Welcome to 'The
Liberty Insider.'
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This is the program
bringing you news, views,
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analysis and
up-to-date information
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on religious
liberty developments
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in the United States
often but also around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine
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and my guest on the
program is Ambassador John Nay,
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retired from-- Foreign Service.
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Foreign Service,
'cause I nearly said
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civil service again.
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But a great experience
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in that area and a great career.
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And I want to ask
you a leading question.
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Sure.
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First of all-- well,
I'll ask it generally
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and then we'll start
off in a particular way.
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I want to pick your brains a bit
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how Adventist
and other Christians
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and other
people of other faiths,
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how can a person of
faith move into working
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and representing a country,
in this case the United States.
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How do you see that dynamic
and may be explain a little bit
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of how you--
How you got into it?
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Well, I think
that it's important
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that Christians be
involved in government.
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Our government
represents everybody
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within the United
States, and a very large portion
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of the population
are active Christians,
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and if Christians abdicate
from involvement in government,
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it simply means
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that their voice won't be heard,
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their beliefs will
be less represented.
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That is true.
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So I think it's
important to participate.
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I think it's
important that Christians vote.
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As for myself I
started college thinking
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that I would
perhaps become a lawyer.
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I always had a long
term interest in history
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and political
science in that area.
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What were you
studying in college?
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Well, I went
through various majors.
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At on point-- I know the feel.
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I thought may be
I would be a doctor
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and I nearly finished
with the minor in biology also
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and I took general
accounting and all of that.
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But it really wasn't my interest
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as much as history
and international affairs.
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After my junior year,
actually what happened
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is that I wound
up going to Japan
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and spending a year
there as student missionary
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teaching English and Bible
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in Adventist
English language school.
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And that was
with the encouragement
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of the number of my
friends who had gone
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and thought it was
a great experience.
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I went and as it happened
the girl who became my wife
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later spent the same
year in Bangladesh as a nurse.
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She was a nursing
student. Did you know her then?
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Yes, yes and we had dated so.
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And we wrote occasionally
while I was in Japan
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and she was in Bangladesh.
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To get to the
hospital where she worked
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you had to-- you could
only get there by boat.
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I had a much more comfortable
experience I think in Japan.
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I came back and was
thinking as a senior
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that perhaps I would
become a history teacher
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or again law
school was a possibility.
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In the Andrews
University placement office,
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where they helped people look
at careers after graduation,
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I happened to see a pamphlet
about the Foreign Service test.
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I signed up and in
December of my senior year
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took the Foreign Service test
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which you could request
a Sunday administration.
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I went down to
South Bend, Indiana
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about 30 miles away, took it.
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Passed it, was
invited to an oral test
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which was the next step.
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Went down to
Chicago for that, passed it
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and you know then
it was sort of things
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kept moving forward.
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I started grad school and--
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It's an interesting progress
and even as you were saying
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and of course that was
one aspect of government.
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I always wonder as I
get-- since 9/11 particularly,
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I go into the airports
and this big ads and it says,
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"There's a
career waiting for you
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in the clandestine
services, which you're not in.
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Right.
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But I see there that there's--
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it's just you apply
and there's a track.
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You don't really-- at
least I've in the past,
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never really thought of
people entering that way.
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It's just-- Yes.
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Decide, take a test and
you sort of move into it
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as a calculated career.
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They did a background
security investigation
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and you get a
medical exam to make sure
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that you're able to
serve in any country
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and regardless of the situation.
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And about 14 months
after I took the exam
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I was invited to--
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asked if I was ready to join
the Foreign Service and I did.
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You know, it's
interesting that my time abroad
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really was very helpful
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and you know
many Mormons wind up
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joining the Foreign Service
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or other
agencies in US government.
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Precisely because
they have so much--
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they have experience abroad.
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They've learned
a foreign language.
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Learning a foreign
language I think is very useful,
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no matter what job you go into.
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But that's briefly my story
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of how I came into
the Foreign Service.
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Well, I've managed to
learn American, speak American.
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Yes. Yes. Australia--
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But I was gonna make a comment
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when you were passing
through your early experiences.
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Going to Japan
must have given you
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a real sense of the
cultural differences.
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Japan has a great culture,
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but very distinct
ways of doing things.
