Sieple named to post for religious liberty

Christian Century, July 1, 1998

A top official with the world's largest privately funded international Christian relief and development agency was named June 18 to a newly created State Department post dealing with the issue of religious persecution abroad. President Clinton said the appointment of Robert A. Seiple to the position of senior adviser to the secretary of state for international religious freedom will "make sure that religious liberty concerns get high and close attention in our foreign policy."

For the past 11 years, Seiple has served as president of the U.S. branch of World Vision, a nondenominational agency working in some 100 nations around the globe. Last year he indicated that he would leave the post at the end of June '98.

Seiple's appointment was announced at the White House by Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It came days before the president's scheduled trip to China, for which he has been criticized by congressional Republicans and some conservative religious activists because of Beijing's tight control over religious and political expression. The 55-year-old Seiple's role will be to advise Albright on ways "to integrate and implement policies that promote religious freedom into U.S. foreign policy," according to a State Department announcement.

In brief remarks; Seiple said his task will be "simply to keep the momentum going" on the issue of religious persecution abroad, which, he noted, has achieved "a tremendous head of steam" in recent months. Indeed, Seiple, a moderate evangelical Protestant who recently toyed with running for Congress as a Republican in Washington state's ninth district south of Seattle, has placed himself smack in the middle of what has become one of Washington's most heated issues.

For the past two years the White House and members of Congress, pressed primarily by religious conservatives, have sparred over the best way to respond to what activists on the issue say is government-backed persecution of religious minorities--particularly Christians--in such countries as China, the Sudan and Pakistan.

The position Seiple is assuming was proposed earlier this year by a State Department advisory panel as one way to address the problem. About 40 panel members and other religious leaders were on hand at the White House for the announcement of the appointment. One of Seiple's roles will be to facilitate the panel's efforts.

The administration has emphasized addressing the issue in ways it says will not hamper other foreign-policy goals, including trade and national security. But conservatives, including some members of Congress, and some liberal religious and human rights groups have insisted on putting first what they say is the issue's moral dimension.

In the Congress, competing measures in the House and Senate both call for establishing positions similar to the one created for Seiple. The House bill, already approved, sets up an Office of Persecution in the State Department headed by a presidential appointee who would report annually to Congress on countries found to be persecuting its citizens on the basis of their faith. The Senate bill, which has yet to be voted on, calls for both an ambassador-at-large for religious liberty who would also report annually to Congress and a White House special adviser on the issue. The White House opposes both bills, contending that they would interfere with the president's ability to conduct a foreign policy tailored to individual cases. In announcing Seiple's appointment, Clinton made reference to the bills, referring to them as "rigid laws" that will "tie the president's hands" and, ultimately, harm the cause of religious freedom.

Some critics of the president's past actions on the issue disagreed, however, and dismissed Seiple's appointment as window dressing. "The White House is just huffing and puffing to get abreast of the parade while simultaneously trying to block it," said Michael Horowitz, an early advocate for more forceful U.S. action on the issue. Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, said Seiple's institutional setting "is not one conducive to really getting things done. He won't have the freedom and independence to buck the desk officers who are out to be nice to whatever country they have to work with, `no matter what the human rights and religious freedom record there may be." Seiple's post at State will be subordinate to the assistant secretary of democracy, human fights and labor. He would not have to report to Congress, as stipulated by both legislative measures addressing the issue.

But another critic of the White House on the issue, Representative Frank Wolf (g., Va.), expressed a wait-and-see attitude on Seiple's appointment. Wolf, who sponsored the House measure on religious freedom abroad that passed with overwhelming support, called Seiple "very capable [and] somebody who understands the issue very well. He has seen enough of this firsthand to really know what it's all about. I don't think his appointment is an attempt to just bury the issue."