Congress passes bill to protect non-believers for first time

WASHINGTON — In updating an 18-year-old religious freedom law, Congress this year decided for the first time to expressly protect the rights of people around the world who practice no religion at all.

President Obama signed the International Religious Freedom Act on Friday, hailed by Republicans and Democrats as way to strengthen the ability of the United States to call out countries that oppress or persecute people for their religious beliefs.

But now the law includes a reference to nonbelievers as well.

“The freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs and the right not to profess or practice any religion,” according to the new law governing international programs, which passed the House and Senate unanimously, without controversy.

The addition was lauded by humanists, who said incidents of violence against atheists in places like Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia are an affront to anyone who cares about religious freedom. Shaping U.S. foreign policy to protect human rights is common ground for groups that normally don’t agree on much, like atheists and Christian conservatives.

“Religious freedom for all people, theists and non-theists, is an American value we must protect,” said Matthew Bulger, legislative director of the American Humanist Association.

The new legislation strengthens the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, which gives the State Department the ability to identify and denounce regimes that violate the rights of people to worship freely. The update allows the U.S. government to also designate non-state actors like terrorist groups or individuals, create a comprehensive list of religious prisoners, and require international religious freedom training for all foreign service officers.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., was the lead sponsor in the House.

“This is serious strengthening and enhancement of the original law and it does so in a way that it has to be implemented aggressively and can make religious freedom a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy,” Smith said Tuesday in an telephone interview from Iraq.

Smith was in Erbil visiting a refugee camp with thousands of Christians fleeing Islamic State terrorists.

He said the added reference to non-theism was a way to encompass groups like Falun Gong in China.

“We wanted to make clear that … nobody is coerced into believing in God if they don’t want to,” Smith said. “I’m a Catholic and I believe very deeply in God, but Christ said, ‘I stand at the door and knock. If you welcome me, I come in.’ And that’s the way religious liberty ought to be, absolutely voluntary. People have a right not to believe.”

Smith said the non-theist reference was noncontroversial, even among the more evangelical Christian members of Congress.

“It speaks well of all of us, of everyone, that we really wanted to protect freedom of conscience for all people,” Smith said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was the lead sponsor in the Senate.

“America was founded in part by people fleeing religious persecution, and the U.S. has a moral responsibility to be a champion for oppressed people around the world,” he said in a statement.

Religious freedom violations involving atheists are already tracked by the State Department, but advocates say it was important to add the protections into the new law. The agency’s most recent report on international religious freedom, for example, in 2015 said there were two known cases in Saudi Arabian courts where atheists were being prosecuted for their views.

The State Department currently has an Office of International Religious Freedom, led by Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom David Saperstein. The office publishes an annual report about persecution of religious minorities and works with the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The two main changes in the law passed last week allow the State Department to identify religious freedom violators that are not associated with any government, and the addition of a special watch list to identify those places of concern before they escalate to become a “country of particular concern,” which can bring economic and political sanctions.

The Family Research Council, a Christian public policy organization in Washington, endorsed the new religious freedom law, including its provisions for non-theists.

“We want to see strong religious freedom protections for everyone, regardless of their faith,” said Travis Weber, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council. 

The new law is named for former congressman Frank Wolf, R-Va., a longtime champion of focusing U.S. foreign policy on issues of religious freedom.