It was just the beginning of the red-carpet hospitality for which Filipinos are legendary, and which had gone into full swing as delegates arrived over several days from all over the world. We'd all come to the Philippine capital to attend the Fifth World Congress of the International Religious Liberty Association (IRLA),* held at the Westin Philippine Plaza Hotel, located on the picturesque Manila Bay, in full view of the Pasay city skyline and of oceangoing ships docked against huge crane elevators on the other side of the harbor.
Some 300 strong, the delegates hailed from 33 countries around the world, representing (by confession) at least five major world religions: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. For four days (June 10-13) they would give attention to a battery of speakers and presenters weighing in on the conference theme: "Religious Freedom: A Basis for Peace and Justice."
One of my overriding impressions of the conference was the seriousness of the delegates in regard to the business of the meeting. I sensed an earnestness, even a passion, for the issues at stake.
Then there was Roland Minnerath, professor at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Strasbourg and a consultant to the Vatican Secretariat of State. "No state should claim to have a duty or a competence whatsoever in matters of religious belief," he said, "and should neither impose specific religious views to its citizens, nor prevent them from living according to their own faith." "The Catholic Church teaches," he said, "that freedom of conscience and religion is at the heart of human rights."
It was a sober assessment of the present state of religious liberty in the world. "Large numbers of people," he said, "are still paying [the price of religious freedom] by their lives."
One of the most balanced presentations came from Robert Seiple, president of the Institute for Global Engagement and a former United States ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. "Treat religious freedom as a security issue, not just a human rights issue," he said, quoting the words of the International Crisis Group in their March 2001 report on central Asia.
No blinders on, Seiple took on all sides. "Raising the voice of principle" in regard to the treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay "was a tactical mistake" on the part of human rights advocates, he said, and the world turned them off. To the extent that it listened, "it heard the unintended and unfortunate comparison between the cramped quarters for terrorists and the loss of 3,000 innocent lives." Said Seiple, "Any tendency toward a moral equivalency, regardless of intention, was offensive to all. In the context of a post-September 11 environment, human dignity was no longer a stand-alone concept." "Security was the issue," he said, "and a one-sided presentation of human rights had no chance of carrying the day."
On the other hand, says Seiple, authoritarian leaders seem all too willing to use the need for security as cover "for additional crackdown on the opposition in their country." And with obvious reference to current U.S. policy he spoke of the danger of seeing the world in categories of "good and evil," "us and them." "The world is at war with terrorism," he said perceptively, "and nuance is the first casualty of war!" "Let's be honest," he said in a statement pregnant with meaning, "would we ever have experienced the blunt-edged boldness of the Israeli military as a conflict is allowed to escalate both out of control and rational thought?"
It's the kind of speech one's tempted to reproduce verbatim. The point at the heart of it was his contention that "we can literally locate and track a country on a continuum of human dignity and compassion by how that country deals with religious freedom." And what's important for states is equally important for groups and individuals. In this connection he referred to Osama bin Laden as "a product of a truncated gospel, an aberration of the Islamic faith," and cited September 11, 2001, as "the ultimate perversion of religion." "What we now know for sure in the world today," he said, "is that there are people who are willing to die for their faith, and, unfortunately, there are people who are willing to kill for their religion."
The presentation by J. Reuben Clark Law School professor W. Cole Durham might be called the defining presentation of the congress. Precise, thoughtful, solid, it succinctly epitomized what the conference was all about. Under the title "Pluralism as a Factor in Peace," Durham successfully argued, contrary to common wisdom, that religious pluralism, far from being a source of tension and conflict for states, can indeed become a source of strength. "It is not religious pluralism itself that is hazardous, but inappropriate constraints on pluralism." It's a message that every nervous dictator around the world needs to hear.
And Durham made a point that should be especially comforting to religious groups holding strong views about "truth." Strong conviction, he said-even "exclusivist religious claims"-are eminently compatible with pluralism. "Groups that make claims that they are the only true church, or hold exclusive access to salvation," do not necessarily "feel impelled to impose their views on others," thus becoming "a source of social tension." "Truth commitments may be fully compatible with joint efforts with others in pursuit of the common good." Without this philosophy the whole concept of religious freedom crumbles.
Evidence that delegates understood this fundamental point came during the awards banquet the third evening of the conference. The keynote speaker was the Honorable José de Venecia, Jr., speaker of the Philippine House of Represen-tatives-an affable gentleman, apparently well versed in the statistics and distribution of the major religions around the world. Commenting on areas of religious tension across the globe-between Hindus and Muslims in India, Arabs and Israelis in Palestine, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, etc., he at last came to the climax of his point: Maybe this is God's will, he said, and maybe one day God will unite all the religions of the world into one body.
He'd been building rhetorically toward this high point of his talk, but the result was any speaker's nightmare: total silence where the applause should come-not a sound. He went back again, twice-building ever so carefully to the applause line. But each time, silence. He'd miscalculated his audience, confusing the drive for religious freedom with the yearning for religious unity-two concepts that, however strongly advocated by their respective proponents, run on distinctly different tracks.
Beyond statements of principles and ideals, the congress heard reports (and in the Hearings Committee, heartrending reports) of situations on the ground where delegates live. From attorney Suk Tae Lee, vice president of MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, Republic of Korea, they heard about serious infringements of human rights in the area of military service, the Korean government refusing to recognize conscientious objector status or provide any alternatives to military service.