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It was very
different, but at the same time
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I spent a lot of time
visiting areas in Japan
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that were historical.
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I would go over
to Kyoto up to Tokyo.
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I spent most of my spare money
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and there wasn't
a lot of it but--
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And out in Japan it
doesn't go very far.
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And I lost weight
because I was saving every,
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every yen that I had for travel
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rather than spending it
on food or cameras and so on.
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I was able to climb
Mount Fuji and you know,
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go as far as south
as Okinawa and so on.
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It was a great experience
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and I even went
over and visited Korea.
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Went up to the
demilitarized zone.
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So it fed my interest in
travel and other cultures
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and so you know, what
can I say but eventually
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then it gave me the
opportunity to travel further.
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You really didn't--
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you mentioned
Sunday versus Saturday,
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you didn't find
a direct conflict
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between Sabbath keeping and--
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No, although you
do have to realize
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that you are available
and need to be available
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to help any day of
the week in some ways.
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Now I was-- when I came
in I was a counselor officer
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and that has the aspect
of both doing visa work.
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Issuing visas to foreigners
who want to either visit
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or immigrate to the US.
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And also providing
American citizen services
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and Americans at
times-- Get into trouble often.
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Seem adapted
getting into trouble.
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And they will get
into trouble on weekends.
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And frankly you
visit Americans in jail.
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When they're
arrested you try to help them.
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When they're injured
or killed in car accidents
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you sometimes have to
communicate to their families.
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I would think those
sort of duties are--
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I felt quite--
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Charitable assistance.
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I felt quite comfortable
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that I needed to be
there to try to help.
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When you have to
notify a family that,
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you know, the father
has died of a heart attack
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or the daughter has been
killed in a car accident.
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It's a tough
thing to have to do.
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Did you-- have you ever--
was this a regular occurrence?
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You know several
thousand Americans
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die abroad every year.
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Many of them, I mean,
some of them are retirees
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and they've retired abroad.
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Traffic accidents
claim more Americans abroad
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than probably anything else.
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My wife has an
interjection on that.
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When I'd gone back to
Australia after I was married
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and my wife was working
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at Rockwell Collins
an American company,
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aerospace company in Melbourne
and two of the engineers
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came from the US, flew
out for to consult there.
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Picked up a rental car,
came to the headquarters,
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connected and then
they got off in the cab.
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Side road, it's a main
highway, looked the wrong way.
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Drove out and killed instantly.
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Yes, you know, it happens sadly.
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You know, there was--
that's the real risk of travel
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I mean, immediate risk.
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Just a different way of
doing things can be fatal.
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The state
department does everything
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it can to try to make
available information to people
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about the risks
in a given country,
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whether its traffic
or-- we generally recommend
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that young
people not travel alone.
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But it's good
advice even in the US.
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Yes, yes, that's true.
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We had a very sad
case where a young man
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traveling alone in
India was robbed and murdered
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and but through
the embassy's help,
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through the experience
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of a really
experienced local employee
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that we had at
our embassy there.
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She was able to
work with the police
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and keep pushing, pushing
and they kept investigating
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and they finally were
able to crack the case.
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But it wouldn't have
happened without the US embassy
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working with the
police and keeping
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a certain amount of
attention on the case.
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But then you have
to tell the parents
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and that's very tough.
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It's worth asking the question,
but I doubt it happened.
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did, were any of
these calls for assistance
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of a religious nature, were
there religious complications?
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I didn't wind up
with any in that case.
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But we have had cases
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where there
were religious issues
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or where a missionary wound
up involved in something that--
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wound up either being in
an accident or a problem--
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Misunderstood, is
religion became an issue?
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You know, there
was a very sad case
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just a couple of years
ago where an Adventist doctor
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disappeared in Ukraine
and could not be located.
00:10:38.33\00:10:43.24
We also had a case where
an Adventist pastor in Togo
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was arrested and held
without trial for two years.
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I had a few programs on
that. That was a big issue.
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I wound up in contact
with the US embassy there
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because the
deputy chief of mission
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was a friend of mine.
00:11:00.86\00:11:02.19
So I was-- because
it was an Adventist
00:11:02.22\00:11:04.93
and because I was
interested in the case,
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I was just trying to find
out a little more about it
00:11:07.10\00:11:09.73
and he was very clear
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that they were
definitely talking
00:11:11.37\00:11:12.70
to the government about it
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and trying to
persuade the government.
