Will Trump’s State Department push religious freedom to center stage?
One of the most underestimated movements in Washington today started with a man and a vacuum sweeper.
It was 1999, and Robert Seiple had just been named America’s first ambassador at large for religious freedom, a position created by Congress the year before. An escort ushered him to his new office in the State Department, and left him at the door; the room was so small that no one else could fit in it.
“It was just me and a vacuum sweeper,” Mr. Seiple recalled recently at a conference commemorating the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). “I was grateful for that vacuum sweeper, because that office needed it.”
Indeed, the title – Office of International Religious Freedom – was more grandiose than the space. Today, however, it is run by Ambassador at Large Sam Brownback, a veteran politician who heads up a team of more than 30 people and has millions of dollars at his disposal. And he has powerful political allies in Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fellow Christian conservatives who
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