research questions on freedom of religion

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Origins and Consequences of Religious Restrictions: A Global Overview

Roger finke.

Pennsylvania State University

Despite the international controversies surrounding religious restrictions and freedoms, the topic has only recently received substantial research attention. Drawing on this new body of research, and multiple research projects in progress, this address explores both the origins and consequences of religious restrictions in the global arena. To understand the motives for restrictions, I propose hypotheses in three areas: the relationship or lack of relationship between institutional religion and the state, the willingness and capacity of the state to ensure freedoms, and the larger social and cultural pressures restricting freedoms, including social and political movements targeting minority religions. Turning to the consequences of religious restrictions, I explore how and why restrictions alter the religious economy (i.e., formation, supply and operation of religions) and are associated with higher levels of religious persecution, religious violence and intrastate conflict in general. Finally, I review additional areas where research is needed.

When an unlikely alliance of religious and human rights groups advocated for improving international religious freedoms in the mid-1990s, they described the freedoms as the overlooked “orphan of human rights” ( Hertzke 2004 , p. 69). But if religious freedoms were frequently overlooked in policy, they were virtually ignored in international studies. Prior to 2000, there were no systematic data collections on religious freedoms and few studies attempted to understand either the origins or the consequences of these freedoms. Indeed, even for the heavily studied topic of international social conflict, little attention was given to religion and even less was given to religious freedoms. Samuel P. Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” thesis is the most notable exception, but this approach gained little support from other social scientists and his silence on religious freedoms spoke volumes for many ( Huntington 1996 ).

Despite this silence, religious freedoms are of both theoretical and substantive importance for those who study religion. Because denying religious freedoms represent regulations or restrictions placed on religion, these denials lie at the heart of religious economy arguments. But the theoretical importance of religious freedoms is not limited to religious economy arguments and the potential substantive consequences go far beyond religion. Whether the theoretical discussion involves civil liberties, economic development, social conflict or a long list of other topics, the restrictions placed on these freedoms have potential consequences that need to be understood.

Since 2000 there has been a flurry of data collections on religious restrictions and a new body of research has begun to emerge. Drawing on these new sources, including my own work with Brian Grim, Jaime Harris and Robert Martin, I want to explore both the origins and the consequences of religious freedoms in the global arena.

Beyond America

This isn't the first time that I have sought to explain the origins and consequences of restrictions on religion. More than twenty years ago, I published a paper entitled “Religious Deregulation: Origins and Consequences” ( Finke 1990 ). This paper drew on historical evidence to tell the story of how religious freedoms arose in America. The paper explained that in most colonies a religious tolerance arose more out of necessity than principle and the eventual turn to religious liberties was promoted by an unlikely alliance of political rationalists, such as Thomas Jefferson, and religious sect leaders such as the Baptist pastor Isaac Backus. The sect leaders wanted the state out of religion's domain and the rationalists wanted the church out of the state's arena. The alliance was tenuous and short-lived, but it clearly illustrated the mixed motives for supporting religious freedoms.

The paper also outlined some of the consequences of deregulating religion. For the individual, religious deregulation allowed for a freedom of choice without penalty or increased costs. For religious organizations, they could compete on a level playing field where startup costs were low and the opportunity for innovation was high. Finally, for the religious market as whole, regulatory agencies were abolished and an increased pluralism better served the diverse religious demand. In short, I argued that religious freedoms increased the supply of religion by changing the incentives and opportunities for religious producers (churches, preachers, revivalists, etc.) and the viable options for religious consumers (church members). All of this resulted in what Rodney Stark and I called the churching of America.

I want to expand on this initial explanation in two key areas. First, I want to move beyond the United States. When working with a single case it is obviously impossible to explain variation and as a result some have suggested that the principles reviewed are distinctively American ( Warner 1993 ). Second, when exploring the consequences, I want to move beyond religion. In particular, I want to look at the relationships religious freedoms hold with multiple measures of social conflict. Although the potential for conflict is often cited as a need for restricting freedoms, the consequences of increased restrictions are often more conflict.

To avoid confusion I want to begin with a few definitions. I will define religion as a system of beliefs, symbols and practices concerned about the nature and workings of the supernatural and about ultimate meaning. Whereas some define religion based on the functions it performs for individuals or for society at large, my definition confines religion to beliefs and practices that are based on supernatural assumptions. This helps to distinguish religion from secular ideologies, science and other forms of culture that may serve many of the same functions of belonging and belief that religion performs. By extension, I define religious groups as collectives that promote religious beliefs, symbols and practices. Building on these two definitions, religious freedom refers to the unrestricted practice, profession and selection of religion.

The Origins of Religious Restrictions

Measuring religious restrictions has been a challenge. Approximately fifteen years ago, when I was first looking for cross-national measures on religious restrictions, I thought national constitutions might serve as a proxy. I was wrong. After reviewing multiple constitutions, I quickly found a wide gap between promise and practice. Religious freedoms were routinely promised, even in countries where the practice was routinely denied. More recently when the Association of Religion Data Archives ( www.theARDA.com ) conducted a systematic data collection on religious restrictions, Brian Grim and I found that the chasm was even greater than I expected. Only 9 percent of the nations failed to provide assurances of religious freedom; yet 86 percent of the nations had at least one law restricting religious freedoms and 38 percent had four or more such laws. Additional collections at the Association of Religion Data Archives ( Grim and Finke 2006 ), as well as collections by Freedom House ( Marshall 2000 ), the Religion and State Project at Bar Ilan University ( Fox 2008 ; 2011 ), and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2009) have all confirmed these findings. This raised several perplexing questions about the motives, movements and institutions involved in restricting religious freedoms. One of the obvious questions is what are the motives of the state for restricting or supporting religious freedoms?

