Spiritual statecraft: The intersections between faith and diplomacy

Dag Hammarskjöld, secretary-general of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961, was both a deeply spiritual person and a widely respected diplomat.

His biographer Roger Lipsey wrote about how Hammarskjöld’s religious convictions directly impacted his diplomatic outlook.

“Somewhat forgotten today but admired nearly worldwide in his time,” Lipsey wrote, Hammarskjöld was a significant figure in shaping the U.N.’s sense of mission and breadth of vision, creating important peacemaking methods such as shuttle diplomacy and the UN peacekeeping forces.

Since then, the U.N. and the wider international relations community have continued to wrestle with the relationship between religion and diplomacy.

As early as the 1990s, authors such as Barry Rubin pointed out how the U.S. and other policymakers too often ignored the impact and influence of religion in international affairs.

Organizations like Religions for Peace — a multireligious platform with representation from diverse religious institutions and communities — and the U.N.’s own Interagency Task Force on Religion and Sustainable Development have sought to bring religious actors to the policymaking table.

Significant moments in the history of the freedom of religion or belief include the enactment of 1998’s International Religious Freedom Act and the two entities it created: the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Later came the creation of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, a network of countries with stated commitments to advancing freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). Also of note are the Ministerials to Advance Religious Freedom. Held in locations such as the United Kingdom (2022) and the Czech Republic (2023), the ministerials bring together leaders from around the world to discuss religious freedom and discrimination worldwide.

Leaders in the realm of faith and diplomacy have pointed out the ongoing tensions involved in such efforts.

Shaun Casey, previously the U.S. special representative for religion and global affairs and director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs, wrote for Religion & Politics back in January 2023:

Religions are powerful forces in global diplomacy, and … the future of the work we did in the Office of Religion and Global Affairs is unknown. I believe that without such an institutional capacity, the U.S. government will not be able to help the world answer major global issues such as forced mass migration, burgeoning climate change, the effort to inoculate the planet against COVID, and the securing of full human rights for women and girls, to name a few issues where religious communities are simultaneously part of the problem and part of the solution. 

Meanwhile, the former secretary-general of Religions for Peace, Azza Karam, critiqued the process by which religious leaders come together to serve the common good, questioning the effectiveness of “projects, programmes, initiatives, meetings, and more meetings” hosted by a certain cadre of global religious experts and elites.

Whatever the future may hold, and whatever role religion is to play in international diplomacy, reporters would do well to cover how faith shapes statesmanship and foreign policy. Journalists would also be wise to report on who is seeking to hold sway over diplomats themselves and how various religious communities wield their influence at the national and international levels.

In the latest ReligionLink source guide, we provide a range of background, resources, stories and sources to help you understand the consequential intersections between religion and diplomacy.

“I have come to serve, not to be served”: the World Evangelical Alliance’s permanent representative at the UN puts focus on serving others

Gaetan Roy goes to the United Nations building in Geneva with an unusual question: “How can I serve you?”

Roy is not a waiter or a salesperson but the new representative from the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) to the UN. Ever since he first got involved in politics, this is the question he’s led with. Back in 2015, when he went to the German parliament to lobby on behalf of evangelical organizations, he couldn’t get the words of Mark 10:45 out of his mind: I have come to serve, not to be served.

So Roy asked the first politician he met on his first day, “How can I serve you?” He’s continued asking it ever since.

“I thought this was really simple, but I felt God was unrelenting in this regard,” Roy told CT. “If Jesus came to serve and not to be served, then I will do the same by asking diplomats and politicians we engage with how we can serve them.”

With this question, Roy has become one of the primary evangelical voices at the world’s largest intergovernmental organization, speaking on behalf of 600 million believers in more than 120 countries. He takes over from Michael Mutzner, who helped establish the WEA’s office at the UN in 2012, and joins Wissam al-Saliby, director of the WEA’s Geneva office. Al-Saliby focuses on public statements about human rights violations while Roy works behind the scenes, brokering deals and developing official proposals for the UN representatives to consider.

Whether he’s promoting peace in Nigeria or working with the Coalition for Minority Rights in India, Roy said he hopes service will lead the way as he represents evangelical concerns and advances the cause of religious freedom for all.

If Roy’s approach to high-level negotiations and political diplomacy seems unorthodox, so was his pathway to such a high-profile position.

Accused of diverting funds to Hamas, former World Vision employee still awaits verdict

Mohammad el-Halabi believes the truth will set him free.

The former Gaza director of World Vision has now spent more than half a decade in prison, and according to his lawyer, the Israeli government has offered him plea deal after plea deal. He could potentially go home if he would only confess that funding for the Christian humanitarian aid organization was diverted to support terrorism.

