Religious Freedom at a 16-Year Low—What Can Be Done?

Religious Freedom at a 16-Year Low—What Can Be Done? February 3, 2025

Women and religious persecution panel IRF Summit, Washington, DC | Credit: IRF Summit
Pew reports that governments harassed religious groups in 186 countries and territories in 2022. Image: women and religious persecution panel IRF Summit 2024, Washington, DC | Credit: IRF Summit

Religious persecution now impacts 97% of countries. A new strategy involving business and diplomacy could help reverse this alarming trend.

Would you, like many people, be surprised to learn that the share of the world’s countries experiencing religious persecution is 97%?

That’s what the latest data from the Pew Research Center show. Pew reports that governments harassed religious groups in 186 countries and territories in 2022. That’s up from 118 in 2007, the year I led the first Pew Research Center annual study of restrictions on religious freedom.

Compounding the problem is that when harassment by social actors is included, religious groups in 192 out of the world’s 198 countries and territories (97%) experienced such harassment. This is a new peak level (see chart).

Common Experience Across Faiths

This global epidemic of religious persecution is no respecter of religions. It impacts all religious communities. Between 2007 and 2022, Christians, Muslims and Jews saw a more than 50% rise in the number of countries where they faced persecution. Other religions (including folk religions, Sikhs, and Baha’is) as well as Buddhists experienced persecution in more than double the number of countries as before. And persecution of religiously unaffiliated people increased more than sixfold, from 5 countries in 2013 to 32 in 2022.

Granted, some of this harassment is verbal or online, but in 145 countries (73%), religious groups face killings, displacements, physical assaults, detentions and/or property damage.

The United States is no exception

During the five years between 2019-2023, religious hate crimes accounted for nearly one-in-five (18.3%) of all hate crimes reported in the United States.

Unfortunately, the trend is heading in the wrong direction. Religiously biased hate crimes accounted for more than one in five (22.5%) in 2023, the latest year for which data are reported. While religious hate crimes accounted for 21.4% of all hate crimes in 2019, they dropped to 15.4% in 2020 and 14.1% in 2021. But they rose again to 17.3% in 2022 and then reached the new peak of 22.5% in 2023.

A new strategy is needed

Given that violations of religious freedom occur in 97% of countries, we need a global strategy to combat this epidemic that works at home and abroad. In fact, I left the Pew Research Center in 2014 with just this mission. Looking at the data, I identified a powerful new and largely untapped force with a vested interest in building religious freedom worldwide. That’s business.

As Roger Finke and I show in our Cambridge University Press book, The Price of Freedom Denied, religious freedom for all (including those without a religion) is a recipe for peace and human flourishing. Research that I published at the World Economic Forum shows that religious freedom also promotes sustainable development and global competitiveness. Specifically, religious freedom is positively associated with nearly all of the pillars of global competitiveness measured by the World Economic Forum. According to the study, religious freedom is one of only three factors significantly associated with global economic growth.

The U.S. State Department can play a significant part

Last week I sent U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter outlining five new things they could do to reverse these concerning trends. Congress mandates the State Department to monitor and recommend action to advance religious freedom globally. This includes making annual reports to Congress. It also includes appointment of an Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.

The good news is that top global businesses are already engaged. They are building religious freedom for millions of working people by making their workplaces faith-friendly.

My five recommendations are:

Recommendation 1: The State Department should convene and call on companies worldwide to adopt and benchmark faith-and-belief-friendly practices. This can build religious freedom for billions of working people.

For instance, our Corporate Faith-Friendly Index survey helps global companies benchmark their progress in creating faith-friendly work environments. In 2024, more than 3.4 million people are employed by companies participating in the Index, working in all 50 states and scores of countries. These include Fortune 500 companies ranging from Accenture and American Airlines to Google and Tyson Foods.

These companies see that when people’s faiths and deeply held beliefs are welcomed, respected and celebrated in the workplace, it’s good for business. It significantly boosts employees’ motivation, resulting in increased retention, recruitment and revenue. These are bottom-line business benefits.

Our Index tracks 11 best practices to create such work environments. To give one example, it is a best practice to provide for the spiritual care of employees.

