WASHINGTON — The speaker lineup during a 20-minute stretch at IRF Summit 2025 certainly was unusual.
First, JD Vance spoke from teleprompters for 12 minutes to nearly 2,000 people in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton near the White House. He stood behind his own specialized podium bearing the seal of the Vice President of the United States of America and declared the Trump administration will support international religious freedom.
As what appeared to be Secret Service employees swiftly dismantled the podium, large screens around the ballroom broadcast live video of actor Rainn Wilson, who gained fame playing Dwight Schrute for laughs on “The Office.” Wilson spoke for seven minutes from New York City, where he is appearing on Broadway.
“What a strange and profound honor to be following the vice president of the United States in any kind of talk,” Wilson said.
So, how do you follow both the veep and a famous comedian?
That job fell to Brett Scharffs, a stylish BYU law professor who has helped lawmakers around the world add religious freedoms to national constitutions in many countries.
Scharffs needed just three minutes to outline a new framework for thinking and talking about religious liberty. His point was that countries and cultures committed to religious freedom should actively promote certain virtues as the seedbed for those rights to grow and flourish.
“Or to put it another way,” he said, “if Heraclitus was right, that character is destiny — what kind of character, both individual and social, would we strive to develop if we want to be people, and to live in places, that value religious freedom?”
He broke down his list of 13 of the most important virtues of religious freedom into three categories — habits of the head, habits of the heart and habits of the hand to be cultivated personally and in others, including children.
Habits of the head
Those who care about religious liberty will seek to develop people who:
- Are curious.
- Are open-minded.
- Seek for truth.
- Stand for truth.
- Are tolerant of others.
Habits of the heart
These seven virtues value reverence, awe and wonder, Scharffs said. He added, “Where better to learn these virtues than Sunday School, the synagogue, the mosque.”
- Faith, hope and charity.
- Humility, kindness, respect and love.
Habits of the hand
Finally, those who want to protect religious freedom rights will seek to develop and spread a specific kind of desire:
- To lift the downtrodden, to be of service to those in need, to reach out to the vulnerable and the broken.
“So in all of our talking about rights ... let us not forget to speak about the virtues of religious freedom,” Scharffs said.
“We want to live in cultures that cultivate people who will value religious freedom, not just as a right, but as deeply ingrained traits of character, habits of the head, heart and hand, indeed, virtues of our very soul.”
