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Hertzke began to study this incipient movement in 1996, and was amazed by its sudden growth and the unlikely character of the alliances. His book is full of colorful characters and subplots that provide the backstory to this great tale of humanitarian action.

For example, Hertzke tells how the Horowitz family became engaged with Gataneh Matafriah Getaneh, an Ethiopian Christian refugee, whose need for asylum the Immigration and Naturalization Service denied because the agency couldn't understand that in his homeland he was being persecuted as a Christian. The category of religious persecution simply didn't compute for them, but for Horowitz it provided a point of connection between his Jewish history and the mistreatment of Christians.

Hertzke also tells how the evenhanded human-rights advocacy of Shea got her blacklisted in the human-rights community. In the 1980s, her documenting of right-wing death squads in El Salvador earned her access to elite gatherings and the op-ed page of The New York Times. But when she began reporting similar abuses by Nicaragua's leftist regime, she found herself shunned. At the urging of a Nicaraguan journalist in exile, she founded the Puebla Institute, a lay Catholic organization, to defend religious freedom for all creeds in all parts of the world. Thus was laid the foundation for a kind of human-rights advocacy that had been previously scorned or ignored by the old-line rights groups.

Secularist thinking has long been dominated by one or another variety of historical determinism. In the Marxist version, for example, history is determined by the inexorable clash and succession of economic classes. But Hertzke's tale is woven around the necessity of human action and its potential for changing history. That antideterministic thinking drove the Reagan-era confrontation with communism, and it also fueled Horowitz's passionate crusade for religious freedom. 

But complementing Hertzke's antideterminism is the concept of Providence. Providential appears repeatedly in this book, suggesting (though only suggesting) a sense of divine blessing on human effort. One chapter title that illustrates this sense of history is chapter six, "The Hand of Providence in Congress." The chapter recounts the strategic decision to sponsor congressional legislation. After the initial burst of enthusiasm, the incipient movement needed a focus for its energies and "a tangible way for American Christians to exercise their citizenship on behalf of their coreligionists." The first piece of legislation to emerge was tough and offered the government only a blunt instrument with which to respond to religious persecution.

But not everyone was happy with the approach of the Wolf-Specter bill, and looked for a more calibrated, diplomatic approach. That was to be found in alternative legislation sponsored by Senators Nickles and Lieberman. Within evangelical ranks, the clash between advocates of the different approaches was fierce, and Hertzke offers glimpses of the bruising fight. He concludes that the struggle "suggests a pluralism in the born-again world not always appreciated outside the community." The outcome was the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which blended the strengths of each approach.

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October 2004, Vol. 48, No. 10