State's Motives for Restricting or Supporting Religious Freedoms

One of the most common motives for restricting freedoms arises from the state's relationship with the dominant religion or group of religions. As Anthony Gill (2008) explains in The Political Origins of Religious Liberty the state often forms an alliance with religion in an effort to enhance political stability through increased political support, more effective control of the dominant religion, and increased political and ideological compliance. 1 Institutional alliances can imbue religious authority to most institutions in the country, as in Iran, or they can be based on past traditions and offer little formal authority, as in many Latin American countries. Even nations that are officially atheist, such as contemporary China, form alliances with select religions. These alliances allow them to more effectively control the activities of the favored religions and to more heavily regulate those not condoned by the state ( Yang 2006 , 2012 ; Richardson and Edelman 2004 ). Yet these alliances with religion typically come with a price. The state is often expected to favor the established religion and to regulate religious and cultural competitors. Gill's propositions and the work of others suggest that when states form alliances with select religion(s), restrictions on religious freedoms will increase.

However, even when no alliances are formed with the dominant religions, the state often has motives for denying freedoms. The most obvious examples are communist governments proposing atheism as an official ideology. Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-1979) or the former Soviet Union represent extreme outcomes of this position, where the state attempts to eliminate religion ( Yang 2006 ; Froese 2004 , 2008 ). But even when the state holds no competing ideology, the formal organization and the teachings of a religious group can be viewed as a political threat or competitor. Thus, when the state views religions as offering ideological or political alternatives, the state's restrictions of religious freedoms will increase.

Perhaps the most common state motive, however, is restricting minority religious groups because there are strong cultural and religious pressures to do so. My recent work with Brian Grim and Robert Martin consistently finds that the social and cultural pressures against minority religions are a strong predictor of the restrictions enacted by the state, regardless of the controls entered. We find that religious groups are often charged with being a danger to public welfare. Even stable democracies, have accused religious groups with using “brainwashing” or “mind control” to secure the loyalty of members ( Richardson and Introvigne 2001 ). In 2006, an official report to France's prime minister explained that the “sects” create a “condition of destabilization, disorientation, and vulnerability” and then use reinforcement techniques to reconstruct individuals’ personalities ( Roulet 2006 : 23). Although a long line of research refutes the religious minorities' capacity for “mind control,” “brainwashing” or personality reconstruction, the media, general public and even state agencies continue to harbor such fears. 2 As a result, even when states form no religion alliances and religions pose no political threat, the state can still hold motives for restricting religious freedoms: When cultural and social pressures arise against select religions, the state's restrictions on religious freedoms will increase.

Finally, it is important to recognize that states can hold economic and political motives for reducing the level of restrictions on religion. In the case of colonial America, toleration of religious diversity became a necessity for making many of the early colonies profitable. Likewise, the nations relying heavily on expatriate workers, such as the United Arab Emirates, must find ways to tolerate other religions. Nations also face global political pressures to respect basic civil rights. These economic and political pressures seldom result in full freedoms for all religions, but the pressures often result in formal statements of support for religious freedoms and lead to a reduction in the most severe restrictions. When support for religious freedoms offer increased revenue, economic production, or stronger political alliances, political leaders will profess more support for religious freedoms and the level of restrictions often declines. These same pressures also might explain why constitutional promises of religious freedom are so common (despite the lack of practice) and why the constitutional clauses so frequently mimic common global standards. When appeasing global pressures, the constitution becomes the public document for all to see.

Thus, the motives for states restricting or supporting religious freedoms are many and varied. States can restrict freedoms in an effort to support the religion(s) that hold an alliance with the state. Or the state might impose restrictions because religions are perceived challenging the state's ideology, threatening government stability, and being a potential harm to public order and the welfare of local citizens. Finally, states can have economic and political motives for supporting such freedoms.

Each of the motives just reviewed suggests that the state is often intentional in denying or supporting freedoms. In many cases, however, the state is simply unwilling, unable or disinterested in protecting religious freedoms.

The State's Failure to Protect Religious Freedoms

Virtually all of the freedoms listed in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights can offend or threaten a cultural majority, and, as a result, all require state support to ensure the freedom is protected. Religious freedoms are no exception. Like other freedoms, protecting religious freedoms can be both inconvenient and costly. Even when the state lacks explicit motives for restricting religious freedoms, the state often allows restrictions to arise because it lacks either the motive or the ability to protect such freedoms.

For some countries, constitutional promises were seemingly never intended to support such freedoms. Indeed, promises of religious freedom are sometimes nullified by other clauses in the same constitution. For example, Article 2 of the 2004 Afghanistan constitution states that all religions “are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law” and Article 3 explains that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.” 3 In other cases, promises of freedom are negated by legislation or are simply too vague to clearly enforce. But even when the constitutional clauses are clear and religious freedoms are explicitly promised, there are no assurances that freedoms will be protected. The state must be held accountable for enforcing these promises and there must be mechanisms and institutions capable of doing so.

At the most basic level, the state must be capable of protecting the constitutional freedoms. When the state is incapable of enforcing religious freedoms, restrictions on these freedoms will rise. Even when assurances of freedom are clearly stated, the state must have the institutional capacity to protect such freedoms. When the state fails to monitor, enforce and protect these freedoms, the door is open for others to enact their will and to deny these freedoms.

Along with being capable, the state also must be held accountable for protecting these freedoms. Democracy is typically treated as a panacea for ensuring that the state delivers on promises of civil liberties, with free, fair, and open elections being identified as one of keys. This suggests that: when a country has free, fair and open elections, the state's restrictions on religious freedoms will tend to decline. I agree that open and free elections remain an important avenue for holding political leaders accountable, but they often fail to protect minorities. Following Alexis de Tocqueville's lead, political scientists have long warned about the “tyranny of the majority.” When looking at the freedoms in a young America, de Tocqueville (1945 , p. 270-271) cautioned that the “main evil” he found in this new system was not the “excessive liberty” that most Europeans feared, but the “inadequate securities . . . against tyranny [of the majority].” In the case of religious freedoms, a series of recent elections have demonstrated that majority rule does not ensure freedoms for all. Because a majority might agree that minority religions should be restricted, even free, fair and open elections do not ensure freedoms.

