SOCIETY: The Foundation met with the Fundación Incluyendo México (Inclusive Foundation of Mexico) a foundation working for a sustainable and prosperous Mexico as well as the world at large, focusing on vulnerable communities and families. The Fundación Incluyendo has a broad network of business and civic leaders that are looking to engage in practical projects directed to these ends. The Fundación Incluyendo works with people of all faiths, including with the LDS Church in Mexico, which helped organize the meetings.

GOVERNMENT: Grim also met with several government leaders, including with Dr. Arturo Manuel Diaz Leon, Director General of Religious Associations, the Mexican agency that manages relations between the Mexican government and religious associations.

The Foundation anticipates further work in Mexico, beginning with a planning meeting in September 2014 and a forum in February/March 2015 to work on a sustainable business project that helps increase interfaith understanding and peace in southern Mexico, where traditional communities and newer faiths sometimes experience tensions and conflict.

For a summary of the religious freedom situation in Mexico, see the 2012 CSW report.

The webinar will be co-hosted by the UN Global Compact’s Business for Peace platform together with the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation. It will explain how businesses can effectively incorporate religious freedom in their strategic business plans for the benefit of their stakeholders, their employees, and society and also highlight the positive contributions to peace these actions can have in the workplace, marketplace, and local communities.  Finally, the webinar will also introduce a range of global initiatives that businesses and other stakeholders are welcome to join.REGISTER

The UN Global Compact’s Business for Peace platform and the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation call for nominations of businesses that have advanced interfaith understanding and peace through their core business and/or outreach activities to be highlighted in new resource/publication.

Deadline for nominations is May 23, 2014.

Building on the common objectives of the Business for Peace platform and the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, these organizations are collaborating to develop a new resource/publication. This project will provide case studies that expand existing research showing that religious freedom leads to peace, stability, global competitiveness, and better business environments for majorities and minorities alike, including for women.

The resource will profile approximately 5 examples of how companies have taken action to advance inter-religious understanding and peace. Relevant examples will be drawn from multiple regions of the world and from a variety of business sectors.

• Eligibility: Any company with ten or more employees that has taken concrete steps to address a challenge involving interfaith understanding or peace, ideally, as part of their core business, or alternatively through community outreach (see examples).
• Recommended: Companies participating in the UN Global Compact’s Business for Peace platform and that also indicate willingness to be part of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation’s RFB Global Network will be considered first. (Also see main nominations page.)
• Deadline: Nominations must be received by May 23, 2014.

The case study project will also help set standards for the RF&B Foundation’s Biennial Religious Freedom & Business Global Awards. See NOMINATIONS for more information.

As the conflict on the border of Russia and Ukraine dominates world headlines, scholars from both countries made their way to the Russia’s National Research Nuclear University MEPhI in Moscow for an unprecedented event – an international seminar on religious demography, religious freedom and business.

Behind the gates of the high security institution lie innovations in religion and public life that made news before the April 30 seminar. Within the nuclear science university, its head, Rector Mikhail Strikhanov (pictured above), established a department of theology. By his account, the department helps provide ethical and spiritual input for the future top scientists of the nation so that nuclear science develops for the good of humanity. Some, however, argued that religion had no place in the halls of science.

MEPhI has just launched a Theology Department, opened a chapel for students, and encouraged application of theology and ethics to professional and scientific life.

The department is chaired by Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of external relations for the Russian Orthodox Church and, by some accounts, the number two figure in the Church. Staff in the department include physicists who, after graduating from the university, became priests and monks in the church.

Within this unique context, Dr. Brian Grim, a quantitative social scientist and president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, led a seminar hosted personally by the Nuclear University’s rector. This full-day seminar was the culmination of a series of lectures on religious freedom’s relationship to social and economic outcomes at Moscow’s two leading institutions – Higher School of Economics.

These lectures and seminars are part of the Society, Religion, and Science Lecture Series, co-sponsored by the Postgraduate School of the Russian Orthodox Church  and the University of St. Thomas. They are organized by Rev. Vladimir Shmaliy, Dr. Iryna Khromets, and Dr. Dmitry Uzlaner. The lecture series brings prominent international scholars to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev.

Grim is not a newcomer to the region. He previously directed economic development projects in Soviet Central Asia during the final years of the USSR, and more recently lectured in the first international demographic conference hosted by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. He is also a contributor to the forthcoming Russian Encyclopedia of World Religion.

For more information or interviews: email or call +1.410.268.7809

Dalits are members of the so-called untouchable Hindu caste, and are often marginalized in communities where they live. A number of Dalits in India, Pakistan and Nepal have converted to other faiths, including Christianity. They continue to be among the poorest of the poor in many locations where they live, sometimes negatively stereotyped and consigned to collect garbage.

Turning this negative stereotype into an opportunity, potential partners held preliminary meetings to explore grass roots waste collection and recycling enterprises in Dalit areas. The criteria include that the projects must be locally sustainable, part of a broader community development plan, and involve international partners who receive not only a return on their investment, but learn new business innovations from the project itself.

Such projects help struggling minority communities acquire not only economic resources but also social capital that better integrates them within the societies in which they live.

