FALLS CHURCH, Va. — A Baptist World Alliance (BWA)-led delegation recently returned from Vietnam, where it pressed government officials to ensure greater religious freedom in the rapidly Westernizing nation.
Though conditions for religious groups — especially Protestant groups — have improved in recent years in Vietnam, it remains designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern,” or CPC, under the terms of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
Vietnam passed a 2004 law granting greater autonomy to religious groups and reached a 2005 agreement with United States officials on further improving religious conditions in the communist nation. But the chairman of a federal panel that monitors the status of religious freedom worldwide said in March that the agreement had not been fully implemented, particularly by provincial government officials in rural areas.
“We recognize in the recent laws on religious liberty that there is greater respect for Protestant groups like Baptists,” said David Coffey, BWA president. “What we asked for was that they would go beyond respect to granting freedom of worship without any restrictions. The delegation particularly pressed for a normalization of religious freedom which would include the right to open church buildings, Bible schools and compassionate ministries.”
The trip included a BWA-sponsored dinner that gathered more than 500 Baptist leaders, the largest public gathering of Vietnamese Baptists since the fall of Saigon in 1975. Baptist World Aid, the humanitarian arm of the BWA, also presented checks to build homes for the poor as a goodwill gesture to the Vietnamese government.
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