Congressional Report Slams State Department for Funding Atheism AbroadThomas D. Williams, Ph.D. 13 Nov 2024
The Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs has issued a damning report revealing theU.S. State Department’s promotion of atheism abroad in the name of “religious freedom.” At the culmination of a two-year congressional investigation into the State Department’sfunding of “ideologically charged foreign aid projects overseas,” Chairman Michael T. McCaul wrote in a summary report Wednesday that thecurrent administration has failedto be an effective steward of the cause of religious freedom abroad, preferring instead to support atheism.
McCaul and his team obtained “information theDepartment of State tried to keep hidden,” he notes, showing thatfunding for religious freedom initiatives has been “diverted from religious minoritiesaround the globe to support agnostics’ and atheists’ right to disbelieve.” This choice has involvedsnubbing“the truly imperiled faithful” to promote the worldview of nonbelievers.
In his report, McCaul cites the example ofa 2021 “notice of funding opportunity” for $500,000issued by the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The notice specifically solicited proposals forprograms that would “promote and defend religious freedom inclusive of atheist, humanist, non-practicing and non-affiliated individuals.”
It also indicated toparticipating NGOsthat the proposed (taxpayer-funded) programs shouldincrease the capacity of atheists and humaniststo “form” and “strengthen” their “networks” in South Asia.
According to McCaul and his team, such a notice translates as: “We want you all to come up with ideas forexpanding the presence and influence of atheists overseas.” The report is quick to note that the State Department’spromotion of atheism abroad does not arise in responseto a situation where nonreligious people were being persecuted, but seems to be simply an ideological choice to promote non-belief.
In countries such as Nepal and Sri Lanka, the text observes, certainChristians and Muslims have recently faced persecution, whereas atheists or humanists have been left in peace. Yet theState Department “deliberately chose to spurn the religious groupsmost in need of assistance in the relevant countries and devote funds instead to a pet project, one thatappears to have been tailored for the grantee.”
Moreover, there were no countervailing religious freedom grantsto support persecuted Christians and Muslims in Nepal and Sri Lanka.These groups were simply ignored.Official grant documents, some of which were obtained by subpoena, proposed “translating and disseminating various humanist content (declarations, textbooks, guides, etc.) into the relevant national and local languages.”
Other documentsmade clear that the grant targeted atheists and humanists as the preferred recipients, noting: “Applicants will be required to provide information on their humanist activism [and] their past and current affiliation with non-religious groups.”
Turning theconcept of religious freedom on its head, the training program implemented in Nepalpromoted freedom of nonbeliefbut suggested that a so-called “freedom of religious belief” does not entail manifestations of faith such as Christian priests’ distribution of the Eucharist.
It also asserted that whena Christian adoption agency, acting on sincerely held religious convictions,denies services to same-sex couples, it violates human rights, a stance that contradicts U.S. policy. (All of these were put in from Day one when Obama got in. the State Department is still persecuting countries that don’t allow gay, bi-sexuals, trans, sex with animals etc. All of Obama’s policies and people in the State Dept. need to removed.)
Related training programs focused on recruiting forantireligious organizations and converting people into active “humanists,” McCaul notes. In the Nepal case, the State Department grant from U.S. taxpayer money wasawarded to Humanists International, an anti-Christian group whoseCEO has statedthat people should be ashamed to be associated with the Catholic Church and that his job is “to combat the Vatican policies and to push against them.”
We observe“an elite, professional classthat has no qualms about using taxpayer money to export its own secular agenda overseas, attempting to keep the details from being known outside the Department,” McCaul writes, while calling onCongress to put an immediate halt to this new model of atheistic proselytism.
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https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2024/11/13/congressional-report-slams-state-department-for-funding-atheism-abroad/