Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights [Hardcover]

Allen D. Hertzke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2004

With the dawning of the 21st Century a new human rights movement burst unexpectedly onto the global stage. Initially motivated by concern for persecuted Christians around the world, unlikely alliances emerged, and the movement grew to encompass a broader quest for human rights. Now, American evangelicals provide grassroots muscle for causes joined by a wide array of activists--from Jews to Catholics, feminists to Pentecostals, African American leaders to Tibetan Buddhists--in the most important human rights movement since the end of the Cold War. Given unprecedented insider access, author Allen D. Hertzke charts the rise of this faith-based movement for global human rights and tells the compelling story of the personalities and forces, clashes and compromises, strategies and protests that shape it. In doing so, Hertzke shows that by bringing attention to issues like religious persecution, Sudanese atrocities, North Korean gulags, and sex trafficking, the movement is shaping American foreign policy and international relations in ways unimaginable a decade ago.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Why would liberal Jewish groups team up with conservative Pentecostals to fight human rights abuses? What issues might prompt the Catholic Church to work together with Tibetan Buddhists? In this engaging book, Hertzke, who teaches religion and political science at the University of Oklahoma, argues that 21st-century religious and political activism has made for some strange bedfellows. As religious persecution increases in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world—and most of the West continues to ignore the mounting death toll—some courageous people have banded together to fight for religious freedom and human rights around the world. With surprisingly accessible writing and memorable stories of activists and the victims of religious persecution, Hertzke explores the rise of unexpected religious alliances in the struggles against sex trafficking, against the persecution of Christians in Indonesia and elsewhere, and against the atrocities in Sudan and the repression in Tibet. One startling trend that emerges is the new interest America’s evangelical Christians have evinced in world issues. Hertzke paints a fascinating, and ultimately optimistic, picture of the way that individuals of many different religious backgrounds have chosen to work together on human rights issues. In doing so, he analyzes a neglected aspect of the paradigm shift in religion today, in which affiliation matters far less than ideological affinity.
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Review

In this eloquent and thoughtful book, Allen Hertzke offers an enlightening survey of the new politics of human rights, and shows how religious activism has been translated into practical politics. This is a noteworthy study of how social movements work. (Jenkins, Philip )

Allen Hertzke brings us a readable and interesting account of a recent and surprising phenomenon: conservative evangelicals engaging in the traditionally liberal arena of international humanitarian and human rights advocacy. (Evangelical Missions Quarterly )

In lively prose, Freeing God's Children details the growth of one of the most significant, and ignored, developments in recent U.S. foreign policy, the growth of a large, religion based human rights movement. The story it tells shows how religion shapes American politics in ways not envisaged by either its admirers or detractors, and how foreign policy cannot be interpreted apart from religion. Its lessons need urgently to be digested in order to accelerate the too slowly growing realization that, without understanding religion, we cannot understand international politics. (Marshall, Paul Freedom House's Center For Religious Freedom )

In lively prose, Freeing God's Children details the growth of one of the most significant, and ignored, developments in recent U.S. foreign policy, the growth of a large, religion based human rights movement. The story it tells shows how religion shapes American politics in ways not envisaged by either its admirers or detractors, and how foreign policy cannot be interpreted apart from religion. Its lessons need urgently to be digested in order to accelerate the too slowly growing realization that, without understanding religion, we cannot understand international politics. (Marshall, Paul Freedom House's Center For Religious Freedom )

How did American evanglicals and Jews join together to become one of the most powerful human rights lobbies? Hertzke combines solid research, perceptive analysis and eloquent prose to provide a definitive answer. For anyone wishing to understand how religion is reshaping the U.S. foreign policy agenda--often in surprising ways--this book is a must read. (Luis Lugo, Director, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life )

Hertzke's book is a must-read for any person of faith interested in the role and promise of the church in the global human rights movement. (Prism )

Allen Hertzke has struck paydirt with a riveting book that tells an engaging story about religious activists in the public arena. This is more than a story about singular or short-lived development. It suggests that America's 'new world order'--like that of world powers in the past--is more influenced by religion than realpolitick and trade statistics would suggest. The story is well told; the implications are profound. (Robert Wuthnow Princeton University )

