WASHINGTON (ABP) — America's first female secretary of state said Nov. 20 the United States must begin educating its current and future diplomats on faith issues in order to have success in the foreign-policy arena.
Echoing the thesis of her new book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs, Madeleine Albright told the nation's largest gathering of religion professors that the ignorance of policymakers toward religion is dangerous for the United States.
“If Jerusalem were just an issue of real estate, we would have settled it a long time ago. But since all the parties believe God gave them that land, there's another presence in the [negotiating] room,” said Albright, speaking to the annual gathering of the American Academy of Religion in Washington.
Albright — who was raised Catholic in Czechoslovakia and Colorado, converted to Episcopalianism and later discovered she had Jewish roots — served as secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and worked for President Jimmy Carter. Prior to becoming secretary of state in 1996, she served as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, dealing with the resolution of the decades-long conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
When she first began to consider the Ireland issue, Albright said, she was amazed that religion remained such a bone of contention in an otherwise modern nation. “I thought to myself, ‘Why are we having a religious war at the end of the 20th century?'”
But she soon became convinced that diplomats were overlooking or misunderstanding faith-related issues and were doing so to America's great peril.
“I continue to believe in the separation of church and state for the United States,” Albright said, “[But] I really think in order to resolve some of the foreign-policy programs, we have to bring God and religion into it.”
For instance, she asserted, the State Department should have well-trained religious experts. She noted that, during her tenure in Foggy Bottom, she had arms-control advisors with her when negotiating nuclear treaties and economic advisors with her when discussing trade agreements.
“I therefore think that it's not [outside] the realm of possibility that the secretary of state should have religious advisors,” she said.
While noting that sectarian views should not form the basis of policy decisions for a religiously pluralistic nation, she said religious leaders can help fill advisory roles. “I don't think they should be at the table as negotiators, but I do think they should be there as resource people,” Albright said.
She also said the State Department's entire foreign-service corps should have better training in faith-related matters. “I think our diplomats need to be trained to know the religions of the countries to where they're going,” she said, to loud applause from the audience. “Our diplomats are very knowledgeable in languages, history, culture but not necessarily religion.”
That idea has “taken some people aback” at her old agency, the former secretary said.
In promoting her book — published earlier this year — Albright noted she has experienced various levels of receptivity to her ideas.
In most secular or progressive audiences, she said, she tended to find “a little bit more skepticism — a lot more skepticism, frankly. The further left the audience, the greater the skepticism. And the hardest time I had was in Seattle.”
But Albright did not let conservatives off the hook. She said President Bush's foreign policy has been characterized by a certitude about the stark dichotomy between “evildoers” and allies — an attitude that bordered on the religious.
That attitude toward foreign policy is very different from those of the two presidents for whom Albright worked, who were also “very religious,” she said. And Bush's attitude has contributed, in Albright's view, to disastrous results. “I'm afraid that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy,” she said.
Albright also cautioned religious leaders who have the ability to influence world events — such as Pope Benedict XVI, whose recent comments in a speech were interpreted by millions of Muslims as an insult to Mohammed, the founder of Islam.
“The assumption that a religious leader, if involved [in foreign policy], is automatically helpful is not the right assumption,” she said. “I think that religious leaders have to understand diplomacy to some extent.”
The diplomatic technique of negotiation is an ethos in which religious leaders — trained in defending truths they believe to be absolute — may not naturally excel, Albright said.
But colleges, universities and divinity schools can begin offering programs combining studies in international relations and religion to help diplomats and religious leaders, she said. “If we begin to think about having an interdisciplinary approach to this, I think we could do some good.”
It's not only government officials and religious leaders who affect the way the United States relates to large portions of the world, Albright noted. Those in the private sector need to be trained in religious diplomacy as well.
“It wouldn't hurt, also, just to broaden this: Business people need to learn about religion,” she said. “American businesses and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] have very large footprints abroad and often play as big a role as any conventional diplomat in how the United States is perceived.”
-30-