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The sun was setting as our small bus bumped along a Vietnamese highway. Then someone began to sing. We were in the middle of a four-hour drive between Buon Me Thuot and Pleiku, having just endured a day of formal meetings with government and church officials, meetings as necessary and exhausting as tilling a garden that has been long neglected.

The singer was our guide, Hoang Cong Thuy, secretary general of the Vietnam-usa Society, an organization with close ties to both the Vietnamese Communist Party and the government. The cliché "he is a small man with a big heart" was invented, I'm sure, after someone met "Mr. Thuy" (as he is called). Unfailingly cheerful, even though he had to endure the quirks of eight evangelical pastors, three businessmen, one nonprofit diplomat, and one skeptical journalist, he worked to keep our spirits up. So during our drive, he grabbed the microphone of our little bus and began belting out a Sinatra tune. A cappella.

It was a joyful noise, as one is wont to say about earnest musical efforts. And it inspired equally modest talents on the bus to join in. One of our party—a man in his retirement years—gave a rendition of Elvis, followed by a bold fellow crooning from the repertoire of the Monkees. Then the Vietnamese sang their national anthem, and we followed with ours.

As Amy Rowe, one of the intrepid travelers, wrote in her blog, "It doesn't get any weirder than Baptists and Communists singing karaoke together in a van driving through the middle of Vietnam."

Yes, but weird stuff like this is at the heart of religious freedom efforts in Vietnam. It is the sort of thing that is making a difference for Christians there.

I went to Vietnam in late August and early September 2006. The Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) and the Vietnam-USA Society (VUS) organized the trip. VUS is a part of the Fatherland Front, an umbrella of pro-government organizations overseeing many government programs and policies, such as religion policies. The trip was part of an agreement—formally called a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)—between the two parties, saying that American pastors and scholars would visit Vietnam "to better understand religious freedom challenges and progress."

It was a perfect time to visit Vietnam. Vietnam now has the third-largest population in Southeast Asia, with 84.4 million citizens. Trade relations with the United States have nearly doubled every year since 2002, so that the U.S. is now Vietnam's largest export trading partner, larger even than China. Thus, Vietnam is emerging as a significant force in Southeast Asia.

In addition, a variety of forces were at play last fall. The country has had an atrocious human-rights record since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. It has also had an atrocious economy. Both atrocities were perpetuated by an unswerving, ideological commitment to communism. Human rights abuses had led to various international sanctions. The U.S. had listed Vietnam as a Country of Particular Concern for its religious freedom abuses. That, in turn, had blocked Permanent Normal Trade Relations status, which Vietnam needed to clear the way for U.S. support for accession to the World Trade Organization. Economic isolation had stalled the economy.

But in the 1990s, Vietnam's rulers began making significant reforms, somewhat along the lines of Communist China, trying to combine political socialism with a liberalizing economy. While Vietnam was trying to get in the good graces of the U.S. and the WTO, it signed an MOU with IGE, a faith-based organization that "promotes sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide" through "relational diplomacy." Its work in Vietnam may be the most significant example of how the U.S. and global evangelicals can better expand religious freedom in repressive states.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5