The Office of Religious Freedom has a Herculean task ahead when it comes online this month: to define and operationalize religious freedom in Canadian foreign affairs with $5 million. To bureaucrats at the Department of Foreign of Affairs and International Trade it may well look like a modern day Augean Stables, a stiff shovel and proper pile of horse manure.

Something is going on that is more complex regarding meaning, authenticity, social change, and development that cannot be explained away by right-wing theorists of modernization or left-wing critics of capitalism and globalization. We cannot continue to promote democracy and development by...

The creation of a Canadian Office of Religious Freedom is good news for a complex array of reasons, but the most important reason is simple: religious liberty is under attack in many places around the world, and it needs all the friends it can get.

In 1998 the United States of America adopted the Office of Religious Freedom, a parallel process on which Canada is now embarking. In this article I argue that American—like Canadian—policymakers should, as Scott Thomas puts it, "promote religious freedom as if the truthfulness of...

Religious freedom is important not only in its own right but is also central to other human goods: it correlates with civil liberties, political liberties, press freedom, longevity of democracy, low levels of militarization and conflict, more physicians, and lower infant mortality.

Despite its strong commitment for protection and promotion of human rights, Canada's foreign affairs department has long had a spotty record regarding religious freedom. The campaign promise in the 2011 federal election to create an Office of Religious Freedom may change that, depending on the...

Evangelicals in Canada are confused and conflicted when it comes to religious freedom. Then again, Canadians in general are confused and conflicted about religious freedom. Neither situation can be avoided entirely, but each can be improved. I would like to suggest at least one form of...

In June, at the University of Toronto's Munk Debates, Henry Kissinger and Niall Ferguson debated whether the 21st century would belong to China. Henry Luce, undoubtedly, would say it will be American like the last one. A few cheeky Canadians at the MacDonald Laurier Institute even said it would...