00:11:14.10\00:11:17.44
But again, you
have to do so tactfully
00:11:17.47\00:11:20.04
because it's-- we're
not-- the person in fact,
00:11:20.08\00:11:23.45
who was arrested was
not a US citizen and so--
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Well, he was from
the Cape Verde Islands.
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I never quite understood
why his own government
00:11:30.69\00:11:34.96
wasn't
obviously more aggressive.
00:11:34.99\00:11:37.13
They might have done something
that they didn't appear to be--
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Well, they may not have
had an embassy there either
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it's a very tiny country.
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They had an
embassy in Washington.
00:11:42.93\00:11:44.30
I spoke to the ambassadors.
00:11:44.33\00:11:46.97
But in any case
we-- US embassies abroad
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follow religious liberty cases.
00:11:51.37\00:11:52.81
Yeah, that was good to know
00:11:52.84\00:11:54.18
that the US was
involved in that case.
00:11:54.21\00:11:58.25
Because there
was a justice issue
00:11:58.28\00:11:59.61
and we should be concerned
about religion and justice.
00:11:59.65\00:12:04.09
And every year,
every US embassy writes
00:12:04.12\00:12:07.72
an international religious
freedom report as you know.
00:12:07.76\00:12:10.63
We use that.
00:12:10.66\00:12:11.99
And describing the issues
00:12:12.03\00:12:14.36
related to religious
freedom in a given country
00:12:14.40\00:12:17.20
and those are
publicly available.
00:12:17.23\00:12:18.57
And they would
lean pretty heavily
00:12:18.60\00:12:19.93
on the US representatives
and the embassies
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and diplomatic stuff, I'm sure.
00:12:22.47\00:12:24.94
Well, the
embassy drafts the report
00:12:24.97\00:12:27.51
and then sends it to Washington.
00:12:27.54\00:12:30.15
They're edited to make sure
00:12:30.18\00:12:31.88
they're conformed
to the right format
00:12:31.91\00:12:33.25
and everything and
then they're published.
00:12:33.28\00:12:35.52
But it is the
embassy that drafts it
00:12:35.55\00:12:37.19
because it's the embassy
that knows the local situation.
00:12:37.22\00:12:40.59
Now we use that report
00:12:40.62\00:12:41.96
and our own church draws
up a similar report each year.
00:12:41.99\00:12:46.39
And I'm not sure who draws from
00:12:46.43\00:12:48.66
you know, there's a
little cross-fertilization.
00:12:48.70\00:12:50.37
But these are
very useful outlines
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and especially comparing
from one either the other
00:12:54.00\00:12:56.17
you can see what's shifting.
00:12:56.20\00:12:57.67
Yes.
00:12:57.71\00:12:59.04
Because things are dynamic.
00:12:59.07\00:13:00.41
You know, amazing
as it seems the country
00:13:00.44\00:13:02.64
that can have a hard
line on religion in general
00:13:02.68\00:13:05.65
or may be against a
certain minority may change,
00:13:05.68\00:13:08.42
and curiously they can shift,
sometimes ease up on this group
00:13:08.45\00:13:12.52
and then clamp
down on another one.
00:13:12.55\00:13:14.76
I've written several and
edited several during my career,
00:13:14.79\00:13:18.63
depending both when
I was working in Africa
00:13:18.66\00:13:20.66
and then in the
Suriname and so on.
00:13:20.70\00:13:24.07
But yes, you speak
about countries that maybe
00:13:24.10\00:13:26.13
will have general
religious freedom in one aspect.
00:13:26.17\00:13:31.67
Singapore is an example
00:13:31.71\00:13:33.04
where they have
religious freedom in general,
00:13:33.07\00:13:36.98
but Jehovah's Witnesses'
wind up being prohibited.
00:13:37.01\00:13:40.38
It's a very bureaucratic state
00:13:40.42\00:13:41.88
and religion can run
fell off the bureaucracy.
00:13:41.92\00:13:44.45
Let's take a break.
We'll be back shortly.
00:13:44.49\00:13:46.72
Stay with us and come
back for this discussion
00:13:46.76\00:13:49.02
with Ambassador John Nay.
00:13:49.06\00:13:50.46