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In the Longworth House office building on Capitol Hill, on an unusually warm April afternoon, Nina Shea is moving to the drumbeat of a southern Sudanese Shilluk tribal dance. The typically reserved, influential director of the Center for Religious Freedom (CRF) at Freedom House is with a broad coalition of clergy, congressional representatives, human-rights activists, and Sudanese war survivors. They are celebrating the January signing of Sudan's comprehensive North-South peace agreement.

Shea and the coalition she helped assemble have been pushing for agreement for more than a decade. The 22-year genocidal jihad waged by the ruling National Islamic Front against Sudan's predominantly Christian and animist South has ended. But Shea and others say they will not rest until peace is restored to Darfur, where a second genocide rages on.

Drawing attention to religious persecution around the globe is something Shea has learned to do well. She is described by her friends as forthright and direct, and by her critics as "shrill." No matter. Her reputation as an intensely focused, doggedly persistent advocate of religious freedom led Newsweek magazine to credit her with "making Christian persecution Washington's hottest cause."

Shea has been championing religious freedom and decrying human-rights violations since her days as a young lawyer with the International League for Human Rights in New York. She is currently vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), established by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The commission advises the U.S. government on religious freedom around the globe. It is a job the savvy, 40-something, blonde mother of three has embraced with gusto. She has become an increasingly prominent player in promoting religious freedom as a top U.S. foreign policy objective.

"I think Nina Shea is one of the most influential people on human rights and religious liberty there is," said Faith McDonnell, director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy's Religious Liberty Program. McDonnell has worked closely with Shea on Sudan and other fronts. "She speaks with authority and has influence with people who are rather important themselves. Anyone who hears Nina understands that this is someone who knows what she's talking about."

Shea served on the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad to the U.S. Secretary of State (Madeleine Albright) from 1997 to 1999, and meets regularly with the Congressional Working Group on Religious Freedom, led by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn. Colleagues describe her as a go-getter who never shrinks from opportunities to press her issues. In uscirf meetings with President Bush, Shea will try to "buttonhole him and use the time to raise the issues she thinks need to be talked about," says colleague Paul Marshall. Marshall, senior fellow at the CRF and author of Their Blood Cries Out, a bestselling survey of religious persecution, adds, "She's not overawed by people."

"Nina is a real visionary with a passion for truth and justice," says international Christian humanitarian Baroness Caroline Cox. "She's led a robust campaign to draw attention to peoples' suffering in the Sudan, and her approach is both principled and powerful."

Shea's approach is to bring together politically diverse coalitions of churches, religious groups, and civil-rights organizations to press for government action. It has proven effective. In 1998, Shea, McDonnell, Michael Horowitz, and others began laying the groundwork for the Sudan Coalition, a loosely affiliated network of human-rights groups, students, and religious organizations. It later joined forces with the Sudan Campaign, a group launched by African American civil-rights leaders, to pass the 2002 Sudan Peace Act.

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September 2005, Vol. 49, No. 9