Three advocates of religious liberty — at the international, national and state levels — will be honored with the 2011 First Freedom Awards during a ceremony in downtown Richmond tonight.
The Richmond-based First Freedom Center will present the awards to Asma Jahangir, John Graz and J. Brent Walker during a dinner at the Richmond Marriott. This is the 17th year the center has presented the awards in recognition of National Religious Freedom Day, which is Sunday.
•Jahangir, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, will receive the International First Freedom Award. As the special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief from August 2004 to July 2010, she served as a senior authority appointed by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to investigate the status of religious freedom worldwide. She twice has been elected as chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and is also a director of the AGHS Legal Aid Cell, which provides free legal assistance to the needy.
•Graz will receive the National First Freedom Award. Since 1995, he has served as the secretary-general of the International Religious Liberty Association, a nonsectarian organization organized in 1893 by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
•Walker, who will receive the Virginia First Freedom Award, is executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. He is also an adjunct professor at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.
The center will also present its Distinguished Service Award to the Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond.
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