Spiritual care is one of the four core pillars of health recognized by McKinsey & Company’s Health Institute. For example, Tyson Foods does this through their chaplains who provide compassionate care to all their employees across the nation. American Airline’s chief flight dispatcher is also an ordained Anglican priest who provides chaplaincy care for employees. This is not unlike chaplaincy programs provided in prisons, hospitals, military installations, and even in Congress itself.

Companies like Accenture meet the need for spiritual care by creating a culture of belonging. This includes providing faith-based counseling services as part of their Employee Assistance Programs. Many companies have employee business resource groups (EBRGs) that also provide spiritual support for employees. Organizations as diverse as Rolls-Royce, KPMG, PayPal, Intuit and Texas Instruments have faith in EBRGs.

Recommendation 2: The State Department should develop and convene a coalition of global business leaders who can inspire their peers to advance peace by advancing religious freedom and interfaith understanding.

The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation’s Global Business & Interfaith Peace Awards, for example, recognize business leaders advancing peace. Recipients include CEOs and Chairs of major corporations ranging from Intel and EY to Tyson Foods and Hyundai.

They hail from more than 30 countries and all five continents. These include heroes who are funding and carrying out peace initiatives in the Holy Lands, such as Dr. Judith Richter, CEO of Medinol, and in India, such as King Husein, Chairman and CEO of Span Construction and Engineering:

  • Medinol CEO Dr. Judith Richter founded the NIR School of the Heart to help high school students understand cardio-vascular career opportunities. At the same time, it connects the hearts of people from different religious backgrounds. The program is widely popular and currently has 826 graduates from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Egypt.
  • King Husein, Chairman and CEO of Span Construction & Engineering, has played a critical role addressing the rising global tide of restrictions on religious freedom. King’s efforts include kicking off the first-ever Business Roundtable to advance International Religious Freedom during the 2019 UN General Assembly in New York City.

Recommendation 3: The State Department should prioritize funding international religious freedom initiatives that can be sustained through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, through its Dare to Overcome initiative, has developed and piloted a human rights and business skills curriculum for high school students in India. Such projects can be scaled up for corporate support worldwide.

Recommendation 4: The State Department should develop a business toolkit that incorporates the best practices and lessons learned from successful “religious freedom building” initiatives such as those just described.

This has already been done in the United Kingdom. The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation worked with the UK’s APPG FoRB (All Part Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief) to launch a toolkit to help businesses “build” religious freedom for all through faith-friendly workplace policies and programs.

Former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, embraced this approach at an event on the margins of the UN General Assembly after President Trump’s 2019 speech. The State Department can renew efforts to call businesses and business leaders at home and abroad to embrace faith-friendly workplace policies. It’s not just a practical way to build religious freedom for everyone everywhere, it’s also very good for business. This leads to a fifth recommendation.

Recommendation 5: The State Department should recommend to the President that he nominate an Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom who has global business experience. This can have a world-changing impact by promoting the positive socio-economic and bottom-line benefits of religious freedom.

Indeed, religious freedom offers substantial benefits to businesses and economies. For example, generative AI being developed by technology companies can benefit religious freedom but at the same time pose unique challenges, as was documented during the 2024 International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief in Berlin. Therefore, it is critical that the next Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom to understand business and technology. And the Ambassador should be able to engage this sector actively and knowingly.

Religious freedom is in the self-interest of business. And business has tremendous culture-shaping power and resources. Therefore, I recommend that a business leader with a passion for international religious freedom be the next Ambassador-at-Large. This may seem disruptive, but it may fit in nicely with the new Administration’s passion for change.


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About Brian Grim Ph.D.
Brian Grim, Ph. D., is founding president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and global chair Dare to Overcome, a corporate diversity initiative that promotes mutual respect and engagement among differing groups in the workplace. He works with Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies to include religion and belief as part of their workplace initiatives. Brian is the world’s leading expert on the relationship between economic sustainability and freedom of religion or belief for all (including those without a religious faith). He is an affiliated scholar at Baylor University, Boston University and the Notre Dame University Law School’s Religious Liberty Advisory Board. Brian is a Penn State alumnus and author of numerous works including The Price of Freedom Denied (Cambridge), World Religion Database (Brill), World’s Religions in Figures (Wiley), and Yearbook of International Religious Demography (Brill). He lives at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. You can read more about the author here.
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