Vance promises Trump admin will reverse ‘absurd’ approach to religious liberty

The Vice-President said the administration aims to promote ‘moral clarity’

By Katelynn Richardson, Daily Caller – February 5, 2025

WASHINGTON—Vice President J.D. Vance promised that the Trump administration would promote “moral clarity” on religious liberty issues abroad Wednesday at the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit.

Vance said U.S. engagement on international religious liberty issues has been “corrupted and distorted to the point of absurdity” in recent years.

“How did America get to the point where we’re sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars abroad to NGOs that are dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe?” he questioned. “That is not what leadership on protecting the rights of the faithful looks like. And it ends with this administration.”

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) promised a shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday. USAID grants have gone toward issues like supporting LGBT activism worldwide and sending condoms abroad.

Vance said the U.S. must recognize regimes that “respect religious freedom and those that do not.”

“The United States must be able to make that distinction,” he said. “We must be able to look at catastrophes, like the plight of Iraq’s Christians over the past three decades and possess the moral clarity to act when something has gone wrong.”

Vice President JD Vance speaks at International Religious Liberty Summit at the Washington Hilton. (Credit: Katelynn Richardson/Daily Caller News Foundation)

Under the Biden administration, Nigeria was removed as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) on the annual religious freedom watchlist, a decision the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called “unexplainable.”

Vance pointed to Trump’s successes during his first administration, including rescuing pastors and bringing relief to Yazidis, Christians and others facing “genocidal terror from ISIS.” He highlighted steps the administration has already taken to promote religious liberty within the U.S., highlighting orders Trump issued to end the weaponization of the federal government against religious Americans and pardon pro-life activists.

Vance’s first speech as vice president was at the March for Life on Jan. 24.

During his remarks, Vance also highlighted how Christianity laid the foundation for religious freedom, pointing to church fathers as the origins of the idea.

“We find its foundational tenets in the gospels themselves, with Christ’s famous instruction to render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s and unto God, that which is God’s” he said. “Early Christians of course suffered greatly and unfortunately, many Christians still suffer today at the hands of oppressive state power. It weighed heavily on the church’s first theologians and apologists.”

Sam Brownback, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom during the first Trump administration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Trump should host a foreign leaders meeting at the White House around the topic of religious liberty.

“My suggestion to him would be to use it as a relaunch of the Human Rights Project around the world that’s been in decline for 20 years,” he said. “Say we want to relaunch human rights around the UN Charter of Human Rights and make these issues like religious freedom center pieces. We’ve had so much discussion on human rights about really extraneous things that people try to add into the human rights agenda.”

Sean Nelson, legal counsel for global religious freedom at Alliance Defending Freedom International, noted that religious freedom was a major foreign policy priority of the first Trump administration.

“I think a lot of people right now are very hopeful that that same energy, that same focus on the worst persecution in the world, particularly persecution of Christians, which very often gets sidelined, is made relevant again, is highlighted at the highest levels again, and that the right people are put in place to implement that,” Nelson told the DCNF.

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