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# Everyone Will Call This the Graham Family's Ambassador. Read the Statute. The Chair Has Been Empty for Twenty Months, Xi Lands in Eight Days, and the Job Was Never to Free Prisoners. It Was to Make Sure Someone in the Room Asks.
- URL: https://www.theredlighthouse.org/advocate-lynch-irf-ambassador-empty-chair/
- Published: 2026-09-17T15:00:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T15:00:28.000Z
- Description: Cissie Graham Lynch is nominated to an office empty since January 2025. The statute says what it can and cannot do, and Xi Jinping arrives before any vote.
- Author: The Red Lighthouse
- Tags: The Advocate, News Stories

Strip the nomination to its principle and it is not complicated. On Monday the White House sent the Senate the name of Jane Lynch of North Carolina "to be Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom." She is better known as Cissie Graham Lynch: Franklin Graham's daughter, Billy Graham's granddaughter, a Samaritan's Purse spokeswoman and podcaster. Every headline this week led with the surname. Fair enough. The surname is the news.

But the office is the story, and the office has been empty since January 2025\. That is twenty months without a Senate confirmed ambassador for religious freedom, through a nationwide crackdown on China's house churches, through the Zion Church arrests, through the Xi'an indictments we have been reporting all week. The previous nominee, former Representative Mark Walker, was never confirmed. The Senate returned his name on January 3, and the State Department made him a "principal adviser" instead, a phrase borrowed from the statute's description of the ambassador, minus the Senate consent the statute requires.

So settle one question before anyone argues about her qualifications. What can this ambassador actually do? And what happens on September 24, when Xi Jinping walks into the White House and the chair is still empty?

Begin with the text, because that is where the panic and the hype both dissolve. The office comes from the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, codified at 22 U.S.C. 6411\. The ambassador is appointed by the President "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate" and, since Congress amended the law in 2016, "shall report directly to the Secretary of State." The primary duties are three verbs: to "advance the right to freedom of religion abroad, to denounce the violation of that right, and to recommend appropriate responses." The ambassador is "a principal adviser to the President and the principal adviser to the Secretary of State" on religious freedom abroad, and may represent the United States before foreign governments "subject to the direction of the President and the Secretary of State."

Read those clauses twice. Advance, denounce, recommend, advise, represent under direction. Nowhere does the statute say release. The ambassador cannot free anyone. The ambassador can make sure that when the President sits across from a man who can, the names are on the table and the ask is made.

Which is exactly what happened in May, and it happened without an ambassador. USCIRF's own statement on Monday says so: after President Trump's "direct appeal" to Xi at the Beijing summit, Chinese authorities released Pastor Ezra Jin of Zion Church in July and let him fly to his family in the United States. USCIRF, the independent commission that Congress created in the same 1998 act to advise the ambassador and everyone above her, drew the obvious lesson in Vice Chair CeCe Heil's words: Xi "has the power to release FoRB prisoners if he so desires." So the commission has asked the President to do it again on September 24, and this time it wrote the list down: Gulshan Abbas, Ekpar Asat, Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife Pang Yu, Jimmy Lai, the Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family, plus a passport for Pastor John Cao, a U.S. permanent resident who needs medical care here. It named the eight Zion leaders still held: Wang Lin, Yin Huibin, Wang Cong, Lin Shucheng, Liu Zhenbin, Gao Yingjia, Elder Wang Zhong and Wu Qiuyu.

Concede the fair point about the nominee. Her record is a family ministry, a podcast and a convention speech, not a career in diplomacy or law. The Religious Freedom Institute, which applauded the pick, still asked the Senate for "due diligence and expediency," which is a polite way of saying: check. The Senate should. Fifty three Republicans can confirm her without a single Democrat. That is enough votes, and the wrong reason to skip the questions.

