https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6114-6968
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David Smith, Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering. By John Corrigan, Journal of Church and State, Volume 64, Issue 3, Summer 2022, Pages 537–539, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/csac026
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The US Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) in 1998. This requires the government to collect information on threats to religious freedom in every country on earth, except the United States. State Department personnel around the world collect information which is compiled in an annual report. Reports on some countries feature arbitrary imprisonment and execution of religious minorities. Other reports are filled with whatever trivial news embassy staff can find in countries with less religious conflict than the USA. The report on Australia one year highlighted a controversy over whether an evangelical student society was allowed to insist that its members be Christians (they were).
Where does this American fixation on religious persecution in other countries come from? That is the question at the heart of Corrigan’s important and ambitious book. According to the US government, it is because defending religious freedom is in America’s DNA. The text of the IRFA states “From its birth to this day, the United States has prized this legacy of religious freedom and honored this heritage by standing for religious freedom and offering refuge to those suffering religious persecution.” Corrigan has a very different answer: Americans have focused on religious persecution abroad as a way of forgetting about their attempts to eradicate religious minorities at home.
