President Trump, resurrect religious freedom – Washington Examiner

Today is Easter Sunday, Christianity's defining event and most solemn feast day. It is the culmination of Holy Week, which commemorates the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In recent years Christians have joined their savior in becoming targets of torture and execution. Just a week ago, on Palm Sunday, which starts Holy Week, two bomb blasts at Coptic Christian churches in Egypt killed 44 people. Islamic State terrorists claimed responsibility.

The slaughter of innocent Christians at the hands of Islamic terrorists has become an everyday event, an outrage no longer rising to the level of a news story except when perpetrated on the scale just seen in Egypt.

Other forms of persecution persist as well.

According to a new Pew Research Center report, global restrictions on religion rose in 2015, reversing a years-long trend. A quarter of the world's countries now have "high" or "very high" levels of government restriction on religion. The share of countries with social hostilities toward religion, involving non-governmental forces, increased to 27 percent.

Overall, two out of every five nations (40 percent) on Earth have high or very high levels of restriction, an increase from 34 percent in 2014. Of the 198 countries Pew studied, a majority, 105 (53 percent), experienced widespread government harassment of religious groups, up 10 percentage points from 2014.

Middle Eastern and North African worshipers are most threatened. A year ago, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that genocide was being waged by the Islamic State against Christians and other religious minorities.

Persecution is everywhere and targets people of different faiths. In China, the communist government criminalizes unregistered, underground churches and has recently required official ones to install surveillance cameras so it can keep tabs on members of their congregations. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, perhaps the world's deadliest terrorist group, razes churches. In Europe, rising anti-Semitic violence is prompting many Jews to consider leaving the continent for good. Jews in nearly three-quarters of European countries now face social hostility, Pew reports.

Recently the Religious Freedom Institute published a list of recommendations for President Trump to restore religious liberty as a matter of high priority. They recommended that he "state clearly and often" that international religious freedom is important to his administration.

They recommend that Trump nominate an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and give that person the resources necessary to address the issue. U.S. diplomats need to be trained to understand the importance of religious freedom to American interests and values, and how to advance it in foreign policy.

Domestically, Trump should order the Department of Education to remove from its website a "shame list" of colleges seeking an exemption to the Title IX discrimination law, which was first published by the Obama administration, reflecting former President Barack Obama's intolerant secularism. Colleges with a particular religious faith in their very bricks and mortar seek exemptions because Title IX, as interpreted by Obama, otherwise forces them to violate their faith and accommodate the demands of transgendered people and those demanding the freedom to engage in same-sex relationships in dorm rooms.

America has historically been a leader in promoting religious freedom. After eight years under an administration that at best ignored threats faced by religious believers and at worst led the triumphalist secularism that marauds them, Trump should resurrect the government's role in protecting this fundamental freedom.

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President Trump, resurrect religious freedom - Washington Examiner