Freeing God's Children is a first-rate work of investigative scholarship, combining impeccable research, skilled reporting, a compelling narrative, and eloquent advocacy for religious freedom. It is one of those rare books likely to make a real difference in the formation of public policy. (Reichley, A James Georgetown University )

Freeing God's Children is a first-rate work of investigative scholarship, combining impeccable research, skilled reporting, a compelling narrative, and eloquent advocacy for religious freedom. It is one of those rare books likely to make a real difference in the formation of public policy. (Reichley, A James Georgetown University )

A true highlight of this fall book season... [Hertzke's] book is an inspiring chronicle of faith's making a difference in public life, and of the beginnings of a movement whose significance has barely begun to be appreciated. (National Review )

...excellent... (The Economist )

...groundbreaking... (Ambassador Mark Palmer, Vice Chairman )

This is one book every Christian ought to read. (Charles Colson Breakpoint Commentary )

Freeing God's Children is a book that every serious student of American politics and world affairs needs to read. (Foreign Affairs )

Freeing God's Children is a book that every serious student of American politics and world affairs needs to read. (Foreign Affairs )

The study provides a compelling and often riveting story of how a faith-based movement has helped to establish a new human rights foreign policy architecture. (Perspectives On Politics )

This book is one-of-a-kind, the sine qua non on the subject. Without it, the uninitiated cannot fully comprehend current human rights struggles. Freeing God's Children is a systematic chronicle of a profound and effective movement. This book is as deep as Washington politics get, and as broad as any spy thriller, taking the reader to Burma, Israel, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Tiananmen Square, and dozens of other far-flung locales, along with one extraordinary stop in Midland, Texas. Hertzke's book is an attempt to sing an epic song. Hertzke sings it well. (Steven D. Wales )

This book is one-of-a-kind, the sine qua non on the subject. Without it, the uninitiated cannot fully comprehend current human rights struggles. Freeing God's Children is a systematic chronicle of a profound and effective movement. This book is as deep as Washington politics get, and as broad as any spy thriller, taking the reader to Burma, Israel, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Tiananmen Square, and dozens of other far-flung locales, along with one extraordinary stop in Midland, Texas. Hertzke's book is an attempt to sing an epic song. Hertzke sings it well. (Steven D. Wales )

The prose is clear and accessible. . . Although the jury is still out on the wisdom and efficacy of policies that tie human rights to U.S. foreign policy, Freeing God's Children is a helpful resource in this debate. Indeed, this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand more about the complexity of lawmaking and the nexus between religion and politics. (Faith and International Affairs )

The prose is clear and accessible. . . Although the jury is still out on the wisdom and efficacy of policies that tie human rights to U.S. foreign policy, Freeing God's Children is a helpful resource in this debate. Indeed, this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand more about the complexity of lawmaking and the nexus between religion and politics. (Faith and International Affairs )

A tour de force account of activism on behalf of victims of religious oppression. (Theological Studies )

Why would liberal Jewish groups team up with conservative Pentecostals to fight human rights abuses? What issues might prompt the Catholic Church to work together with Tibetan Buddhists? In this engaging book, Hertzke, who teaches religion and political science at the University of Oklahoma, argues that 21st-century religious and political activism has made for some strange bedfellows. As religious persecution increases in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world--and most of the West continues to ignore the mounting death toll--some courageous people have banded together to fight for activists and the victims of religious persecution, Hertzke explores the rise of unexpected religious alliances in the struggles against sex trafficking, persecution of Christians in Indonesia and elsewhere, atrocities in Sudan, and repression in Tibet. One startling trend that emerges is the new interest America's evangelical Christians have evinced in world issues. Hertzke paints a fascinating, and ultimately optimistic, picture of the way that individuals of many different religious backgrounds have chosen to work together on human rights issues. In doing so, he analyzes a neglected aspect of the paradigm shift in religion today, in which affiliation matters far less than ideological affinity. (Publishers Weekly )

Well researched, well written, this is a must read for those who want to understand what an American president is doing jawboning the UN on sexual trafficking. (Charles Colson )

With vivid stories of activists and victims, Hertzke takes the reader on a journy from the Sudanese bush to the halls of Washington Power. (Norman Transcript )

Whether you are a Christian or of almost any other religion, I think you will finish the book determined to do more to ease the suffering and murder of persecuted Christians. (A.M. Rosenthal )

Hertzke's book is a call to sanctified pragmatism, negotiation, and cooperation. And for those who fear the world is beyond rescue or improvement, Hertzke sounds a call to patient, persistent action. (Neff, David Christianity Today )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (August 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742508048
• ISBN-13: 978-0742508040
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,187,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Guess Who Entered the Human Rights Campaign?, January 4, 2006

By 

Steven D. Wales (Katy, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Hardcover)

Guess Who Entered the Human Rights Campaign? A Review of Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights, by Allen D. Hertzke.

