(RNS) — A group of faith leaders, including several prominent conservatives, is pushing the Trump administration to formally include a religion engagement group within the Group of 20 summit, to be hosted at Trump’s golf club in the Miami area next December.
In November, over 80 leaders, led by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan; Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon; and First Liberty Institute President Kelly Shackelford, sent President Donald Trump a letter urging him to build on his legacy as “a stalwart defender of peace and international religious freedom” and direct his administration “to officially recognize the Religion 20 Summit (R20) as part of America’s presidency of the G20 in 2026.”
The G20 intergovernmental forum was formed in 1999 to address global economic issues, comprising 21 member with large economies, including the U.S., European Union, China and Russia. Its presidency rotates each year.
The first time a religion forum was incorporated into the formal program of the G20 was 2022, when Indonesia hosted the summit. But subsequent G20 summits did not include a religion engagement group.
The founder of the R20 was Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, the general secretary of the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board, a large Muslim organization. Glendon told RNS in an interview that the Nahdlatul Ulama leadership played a major role in attracting an interfaith group for the R20. “We would like to make the world aware that there is a battle going on for the soul of Islam between jihadist Islam, which has made such inroads in Europe, and this really beautiful humanitarian Islam that is practiced in Southeast Asia.”
Glendon, an emeritus law professor at Harvard University, said that she hoped the R20 would be a priority for the Trump administration because it would have a “strong appeal” to a religious base and also give the administration “the opportunity to showcase a form of Islam that has declared itself in favor of freedom of religion, of religious pluralism.”
In her trips to Washington to advocate for the R20, Glendon said that Roger Severino, vice president of economic and domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, has been a key advocate, but Trump administration officials have yet to have to officially respond.
“ With four-fifths of the world’s population ascribing to a religion, a group like the G20 ought to take religion into consideration as it tries to achieve its laudable social and economic goals,” she said.
Dolan — whose retirement was set in motion last month when Pope Leo XIV appointed a successor to lead New York — also sent his own letters to Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, writing that “official recognition of the R20 offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revitalize America’s founding vision on the global stage — affirming the God-given right of all people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — and leverage its revolutionary principles to recalibrate the trajectory of Western civilization and the world at large.”
In his note dated Nov. 14, Dolan wrote that the coalition backing the joint Nov. 10 letter had been assembled with the “generous support” of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank embroiled in turmoil after its president defended Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview of antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes.
Dolan emphasized religion as “the greatest source of soft power in much of the world” in his letters to Trump administration leaders. He wrote that recognizing the religion engagement group could help Trump achieve the interfaith dialogue portion of his “plan to end the Gaza conflict.”
In the lead-up to the conclave last year, Trump suggested to reporters that he’d like to see Dolan become pope. He also appointed Dolan to his Religious Liberty Commission.
The broader coalition letter told Trump that including a religion engagement group in the G20 could strengthen international partnerships, saying, “Religious leaders often have significant influence in their respective countries and can serve as valuable allies in advancing American interests and values globally.” It also said the R20 could address the persecution of religious minorities, including Christians, Jews and Muslims and work towards counter-extremism efforts.
Since 2014, an informal group called the G20 Interfaith Forum has met in the G20 host country to discuss global goals, including the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The group says it “provides an important context for religious voices to contribute meaningful insight and recommendations that respond to and help shape the overall G20 and thus global policy agendas.” Last year, it met in August, months before the November G20 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The group of signatories urging a formal engagement group for the 2026 G20 is distinct from the leaders of the Interfaith Forum.
Beyond Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, and the lead signatories, the coalition backing the letter includes Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during the first Trump administration; several current and former commissioners on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family; Kristen Waggoner, CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom; the Rev. Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and Zainab Al-Suwaji, the executive director of the American Islamic Congress.
The letter — dated a day before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops elected a new president — also includes former president Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, and the chair of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace, Bishop A. Elias Zaidan of the Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles. The signatories also include many prominent conservative Catholics, including R.R. Reno, editor at First Things magazine, and the presidents of many conservative Catholic colleges.
Memos supporting the religion engagement group acknowledged that getting the Trump administration’s backing for a new multilateral global initiative may be challenging. “Those committed to an America First agenda are rightly skeptical of the G20 and its constellation of globalist NGOs determined to leverage the annual G20 process to advance a wide array of agendas inimical to U.S. strategic interests and to the Trump Administration’s priorities,” a memo backing the R20 acknowledges.
But, it argues that “the Trump Administration may counter this globalist agenda while leveraging the G20 to produce a stronger, safer, and more prosperous America, and a more peaceful world,” by framing priorities in terms of “America’s founding traditions and principles, backed by the world’s major religions.”
“Unlike America’s constitutional tradition and system of ordered liberty, the French Revolution gave birth to a militant secular ideology that paved the way for Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” the memo says. Referencing the recent election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, it continues, “As may be seen from the recent election in New York City, present-day adherents of this ideology are viscerally opposed not only to America’s founding principles and traditions, but also to President Trump and his political agenda.”
Another memo backing the R20 writes that the religion engagement group would “foster a constructive and human-friendly environmental agenda rooted in traditional religious teachings that will discredit the secular left’s war on food and energy security, and simultaneously promote rational agricultural and energy policies” and “help end modern slavery, as exemplified by child labor in the mining of cobalt, an essential component of lithium batteries, and hence key to the globalists’ net zero agenda.”
In the official coalition letter, the leaders wrote to Trump, “The eyes of the world will be on you and America next year, and we pray you seize this opportunity to further cement your legacy as a stalwart defender of religious liberty when America’s security and spiritual well-being were under threat.”
