The federal government has not made religious freedom a foreign policy priority in the 15 years since Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act, congressional testimony Thursday morning revealed.
The witnesses described to a House Oversight subcommittee a State Department and broader administration that is indifferent to religious freedom and tentative to defend it.
"Religious freedom has more often than not been treated as an annoying thorn in our side—something we are obligated to address out of duty rather than genuine concern," said Tina Ramirez, president of Hardwired, Inc., a nonprofit organization that promotes religious freedom.
The hearing took place before a protest for Saeed Abedini, an imprisoned American pastor in Iran. The protest, organized by the Christian Defense Coalition, took place outside of the Iranian Interest Section at the Pakistani Embassy, which has an Iranian interests section.
President Barack Obama has not spoken publicly about Abedini’s imprisonment. Secretary of State John Kerry addressed it for the first time in March, calling for his release.
"Don’t think the Iranian government has not noticed that President Obama has not personally addressed this issue," Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, told the assembled group of about 15 protesters.
While the act created tools to fight for religious liberty around the world, "I believe they have never been fully used," Katrina Lantos Swett, chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told the subcommittee.
The result has been an incoherent and shifting U.S. policy, said Tom Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University and the first director of the State Department’s Office of Religious Freedom.
"It would be difficult to name a single country in the world over the past fifteen years where American religious freedom policy has helped to reduce religious persecution or to increase religious freedom in any substantial or sustained way," Farr contended in his written testimony.
Swett said that promoting religious liberty should be a "key priority of American foreign policy" because it can help to prevent religious extremism. She noted that Osama Bin Laden was at one point a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist party in many Middle Eastern countries.
The State Department declined to participate in the hearing because of a "longstanding" policy not to participate in a panel with non-governmental organizations, said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), chairman of the Oversight Committee’s National Security Subcommittee.
Farr seized on this point at the beginning of his remarks.
"It is very unfortunate that the administration has decided that this hearing is not important enough to send a representative," he said. "As you will see, I consider this unfortunately symptomatic of the administration’s view of religious freedom."
The State Department defended its work promoting religious liberty around the world in a conversation with the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday afternoon.
"The State Department indeed does work a considerable amount on religious freedom," said Aaron Jensen, a spokesman for the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
Jensen said the department had worked to get Iran to release Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian minister imprisoned there. Because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran the State Department could not take direct credit for it.
Jensen also noted that religious restrictions in Turkey and Vietnam have been eased because of American work, and said that the department works with civil society groups and non-governmental organizations to promote religious liberty.
Jensen defended the department’s rhetorical approach, saying that raising the issue of religious freedom in high-level meetings between diplomats is "one of the tools that diplomacy uses."
He also highlighted the annual International Religious Freedom Report as evidence of the department’s commitment, although he also noted that they have sanctioned individuals for human rights violations, including religious liberty infringements.
Farr blamed the administration’s lack of interest in religious liberty abroad on a declining emphasis on the role religion plays in American life.
"Clearly the Obama administration has in its domestic policy weighed religious freedom against other rights claims it believes important, such as the right to contraceptives and abortifacients, or to same-sex marriage, and religious freedom has been found to be an inferior right," Farr said.
The protest at the Pakistani embassy was one of several around the world organized by Abedini’s wife, said Tiffany Barrans, the international legal director for the American Center for Law and Justice and one of the lawyers representing the Abedini family.
"The White House—it’s quick to stand for other human rights. We would like to make sure that they’re also standing for this one," Barrans said.
Barrans described religious liberty around the world as "on the decline." Both she and the congressmen noted that 75 percent of the world lives in societies that are either hostile toward, or actively restrictive of, religious freedom, according to the Pew Forum.
The United States has not taken a lead in trying to defend religious liberty, she said.
"When we don’t raise human rights as an issue, and instead we talk about environmental issues, it does tell you were religious liberty is on the totem pole of priorities," she said.