April (Web-only) 2003

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Last month, two religious-freedom advocates debated how best to help those persecuted for their beliefs. Michael Horowitz, director of the Hudson Institute's Project for International Religious Liberty, urged public campaigns and punitive sanctions against repressive regimes. T. Jeremy Gunn, senior fellow for religion and human rights at Emory University, favored quiet diplomacy.

Robert Seiple, former U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom is a critic of the punitive approach. Seiple wrote an essay for ChristianityToday.com in which he contrasted the "public finger pointing" of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the "quiet diplomacy" of the State Department. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) created both the USCIRF and the ambassador's post. Felice Gaer, chair of the USCIRF, responded to Seiple's article prompting Christianity Today to invite two longtime religious-rights advocates to make their cases.

We posted Horowitz's response to Gunn's original essay yesterday. Today, Gunn responds to Horowitz.

I began this exchange by identifying some positive steps the United States could take to promote religious freedom abroad. I also offered several examples to show that policies relying on denunciations and sanctions are usually unsuccessful. In response, Michael Horowitz—a longtime proponent of the denunciation and sanctions approach—says, remarkably, nothing.

Nor does Horowitz take up a serious discussion of which measures are most effective in promoting religious freedom abroad. Rather, he devotes his response to inventing opinions of others and then attacking these phantoms of his own creation. Let me offer just a few examples.

My opening article did ...