The vast ballroom at the Washington Hilton galvanized unexpected allies and ideas this week — for example, two Trump administration officials argued for the United Nations from the same stage where the Dalai Lama provided an inspiring message delivered by Nancy Pelosi.
Hundreds of vastly different people — as different as President Donald Trump and Pelosi or evangelicals and Muslims — united over gut-wrenching first-person accounts of shocking religious persecution, from beheadings and other killings to abduction, imprisonment and sexual violence.
The unthinkable suffering is exactly what made Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations describe the U.N. as indispensable despite the president’s well-known attacks on that beleaguered international institution.
“It absolutely needs to be cleaned up,” Ambassador Mike Waltz said. “It needs to be focused in a better direction, but under an America First agenda, with a diplomacy-first approach, we need one place in the world where everyone can talk, where everyone can come together, even those that we have fundamental and absolute disagreements with.”
Waltz was gobsmacked to find himself working at the U.N. with rapper Nicky Minaj, but maybe it wasn’t so strange after all. They united over the murders of thousands of Christians in Africa.
Minaj’s pastor is Nigerian. Waltz served in Nigeria as a green beret, where he helped rescue girls kidnapped and sold into slavery.
“I did not have Nicki Minaj, one of the world’s greatest rappers on my dance card when I swore in as a U.N. ambassador,” he said. “I didn’t foresee that one, but this is a person that has a quarter billion followers across all of her platforms, people that may not think about or even realize the extent and the gravity of these issues.”
So he sat on stage during a panel at the sixth annual IRF Summit this week and said the U.N. was useful.
“We’ve seen meaningful action to protect those poor people that are literally having their churches burned down, priests beheaded, people chased out of their homes because they call Christ their Savior,” Waltz said.
All across the bottom floor of the Hilton, people of dozens of faiths who don’t share each others’ beliefs rallied around the bellwether right of religious freedom.
Data shows that people and nations are healthier when citizens are free to believe and worship and convert or not worship however they like.
Where religious liberty is weak, other basic rights also fade.
The Dalai Lama did not attend but sought to inspire an estimated group of about 1,500 religious, government and charity leaders.
“Although the world’s religions are diverse in their traditions and philosophies, they share the same essential message of love, compassion, forgiveness, contentment and self-discipline,” he said in the statement read by Pelosi. “These values are not intended only for followers of a particular religion. They are universal and relevant to every human being.”
The leader of Tibetan Buddhism called it “deeply regrettable” that religion has often been the source of division and conflict.
“In the 21st century, humanity must move beyond old divisions and learn not only to work together, but to live together,” the Dalai Lama stated. “Cooperation among different faiths and cultures is no longer optional. It is essential to our shared future.” (His full message is included below.)
That spirit animated dozens of sessions Monday and Tuesday at the IRF Summit — IRF stands for international religious freedom — and the Global Faith Forum.
Former NBA player Enes Kanter, exiled from Turkey for speaking against the government, is a regular at the IRF Summit.
“It feels like a family,” he said. “Once you walk in, you see people of all different colors, different religions, different ethnicity, different backgrounds, but we are all here for one simple reason: To fight against dictatorships and try to bring freedom into this world.”
Kanter said the convention provides courage and hope.
“It makes me feel I’m not alone in this fight,” he said. “I have so many people here that actually share what I’m going through, so thank you.”
The troops heard rallying cries from the summit’s co-founders, Sam Brownback and Katrina Lantos-Swett.
“The IRF Summit exists to put gas on the fire of religious freedom,” said Brownback, a former U.S. senator and former U.S. ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom.
He said the summit stands up for the unpopular kids on the playground.
“Once you stand up to a bully, everyone gets more freedom on the playground,” he said.
Lantos-Swett said the people at the summit are builders.
“You build not on a ground of shared theology but of shared commitment to treat each other with profound respect, a determination to defend each other’s rights to live our lies according to the dictates of our own conscience,” she said.
The Global Faith Forum’s co-founders are an evangelical pastor and a Muslim imam. The Rev. Bob Roberts and Imam Mohamed Magid burst expectations everyone they go together in the United States and the Muslim world.
“I never thought I’d be best friends with a non-Christian, but I love this guy,” Pastor Roberts said Tuesday night at the closing dinner. “I believe we are doing God’s work. It’s made a difference.”
Pastor Roberts asked Christians to defend Muslims. The imam asked Muslims to defend Christians.
Even the events’ backers are disparate. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored both the IRF Summit and Global Faith Forum, whose sponsors also included the Gates Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
On Monday, White House Faith Office special adviser Paula White-Cain also relied on the U.N. for moral authority in her arguments on behalf of religious liberty.
On Tuesday night, the dinner was attended by Assistant Secretary of State Riley Barnes, assistant U.S. secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor.
A personal and thoughtful deliberation on the ideas of loving the stranger was delivered by Miroslav Volf, director of Yale University’s Center for Faith and Culture.
“The reach of God’s love,” he said, “is the scope of our respect.”
The Dalai Lama’s full message
I am pleased to offer my greetings to all those gathered for the 2026 International Religious Freedom Summit. I deeply appreciate your efforts to protect and promote one of the most fundamental human rights — freedom of thought, conscience and belief.
Religious freedom is not only the freedom to practice a particular religion. At its core, it is freedom of thought, the right of every individual to reflect, question and choose their own beliefs without fear or coercion. This freedom of inquiry is essential to human dignity and to peaceful coexistence in our increasingly interconnected world.
Although the world’s religions are diverse in their traditions and philosophies, they share the same essential message of love, compassion, forgiveness, contentment and self-discipline. These values are not intended only for followers of a particular religion. They are universal and relevant to every human being.
It is deeply regrettable that religion has so often been the source of division and conflict. No genuine religion teaching promotes hatred or violence. In the 21st Century, humanity must move beyond old divisions and learn not only to work together, but to live together. Cooperation among different faiths and cultures is no longer optional. It is essential to our shared future.
Though we are all members of one human family, whether one is a believer or not, every person shares the basic wish to be happy and to avoid suffering. Common human values such as compassion, kindness and integrity are essential, not only for spiritual life, but for the survival of humanity itself.
Along with compassion, contentment and self-discipline help us reduce destructive emotions and develop greater concern for the well being of others. These qualities are equally important for religious practitioners and for those who may not follow any particular religion.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of you, including Ambassador Sam Brownback and Mrs. Katrina Lantos-Swett, and I hold their work in high regard. I sincerely appreciate the efforts of all those engaged in this field, and specifically encourage the continuing commitment to protecting religious freedom while promoting mutual respect and a shared sense of responsibility.
By upholding freedom of thought and nurturing universal human values, we can contribute to a more peaceful world and compassionate world.
With my prayers and good wishes, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.