The best plans for supporting Christians in the region will be those made in cooperation with their Muslim and Jewish neighbors.
The best plans for supporting Christians in the region will be those made in cooperation with their Muslim and Jewish neighbors.
D espite years of valiant effort, attempts by Americans from both the left and the right to strengthen the indigenous Christian communities of the Near East have fallen short of expectations. The international religious-freedom movement, a fusion of both camps, has had important successes on this front, but political instability and sectarian violence have left the region’s minorities weaker than ever before. Devastating wars in Iraq and Syria have harmed Muslims and Christians alike, but Christians, owing to their small footprint and lack of political power, have felt their effects disproportionately.
The problem isn’t due to a lack of goodwill or righteous intent. It’s a problem of approach. The time has come to forge a new international religious-freedom strategy, one that is less reliant on American power, more organic to the Near East, and more street-smart about changing realities.
The new approach must start, counterintuitively, with a presumption of American disinterest — not because Americans don’t care about indigenous Christians, but because the U.S. government will never make them, or religious freedom more generally, a foreign-policy priority. Nor will the Near East remain central to American interests. The last three presidents have expressed intent to pivot from the region to the Far East, and the public, weary after years of war, is unlikely to support engagement at past levels.
And yet, despite America’s lack of interest, political power must remain a central component of any new strategy. International advocates and human-rights organizations tend to prefer softer approaches, but only states, armies, and police forces can guarantee religious freedom in the end. And so it is with states and their interests that we must deal.
Unfortunately, indigenous Christians cannot challenge their leaders, for fear of losing what little purchase they have, and advocates abroad are often reluctant to dialogue with those leaders, for fear of being tarnished by their less than stellar human-rights records. But it goes without saying that any attempt to help local Christians that ignores local decision-makers, or merely talks at them, is bound to fail — and may actually make things worse.
With this new awareness of power must come a certain savvy for how to direct that power to constructive ends. Religious freedom should be treated not as a stand-alone issue but as the outcome of a more integrated strategy that leverages existing political momentum to achieve desired goals. Critical events that affect the region, such as the conflict in Ukraine and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, instead of being disconnected from the push for religious freedom, should be harnessed to foster it wherever possible.
The Near East is witnessing one such critical event in the rise of a pro-American network of alliances centered on the Abraham Accords, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, and political-reform projects led by various Muslim leaders who, though not democratic in the American sense, understand that security is tied to stability, and stability to mutual respect. This new “Abrahamic axis,” which stretches from Athens to Abu Dhabi through Jerusalem, and takes in several nearby countries, could, if engaged wisely, offer fresh opportunities to strengthen Christian communities in ways more organic and authentic.
But no strategy will be effective if it doesn’t move beyond rhetoric to physical reality. The religious-freedom community tends to prioritize manifestos and strongly worded statements, often talking about Christians, and religious freedom itself, in disembodied terms. But religion is not just an exercise of the mind in the Near East. Here, faith is expressed tangibly in the bodies of actual believers gathered in communities with spatial dimensions. To strengthen these communities, we must foster liberty of conscience, but also physical security, economic prosperity, and cultural preservation. To truly flourish, Christians need more than freedom to worship. They need to live as respected and contributing members of society without fear of retribution.
The upshot is that the new approach must be a local one, since the best plans for supporting Christians will be those made in cooperation with their Muslim and Jewish neighbors. Thankfully, our allies have enshrined mutual respect as the core value of the Abrahamic axis, calling for a rising tide of coexistence and cooperation that lifts all boats. A smarter strategy will take them at their word and strive to make that word a reality.