US Secretary of State discusses international religious freedom threats

Nashville, Tenn., Oct 15, 2019 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- In a speech on Christian leadership Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo highlighted international religious freedom threats, especially in China, Iran, and Iraq.

Pompeo spoke Oct. 11 in Nashville to the American Association of Christian Counselors, discussing Christian leadership in disposition, dialogue, and decision making.

“Before you can help others, you need to have the right approach to yourself,” he began in speaking of disposition. “How you carry yourself is the first arena of Christian leadership.”

Pompeo noted he keeps an open Bible on his desk, and tries to read it each morning. “I need my mind renewed with truth each day. And part of that truth … is to be humble.”

He also noted the importance of forgiveness in one’s disposition.

Turning to dialogue, Pompeo emphasized the importance of listening carefully and not rushing to judgement, but especially truth telling.

He noted that as Secretary of State “I’m especially telling the truth about the dire condition of religious freedom around the world. America has a proud history of religious freedom, and we want jealously to guard it here. But around the world, more than 80% of mankind lives in areas where religious freedom is suppressed or denied in its entirety.”

He said the Chinese Communist Party “is detaining and abusing more than one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in the Xinjiang” and “Christian pastors today are being unlawfully arrested, beaten, detained inside the Islamic Republic of Iran. We need to speak about this.”

“Christian areas in northern Iraq that I’ve had the privilege to visit have been ravaged by ISIS, part of a greater trend of Christian persecution all across the Middle East,” he added.

Pompeo spoke of the State Departments efforts in recent years to emphasize religious freedom, saying, “we’ve hosted ministerials. We bring leaders from all around the world called the Ministerial on Religious Freedom at the State Department. We’ve told the world about these shortfalls and the success of nations when individuals are given their basic human dignity to practice their conscience, their faith, or to choose no faith if they so choose all around the world.”

Finally, the state secretary addressed decision making, focusing on faithful stewardship and intentional use of time.

“Decisions are a question of priorities, often … I am grateful that my call as a Christian to protect human dignity overlaps with America’s centuries-old commitment to the same mission in our foreign policy all across the world.”

Pompeo noted that “international organizations will try, from time to time, to sneak language into their documents claiming that abortion is a human right. And we’ll never accept that. We’ve worked diligently to find every dollar that might be going to that and we have worked tirelessly and successfully now to bring it nearly to an end.”