WHEN they are expressed in very general terms, American arguments in favour of religious liberty can risk sounding as bland as professions of liking for motherhood and apple pie. Well, the new head of America's religious freedom-watching agency supports motherhood, and has probably enjoyed apple pie, but bland he is certainly not. Robert George, a Princeton University professor of law and moral philosophy, is a leading "theocon" intellectual who also commands some respect among liberals as a clear thinker and teacher. He has just been elected chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a post that rotates more or less amicably between the nine members of a panel that is mandated by Congress to monitor freedom of conscience across the world. It is supposed to denounce violators and galvanise the administration. It generally proposes a longer list of "countries of particular concern" - egregious violators of religious freedom, liable to face sanctions - than the State Department can accept; but its pronouncements carry moral and political weight.



Domestically, Mr George is best-known for his advocacy of the traditional family; he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, and he was founding chairman of a campaign group called the National Organization for Marriage. But these positions won't bear directly on his new role as an international liberty-watcher, he told me. "As chairman of USCIRF I won't be commenting on domestic American issues." The commission's role was to uphold the liberty of "people of all faiths, including people with whom we might disagree" - so it was possible he might find himself defending the rights (in other countries) of liberal religious groups whose ideas were at odds with his own.

But that doesn't mean the commission's work is uncontroversial. Over the last two years, as Erasmus has noted, there has been open disagreement within the panel over one country in particular, Turkey. Last year, the commission declared after a split vote that Turkey should be categorised as a "country of particular concern" - in other words, a hard-core oppressor of faith, along with places like Saudi Arabia and North Korea. This year, after another split ballot, the US commissioners dramatically upgraded Turkey's status. The country was left out of the CPC list and also spared from "tier 2" which is a list of countries under close scrutiny. Instead Turkey was simply included among "other countries bring monitored". (Concerns over Turkey include the status of Christian and other minorities and also the restrictions faced by practising Muslims under the country's secular constitution.)

Mr George told me that in his view, "the facts justified putting Turkey in Tier 2" - but he would be opposed to putting Turkey back on the CPC list. In other words, this year's verdict was a bit too mild while last year's was excessively stringent. But he stressed that on this and other contentious matters, he and his fellow commissioners (some appointed by Congress, some by the administration) would "try to behave in a collegial way" and concentrate on gathering objective facts.

Not that anybody, in this sensitive area, is free of personal sensibilities. Mr George says he is "deeply concerned about the plight of Christians in the Middle East" and has personal knowledge of that issue. That is partly because his family roots are in the Syrian Christian community and he has kin who left that country only recently. But this did not make him less mindful of other vulnerable groups. "I have great respect for the Muslim population of Syria," he told me, adding that he was very much aware of the small, hard-pressed Jewish minorities in places like Iran, and of other regional minorities like the Druze and the Alawites.

On his watch, the religious-liberty debate will certainly not be platitudinous.