Moving beyond elections I argue that an independent judiciary is especially crucial for protecting freedoms and holding the state accountable. An impartial and independent judiciary offers guarantees of minority rights when such rights are protected in law and provides an institutional avenue for ensuring that these rights are upheld. 4 Past attention to the judiciary, including my own, has often focused too narrowly on the enactment of various versions of Sharia law, or other forms of religious law. This narrow focus has distracted from the more general principles explaining the relationship between religious freedoms and the courts. Robert Martin and I are finding that the level of independence a judicial system holds from other state and religious institutions is a powerful predictor of religious freedom. In fact, the strong bivariate relationship between religious restrictions and the nation's Muslim population fades to insignificance once we control for the independence of the judiciary. We find that when religious freedoms are supported by an independent judiciary, restrictions on religion are reduced. Government effectiveness, open and free elections, and an independent judiciary all hold strong correlations with religious freedoms, but it is the independent judiciary that proves the most powerful predictor when multiple controls are entered.

Thus, even when the state has few motives for denying freedom and holds no strategy for restricting religious freedoms, the inaction of the state can lead to high levels of restrictions. When the state is weak and the judiciary is embedded within other government or religious institutions, the tyranny of the majority and the actions of religious, political and social movements can quickly deny the religious freedoms of others.

Religious, Social and Cultural Motives for Restricting Religion

To fully understand the sources for restricting religious freedoms, we need to look beyond the state at religious, social and cultural groups restricting religious freedoms. Not only do these sources spur increased restrictions by the state, they also impose restrictions on religious freedoms independent of the state. We find that when secular, cultural, social and religious groups are mobilized against religious minorities, restrictions on religious freedoms will increase.

We have found that many national and cultural identities are so closely interwoven with or against selected religions that ensuring religious freedoms for all is perceived as challenging the cultural identity as a whole. From informal cultural pressures to well-organized religious, social and political movements, efforts are made to stake out cultural claims and to prevent or prod cultural change; actions that serve to reduce the freedoms of the minority and less powerful religious groups. Sometimes these groups work within the confines of formal political structures and sanctions, other times they take actions independent of the state to restrict freedoms and even initiate violence.

The motives for these pressures are many. Because the relationship between religion and culture is often complex, lengthy and tightly entwined, dominant religious and social groups can appeal to the history and culture of their country as motivation for denying religious freedoms and even justifying violence. For some countries the dominant religion serves as a source of national identity or cultural unity; allowing religious challengers equal status is viewed as threatening the larger collective. For others, religion provides the moral foundation or legitimacy for judicial, political and social organizations and leaders, with alternative religions serving to threaten this order. Finally, pressures can also arise from secular groups, such as Marxist political groups, seeking to curb the influence of any religion.

India offers an obvious example of social and cultural pressures calling for more restrictions on religion. The Sangh Parivar or Hindutva organizations in India strive to define India as a Hindu nation and to promote Hindu identity and nationalism. Many of the organizations openly discriminate against other religions and they restrict the ability of other groups to speak about their religion or worship in public, with several groups leading vigilante actions against religious minorities ( Hibbard 2010 ; Nandy et al. 1995 ). Although the national government places few restrictions on religious freedoms, the failure to protect minority religions has resulted in restrictions being imposed by other groups as well as periodic violence resulting from attempts to impose or resist such restrictions ( US Department of State 2010 ). These cultural and social pressures are especially powerful at the local level, influencing both formal and informal sanctions.

These pressures and motives for restricting religion also will vary based on the tensions between religions and cultures within a society. Samuel Huntington has argued that religion is often the foundation of major civilizations and cultural identities. As such, it also serves as the basis for clashing civilizations and cultures. Although I disagree with Huntington's conclusion that multiple civilizations and cultural identities will inevitably result in conflict, I do agree that this diversity often leads to increased calls for restrictions -- a conclusion that is strongly supported by my research with Grim and Martin ( Grim and Finke 2011 ; Finke and Martin 2011 ).

Because the social and political motives for restricting religious freedoms remain high in many countries and the efforts to protect the freedoms are often weak or ineffective, promised religious freedoms are routinely denied. The obvious question that arises is: so what? Does the denial of religious freedoms for minority religions or even all religions have a significant impact? What are the consequences?

The Consequences of Religious Restrictions

Previous work on the consequences of religious restrictions, or what is commonly called religious regulation, has often focused on religious diversity and vitality. Like so many areas in the sociology of religion, this research has been consumed with uncovering a master secularization trend or refuting its existence. This ongoing attention to secularization has often diverted our attention from many interesting and important questions about restrictions. First, how do the restrictions alter the operation of religion within a society, as well as the religious organizations and individuals in those societies? Second, how do these restrictions influence the larger society? This second area, in particular, has received little attention. Each of these questions could easily justify a book-length manuscript, but for this talk I simply want to review a few of the propositions that either have been or should be tested and studied in greater detail.

Consequences for the Religious Economy

As noted earlier, religious restrictions lie at the heart of the religious economy model. Rodney Stark and I initially used the model to explain the surge in American religious activity following the lifting of restrictions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ( Finke 1990 ; Finke and Stark 1992 ; 2005 ) and it has since been used to explain religious change around the globe (Chestnut 2005; Froese 2008 ; Gill 1994 ; Iannaccone, Finke, and Stark 1997 ; Lu 2008 ; Stark and Finke 2000 ). In a paper that was published in the Sociology of Religion and later received the 2009 Distinguished Article Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Jonathan Fox and Ephraim Tabory (2008) used a massive global data file and concluded that restrictions are “significantly and negatively correlated” with attending religious services. But the consequences of religious restrictions go far beyond changes in worship attendance. At the individual level, as I noted earlier, the restrictions change the incentives and opportunities both for religious producers and consumers. At the organizational and market level the restrictions change how organizations operate and alter the structure of the market. I have written extensively on this elsewhere ( Finke 1990 ; Finke and Stark 1992 ; 2005 ; Stark and Finke 2000 ), so I offer only a few brief comments here. 5

