Citing ancient Church teachings, Vance prioritizes religious liberty at IRF summit

 

Washington D.C., Feb 5, 2025 / 13:55 pm (CNA).

U.S. Vice President JD Vance cited both ancient Christian teachings and America’s Founding Fathers as he vowed that the Trump-Vance administration will deliver on its religious liberty commitments during a speech to the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit Wednesday morning.

“Religious freedom flows from concepts central to the Christian faith,” Vance said at the Feb. 5 speech to hundreds gathered at the annual summit in Washington, D.C.

Those Christian tenets, according to the American vice president, are “the free will of human beings and the essential dignity of all peoples.”

“We find its foundational tenets in the Gospels themselves with Christ’s famous instruction to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s,” Vance said. “Early Christians, of course, suffered greatly and unfortunately many Christians still suffer today at the hands of oppressive state power.”

The vice president referenced a letter that ancient Church historian and apologist Tertullian wrote to Scapula, a proconsul of Carthage, in the early third century about the persecution of Christians and the importance of religious liberty.

“It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions,” Tertullian wrote. “One man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion — to which free will and not force should lead us.”

Vance noted that Tertullian’s writings influenced Thomas Jefferson, the third American president, and that Tertullian’s writings remain in the Library of Congress.

“This is the legacy that has guided America’s political principles from the founding to this very day,” the vice president added. “We remain the world’s largest majority Christian country and the right to religious freedom is protected by the people for everybody whether you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, or [have] no faith at all.”

Vance noted that the principle of religious freedom was so vital to the founders of the country that it was included as a protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

‘Expanding’ religious liberty in Trump’s second term

Vance promised attendees that during President Donald Trump’s second term, the administration will not only restore the religious freedom protections he supported during his first term but also intends on “expanding” those protections further.

On the domestic front, the vice president said the administration will continue its work from Trump’s first administration to preserve the conscience rights of hospital workers and faith-based ministries, remove barriers for religious organizations and businesses to contract with the federal government, and combat antisemitism.

Vance also noted that Trump is working to end the weaponization of the federal government against religious Americans and halt government censorship. “You shouldn’t have to leave your faith at the door of your people’s government, and under President Trump’s leadership, you won’t have to,” Vance told the assembled gathering.

On the subject of U.S. foreign policy, Vance referenced the American military response to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which was intended to protect Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in the Middle East. He spoke about the plight of Iraqi Christians and the work that is needed to advance religious freedom in every part of the world, saying there is “more to do” to secure those rights.

Vance said the new administration will recognize “the difference between regimes that respect religious freedom and those that do not.”

The vice president also gave credit to Trump for halting federal funds to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that he asserted are “dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe.”

“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 both within our own borders and especially outside [of our borders],” the vice president assured.

“I pray that together we will be able to better protect the dignity of all peoples as well as the rights of all believers to practice their faith to the dictates of their conscience,” Vance said.

The speech came on the second day of the IRF Summit, which kicked off on Tuesday with a panel that discussed some of the speakers’ hopes for religious liberty protections in Trump’s second term.

Some of the speakers expressed optimism about the administration’s commitment to religious liberty, but some also expressed concerns about the federal freeze in grants for certain NGOs abroad, some of which are meant to promote religious liberty in other countries.

In conjunction with the launch of the summit, the partners that organized the summit published a seven-page paper that outlined certain priorities. These included reassessing foreign grants to ensure religious liberty is a priority and restoring the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program with a prioritization for religious minorities.