The Hudson Institute delivers the initial findings of its forthcoming book, Religious Freedom in the World 2007. This survey describes and analyzes 100 countries, especially those where religious freedom is most violated. It ranks them comparatively, includes scores and charts of freedom, details world trends, correlates religious freedom with measures of economic freedom, social wellbeing, civil liberties, and political rights, and features essays by experts explaining relevant issues.
Paul Marshall, Senior Fellow, Center for Religious Freedom, presents survey results.
Discussion and additional commentary is provided by: Brian Grim, Senior Research Fellow in Religion and World Affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; Theodore Malloch, Founder and Chairman, Spiritual Enterprise Institute; Zainab Al-Suwaij, co-founder and Executive Director of the American Islamic Congress (AIC); and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
The panel is chaired by Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute.
Bio
Zainab Al-Suwaij
Zainab Al-Suwaij is the Executive Director of the American Islamic Congress.
Brian J. Grim
Brian J. Grim is a senior research fellow in religion and world affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Brian also is a research affiliate with the Population Research Institute at Penn State University.
Immediately prior to joining the Forum, Brian managed the international data initiative for the Association of Religion Data Archives housed at Penn State University and funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. He was also a faculty research associate at Penn State's Survey Research Center, where he was responsible for the planning, initiation and budgeting of all modes of survey research, including focus groups.
Brian has extensive overseas experience. Before joining the Pew Forum, he worked for 20 years as an educator, researcher and development coordinator in China, the former USSR, Kazakhstan, Europe, Malta and the Middle East. His research interests include quantitative measurement of international religious regulation, religious freedom and socio-religious conflict. His 2006 publication with Roger Finke in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Religious Research provides indexes of religious regulation and favoritism for 195 countries of the world, and in an August 2007 article in the American Sociological Review, Grim and Finke analyze the impact of restricted religious freedom on the level of religion-related conflict. Brian was also a visiting researcher at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
Grim received his Ph.D. and an M.A. in Sociology from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. in TESOL from William Carey International University and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Delaware. He did formal language studies at inlingua Sprachschule and Kazakh State University, and theological studies at Southern Seminary, Louisville, Ky.
Richard Land
Princeton and Oxford educated, Dr. Richard Land has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988.
During his tenure as representative for the largest Protestant denomination in the country, Dr. Land has represented Southern Baptist and other Evangelica concerns in the halls of Congress, before U.S. Presidents, and in the media.
In 2005, Dr. Land was featured in Time Magazine as one of "The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America."
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is Chairman and Founder of the Spiritual Enterprise Institute. He is also Chairman and CEO of The Roosevelt Group, a strategic management and thought leadership company. In 1994, he co-founded and subsequently directed the CEO Learning PartnershipSM for Price- waterhouseCoopers LLP.
Dr. Malloch has been a Senior Fellow of The Aspen Institute, where he previously directed all of its national seminars; and President of the World Economic Development Congress sponsored by CNN. He served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum, which hosts its renowned yearly "summit" in Davos, Switzerland.
He has held an ambassadorial level position in the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (1988-92); headed consulting at Wharton-Chase Econometrics; worked in international capital markets at Salomon Brothers, Inc.; and served in senior policy positions at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and in the U.S. State Department. He is active in church and religious organizations and serves on numerous corporate and educational boards.
Dr. Malloch earned a B.A. from Gordon College, an M.Litt. Degree from Aberdeen University in Scotland, and a Ph.D. in international political economy from the University of Toronto. He has authored numerous articles and books, including The Renewal of American Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness, with Scott Massey (M &M Scrivener, 2006).
Paul Marshall
Paul Marshall is senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and at the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House, Washington, D.C. He is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and the author and editor of over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom. He has just completed a world survey on religious freedom, to be published this December, and is heading a research project on blasphemy and political repression.
Michael Novak
Michael Novak is an American Roman Catholic philosopher and diplomat. The author of some 25 books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982), which has also appeared in numerous translations. In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace. He writes on capitalism, religion, and the politics of democratization.
He served as U.S. chief ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1981 and also as the ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Novak is currently George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
Novak is a member of the Catholic Advisory Board for the Ave Maria Mutual Funds. Novak is also a board member of the Capital Research Center and the Center of the American Experiment.
Novak was born in 1933 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He earned an M.A. in history and philosophy of religion from Harvard University in 1966, a Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureus (a degree in theology), from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1958, and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and English (Summa Cum Laude) from Stonehill College in 1956.