One of the most significant outcomes of religious restrictions is how they change the supply and diversity of religions available. Chris Scheitle and I have argued that when restrictions are absent, the diversity in supply is a product of two forces: the underlying diversity of religious preferences and the number of potential adherents within an environment ( Scheitle and Finke 2009 ; Finke and Scheitle, forthcoming). 6 In other words, when facing few external constraints, the diversity of religious suppliers reflects the social and cultural diversity of the area. 7 Once restrictions are introduced, however, many market niches go unfilled or are underserved. The restrictions often determine who can enter and they inflate operating costs if they do enter. The end result is that the supply of religions no longer reflects the diversity of religious demand. Because religious minorities are the groups most frequently targeted and are also the source of many religious innovations, religious restrictions also tend to curtail new organizational and market developments. As a result, even when restrictions are targeted only at minority religions, they have consequences on how the entire religious market operates and grows.

Closely related to restrictions are the subsidies or favors that the state provides for the dominant religion(s). Rodney Stark and I argue that religious monopolies supported by state subsidies tend to be lazy and less efficient, but we also argue that societies with such monopolies tend to be more sacralized ( Stark and Finke 2000 ). By sacralized we mean that there is less differentiation between religious and secular institutions and that religious symbols, rhetoric and rituals are suffused throughout the culture. 8 This suggests that at the very time when religious activity might be increasing in a nation, the role of religion in many state-related institutions will be in decline.

In short, religious restrictions, as well as subsidies, have consequences that go far beyond the religious institutions and activities being targeted. Although restrictions are most frequently targeted at religious minorities, they alter the entire market structure and revise both how religious institutions operate and whom they serve.

Consequences Beyond the Religious Economy

The most obvious consequences of religious restrictions are that they curtail the activities of religions. Yet, a small but rapidly growing body of research suggests that the restrictions have consequences that go well beyond religious institutions and activities. Moreover, some of the consequences defy common expectations. For example, religious restrictions are justified as a necessity for curbing violence and maintaining public order, but research finds just the opposite. Social conflict is often a consequence of increased religious restrictions.

The most carefully documented example is religious persecution. Brian Grim and I devoted a paper in the American Sociological Review and a book with Cambridge University Press to explain how and why religious restrictions are so closely related to persecution ( Grim and Finke 2007 ; 2011 ). We defined religious persecution as physical abuse or physical displacement due to one's religious practices, profession, or affiliation and proposed that to the extent that religious freedoms are denied religious persecution will increase. The evidence was overwhelmingly supportive. We found that government restrictions on religion were the strongest predictor of religious persecution and that the social restrictions enacted by other religions, social movements and the culture as a whole were powerful predictors as well.

This research has now been replicated using other measures of violence and the relationship still holds. When using a more general measure of religiously motivated violence, one where religion could serve as the perpetrator, victim or both, Jaime Harris and I found that religious restrictions remain a powerful predictor of the violence ( Finke and Harris 2012 ). The most notable change was that social restrictions on religion, rather that government restrictions, now held the most direct and powerful relationship with conflict and violence. When extending this relationship to a more general measure of Intrastate Social Conflict, one that goes beyond religiously motivated violence, Robert Martin and I have found that the relationship is slightly attenuated, but remains highly significant ( Finke and Martin 2012 ). Regardless of the measure used for social conflict or violence, we find that to the extent that religious freedoms are denied intrastate conflicts increase.

These studies also reveal that the mechanisms through which religious restrictions increase conflict are similar to many other conflicts. First, we are finding that restrictions alter social interactions between religious groups, determining both the quantity and quality of their contacts, and increasing the potential for conflict. One of the most enduring explanations for understanding social discrimination and conflict has been some form of social contact theory. Although many variants of the theory exist, a central thesis is that increasing contact between groups or individuals tends to reduce inter-group conflict. Yet, most versions of contact theory argue that it is not just the quantity of contacts that matters, it is the type of contacts and the social conditions under which the interactions occur that make the difference. 9 In particular, scholars often point to four sets of conditions for these interactions: equal status; support by authorities; shared goals; and interdependence between groups. The first highlights that even intimate and frequent contact does little to change inter-group conflict if the interactions assume unequal status. The second condition points to the importance of sanctions stemming from formal and informal authority figures that can either facilitate or impede positive interaction; the third and fourth establish the influence of cooperative rather than competitive actions for the attainment of mutually beneficial outcomes.

When applied to religious groups, we can see that religious restrictions serve to violate all of these conditions. To the extent that formal and informal regulations restrict religious groups, their interactions with other groups are often reduced and when they do occur they are neither cooperative nor equal. 10 When one group holds an advantage or receives privileges above and beyond another group, the chances of social conflict increase. As a result, the theory proposes that when a religious group's interaction with other members of the society is restricted, the probability of religiously motivated prejudice, discrimination, and violence increases. 11 My initial attempt to test this thesis with Jaime Harris found that government restrictions on religion do contribute to increased social isolation of the religious groups and that social isolation does help to explain increased levels of violence.

Religious restrictions can also alter both how and why religious groups mobilize their membership, serving as another mechanism through which restrictions increase conflict. We find that increased restrictions and reduced social contacts contribute to the formation of social movements and political parties organizing around religion. Some are organized to protest the restrictions of the state, but many are organized to garner political favors or increase restrictions on minority religions. As noted earlier, these restrictions might be enacted through the state or through vigilante action. This leads to yet another mechanism through which religious restrictions work: To the extent that a religious group forms the basis for political parties and social movements, the group's ability to motivate social action (including religious violence) is increased. When combined with restrictions on religion, this was one of the most powerful predictors of violence in our research.

