Rethinking Strategic Religious Engagement

United States diplomacy has often experienced a “God-gap” in understanding world events from the perspective of people of faith. It was not for nothing that Doug Johnston in 1994 entitled his book “Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft.” While the God-gap has closed in recent years, it was not the result of any overarching strategy. Rather, global events spurred independent, uncoordinated efforts to promote religious freedom internationally and build capacity for strategic religious engagement (SRE). This article will discuss how the termination of a dedicated SRE focus within the U.S. government provides an opportunity to reframe strategic religious engagement as a theme and not a distinct office or line of work.

Religious Engagement as a Dedicated Foreign Policy Area

While the First Amendment separates church and state in the United States, religion and politics are never far apart. Their proximity stems from the universal salience of faith, regardless of time or culture. For these reasons, policymakers have worked to enable diplomats, development professionals, and military service members to understand the role of religion or belief in foreign societies while working to advance U.S. priorities.

The passage of the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998 was a seminal moment in U.S. efforts to advance religious freedom globally.After its signing into law, U.S. diplomatic engagement with religious actors was singularly through the lens of human rights for a decade and a half. However, in 2013, efforts expanded when the Obama administration established the Office of Religion and Global Affairs (RGA) at the State Department. RGA established a cadre of civil servants and foreign service officers endeavoring to expand religious engagement further. 

The first Trump administration closed the RGA Office, renamed the effort Strategic Religious Engagement (SRE), and embedded a reduced unit in the Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF). While the combined office continued to pursue both, the cohabitation was not one of equals, with the first Trump administration prioritizing religious freedom in ways never seen before. The Biden administration kept SRE embedded within IRF, while religious freedom slipped in priority. The second Trump administration, in contrast, has brought about significant changes: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) shuttered, SRE disbanded, IRF demoted within the State Department hierarchy, and no confirmed IRF ambassador currently in place. 

As of this writing, the impact of these changes remains to be seen. However, if starting with a blank sheet of paper, no one would have designed the system as it evolved over time. Consequently, the disruptions provide an opportunity to reconsider how the U.S. government can better understand and engage religious dynamics abroad across a broad array of issues and concerns. 

An Inflection Point for SRE in U.S. Government

Over the past 25 years, the United States has approached religion in foreign policy through three distinct but poorly integrated pathways: international religious freedom advocacy, broader religion-and-global-affairs in diplomacy/development, and the military’s efforts to understand religion’s role in conflict. The approach demonstrated the influence of religious actors in shaping societies in ways positive and negative to U.S. interests. However, none of these initiatives was created with any thought about how they would interact with similar or parallel initiatives. Human rights, diplomatic/development engagement, and military religious advisement operated as separate silos. In addition, an imbalance of interest, support, and resources resulted in a fragmented landscape.

Given this history, how can the United States best conduct strategic religious engagement and advance religious freedom and other human rights? First, policymakers must recognize the interconnected nature of faith. Religious actors do not see the world through U.S. government bureaucratic boxes. A cleric can be simultaneously concerned about girls’ education, water and sanitation, and religious persecution.

Citizens in many countries often interpret global events through a religious lens, regardless of U.S. diplomats' more secular or jaded perspectives. As was well-said by the former Office of Religion and Global Affairs, “Religion is a multivalent force and plays a wide range of roles in different societies. Engaging religion is not about privileging the religious aspects of a given issue, but rather about addressing the interplay between religion and factors including politics, law, economy, society, and culture.” In other words, religion is not a box you check, because religion is in every box.

Now, in this new moment, SRE should be revived as a policy focus, but in a way that complements, not conflicts, with other established efforts such as promoting international religious freedom. In addition, the approach must be relevant to the lived realities on the ground for faith actors, not organigrams in Washington, DC. Consequently, success requires recognizing the various U.S. government offices and actors, coordinating them, and respecting their distinct roles and authorizations. 

Reframing SRE as a “Theme” in U.S. Foreign Policy

SRE can achieve a policy coherence previously missing by reframing SRE along four areas of U.S. foreign policy that engage religious actors or issues: security, humanitarian assistance, development, and human rights and religious freedom. Each sphere, while not completely disconnected from the others, has its own universe of actors. And historically U.S. government programs in these four spheres have operated independently at best or in competition at worst.

