Religion at UN more visible, yet minor player

Christian Century, June 19, 2002 by Chris Herlinger

Before a United Nations summit on children's issues, religious groups and other nongovernmental organizations proclaimed the meeting's importance. Once the May 8-10 summit was over--with little to show except a carefully crafted document penned by midlevel diplomats--many of the groups acknowledged that it would likely have little impact.

The assessments depended largely on the ideologies involved. The Vatican, Muslim nations and the U.S. (which sought conservative language on family planning issues but did not get an outright abortion ban for teens in the text) saw it as mostly successful. Women's health advocates and liberal faith-based nongovernmental groups (lobbying for adolescent health and reproductive rights, including abortion) viewed it as a disappointment.

It has become a familiar scenario. Religious groups battle for the heart and soul of final statements emerging from UN conferences.

But those weary of this increasingly predictable routine had better get used to it. A recent study by the group Religion Counts says religious organizations are becoming more prominent at the UN and will continue to have what one of the study's authors called a "potent" role in shaping future international public policy.

"Religion has been a critical part of the United Nations since its inception and continues to offer a distinct dimension and voice there that other entities do not bring to international issues," said Philip Boyle, chief operating officer of the Chicago-based Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics. Boyle helped write the study and the Park Ridge Center conducted the report's research, which included interviews with 60 persons, among them representatives of religious and nonreligious groups and UN officials.

"The UN cannot fail to engage with religion and in doing so must recognize that religion is not monolithic and defies predictability," Boyle said, "especially when it comes to the critical issues debated at the UN." If the report, "Religion and Public Policy at the United Nations," paints a complex and sometimes unwieldy portrait, it is apparent that religious-based advocacy at the world organization shows no sign of abating.

Beginning with the UN's 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt--at which the Vatican, joined by several Central American and Muslim nations, and advocates of family planning and birth control publicly clashed--and continuing with a series of UN conferences since then, religion-linked issues such as population, development and AIDS have been at the forefront of international forums.

While UN leaders, such as Secretary General Kofi Annan, have praised religion's "transcendent, spiritual dimension," it is also clear that there is not a consensus at the UN on what the "religious voice'" means or what the "appropriate role" of religion ought to be, the report concluded.

An unnamed leader of a conservative U.S. "family values" group, quoted in the report, summed up what is a kind of operating principle for religious organizations working and lobbying at the UN. "No one coming to the UN is neutral," the leader said. "Everyone comes here with moral values, ideas they believe in. The lesbians and the communists come with moral values, as do those organizations that come with a belief in the [traditional] family. Everyone has a right to be here."

One of the report's key findings is that conservative Christian religious groups that once shunned the international body are enjoying increased prominence, as are non-Christian groups, such as Buddhists. "The religious ecology of the UN is more diverse than ever," the report said.

And while those groups enjoy new prominence, the influence of liberal, mainline Protestant organizations at the UN has steadily declined, with the exception of some groups--such as the Lutheran World Federation--which are known for "a nose to the grindstone" approach toward working at the UN.

Despite the increased visibility of religious groups in recent years, however, the UN remains a predominantly secular body. The report noted that fewer than 10 percent of the 2,000 nongovernmental groups working at the UN--only 180 in all--have a religious affiliation. Of those, an overwhelming number--61 percent--are Christian.

Religious NGOs still are perceived by many as having a "second-class citizen role." That, Boyle said in an interview, is due to the fact that the "middle managers" of diplomacy--an important group at UN conferences, for example--"are particularly unaware" of religion or see religion not as a solution to problems but as a problem in itself, particularly when viewed as the cause of "ethno-religious" conflicts.

Boyle said the much-publicized August 2000 Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, the first interfaith gathering ever held at UN headquarters in New York, was something of an "ecclesial fashion show," or a parade that may have accomplished little that was concrete. But, he said, parades carry "symbolic significance that should not be discounted out of hand."