ADVOCATES of religious freedom have played down an apparent shift of emphasis by the United States on issues relating to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB).

President Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance last week appeared to distance themselves from defending forms of non-belief as part of upholding religious freedom.

President Trump told an event at the Capitol connected to a National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday of last week: “We have to bring religion back. We have to bring it back much stronger.” He said that “religious liberty” was a “fundamental freedom” that should be protected “with absolute devotion”.

Since the attempt on his life last July (News, 19 July 2024), he felt “much more strongly” about believing in God, he said.

At a separate prayer breakfast on the same day in the Washington Hilton hotel, the President announced the creation of a presidential commission on religious liberty. “In recent years, we’ve seen this sacred liberty threatened like never before,” he said. He would sign an executive order to create a task force to eradicate “anti-Christian bias”, which would “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government” and “prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society”.

The new commission is to be led by the televangelist Paula White-Cain, a long-term spiritual adviser to Mr Trump. On Friday, some Evangelical Christians publicly criticised the appointment on social media, referring to concerns about both her integrity and her style of ministry.

Vice-President Vance struck a similar tone to that of President Trump, when addressing religious leaders and campaigners at an International Religious Freedom (IRF) summit at the Hilton earlier last week. Representing the UK at the summit were the newly appointed UK Special Envoy for FoRB, David Smith MP, and senior FCDO officials. The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, who has raised FoRB issues in the House of Lords, attended the summit, and hosted a prayer breakfast at which he and Mr Smith spoke.

Vice-President Vance said: “Our administration believes we must stand for religious freedom, not just as a legal principle as important as that is, but as a lived reality. . . How did America get to the point where we’re sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars abroad to NGOs that are dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe?”

Several religious figures disagreed with the Roman Catholic Vice-President’s speech. The executive director of the charity Churches for Middle East Peace, the Revd Dr Mae Elise Cannon, told the Religion News Service (RNS) that the speech gave lip service to international religious freedom and liberty for all, but that its “subtext” included “deeply disturbing assumptions about the superiority of Christianity and the idea that only the ‘right kind of people’ should have complete freedom and human rights”.

The religious-freedom ambassador at the World Evangelical Alliance, Godfrey Yogarajah, told RNS: “Freedom of religion or belief also gives people a right not to believe.”

Mr Smith spoke as part of a panel discussion, “Building on the Successes of the Global IRF Movement”. He welcomed the Vice-President’s comments about religious freedom as a lived experience, and said that governments and civil society had to work together “to be reaffirming our commitment to human rights and, within that, freedom of religion and belief”.

Bishop Mounstephen, asked whether the Vice-President’s comments about atheism suggested that the US was no longer on the same page as the UK on FoRB, said that he believed that FoRB was an area in which the US and the UK “could make common cause”, and that the US’s considerable apparatus around promoting religious freedom “is statutory”.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) describes itself as monitoring “the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad”, and the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom says that it “promotes universal respect for freedom of religion or belief for all as a core objective of US foreign policy”.

Stephen Schneck, who chairs the USCIRF, told the Church Times: “Speaking in my personal capacity, and not as a Commissioner, I’m pleased to see the new administration’s concern for freedom of religion or belief. For me, personally, I do not see any potential change to the Commission’s mandate.”