From attorney Nceku Moses Msimanga, of Nairobi, Kenya, delegates heard accounts of severe hardship encountered by Seventh-day Adventist law students in Uganda. Although that country's 1995 constitution grants citizens "rights and freedoms, including religious freedom," he said, "state organs, such as universities and other institutions of higher learning, have taken liberty in violating this right of many Adventist students by conducting seminars, examinations, tutorials, lessons, guest lectures, etc., on Sabbath." As a result, Adventist law students have been "failing to qualify to practice since 1997." In 2002, at Makerere University alone, he said, "14 students have discontinued their courses."
And from José Hayasaka, an official advisor to Mexico's congress, we heard how Adventist church members were forced to strip and walk naked through the streets to a Catholic church, where they were forced to ask forgiveness for failing to comply with certain local community rules and regulations.
We could go on ad infinitum if space permitted. In his masterful summation at the end of the conference, attorney Mitchell Tyner, from the Adventist Church's world headquarters, mentioned that the congress featured "51 speakers in 13 sessions," a reality that makes any comprehensive report of what they said virtually impossible.
The situation might have been even worse if everyone expected had turned up. Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila Jaime Cardinal Sin, perhaps the most powerful man in the Philippines, did not show. Nor did former presidents Fidel Ramos and Corazon Aquino. But the congress heard from several important leaders at different levels of the Philippine government, among them the Philippine Senate president, the Honorable Franklin M. Drilon, the highest-ranking official to appear before the conference; The Honorable Representative Imee R. Marcos-Manotoc; the Honorable Senator Francisco "Kit" Tatad; Philippine ambassador to Papua New Guinea Bienvenido V. Tejano (a Seventh-day Adventist); attorney Wenceslao "Pee Wee" Trinidad, mayor of Pasay City, the immediate location of the congress; José L. Atienza, Jr., mayor of Manila; and House of Representatives speaker José V. de Venecia, Jr.
In addition, IRLA leaders and a few selected delegates did receive a gracious audience with the Philippine president, Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, at Malacanang Palace, and with the Manila Gazette, the country's largest and most influential daily, carrying a color photo of the event on the front page the following day.
Where They Went
The congress listened to many speakers presenting a variety of emphases, but in the end was eclectic in the direction it took. What was that direction? Where exactly did they go? Where did they come down?
The resolutions voted included the usual bouquets for justice, peace, human rights, and the right to freedom of conscience, religion, and belief, while at the same time condemning the usual suspects: civic and religious intolerance, bigotry, and even misinformation in the mass media. It's a measured document, not easy for anyone-even the most notorious offenders of religious rights-to oppose. It calls, among other things, for "a clear distinction of religious and governmental spheres so as to permit an equal treatment of all persons regardless of their religious affiliation"; for "education at all levels" in order to "promote a culture of tolerance and mutual understanding"; and for religious groups to not "demonize each other."
But what's vague and general in the resolutions becomes explicit in the congress's "Statement of Concern." Here the council gets specific, naming names. (See sidebar.)
Over the years I've attended several international gatherings in which actions have been taken with the intent of influencing the general society. The World Council of Churches' general assemblies provide one example; the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists' quinquennial sessions are another. Each time I've been moved by the principled calls for one or another positive reform in society. But with other delegates, I've left these meetings with their fiery speeches and forceful resolutions, only to melt away and disappear in the huge world outside the meeting place. "As I spend a few days following the congress, perched on the seventeenth floor of Traders Hotel," I wrote while still in Manila, "looking down on Manila Bay and the wall-to-wall traffic on the city's supercrowded Roxas Boulevard, I keep wondering how many in this huge metropolitan area of more than 9 million even knew we came, let alone what we did."
It's discouraging business trying to capture the attention of a distracted world. But groups such as the IRLA might take courage from the fact that sometimes the forces that eventually shape the thinking of human civilization are silent ones, operating almost imperceptibly, changing attitudes and sentiments one person at a time.
* The other world congresses were Amsterdam (1977), Rome (1984), London (1989), Rio de Janeiro (1997).
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Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.
LYING IN FROM GERMANY (WHERE WE had appointments en route), my wife, Celia, and I landed in Manila about 10:45 in the evening, some four hours behind schedule. How to get from airport to hotel without unpleasantness had been my concern for days, but I needn't have worried. One of the first things that met our eyes after emerging from the jetway was someone holding a sign reading "IRLA Congress."
In an interview with me in the lead-up to the conference, Graz had listed several reasons for the IRLA's choice of the Philippines as the venue for the congress. "The Philippines is in a very sensitive region in terms of religious freedom," he said. "Close to the Philippines you have China; you have Indonesia (where we have had a lot of violations of religious freedom); you also have Vietnam; the former Burma; and India (where we have also had a lot of problems in the area of religious freedom)." Having the congress in that location will give us "a kind of insight about what's going on." The Philippines itself, however, he said, "has a great record on this issue. [It's] . . . a land of religious freedom in a region of the world where this right is challenged."
In his keynote address to the congress, United Nations special rapporteur to the Commission on Human Rights, Professor Abdelfattah Amor, stressed again and again the need for vigilance in regard to religious freedom. Repeatedly he made the point that such freedom is never achieved once and for all. "Past progress," he said, is constantly "in danger of being reversed." He warned that "we're in danger today of going on a backward road that can lead to the loss of order in society." Especially is this true in former Communist countries, where ideological dogmatism has given way to religious hostility and intolerance. In other places (the United States, for example), "there is a danger that security measures can endanger religious liberty." Society should be eternally vigilant and "not let political events stifle the struggle for religious freedom." He stressed the urgent need for education on all levels of society to foster tolerance and mutual respect.
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