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In North Korea, Christians meet secretly or else they suffer imprisonment. In northern Nigeria, some Christians have been subjected to Islamic Shari'ah law, which punishes violators with amputation, floggings, and stoning. In countries all over the world, men and women of all manner of religions are victimized because of what they believe. What exactly should we do about it?

Among human-rights advocates, two strikingly divergent opinions have emerged. One side is represented by Robert Seiple, former U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. In October 2002 he wrote an essay for ChristianityToday.com.

Among other things, he contrasted the approaches of the U.S. State Department and that of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom: "One is based on quiet diplomacy; the other, public finger pointing. One works with governments; the other castigates governments from afar. One lights candles, if you will, and the other feels obligated to curse the darkness."

As for himself, Seiple concludes, "I have never been comfortable with the 'punishing' approach. While it may appeal to our public machismo at home, it rarely moves the ball forward abroad. Sanctions, especially unilateral sanctions, have a checkered career at best, sometimes creating a negative blowback on those we are attempting to help."

After some key leaders took exception to Seiple's views, Christianity Today invited two longtime religious-rights advocates to make their cases.

This article, written by Michael Horowitz, is the debate's first essay. Also read T. Jeremy Gunn's piece.

Lives are at stake. Remarkably, Robert Seiple argues that the world's persecuted believers, most of whom are Christians, can best be helped through "quiet diplomacy" managed by the State Department.

He contrasts this approach with the public anti-persecution campaigns of such leaders as Chuck Colson, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Center for Religious Freedom Director Nina Shea, and the late Steve Snyder—campaigns that helped pass the International Religious Freedom Act.

This act educated a previously unknowing and indifferent America about the hundreds of millions of believers who, in the words of the act, are victims or at risk of "abduction, enslavement, killing, imprisonment, forced mass relocation, rape, crucifixion, or other forms of torture." Seiple analogizes his approach to "lighting candles," and charges the anti-persecution movement with such self-indulgent sins as "curs[ing] the darkness," "hurl[ing] grenades from afar," "tak[ing] … perverse … pleasure in" naming persecuting regimes, and "appeal[ing] to public machismo" but "rarely mov[ing] the ball forward."

There are important lessons to be learned from Seiple's views and the record of the Clinton State Department, which he served as its Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, an advisory position created by the Religious Freedom Act.

First is a lesson I know as a Jew—that silence doesn't work with tyrants. At root, Seiple's preferred "government-to-government" and "quiet diplomacy" approach erroneously assumes that persecuting regimes have greater power and permanency than they actually possess. It fails to understand the fragile and vulnerable character of such regimes, and it dispirits their internal opponents and crushes their victims' spirits. While engagement with persecuting regimes must often be abided as a tactical expedient, doing so on a routine basis causes their character and conduct to be masked over time, and in the process empowers and legitimizes them.

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March 2003, Vol. 47, No. 3