TRUE OR FALSE?

October, 2000. In support of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Bill Bennett gives a speech in a Senate caucus room and the next speaker reads a supportive statement from Gloria Steinem. One observer notes, "Bill Bennett and Gloria Steinem and Chuck Colson and Gloria Feldt are all saying the same thing."

Good Friday, 2001. Michael Horowitz, Republican think tank director, and Joe Madison, African American radio personality, chain themselves to a fence at the Sudanese embassy in Washington (to protest that regime's support of a growing slave trade) and are arrested, then call on Johnnie Cochran to defend Horowitz, and Ken Starr to defend Madison. Fearing publicity, prosecutors drop the charges.

Late in 2000. Pope John Paul II, U2's Bono, and Pat Robertson join the campaign to provide debt relief to impoverished third-world countries. "Tightfisted Republican Senator" Phil Gramm threatens to filibuster the legislation. Pat Robertson asks viewers of the 700 Club to contact Gramm and demand he remove his hold on the legislation. Gramm promptly does just that.

Also in 2001. Kweisi Mfume and Al Sharpton join Jesse Helms, Henry Hyde, Dick Armey, and various evangelical leaders in calling for tough U.S. action against the NIF of northern Sudan.

Spring of 2003. Sudan violates its cease-fire agreement, causing the Midland Ministerial Alliance to deliver a letter to the Sudanese embassy under the letterhead "Hometown of President and First Lady Laura Bush." The letter explains that the group has been documenting NIF atrocities for five years and "flouting of the law will have devastating consequences for the regime." The letter gets the attention of the government of Sudan.

May, 2002. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls evangelicals the nation's "newest internationalists," saving lives "in some of the most forgotten parts of the world." Some go so far as to label evangelicals the "foreign-policy conscience of conservatism," rescuing Republican foreign policy from a takeover by big business.

All of the above statements are true. Surprised? If these unlikely alliances are news to you, you are not alone. This remarkable human rights movement has been all but ignored by the media. But the astonishing lack of coverage by the press has at least served to avoid giving away the ending of Allen Herztke's Freeing God's Children: the Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights. This movement has martialed the efforts of thousands of people all over the United States: feminists, Jews, Episcopals, Catholics, African American activists, modern-day abolitionists, and organizations as diverse as NOW, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Tibet, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Hertzke's book tells the story of these unlikely alliances. As he notes, Washington is known for strange bedfellows (a phrase Hertzke avoids for much of the book) but Washington has rarely seen such pervasive alliances of generally adverse parties.

Freeing God's Children is Hertzke's response to a challenge put to him seven years ago by Michael Horowitz, senior director at the Hudson Institute and (as Hertzke describes him) a catalyst for this new human rights movement. Horowitz, formerly of the Reagan White House, challenged Hertzke, professor of political science and director of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma, to chronicle the nascent movement by diverse Americans to press human rights around the world. That movement has revolutionized U.S. foreign policy and brought extraordinary changes to the conditions of suffering peoples the world over.

Hertzke became a "participant observer" in January, 1998. He admits the obvious bias such involvement might create, but would have it no other way. Where outsiders (myself included) have reported on this movement by describing one of its parts, like the blind prophets who touch only part of the elephant, Hertzke comprehends the whole animal, and his striking book paints the most complete picture available. Hertzke's insider status also lends his writing greater immediacy. Indeed, his reports of various backroom meetings read like official minutes-or at least the pithy notes of one in attendance. A turn to the end notes confirms he was there. This first-person narrative elevates an already good story to the status of a thinking man's page-turner.

