Two experts on international religious freedom will be featured in a Baptist News Global webinar Thursday, March 3, at 3 p.m. Eastern time.
Wade Kusack
The speakers are Wade Kusack, founder and president of Love Your Neighbor Community, a nonprofit that promotes religious freedom in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Knox Thames, who served as special advisor on religious minorities at the U.S. State Department during the Obama and Trump administrations. Both Kusack and Thames are senior fellows at the Institute for Global Engagement.The webinar is free but advance registration is required. Register here.
Kusack and Thames will converse with BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield about the current situation in Ukraine and how it relates to the larger picture of religious freedom in the region.
Knox Thames
Thames is a graduate of Georgetown College, as well as earning a law degree from American University’s Washington College of Law and a master’s degree in international affairs from the School of International Service at American University. He has written for
BNG and was featured in a 2021 webinar on international religious freedom.
Kusack was born and raised in Belarus, is fluent in Russian and English and possesses extensive cross-sectoral networks throughout the former Soviet Union, especially in Central Asia. His nonprofit has participated in the Institute for Global Engagement’s “Religion, Security and Citizenship” project focused on Central Asia; organized or participated in more than 150 government, academic, and civil society discussions and roundtables on religion policy; and developed an educational network for religious leaders on international and domestic religious laws and policies.