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M. Pompeo: Address to Summit 2022, Session V
Written by Hon. Michael Pompeo, Secretary of State (2018-2021), USA
Friday, August 12, 2022
Address to Summit 2022 and Leadership Conference,
Seoul, Korea, August 11-15, 2022
Good afternoon. I want to pick up where Speaker Gingrich left off. He talked about pagans to the right of us, totalitarians to the left, or maybe the other way around. Know that the Lord is with us in all that we do.
I want to thank Dr. Moon for the chance to speak on a topic that is very personal for me, and I pray that it is personal for all of us. In the Trump administration, we made religious liberty around the world a central thesis of keeping America more secure and making more prosperity and security for people all around the world. We knew in our hearts that people had the capacity to practice their faith the way that they wanted to, or choose not to, for that matter. We knew that they were in a stronger place, that their institutions of family and their institutions of church and faith would be stronger, and therefore that nation would be more secure and present a little bit less risk to us in the United States. We tried what we knew to be true—the expansion of religious freedom around the world, the protection of persecuted minorities around the world—to our understanding of how to keep Americans safe and to keep people safe all across this globe.
I get asked all the time: “These are high-minded ideas, Mike. How do I live them out? What are the things one can do?” My son would tell you that I don’t always get it right myself, living a good Christian life. My wife describes me as an authentic Christian. I sometimes use words that my mother sometimes wouldn’t appreciate, but I always pray for forgiveness, that I will do better next time. But I do try to live it out, and I would urge each of you to do that, too.
Let’s start with the proposition that Speaker Gingrich laid out. The attacks will be serious. They will be personal. They will come after you; it doesn’t matter where you are. I gave some remarks once at a group of Christian counselors. You should know that the first attacks that I suffered as a result of that speech were from my lawyers at the State Department who didn’t think that people of faith—Christians, Muslims, Jews, Baha’i—should even live their life in service to their country. I would suggest to you that you’re serving your nation as you’re serving your community, as you’re serving your family and all those around you, that your faith is the central part of who you are. You should live it each and every day, and you should do so with the knowledge that there will be those who will think that’s just not the right way to do it. Be strong.
There was a newspaper headline. It wasn’t The New York Times. I think it was The Washington Post. I know for sure it wasn’t The Washington Times. The headline said, “Mike Pompeo - God’s Diplomat.” And then it went on. We laughed, commenting that if I could get that on my epitaph, that’d be a fantastic thing. But it wasn’t meant as a compliment. The totalitarians of the world saw American leaders who were faithful and they knew that put them at risk. They saw American leaders who understood Christian persecution in northern Iraq and were going to spend resources, money and time to try to protect them. They saw American faith leaders who are prepared to try to help the poor one million Muslims who are trapped in what are essentially concentration camps in the western part of China. They knew that it was in fact not just government, but people of faith that put their regime more at risk, that made their regime more brittle.
The other side, the pagans, as Speaker Gingrich described them, know it puts them at risk as well. It’s why they attack so hard. We could see this in everything that we did.
Also, Speaker Gingrich talked about the American tradition, our Judeo-Christian heritage, the fact that we were founded on the central idea of religious liberty and the fact that our nation wouldn’t establish a religion, but rather we would permit people to practice their faith at their churches and their synagogues and at their mosques. We know this idea holds true in many nations.
I worked with Mary Ann Glendon. She’s a professor at Harvard Law School. She put together an understanding for America about re-grounding our diplomacy in the fundamental understandings of America. We called it the Commission on Unalienable Rights, tied back to the very documents that Speaker Gingrich spoke of. But it wasn’t the Commission that was important. It was the work that we delivered. We worked with nations and religious leaders all across the world to take their faith tradition as it was melded with their national tradition so that we could help secure these very freedoms.
I would ask each and every one of you to do that, to look to your nation’s traditions, to ground your heritage and the central understandings of knowing that faith matters in every place. When you do that, you’ll get it right. You’ll make your nation more secure. You’ll make it more prosperous as well.
I’ll close with this thought. I spoke earlier today about the security concerns around the world, the challenges here in the Indo-Pacific. It won’t surprise any of you that the nations that most threaten us, the nations that put our lives most at risk and our freedoms most at risk, are the very same nations that deny religious freedom to their own. Think of the Chinese Communist Party and its death-grip hold on Christian and Catholic churches inside of its own country. Think of the leaders in Iran who won’t so much as allow women the capacity to wear the clothes that they choose to wear or to practice any faith but their own. Nations that have totalitarianism, nations that want to be aggressors around the world, are the very same nations that are aggressive against their own people. I remember hearing Vladimir Putin say that he was going to retake Ukraine on behalf of the Russian people, but if we just stop for a moment and think about where Russian peoples have more freedom and more capacity to live, it is not in practice of faith. It is not in Russia today, but rather in Ukraine. And faith matters.
I just encourage you never to give an inch, to be strong, to defend the things that are most central to your understanding of humanity and basic human dignity. When I was Secretary of State, I kept a Bible open on my desk every day. I did it mostly for myself, to remind myself to stay in the Word, to stay focused on the things that I knew mattered, to remind me that I was America’s 70th Secretary of State, but I was not very powerful compared to Him, compared to our maker, and that I could not possibly succeed on behalf of my nation and on behalf of all the folks I was trying to help all around the world without His help.
I also could see that people would come into my office and they’d see that I had a Bible on my desk. By the way, oftentimes these were people of no faith or from different faiths. I can’t tell you how often they would remark to me or to someone on my team after they left me, that while I was a Christian, they appreciated the discipline that I had, the openness that I had in my faith. And I often remembered being with leaders of every faith and those who were serious, those who weren’t secular, those who cared about their faith, and they were often people who were most committed to helping us all deliver on behalf of peace and prosperity all around the world.
Religious liberty is at the center of what this very organization is doing today. Bless you all for holding this particular gathering on this particular topic. In the end, it will be faith in the Lord that will cause the peace to be as universal as we all pray that it can be. Thank you and God bless you.
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