The professor's book, marketed for a general audience, is scholarly nonetheless. Hertzke interviewed some 50 individuals, many on multiple occasions, and he fills the book (and almost a thousand end notes) with a range of facts and sources that is staggering. The eight chapters average over 120 notes each. (A word to the publisher: chapter four's notes are mis-numbered between nn.56 and 85.) The book also includes an index and various tables, graphs, and photos. I imagine Hertzke would have us read his book as a work of political science, one providing both context for and analysis of a remarkable movement. But this book reads first and foremost as the story of a movement. And that is as it should be. It is the story that will commend this book to readers of the world, not the cogent analysis. The narrative is remarkable, telling the story of an unusual coalition of liberals and conservatives, passionate people who managed to put aside deeply felt animosities to fight for the freedoms and the lives of thousands. In a few short years, that fight has seen unprecedented success, and Hertzke's meticulous research documents that story in fascinating detail.

The story begins in the late 1980s as the fall of Soviet Communism combined with other factors to increase religious persecution around the world. It ends (for Hertzke's purposes) in 2004 with the better-late-than-never enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Act (enacted in 2000), leading to the freeing of thousands of international sex slaves. As he tells the story, Hertzke examines the movement in the context of political theory. And such analysis is warranted and insightful. But I could not shake the feeling that what really excited the writer was the movement itself, not the implications such a movement has for the movement theory crowd. When Hertzke writes-albeit briefly-to his peers in political science circles, it is distracting. It's not that the analysis is uninteresting or without merit. It's simply so much less interesting than the epic saga documented in the larger work.

Hertzke's thesis is that the movement is making a difference by waging war over human rights abuses that would otherwise have been ignored. As he puts it, the movement "is filling a void in human rights advocacy, raising issues previously slighted-or insufficiently pressed-by secular groups, the prestige press, and the foreign policy establishment." Hertzke supports this argument with compelling evidence, illustrating that each of the movement's campaigns have included three hallmarks: (1) a massive and slighted humanitarian tragedy, (2) engagement by the faith-based movement in alliance with others, and (3) pressure on the U.S. government to exercise more international leadership to stem abuses. These efforts have resulted in tough congressional legislation, robust executive action, and new international cooperation.

The book opens by explaining that recent years have seen a global resurgence of religion. This growth has touched all faiths, though Christianity may have grown the most. In fact, while Christianity is on the decline in Western Europe, it has grown so much around the world that it can no longer be described as a "white man's religion." "The majority of the world's Christians, indeed, are females of color." In fact, Christianity is no longer even a western religion. (Hertzke cites sources estimating that 70 percent of evangelicals now live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.) But this return to religion, particularly a religion that teaches the equality of all in the eyes of God, presents a threat to the despots of the world. Believing that Christian churches helped topple Soviet Communism, China announced in 1992 through its state-run press: "If China does not want such a scene to be repeated in its land, it must strangle this baby while it is still in the manger." Dozens of other nations soon joined China in bloody attempts to eradicate unwanted religions, and by 2000 it was estimated that "36 percent of the world's population live in places where religious freedom is fundamentally violated."

Enter Michael Horowitz, Nina Shea, Rabbi David Saperstein, the New York Times' Abe Rosenthal, and "a cohort of fervent members of Congress," including Chris Smith (R-NJ), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Tony Hall (D-OH), in the House and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Don Nickles (R-OK), and Sam Brownback (R-KS) in the Senate. These and a coalition of dozens of Jewish and Christian organizations and hundreds of committed men and women drafted and supported competing bills. But the coalition faced powerful opposition. Democrats and many in the human rights establishment were afraid to support a bill backed by such prominent evangelical leaders as Charles Colson and James Dobson. And Republican support was spotty because so-called "free-trade Republicans" could not stomach the threatened removal of non-humanitarian aid from nations deemed the worst persecutors. Worse yet, the Clinton White House promised to veto either bill. Then it happened: with the end of the 1998 Congressional season approaching and both bills doomed to failure, coalition members compromised, quickly amending, then solidly supporting... Read more ›

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-opening to the Possibilities..., September 14, 2005

By 

David L. Wetzell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Hardcover)

of what Christian religious conservatives can accomplish if they choose targets that do not generate widespread popular counter-resistance and are given better advice in terms of political strategy.

I particularly enjoyed the passage that describes how the Ethiopian Christian who had endured torture and imprisonment astounded Michael Horowitz with his willingness to forgive and belief that if the dictator of Ethiopia truly came to be a Christian and repented of his past behavior that he would go to Heaven. Those are the sorts of witnesses for Xty that we need today.

dlw