No longer preoccupied with defending against the spread of communism, many evangelicals began to embrace a more expansive foreign policy agenda as they turned their attention to global poverty, human trafficking, the global AIDS epidemic, and the persecution of Christians around the world. In 1996, the NAE issued a “Statement of Conscience” that elevated religious persecution and human rights as chief foreign policy concerns. As Richard Cizik, the NAE’s vice president for governmental affairs, explained, in the post–Cold War era evangelicals had become “more interested in making a difference
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