Land elected USCIRF vice chair
- Jul 3, 2007 - comment
Southern Baptist church-state specialist Richard Land has been elected as a vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Freedom.
Land, who has served a total of five years on the bipartisan panel, is president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the new chair. Preeta Bansal, a New York lawyer, was elected as the other vice chair. One-year terms for Land, Cromartie and Bansal began July 1.
Land was last appointed to the commission by then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in 2005.
Previously, he had served as an appointee by President Bush for two terms totaling three years. He completed his second term as a Bush selection in 2004. The president first appointed Land to the commission for two years in September 2001. He reappointed Land to a one-year term in 2003.
The panel’s nine members are chosen by the president and leaders of both parties in Congress. The president selects three members of the panel, while congressional leaders name the other six. The State Department’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom serves as a non-voting member.
The USCIRF researches the status of religious liberty in other countries and provides reports and recommendations to the White House and Congress.
The commission compiles a yearly report, which includes its recommendations to the secretary of state of countries it believes should be designated as the world’s most severe persecutors of religious adherents. The secretary may designate them as “countries of particular concern,” a category reserved for governments that have “engaged in or tolerated systemic and egregious violations of religious freedom.”
The International Religious Freedom Act is the 1998 law that established the commission and the process for tracking and promoting religious liberty overseas.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Citizenship, Persecution, Religious Liberty