These initial studies are only a brief start to the research that needs to be done on religion and social conflict. For example, we have still given little attention to the relationship between religion and ethnicity. Scholars know that religion and ethnicity are often closely related, frequently referring to ethno-religious identities, but little cross-national work has been conducted in this area. One obvious research question is: To the extent that religion and ethnicity are closely tied, do religious restrictions heighten ethnic tensions and increase violence between groups? Our initial tests of this thesis found only a weak relationship, but we also were limited by weak measures. A related thesis that goes beyond ethnicity is proposed by James K. Wellman and Kyoko Tokuno (2004 , p. 291): the symbolic and social boundaries of religion mobilize individual and group identity in conflict, and sometimes violence, within and between groups. They note that conflict can increase internal unity and result in more effective efforts to mobilize against others. Finally, Fox's recent research has highlighted the importance of knowing the specific targets of the restrictions (e.g., religious minorities). His most recent Religion and State data collection, in particular, will allow us to better understand the consequences of different types of restrictions on religion (e.g., general vs. specific).

The consequences of religious restrictions on religion and social conflict, however, simply scratch the surface of topics needing study. For example, how do restrictions on religion relate to other civil liberties? Brian Grim and I have documented the strong correlations between religious freedom and many other liberties, but what do these correlations mean? We know that some civil liberties can be in conflict with others, such as religious freedoms and the liberties of women, gays and lesbians. How and why does the value given to different liberties vary across countries and over time? Despite these potential conflicts, however, initial reviews of the data would suggest that all boats rise together. When one civil liberty is protected, it enhances the chances of all liberties being protected. Still, there is much to understand on why and when this relationship holds.

We also need to understand how religious freedoms are related to social institutions and to cultural change. For example, how do restrictions on religious freedom alter public discourse or change avenues for political engagement? The level of religious involvement in political discussion and activities varies widely from one nation to another. What are the consequences of this variation? Likewise, how does the religion and state relationship alter economic activity or educational development? Economists and historians have begun to look at how religious freedom and establishment are related to economic activity, but much more needs to be done ( Barro and McCleary 2003 ; Boone, Brouwer, Jacobs, Witteloostuijn, and Zwaan 2012 ; Kuran 2011 ).

At first glance, religious freedoms have much in common with other human rights. In fact, religious freedoms can be viewed as extensions or even redundancies of other liberties. When we look at the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), we find that Article 18 on religious freedom clearly overlaps with the two articles that follow it. The freedom to hold, to teach and to change religious beliefs in public or private might be viewed as a more specific example of the freedom of opinion and expression (Article 19) and the freedom to worship and observe religion publicly overlaps with the freedom of peaceful assembly and association (Article 20). Religion also is listed as a distinctive status category in most covenants and formal statements on human rights. Along with the status categories of race, color, sex, language, social origin and property, religion is assured of receiving all human rights. 12

Yet, despite the similarities between religious freedoms and other liberties, the enforcement of religious freedoms is frequently complicated by the distinctive relationship religion holds with the larger society. First, religions are typically organized into formal institutions that have the potential for mobilizing popular support and forming alliances with the state. The potential for organizing popular support often threatens the state and results in increased restrictions. Likewise, alliances between the state and dominant religions result in increased pressures to restrict religious competitors. Second, religions can often appeal to the shared history and culture of their country as motives for denying religious freedoms and even justifying violence. Religion is often so infused within the institutions, history and identity of a nation that ensuring religious freedoms for all is perceived as challenging the cultural identity as a whole. These social and cultural pressures can call for increased state restrictions as well as implementing restrictions of their own. In the end, religious freedoms rely on the same institutions as other human rights for support and protection, but religions hold distinctive and complex relationships with the state and the larger culture.

In an attempt to control religion and curb potential conflicts, states have typically increased restrictions on most religions and increased favoritism for a few. Yet, research finds that the restrictions fail to curb conflict. Instead, religious freedoms serve to defuse potential violence and the increased restrictions are associated with increased violence. Restrictions often provide the very conditions needed for religious social conflicts to occur. Along with increasing the grievances of the targeted groups, the restrictions result in decreased contact and increased discrimination across groups. The state's restrictions also embolden the dominant religions to enact even stronger restrictions. In contrast, when freedoms are uniformly secured, the freedoms for even the smallest minority become the freedoms for all. Simply put, I have more motivation to support your religious freedoms when your freedoms are my freedoms.

But the consequences of religious restrictions go far beyond social conflict and the origins are remarkably complex. Many questions remain. I invite you to join in this exploration. 13

1 See Gill (2008) for an extended discussion on this topic.

2 The research finds that the vast majority of the groups are not a danger to the individual or society and none hold the powers of mental manipulation or brainwashing, despite the high level of membership commitment to the group. See, for example: Richardson (2004) ; Shupe and Bromley (1980) ; Barker (1984) ; Stark and Bainbridge (1985) .

3 Reviewed on the Association of Religion Data Archives ( theARDA.com ) on August 3, 2012. http://www.thearda.com/internationalData/countries/Country_1_6.asp

4 See James T. Richardson (2006) for a discussion of the variations in legal systems and how it is related to religious freedom, including the autonomy of the judicial system. See Wybraniec and Finke (2001) for research on the significance of court decisions for religious minorities.

5 As confirmed by Fox and Tabory, religious restrictions are a strong predictor of religious activity, but do not have a significant impact on religious beliefs when other controls are entered.

6 See also Lawson and Cragun (2012) for a discussion on the consequences of synchronizing supply and demand.

7 When constraints do exist, pluralism at the supplier level will be lower, as some or all suppliers are prevented from fulfilling their potential market niche. In turn, pluralism at the consumer level will be lower, as consumers are concentrated in fewer suppliers, owing to decreased choice.

8 See Peter Beyer's 2011 Association for the Sociology of Religion presidential address for an extended discussion on the implications of changing religion and state relations for religious engagement and activity.

9 For an early presentation of the theory see Allport (1954) . For a more recent overview of the theoretical developments and research results, see Pettigrew and Tropp's (2006) “Meta-analytic Test.”

