Evangelicals and Policy Wonks Together

Today's WSJ ($) carries a front-page story on the increasing influence exerted by American evangelicals on the formation of U.S. foreign policy. It also highlights the crucial role played by Beltway insiders whose knowledge of foreign policy and the plight of persecuted Christians abroad proved crucial in spurring the evangelicals to action. The most important of these, Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, is shown to be the strongest link between heartland Christians concerned about their persecuted brethren and policy experts whose contacts and knowledge pave the way for these concerns to be acted upon concretely.

As the article demonstrates, and as anyone familiar with the realist school of foreign policy that holds sway in the State Department can attest, the obstacles to implementing a pro-liberty U.S. foreign policy are considerable. As Peter Waldman, the author of the article, writes:

"Led in part by the irrepressible Mr. Horowitz, a neoconservative at the Hudson Institute think tank, evangelicals are embracing international causes with the same moral fervor they have long brought to domestic matters. Since 1998, they have helped win federal laws to fight religious persecution overseas, to crack down on international sex trafficking and to help resolve one of Africa's longest and bloodiest civil wars, in southern Sudan.

"In so doing, evangelical groups, once among America's staunchest isolationists, are making a mark on U.S. foreign policy. They have tipped the balance, at least for the moment, in the perennial rivalry in Washington between 'realists,' who believe the U.S. has limited capacity to change the world and shouldn't try, and 'idealists,' who strive to give U.S. conduct a moral purpose.

"'This community is saying, "We're the most dominant country in the history of humanity. We must move humbly and wisely, not just for our own economic and strategic interests but for what is morally right,"' says Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a champion of evangelical causes on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."

And: "'The policies are up for grabs,' says Mr. Horowitz, 66 years old, a lawyer by training who served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration."

It's because of his concern about Christian persecution and his ability to move powerful people in Washington that Horowitz, who is Jewish, was named one of the ten most influential Christians in 1997 by a Southern Baptist magazine. As Richard Land, a top executive at the Southern Baptist Convention, says: "'Before I met Michael seven years ago, I had no idea it was so bad . . . . He's a provocateur, a real voice of conscience.'"

Such praise from a top Southern Baptist, and the support the policies advocated by Horowitz and Senator Brownback receive from Red State Americans, should help put to rest charges flung by realists and isolationists on the left and right that U.S. policy has been hijacked by a cabal of wild-eyed Wilsonians or sly Zionists. It isn't naive to work for the liberty of others, and although they support the war in Iraq, the anti-isolationists aren't calling for the invasion of every dictatorship on earth. Rather, they're striving to bring American policy in line with America's core ideals and beliefs.