But Halabi has refused.

“He is saying he will not admit to things he never did,” Maher Hanna, who represents Halabi, told CT. “He will not pollute the image of World Vision just to get a personal discount and go home to be with his children.”

Hanna, himself a Christian, said this is one of the remarkable things about this case that has not been noted in the international headlines: A Muslim man who worked for a Christian organization is refusing, under severe pressure and at great personal risk, to betray one of the largest evangelical charities in the world and harm its future work.

“We should admire that position that Muhammad is taking for himself. It’s a high Christian value,” Hanna said.

Close observers and insiders say Halabi’s trial looks like it will conclude this fall. The Israeli court could reach a verdict as early as this month.

How to monitor, identify, and counter hate speech

“The words of a human being have tremendous power, to build and destroy, to give life and to take life. In Abrahamic religions, an essential part of the creation of the world was the word. It was words that created this world and it is words that will destroy this world,” said Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Chief Rabbi of Moscow and member of the European Muslim and Jewish Leadership Council (MJLC).

Worldwide, xenophobia, racism, and other forms of intolerance — including antisemitism, misogyny, and islamophobia — are prevalent in public discourse, the media, and political rhetoric.

The global growth of hate speech raises the spectre of how, over the past century, it was a precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide, from Germany to Rwanda, Cambodia to Bosnia.

“Hate speech is virtually everywhere,” said Goldschmidt, “but we must not tolerate it anywhere.”

With this in mind, the International Dialogue Center (KAICIID) has been employing a range of initiatives to help religious communities and leaders counter hate speech, from producing a guide on how to monitor and analyse hate speech to hosting consultations with experts in the field.

“Religious actors and interreligious leaders,” said Faisal bin Muaammar, Secretary General of KAICIID, “have a role to play in countering hate speech.”

Recently, I learned from KAICIID experts in partnership with the European Council of Religious Leaders/ Religions for Peace- Europe (ECRL/RfP Europe) with the support of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to develop a guide to IDENTIFYING, MONITORING, and COUNTERING HATE SPEECH.

We all have a role to play in responding to hate speech and it begins with understanding what it is, how it manifests online and in day-to-day life, and why it is resonating and replicating. 

Religion at the UN: From Gender Justice to Protecting the Environment, Faith Communities are Creating Sustainable Change

When Prof. Azza Karam was trying to create the Interagency Task Force on Religion and Sustainable Development (IATF) during her time at the UN, she often ran into a challenge that seemed embedded in the organization’s DNA.

“The UN is supposed to be the quintessential universal culture, you’re supposed to step through the doors and have no country, no religion, and serve all,” she said.

Respecting this altruism and admiring the broad human rights principles that make the UN what it is, Karam still felt something was missing — the heart. She wondered, “how can you serve all if you don’t understand what touches people’s hearts, their faith?”

Driven by a desire to see faith-based actors more involved with the UN, she worked with like-minded individuals to create the UN IATF in 2010. Today, it includes more than 20 UN agencies and works toward shared objectives with key partners in the faith-based world.

In 2018, the UN IATF established the MFAC to advise on key areas of the UN’s mandate, such as gender justice, environmental protection, and peacebuilding. KAICIID serves as the only intergovernmental organization that holds membership in the MFAC and co-chaired the council from 2018-2019.

Rabbi Burton Visotzky, Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, was already involved with the UN Under-Secretary General for Genocide Prevention and was often consulted along with other faith leaders by the IATF, so much so that he thought of himself as “the UN’s ‘go-to Jew.’”

Along with other “religious friends of the UN” he came to serve on the MFAC when it was founded.

Although still in its infancy, Visotzky said the MFAC has already made an impact around the UN. “Having discovered religion, the UN has acted on that knowledge and is keen to partner with us in a variety of ways.”

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS PARTNER WITH RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO REACH VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES DURING COVID-19

Pope Francis leading Easter mass in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica. Solitary images of the Kaaba in Mecca and the absence of pilgrims praying around it. Digital meditation sessions, online devotions, and Holy Communion served on the end of a PVC pipe.

As faith leaders react to the new realities of religious practices in light of COVID-19, non-profit organizations, policymakers, and intergovernmental institutions are working with religious communities to develop plans, implement strategies, and provide guidance for what can be done to mitigate the virus’ social, economic, and political impacts. 

“The virus does not care about ethnicity or nationality, faction or faith. It attacks all, relentlessly,” United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said. “Together, we can and will defeat this virus – with cooperation, solidarity and faith in our common humanity.”

Read on to learn what international organizations like the WHO, UN, Religions for Peace, and more are doing to partner with religious communities across the world to protect the vulnerable at such a time as this.