A new approach would view SRE not as a mission itself, but reframed as a cross-cutting policy theme that encapsulates these four areas of focus. As an organizing principle, SRE activities would include any government initiatives that build partnerships with religious actors, understand the religious landscape, and convey human rights priorities to all aspects of foreign communities, in an overall effort to advance U.S. priorities. It would recognize the often overlapping and sometimes competing, areas of interest, among the four spheres but work to resolve policy confusion and ensure more impactful diplomacy. 

Such a flexible arrangement would bring disparate pieces into a coherent mission while respecting their unique roles, unlike previous iterations. Experience has shown that changing administrative priorities or world events can expand or contract the attention given to each sphere. For instance, security issues are always at the forefront of policymakers' minds, regardless of administration, but the focus is shifting from the Middle East to Asia. Or religious persecution has an emotive aspect that rallies people to a human rights cause, especially the constituents of Members of Congress, in ways other more technical issues do not. Because of these certainties, grouping these four spheres together in a flexible context would help account for swings in interest and ensure less disruption among long-term U.S. foreign policy goals across administrations.

The new architecture offers a vision for interaction among the four spheres that avoids micromanagement and emphasizes coordination, supporting holistic efforts and greater information sharing. If done appropriately, SRE policy coherence through a loose affiliation would allow each to demonstrate its value in its own right (fighting for human rights and religious freedom, assisting the sick or hungry, providing security), while accounting for overlapping areas. SRE as a cross-cutting policy theme could make these considerations a routine part of U.S. foreign policy decision-making rather than an ad hoc intervention.

A Coordinating Mechanism for the SRE Spheres

But how to do this practically? To succeed, coordination would be needed to mainstream SRE into human rights, humanitarian, security, and development efforts across the federal agencies working in global contexts. The National Security Council (NSC) or the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning are natural places to ensure coherence and prioritization, allowing policymakers to assess both capacity and existing religious engagements across the four spheres, articulate strategy, and determine any adjustments to staffing and/or training requirements. 

The quick solution of appointing an "SRE czar" at the State Department to coordinate these efforts could be tempting, but problematic. The position could not direct the international religious freedom ambassador, who, by law, reports to the Secretary of State and the President. In addition, the work of military chaplains is carried out by a different agency. However, identifying SRE leads in regional bureaus and posts (such as political or public affairs officers) would create a cadre of diplomats who map religious landscapes, maintain relationships with credible faith actors, and feed insights into reporting and policy deliberations. In Washington, the NSC or Office of Policy Planning could chair an interagency SRE working group for policy planning, country strategies, and program design. While potentially bureaucratically slow, it could institutionalize past efforts to coordinate the State Department, USAID, and military chaplains. In practice, such coordination would ensure that religious dynamics are assessed early—alongside political, economic, and security factors—rather than after crises emerge.

However, much policy expertise has been lost after the reductions in manpower at the State Department in general and the IRF Office in particular, the closure of the SRE unit, and the shuttering of USAID. With little hope for rebuilding expertise in the near term, a public-private endeavor could fill the gap by connecting subject-matter experts on different regions, countries, and faiths with diplomats and service members. Expertise from universities, think tanks, or the private sector could be made available to SRE leads within relevant bureaus and posts, helping them with religious-actor analysis and engagement. The SRE Hub is one example of civil society working to provide information relevant to policymakers unaccustomed or inexperienced with these religiously connected challenges. Overall, public-private partnerships would be cost-effective, immediate, and allow for more nuanced understandings of religious dynamics across different regions of the world.

In conclusion, reframing strategic religious engagement not as its own mission, but rather as a cross-cutting theme can enhance cooperation and coordination among various U.S. government entities and thus yield more durable gains for U.S. interests. The closing of dedicated Strategic Religious Engagement offices at State and USAID offers an opportunity to reassess how strategic religious engagement can more effectively advance U.S. interests while promoting religious freedom and other human rights. Going forward, any revival of strategic religious engagement must be better coordinated around the four spheres of security, humanitarian assistance, development, and human rights to ensure a coherent approach that reflects the enduring importance of religion in global affairs.

https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/rethinking-strategic-religious-engagement