10 We emphasize the role of government regulations in restricting interaction, but the limited interaction can also result from natural physical barriers or from social barriers placed on one or more the groups.

11 We recognize, of course, that some religious groups might desire reduced contact with other groups for religious motives. But virtually none will seek to face open discrimination or a second-class citizenship.

12 The complete wording of Article 2 is as follows: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour [sic], sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”

13 Recent data collections by the ARDA and Pew Forum now offer strong measures for social restrictions on religion and the second round of the Religion and State project offers extremely refined measures on religion and the state.

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Freedom of Religion

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• Anne Kühler 3  

Introduction

Freedom of religion (often called “freedom of religion or belief”) is guaranteed in numerous legal documents at national, supranational, regional, and international levels. It is a widely recognized constitutional and human right all over the world. In a historical perspective, a major impact for the legal development of freedom of religion in the Western world had the provisions in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, in the Bill of Rights of 1791, and in the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1789 (although in the latter only as a subcategory of freedom of opinion). This long tradition has helped to establish the reputation of freedom of religion as a primordial fundamental right (“Ur-Grundrecht”, Jellinek 2013 ) – a much disputed thesis that has to be integrated into the persistent broader controversy on the origins of human rights. In this context, it is important to highlight that freedom of religion is not a purely Western...

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Institut für Rechtsphilosophie, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Anne Kühler

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Center for International and Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, USA

Mortimer Sellers

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Law, Ankara University, Yenimahalle/Ankara, Turkey

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National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Konstantinos Papageorgiou

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Kühler, A. (2023). Freedom of Religion. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_692-3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_692-3

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20 Freedom and Religion

Richard Arneson (PhD UC Berkeley) is Distinguished Professor and holds the Valtz Family Chair in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He works mainly in normative political and moral philosophy. Much of his writing is on theories of justice. He has been concerned to articulate a broadly egalitarian view on distributive justice joined with a sensible view on personal responsibility, a variant of so-called “luck egalitarianism” that was then resuscitated as “desert-catering prioritarianism.” He also has written on consequentialism versus nonconsequentialism and on some applied ethics topics. His current projects include writing a short book on prioritarianism and another short volume (co-authored with Jason Brennan), Debating Capitalism.

• Published: 05 October 2016
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The core of freedom of religion is that individuals should be free to form their beliefs about religious matters (and other matters) against a wide, secure background regime of freedom of speech and expression and should be free to join together with like-minded others to worship and proselytize. Controversy about religion and freedom centers on the question whether religious freedom should receive special protection. One view is that religious freedom merits special accommodation. Another is that the state ought not to adopt policies that cannot be justified except by appeals to controversial religious claims, nor promote one type of religion or church over any other or over nonreligious beliefs, practices, and institutions; there should be no establishment of religion. This chapter suggests answers to both the accommodation issue and the establishment issue.

Each person should be left free to form her own beliefs on matters of religion in conditions of wide freedom of speech and expression. 1 Each person should be free to affiliate with any existing church that is willing to take her on as a member, or form her own church or sect or association directed to religious aims, with willing fellow adherents. Each person should be free to worship, in public and in private, with like-minded others, according to the tenets of her faith. Moreover, each person should be left free to practice the tenets of her religious faith, unless the actions her religion prompts her to take would violate the moral rights of other persons.

Many people in the contemporary world affirm religious freedom as just characterized. In addition, many of us also believe that each person has the right to be free from state interference in matters of religious faith. That means that the government should not sponsor one religion or church, or endorse or support any particular religion or church or religious views. Nor should the government favor religion over nonreligion or the religious over the nonreligious. Nor should citizens seek to bring it about that government does any of these forbidden things ( Audi, 1989 ; but see McConnell, 1990 ; McConnell, 1992 ).

In the U.S. Constitution, these two aspects of religious liberty are summarized in the part of the First Amendment that prohibits government from establishing any religion and from hindering its free exercise. Many written constitutions of many countries profess a similar doctrine.

Although freedom of religion has wide appeal around the world in our time, the doctrine is also widely controversial. But even among those who broadly favor religious liberty, deep unresolved puzzles remain as to how it is best understood and how it might best be justified. This chapter examines some of these unresolved puzzles.

A preliminary clarification is needed, although it introduces large issues this chapter will not try to settle. When we discuss religious liberty, what exactly are we talking about? What distinguishes the religious from the nonreligious? Many answers that have been given will strike many of us as underinclusive or overinclusive or both (underinclusive in some respects and overinclusive in others). If we say religions profess faith in a Supreme Being, a God of traditional theology, we are narrowly excluding Buddhism and Hinduism and other religious traditions beyond the Judeo-Christian. If we identify religion with “faith in some higher or deeper reality than exists on the surface of everyday life or can be established by scientific inquiry” ( Greenawalt, 2006 : 134), we would be including speculative philosophical metaphysical doctrines as religious, which seems inapt. Also, some long-standing churches such as the Unitarian, whose doctrinal content is thin to the vanishing point, would be classified as nonreligious. If we identify the religious with “all deep convictions about the purpose and responsibilities of life” ( Dworkin, 2013 : 107), we obliterate the line between religion and secular moral thought.

For practical purposes it may suffice to start with doctrines and practices that ordinary common sense confidently classifies as religious and then simply identify the religious as anything sufficiently similar to that. We can identify features that often mark what is paradigmatically religious without seeking necessary and sufficient conditions. Here I follow suggestions made by Greenawalt (2006) . In seeking a rough idea of the religious, we should have in mind not only types of belief and doctrine but also churches and sects and similar institutional practices. Not all those who propound religious ideas seek to found communities of the like-minded who will band together for ritual, worship, the building or organization, and proselytism, but many do.

The arguments of this chapter deny that qualifying as religion or religious should entitle one to special protection of liberty. Nor should special accommodation be made to the religious to help them carry on in their beliefs and practices. If nothing by way of special treatment should turn on whether an entity is or is not a religion, the sketchiness and vagueness of the idea may not matter so much.

