In a June 2016 essay, I took it upon myself to declare that, “Religion is no longer the missing dimension of statecraft.” Given substantial progress on American diplomatic engagement with religion during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, it was a plausible claim. But now, nearly nine years later and as the second Trump administration rapidly dismantles the U.S. government’s institutional capacity to analyze and engage religion, my 2016 claim reads like wishful thinking from a bygone era.
That claim was, of course, a reference to Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson’s landmark 1994 edited volume: Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft. The declaration made in their title was entirely plausible at the time. Beyond some important work at a small religion unit in the independent, congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the federal government had little institutional capacity to navigate the increasingly-salient role of religion in a post-Cold War world of resurgent identity conflicts and faith-fueled terrorism. As Johnston observed: “Foreign policy practitioners in the United States… are often inadequately equipped to deal with situations involving other nation-states where the imperatives of religious doctrine blend intimately with those of politics and economics.”
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright agreed. In her 2006 book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs, Albright admitted that she made the mistake of avoiding religion in her approach to diplomacy. She called for a reorientation of foreign policy institutions to account for religion and encouraged diplomats to “learn as much as possible about religion, and then incorporate that knowledge into their strategies.”
That process of incorporating religious literacy into diplomatic institutions and strategies was already underway. From 1996 to 1998, the State Department convened an Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. The committee met with Johnston and referred to The Missing Dimension in its final report. In 1998, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the International Religious Freedom Act, creating an independent commission and a State Department office that produces an annual report on religious freedom conditions in every country. In 2001, President Bush established the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Related offices and centers soon popped up at a number of executive agencies.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Johnston’s Missing Dimension seemed all the more prescient. And he followed it up with Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik in 2003. American statecraft had to get religion fast. The Bush administration invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a range of “Muslim engagement” efforts, albeit with minimal success. By failing to adequately assess the religious terrain in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq, the administration undermined its efforts to “win hearts and minds.”
The Obama administration significantly reframed and expanded U.S. diplomatic engagement with religion. Early in his presidency, Obama fulfilled campaign pledges to retain and reform Bush’s faith-based initiative and to reset U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Also in 2009, a group of us at the State Department created the Forum on Religion & Global Affairs to better coordinate religious engagement efforts and to learn from seasoned outside experts. We invited Doug Johnston as one of our first guest speakers. In his 2011 book, Religion, Terror, and Error: U.S. Foreign Policy and Challenge of Spiritual Engagement, Johnston praised many Obama- era initiatives, including the RGA Forum, and said: “With any luck [these efforts] will soon begin to influence the formal structure, and, over time, lead to the institutional realignment that is long overdue.”
That institutional realignment continued apace during the remainder of the Obama administration. Secretary Clinton created a religion and foreign policy working group of external experts that teed up Secretary John Kerry’s establishment of the Office of Religion & Global Affairs (RGA) in 2013. That same year, the administration also issued a National Strategy on Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement.
Reflecting on all this progress, in my 2016 article—hearkening again to Johnston’s 1994 book—I said:
We are not in the 1990s anymore. Back then the State Department deserved its reputation for avoiding religion. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but we must appreciate the fact that an institutionally cautious and highly secular agency has in a relatively short time span created an impressive array of resources for engaging religion in international affairs.
And I added that bit about how “Religion is no longer the missing dimension of statecraft.” At least that’s how I phrased it in my initial draft. Dennis Hoover, the editor of The Review of Faith & International Affairs, added a clause to curb my enthusiasm. So, the full sentence read “Religion is no longer the missing dimension of statecraft—or at least it is more findable than it once was.”
In hindsight, Hoover’s nuance was appropriate. The process of finding the missing dimension was still ongoing mid 2016. And that moment turned out to be, arguably, the high point of the U.S. government’s engagement with religion. The first Trump administration soon severely downsized and downgraded the Office of Religion & Global Affairs and devastated refugee settlement programs, and Trump’s “Muslim ban” tarnished America’s reputation for tolerance. The administration did invest unprecedented resources in the promotion of religious freedom abroad, launching an international religious freedom alliance with dozens of member countries. Another bright spot was the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) 2020 Evidence Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement and USIP’s strengthened religion team.
During the Biden years, the RGA office was never rebuilt, but some important progress was made, particularly at USAID. In 2023 USAID Administrator Samantha Power—at an event held at USIP—unveiled the agency’s first-ever policy on strategic religious engagement.
We would normally include a hyperlink to that policy document. But the link is now broken as the Trump administration has dismantled USAID, including its faith office established under George W. Bush. Moreover, the last remnants of what had once been the State Department’s RGA office have been dissolved. And in a February 19 executive order, President Trump deemed USIP an “unnecessary government entity.”
It seems that religion is once again a missing dimension of statecraft—or at least it is less findable than it once was.
But it can still be found in the movement jumpstarted by Johnston and Sampson’s book. Since 1994, a vast array of academic, think tank, non-profit, and religious institutions and programs have sprung up in the United States and around the world to study the ambivalent public role of religion and to engage faith communities as forces for human flourishing. As Johnston argued in Missing Dimension: “the use of a religious rationale to justify conflict creates opportunities for spiritually motivated peacemakers.” Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, founded in 2006, is very much a part of this story and remains at the forefront of scholarship and engagement.
If the history of American strategic religious engagement could be plotted on a line graph, we would see a major initial spike in 1994 followed by many ups and downs. But there’s been an overall upward trajectory. There may be an especially steep decline in the government’s institutional capacity at the moment, but thanks to the pioneering work of Johnston and many others, we are not in the 1990s anymore.
