Casting itself as a defender of religious freedom, Focus on the Family warned on Friday that a federal commission for religious freedom faces dissolution.
But the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is not an advocate for religious freedom at all.
The USCIRF was founded by U.S. evangelicals to shield the foreign activities of right-wing Christian missionaries, not religious minorities. The commission has advocated for military interventions, not to defend religious diversity and freedom of individual religious expression, but rather to advance Christian missionary objectives.
The Indian press have accused USCIRF of grossly mischaracterizing Hindu-Muslim conflicts and of doing little or nothing to defend the freedom of anyone other than Christian evangelicals.
In Egypt, Coptic Christians have accused USCIRF of antagonizing their Muslim neighbors in a politically motivated effort to smear Egypt.
And federal religious-freedom “ambassador” Robert Seiple criticized USCIRF’s emphasis on the punishment of (anti-Christian) religious persecution over the promotion of religious freedom.
Given USCIRF’s betrayal of non-evangelicals, its anticipated dissolution next month can’t come soon enough. Focus on the Family’s defense of special rights for evangelicals — at the expense of other Christians and the world’s non-Christian religious minorities — is another indication of that organization’s disingenuous selfishness.