1. Religious Liberty and Religious Establishment

A political society that protects the liberty of each person to speak freely on religious matters, worship according to one’s creed, and organize churches and sects with like-minded others, might yet be nonneutral in its religious policies, by sponsoring or supporting one religion or set of religious beliefs over others ( Greenawalt, 2008 ; Leiter, 2012 ). State sponsorship of some sectarian doctrine over others might seem unfair to adherents of nonfavored sects.

One attempt to see state establishment as possibly fair proposes that we should not confine our view to some particular political society but should rather look at government sponsorship and favoritism on a world scale. Suppose the world were divided into many independent political societies, some of which establish particular religious doctrines, in such a way that everyone’s religious belief will be established in some society to which she has access. Imagine that Judaism is the established faith in Israel, the Sunni Muslim faith in Iraq, evangelical Christianity in the United States, atheism in Sweden, and so on. Might this world regime qualify as fair to all religious adherents? One might hold that establishment would be unfair to adherents of nonestablished views, who receive less favored treatment in their home societies, even if a privileged status is available for them elsewhere. The idea might be that the global establishment scheme is more unfair to individuals, the more burdensome and costly it would be for them to relocate to a society in which their favored doctrine is privileged.

Another possibility is that a state establishment that gives privileges to false beliefs would be bad, but a state establishment that involves state support of true beliefs warranted by the balance of available reasons would be good. As a practical matter, some might doubt that public officials or democratic voters would be reliable at singling out true rather than false beliefs for establishment. Such suspicion of government competence would be compatible with holding that state establishment properly oriented to the right and the good would be unobjectionable.

2. A Puzzle about State Neutrality

Here is one puzzle. Many people are inclined to hold that the truth of a religious claim is irrelevant to its aptness as a basis for morally acceptable public policy. Morally acceptable public policies must be justifiable in terms acceptable to all citizens regardless of their particular religious commitments. David Estlund (2008) states this idea with elegant simplicity: Even if the Roman Catholic pope has a pipeline to God, that would not give the pope the moral right to make Roman Catholicism the established religion and use state power in other ways to favor this particular religious doctrine over others.

Let us suppose that having a “pipeline to God” means that the pope has a true warranted belief that Roman Catholicism is the unique route to salvation and that unless people live and die as Catholics, they lose irrevocably the chance to gain in the afterlife an eternity of bliss. Imposing and maintaining Catholicism as the established religion does not guarantee that those who live under this regime will embrace the true faith and attain salvation. But this course of action would increase everyone’s chance of gaining eternal salvation. Given all this, if the pope recognizes even a modest duty of beneficence (to act efficiently to improve people’s welfare), he ought to seize state power and impose and maintain Catholicism as the established religion, if he can do so. And the rest of us ought to assist him in this effort. The imperative to respect religious liberty, no matter the weight of reasons that support it, is canceled in these circumstances. The stakes are just too high. This argument does not literally require the claim that outside the Church there is no salvation and that the payoff of salvation for an individual is infinite in value—an extremely high finite value will do.

On the other hand, if the pope has a high subjective confidence that he uniquely has a pipeline to God, but there is no reasoned warrant for this idea, then we ought to band together to prevent him from gaining any power, much less state power or political power of global reach. The greater his subjective confidence, and that of his followers, and the more we suspect he will conscientiously act beneficently by his lights, the more dangerous he is likely to be.

Some respond to the deep and sharp conflicts of opinion among people of diverse theological views by saying we can all have sufficient confidence in our particular salvation beliefs reasonably to guide our own lives by them but insufficient confidence to impose our views by force on others. But this comfortable vision of people disagreeing tooth and nail while peacefully living together in harmony requires the idea of a private reason—a consideration that is a reason for one person, but not for others. But reasons are inescapably public. If there is reason for me to save the whales, there is reason for others in a position to help. If there are agent-relative reasons for me to help my own children, there are agent-relative reasons for anyone to help her own children. If the reasons I have that bear on choice of conduct are genuine reasons, they are in principle shareable—my reasons can be made available to you, and become your reasons. A principled basis for mutual toleration of other people professing views that are anathema from your standpoint is not ready-to-hand plain common sense—just the opposite.

Another possibility is that even if I believe my own religious views are correct and others are in error, I might also believe that it is wrong to force others to act against their beliefs unless they are wrongfully harming others. My moral inhibition against coercing others might be strengthened, the less confidence I have in my current beliefs. These beliefs suffice as reasons for guiding my own conduct, but fall short of what would be required to overturn the moral norm against coercion.

However, one might flip this point on its head. The more confidence I have in the correctness of my beliefs, then if I accept an obligation of beneficence to save others from peril, the more the no-forcing norm looks overrideable. If I am very confident that you will plunge off a bridge to your death unless I force you to sway from your present path, I should help you by forcing you.

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church is not saying extra ecclesiam nulla salus these days. But the basic problem remains. Religions claim that enormous benefits will accrue to followers, and only their followers, and religions differ widely in theologies and prescribed rituals and commandments for daily life. Compromise is difficult between adherents of radically opposed theological views. Jesus Christ is either the Redeemer and Son of God, who has shown us the path to salvation we must follow—or he is not. If the end of the world is fast approaching, as many Christians believe is foretold in the Bible, it is silly to worry about worldly issues such as climate change, war, the diffusion of nuclear armaments, and the prospects for economic development of the underdeveloped regions of the Earth. If there is no reason to believe the end of the world is fast approaching, the religious claims to the contrary are very dangerous ideas.

