Thomas Farr

Religious factors intersect with U.S. foreign policy on a daily basis, both at home and abroad. In the U.S.religious individuals, organizations, and interest groups are part of the larger set of voices and voters in civil society who try to influence public policy. Citizens and collectives write letters, organize voters, sign petitions, support candidates, give money, and lobby on issues as diverse as family planning in Africa, religious persecution in China and Cuba, and human trafficking in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, and the drug trade in Colombia and the Caucuses. Indeed, the American religious landscape is so large and diverse that it is not unusual for religious actors to form broad, bipartisan coalitions on some issues (e.g. on human trafficking) yet be divided on others (e.g. Kyoto and global warming). Moreover, America’s past, culture, and experiences mean that religion—along with other normative and cultural elements—is interwoven into some of the country’s past policies and the traditions from which current and future foreign policy leaders and thinking derive.