10 Highlights From First-Ever State Dept. Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom Worldwide

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Saturday, July 28, 2018

2. Plan of Action

U.S. Ambassador at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback speaks to reporters at the State Department's Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, D.C. on July 26, 2018. | (Photo: The Christian Post/Samuel Smith)

In addition to the declaration, an accompanying Plan of Action document was issued to serve as a guide for countries on how they can act to promote religious freedom and act to assist and protect threatened religious minorities.

The plan highlights an extensive list of recommendations that are broken up into five sections — defending the right to religious freedom, confronting legal limitations, responding to genocide and mass atrocities, preserving the cultural heritage of religious minorities, and responding to threats to religious freedom.

Among the many suggestions, the list goes as far as to say that anti-blasphemy laws, which are often used in some nations by majority populations to persecute religious minorities, should be abolished.

The plan calls for countries to allow religious communities to enjoy a wide range of freedoms, including the ability to assemble, print and distribute literature and not to have burdensome regulations that hinder those freedoms. Additionally, the document urges countries not to suppress religious freedom under the guise of prohibiting national security.

"I'm not aware of any set of documents issued by any state in modern history that so comprehensively and practically address the actual implications of a real commitment to religious liberty as these documents do," Johnnie Moore, an evangelical adviser to the Trump administration and a religious freedom advocate, told The Christian Post. "They are truly historic."