Description
Religious freedom is an important human right and concept in international global history, and yet, its definition has been frequently taken for granted in legal and political institutions worldwide. It is endorsed in legal and public policy circles around the world, such as constitutions, state offices of religious affairs, and international law. In this paper, I argue that peoples in the Americas are currently contesting and redefining these universal concepts inherited from the liberal international order. Rather than focusing my attention on how governments, international organizations, and states define these meaningful concepts, I turn to transnational and regional networks in the Americas, in particular, the discourses, practices, and performances of civil society groups participating at the Organization of American States (OAS). Is it possible to refashion religious freedom by changing the lens of who is defining it? Could it be possible to debate “religious freedom” as a human right grounded in decolonial, feminist, ecological, indigenous, and hemispheric epistemologies? I explore how a diverse range of identity groups –including feminists, indigenous, afro-descendants, evangelicals, and religious coalitions– address the idea of religious freedom over the last years (2017-2022). I offer a novel account from a decolonial lens, which accounts for the complexities of peoples' identities juxtaposed by race, gender, religious, and spiritualities elements, all of them embedded in the construction of political subjects in spaces of global governance. My research draws from ethnographical fieldwork in OAS General Assemblies and Summit of the Americas as well as an interpretive approach to the role of civil society groups in international organizations.
