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WASHINGTON, D.C. – A coalition of 50 international religious liberty leaders, including Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, sent a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urging support for President Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo. Leaders joining the letter include Franklin Graham, President and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse; Matias Perttula, Advocacy Director of International Christian Concern; Ann Buwalda, Esq., Executive Director of Jubilee Campaign USA; David Curry, President and CEO of Open Doors USA; Bob Fu, President and Founder, China Aid; and former Congressman Frank Wolf among others.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced Pompeo’s confirmation hearing will begin this Thursday.
The letter reads, in part:
“We, the undersigned, a diverse coalition of international religious freedom advocates and organizations representing hundreds of thousands of Americans, write to you today in support of the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Mr. Pompeo is a strong nominee who will make international religious freedom a foreign policy priority—a matter which is especially important given that we now know religious freedom, long protected for its own sake, is also intricately connected to the security and prosperity of nations themselves.
“…Due to his security expertise, Mike Pompeo is especially equipped to address this facet of religious freedom policy.
“Working with willing partners, we must cultivate religious freedom within communities the world over—and all of this helps achieve their security as well as our own security at home. As one scholar has noted, “[t]here is not a single nation in the world that both respects religious freedom and poses a security threat to the United States,” and the “entities engaging in religious persecution—both states and nonstates—are on balance more likely to pose a security threat to the U.S.” We also now know that religious freedom is associated with economic growth. When religious freedom flourishes around the world, corruption is lowered and there is more peace, less harmful regulation, reduced liabilities, and more diversity and economic growth. Thus, when Christians, Yezidis, and others driven away by ISIS are restored to their communities in Northern Iraq, we must understand that not only are we working toward cultivating religious freedom in that region, but we are also stabilizing it, leaving one less spot for the next variation of ISIS adherents to plot attacks against the United States. Yet as we engage with foreign officials, we must not excuse their attempts to compromise the notion that everyone, regardless of their faith, has an equal role in civil society, but rather ‘address this issue forthrightly.’
“We will only have sustainable, long-term peace if we actually make religious freedom a foreign policy priority. Mike Pompeo understands this and will make it happen, and should be confirmed as Secretary of State,” the letter concludes.
To read the full letter, please see: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=LK18D08
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