The meetings were multi-disciplinary, including leaders from research, innovation, technology, government and business sectors. For instance, Grim met with Managing Director Hannu Jokinen (pictured above) of the waste management company MOLOK in Nokia, Finland. MOLOK developed an innovative and efficient waste management system that reduces disease, smell and costs, with work throughout the world including in developing countries such as Namibia.

MOLOK is a potential partner for the Foundation’s “waste-to-wealth” project that will eventually include recycling and construction firms, academic research groups and development agencies partnering with local entrepreneurs among Dalit communities.

Grim went on from Finland to Oslo, Norway, where he briefed leading members of Parliament and the foreign secretary on these initiatives. He also met with Per Leif Saxegaard, Chairman of the Business for Peace Foundation. Grim also delivered a keynote talk at the annual meeting of Stefanus Alliance International, a Christian-based human rights organization working for freedom of religion or belief for people of any faith or belief.

Religious Freedom & Business Foundation President Brian Grim is visiting Finland, as part of its sustainability initiative to participate in discussions on how business and scientific endeavors can foster religious freedom while creating an economic return.

The Finish Evangelical Lutheran Mission will be hosting discussions on the potential public and private partnerships in the recycling business benefitting marginalized groups in developing countries while fostering human rights and freedom of religion. They will meet with the Molok recycling company, which has businesses in places such as Namibia and India.

Among other events in Finland on April 22, 2014, Grim and Martins will meet with Mika Venamaki, Senior Economic Adviser at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. They will also meet with Sara Lindeman, Project Manager at Aalto University for Design, Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Science (renewable energy technologies).

Grim and Martins will also meet with the BYU Management Society on April 23, 2014. Other meetings will be with H.E. Norton de Andrade Mello Rapesta, Ambassador of Brazil to Finland, and lectures at the Annual Assembly of the Suomen Liikemiesten Lahetysliito to about forty Finish business people/executives.

After these meetings, Grim will speak at high level events in Oslo, Norway, and lecture in Moscow, Russia, on the connection between religious freedom and positive socio-economic outcomes.

In the interview, he notes that restrictions on religion, such as the prohibition against defamation of religion, while implemented with the intent to protect and promote respect, can often lead to a rise in social hostilities. For instance in Pakistan, there was a case of business rivals accusing each other of blasphemy for economic gain, both looking for the other to be punished for defamation.

This leads Grim to have concern for the accumulation of religious restrictions in nations such as Oman. The nation has a law with a ten year sentence for defamation of religion, as in the case of Pakistan, could lead to a rise in social hostilities that impact business.

In his opening segment he talked about how the research he did on global religious restrictions and hostilities led him to leave the Pew Research Center and found the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation. Grim cited more than three decades worth of experience and evidence showing that nations with lower governmental and societal restrictions on religion are stronger and healthier than more restrictive nations. 

Interestingly though, Grim notes that while government officials, NGO representatives, religious groups and civil society members are paying attention, business leaders are absent from the discussion, even though businesses have a lot to gain because religious freedom is tied to economic growth. 

The Foundation aims to work with existing businesses and start-ups. Where a minority religion may be socially marginalized, Grim encourages the approach of looking to where there is an economic need in society and working with the minority to facilitate a sustainable solution, bringing both social and economic benefits to them and the larger society.

Press inquiries welcome.

Over lunch in downtown Washington DC, a Turkish trade representative puzzled, “We almost never put religion and business in the same sentence, so, what’s the connection between religious freedom and business?” Fair question, given that I was introducing him to the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation.

His ah-ha moment came about halfway through our meal, but for a different reason than mine had come.

We began by talking about different ways religious barriers inhibit financial cooperation between Muslim countries. For instance, one country’s sharia (Islamic law) board might consider a financial investment instrument acceptable while another country’s does not.

We also discussed attempts in Europe to restrict Islamic halal meats because of the purported ill treatment of animals in the slaughtering process. Of course, such restrictions similarly impact kosher businesses supplying meat for Jewish communities.

But, neither of these were his ah-ha moment.

We then talked about Pakistan where businesses have accused rivals of blasphemy – a capital offense – to undercut the competition or extract revenge. The blasphemy law has also been used to ban websites like Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia. And even questioning the blasphemy law is perilous, as two high-ranking government officials were recently assassinated for merely suggesting that they be overturned.

But his ah-ha moment came when we moved on to Egypt, where ongoing religion-related violence is not only sapping the important tourist industry, but driving young entrepreneurs from the labor market.

The loss of Egypt’s young entrepreneurs was his Ah-ha!

He recalled how until recently, it was illegal for Turkish women to wear headscarves in public jobs or even to attend public universities. While the bans on headscarves in Turkey have been lifted, ongoing employment discrimination persists against more religiously conservative women who don the headscarf. And the loss to the labor market is significant.

And this brings me to my ah-ha moment – conversations like this – not only with Muslim business people, but with people of multiple faiths as well as with people in high levels of government and civil leaders.

But, these conversations are driven by the research I did for well over the past decade.

For instance, in my book with Roger Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied (Cambridge 2011), we documented that religious freedom not only leads to less violence, but that it is also associated with a host of other socio-economic outcomes.

– See more at: Innovation in the Global Fight for Religious Freedom(Venn Institute)