Now the turn, and it is the pluralist one. Look at USCIRF's list again. Gulshan Abbas and Ekpar Asat are Uyghur Muslims. The Panchen Lama is a Tibetan Buddhist. Jimmy Lai is a Catholic. Then come the Protestant pastors. The statute does not say freedom of Christian religion abroad. It says religion. If the granddaughter of Billy Graham walks into that office and speaks only for the people who share her grandfather's altar call, she will have failed the law that created her job, and she will have weakened the case for the pastors too, because the argument that gets Gao Quanfu out of a Xi'an cell is the same argument that gets Gedhun Choekyi Nyima out of wherever he is. The liberty we claim for the house church must cover the mosque and the monastery, or it covers nothing, and Beijing knows the difference.

None of this will be settled by September 24\. No hearing, no vote and no confirmation happens in eight days. The chair will be empty when Xi arrives, and the person who has to ask will be the President, with the names USCIRF wrote down and whatever his own advisers put in front of him.

So do the two things a reader can do. First, learn the list, because a name said out loud in Washington next week is harder to lose in Xi'an or Beijing: Gao Quanfu, Pang Yu, John Cao, the eight from Zion, Jimmy Lai, Gulshan Abbas, Ekpar Asat, the Panchen Lama. Second, call your senators, and do not ask them to rubber stamp her or to block her. Ask them to hold the hearing and to ask the nominee, on the record, which of those names she would say first. This piece is free. Send it to someone who will make the call. Members keep the lights on.

### Sources

1. The White House, "Nominations Sent to the Senate," September 14, 2026 (primary; "Jane Lynch, of North Carolina, to be Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom"): [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/nominations-sent-to-the-senate-9fc3/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/nominations-sent-to-the-senate-9fc3/?ref=theredlighthouse.org)
2. 22 U.S.C. 6411, Office on International Religious Freedom; Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom (primary statute, as amended 2016), Legal Information Institute: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/6411](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/6411?ref=theredlighthouse.org)
3. USCIRF, "USCIRF Calls for President Donald J. Trump to Raise FoRB Prisoners with President Xi," September 14, 2026 (primary): [https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/releases-statements/uscirf-calls-president-donald-j-trump-raise-forb-prisoners-president](https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/releases-statements/uscirf-calls-president-donald-j-trump-raise-forb-prisoners-president?ref=theredlighthouse.org)
4. The Christian Post, Ryan Foley, "Billy Graham's granddaughter Cissie Lynch nominated as Trump's religious freedom ambassador," September 16, 2026 (the vacancy, the Walker nomination returned January 3, the RFI statement): [https://www.christianpost.com/news/trump-picks-cissie-graham-lynch-for-top-religious-freedom-post.html](https://www.christianpost.com/news/trump-picks-cissie-graham-lynch-for-top-religious-freedom-post.html?ref=theredlighthouse.org)
5. CNA / EWTN News, Tessa Gervasini, "U.S. religious freedom commission urges Trump to press for release of religious prisoners," September 15, 2026 (independent account of the USCIRF appeal; Jimmy Lai's faith; the September 16 House hearing): [https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/u-s-religious-freedom-commission-urges-trump-to-press-for-release-of-religious-prisoners](https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/u-s-religious-freedom-commission-urges-trump-to-press-for-release-of-religious-prisoners?ref=theredlighthouse.org)
6. Religious Freedom Institute, "RFI Applauds Nomination of Jane Lynch for U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom," September 14, 2026 (as quoted by the Christian Post): [https://religiousfreedominstitute.org/rfi-applauds-nomination-of-jane-lynch-for-u-s-ambassador-for-international-religious-freedom/](https://religiousfreedominstitute.org/rfi-applauds-nomination-of-jane-lynch-for-u-s-ambassador-for-international-religious-freedom/?ref=theredlighthouse.org)
7. Baptist News Global, "Franklin Graham's daughter nominated as ambassador," September 2026 (second account of the nomination and the vacancy since January 2025): [https://baptistnews.com/article/franklin-grahams-daughter-nominated-as-ambassador/](https://baptistnews.com/article/franklin-grahams-daughter-nominated-as-ambassador/?ref=theredlighthouse.org)