The Adventist Church is continuing to make contacts at the United Nations to fight for religious freedom. “We have a direct personal interest in promoting religious freedom,” says Jonathan Gallagher, United Nations liaison for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. “Freedom of conscience has always been vitally important to us.”

The church is dedicated to promoting religious freedom because many Adventists are the ones who suffer, says Gallagher.

This year the church’s U.N. liaison office continued their involvement with four written and five oral statements to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

The church is also speaking out on “misuse of security issues clamping down on religious beliefs around the world.”

The office currently maintains a branch office in New York staffed with one intern. Gallagher says another intern will join the staff there in January. He hopes to have another intern next year in Geneva--the location of the Commission on Human Rights and the World Health Organization.

“The church can’t function without some kind of religious freedom.” In some countries--Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan--the church can’t function at all. “Freedom is at the center of our religious doctrine,” says Gallagher.

“We have the opportunity to share our faith with ambassadors and heads of state,” and the United Nations is the place to make the contacts. “These are people who aren’t going to attend our cooking classes or other outreach activities.”

“If we don’t have the freedom to worship then we’re irrelevant; and the worst thing to happen to the Adventist Church is to be irrelevant.”

For Gallagher, being at the United Nations means, “We get to share who we are and the God we love.”

In May the United Nations awarded the International Religious Liberty Association “special consultative status.” The IRLA, now established in 65 countries, was originally organized by leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to promote religious freedom worldwide.

A major focus for 2004 is highlighting problems facing religious minorities around the world--"all religions are minorities somewhere," says Gallagher. [Editor: Ansel Oliver for ANN/APD]