First Things RSS Feed - Thomas F. Farr

Today’s Fight for Religious Freedom

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 07:00:00 -0400

Why should you and I, regardless of our religious or political beliefs, support religious freedom for everyone, everywhere? Because human beings must have the freedom to be religious.

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China’s Second Cultural Revolution

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 06:00:00 -0500

China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) occupies a place high in the annals of human savagery. Mao Zedong’s purges sought to purify Chinese communism and ended in catastrophic failure, leaving as many as 20 million Chinese dead and the nation’s stability in doubt.

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Unalienable Rights and Foreign Policy

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 06:00:00 -0400

On May 30, a surprise notice in the Federal Register roiled the landscape of international human rights advocacy. The U.S. Department of State announced that it was establishing a “Commission on Unalienable Rights” to advise Secretary Mike Pompeo.

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Diplomacy and Persecution in China

Wed, 01 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We are witnessing a global crisis in religious freedom, wherein roughly three-quarters of the world’s people live in nations where religion is highly or very highly restricted. China presents a particularly troubling case. The assault on religion currently taking place under President Xi Jinping is the most comprehensive attempt to manipulate and control religious communities in that country since the Cultural Revolution. Under Sam Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, America’s religious freedom diplomacy is more effective than ever. But it can do even more to address the problem of religious persecution in China, if our foreign policy establishment has the will.

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Time to Challenge No-Fault Divorce

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 02:25:00 -0500

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage.

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We Must Fight ISIS with More than Missiles

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:00:00 -0400

The following testimony was given before Sub-Committees of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, September 10, 2014.

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Our Failed Religious Freedom Policy

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The religious freedom policy mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act has now been in operation for fifteen years. Not with standing the hard work of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, it would be difficult to name a single country where that policy has reduced persecution or increased freedom. In most of the countries into which the United States has in recent years poured blood and treasure—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia in particular—freedom is on the decline, persecution on the rise.

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Religious Freedom Abroad

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Seventy percent of the world’s population lives in countries that severely restrict religious freedom. Though largely ignored by the media, scholars, and policymakers, there is a global crisis in religious liberty, and it is getting worse. Outside the West, religious minorities and disfavored members of majority communities are subject to torture, rape, unjust imprisonment, and murder. Some governments and private actors, secular and religious, seek to control or suppress the religious beliefs and practices of their victims for political reasons. Some pursue what they see as a religious obligation. Both cause vast human suffering, create barriers to stable democracy, and abet religion-based extremism and terrorism.

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Cold War Religion

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945“1960:
The Soul of Containment

by William Inboden

Cambridge University Press, 368 pages, $80

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Islam’s Way to Freedom

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The many strands of Islamist radicalism are a terrible threat to vital American interests. The dangers include transnational terrorism fueled by jihad and the growth of extreme Shari’a law in such key Muslim states as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—all while the Iranian clerical regime supports Islamist extremists and seeks the capacity for nuclear weapons.

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