Religious Freedom - A Global Perspective

by Michael K. Young, President of the University of Utah
From the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Conference in Washington, D.C.
Reported originally in Meridian Magazine

Michael K. Young has twice chaired the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which was designed as a watchdog group to propose ways in which the U.S. Foreign Policy could be better designed to advance freedom of conscience and religion around the world.

In that capacity he has traveled to many counties and sat in on sobering interviews with people who have been persecuted for their religion. These were people who had spent years in prison for daring to gather two or three people to pray together, Christians who had been despised and confined for wearing crosses, Muslims who had had limbs hacked off for what authorities termed were wrong practices or beliefs. They were from China, Viet Nam, Sudan - the places in the news where atrocities happen when people dare stand up for conscience' sake.

"What became clear to me," said President Young, "is that it is not accidental that freedom of religion is often called the first freedom. It is profoundly fundamental to people - how they define themselves in relation to the universe, to others and to their children. It is how they order their lives. The way a government is willing to respect religious freedom is the touchstone for defining the moral basis of a government.

"It is a powerful right to protect because it presupposes an allegiance to something higher than the state. It's like the canary in the coal mine. It is the first right that is nibbled around at the edges and then brutally attacked by governments when they feel insecure.

"Among the biggest problems we face is articulating human rights standards that are acceptable to people of a variety of faiths. One of the big failures of the academy is the unwillingness to take religion seriously as a political, economic and social force.

"When we lived in New York, I didn't want my children to walk down in Times Square and have them see things there that would make it more difficult to live their religion. We want to be able to live our lives consistent with our most deeply-held religious beliefs. The problem is where do you draw the line?

"Those are hard issues, but issues we only can wrestle with if we take seriously the matter of religion.

"The problem with freedom of religion is not that we take it too seriously, but that we do not take it seriously enough. We will have difficulty finding the answer to those questions if we don't credit it with legitimate discourse."