The puzzle is that religious liberty is often partially interpreted as requiring government neutrality on religious matters. The government is to take no stance for or against any religious doctrine. Neutrality here requires that the government should not act to promote one controversial religious doctrine over others, nor favor the adherents of some controversial doctrine over the adherents of other views, nor pursue any policy that could only be justified by a claim that some controversial religious doctrine is superior to others (on the idea of neutrality, see Patten, 2012 ; also Nussbaum, 2011 ). But this stance of neutrality makes no sense, especially where huge consequences are at stake. Religions make large empirical, metaphysical, and moral claims that if true are of the utmost importance for all of us. The claims cry out for assessment. If religious claims, claims backed by religious reasons—for example, about divine intentions as revealed in a sacred book—are inapt as a basis for state laws and other public policies, that can only be because the arguments and evidence that can be adduced for these claims do not withstand critical scrutiny. But if the norm of government neutrality in religious matters is rejected, then it would seem that the state should favor better religious doctrines and steer its members away from worse ones, and the question arises: why should the state even tolerate religious creeds and sects that are exceptionally defective from an epistemic standpoint, promulgating claims no reasonable person should accept?

The generic case for wide freedom of speech and expression and for other basic civil liberties provides a sensible reply to the suggestion that in matters of religion the state should act to restrict people’s liberty to embrace defective heresies, dangerous falsehoods. Let us assume that it is accepted that there should be wide freedom of speech and expression along with freedom of assembly and freedom of association. These basic civil liberties will encompass the liberty to speak freely on religious matters, proselytize for one’s chosen faith, assemble with like-minded others to worship and engage in ceremonies and rituals of one’s choosing, and form organizations to promote adherence to one or another particular religious doctrine. We do not need to advance special religious freedom rights to secure these widely accepted freedoms. The religious freedom rights are included in generic civil liberties.

The response to the first puzzle just suggested immediately gives rise to another puzzle. Many us believe that we all owe one another special solicitude for religious liberty. Not all liberties are of equal importance. The government via its traffic safety regulations massively restricts one’s freedom to drive cars however one might wish, but this is not deemed oppressive. But religious liberty has special importance. Moreover, religious liberty includes not only liberty of speech, expression, and worship but also liberty to put one’s faith into practice, to live according to the dictates of one’s chosen faith, at least up to the point at which one’s acting on religious belief violates basic moral rights of others. The puzzle is to interpret and assess the claimed special status of religion and religious liberty.

3. A Thumb on the Scale Favoring Religious Concerns?

Freedom of religion, though under threat in some regions, is assigned special protection in the written constitutions of many political societies. The European Convention on Human Rights stipulates that “Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Why single out religion for special protection in this way? The judgment that ordinary religious activities such as proselytizing and church-going merit protection does not require a further judgment that religion merits special protection.

The question “why single religion out for special protection” bites hard for those who hold the background belief that in a democratic society, the majority should rule, and that up to some point, the fact that a law has been enacted by duly established democratic procedures renders it legitimate to enforce the law both on the majority that supported it and on others who do not support it. Is there is a special right to religious freedom that stands in the way of enforcing an otherwise legitimate democratic law on the ground that enforcing it would interfere with religious people’s freely practicing their religion? On this issue, see Koppelman, 2013 ; Greenawalt, 2006 ; Greenawalt, 2008 ; and Leiter, 2012 .

Examples may help to clarify this concern. Suppose that a democratic political society bans the production, sale, gift, and consumption of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline. These laws might be justified or unjustified; set that question to the side. Consider three claimants who might demand that the law should be rewritten or interpreted by courts to exempt them from the requirement to conform to this law on the ground that it restricts their freedom unjustifiably. That is, the claimants maintain that even if the law is acceptable as applied to most people, it would not be acceptable if imposed on them, because they would be specially burdened by conformity. One claimant objects that her religion requires the use of hallucinogenic drugs in religious ceremonies and rituals that are crucial to the practice of her faith. A second claimant objects that her deepest ethical convictions require her to explore altered states of consciousness, including the altered states induced by LSD or mescaline, to facilitate her attainment of emotional states favorable to treating people as they ought to be treated and to her discovery of the important moral truths. A third claimant objects that her chosen way of life places at its center an activity such as surfing or rock climbing that becomes a sublimely valuable experience when practiced while in an altered state of mind induced by appropriate doses of hallucinogens. If the society in which these claimants live has a political constitution that forbids government to restrict the free exercise of religion or in some similar way gives special legal protection to freedom to carry on religious activities, the first claimant has a presumptive good claim to legal relief, the second a doubtful but possible claim, and the third no claim at all. Why is this fair?

If one examines current writings that touch on this question by constitutional law scholars and interpreters of religious liberty, one finds two broad types of answer. One says that religion is really morally special, and merits special protection. The second response denies that religion is really morally special. On this view, either the appearance that current policies in democratic societies that are especially solicitous of religious liberty is false, or the appearance is correct, in which case the legal policies that cater to religious concerns in a way that would be justifiable only if religion were somehow special ought to be eliminated or reformed.

4. Religion Is Special in That It Should Be Specially Disfavored and Favored

The “religion is special” response to the puzzle about why religion should be singled out for special favorable treatment when governments are handing out benefits or restricting people’s freedom itself divides into two broad categories. One line of thought suggests that religious beliefs are both specially disfavored and specially favored in the government policies of a morally acceptable democratic constitutional regime, the disfavoring and favoring roughly balancing each other. Compare the belief that God hates heresy and the belief that racial discrimination is wrong. A political society ought to abjure the establishment of religion, as does the U.S. Constitution and as do those of many other societies. This means that the government should not take action that supports one religious belief over others or supports the religious over the nonreligious. Any government action to suppress heresy would be based on some particular religious belief as to what is true religion and what is heresy, and government action on this basis would run afoul of any sensible no-establishment rule. In contrast, there is no bar to government taking action on nonreligious beliefs, such as the belief that it is wrong to discriminate against people on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin. Establishment of moral claims by such actions as passing laws forbidding discriminatory conduct is perfectly acceptable in a country that rejects all religious establishment. So religious beliefs are disfavored in a way.

Given this fact, and given its appropriateness, there may be some need for redress or compensation, which takes the form of giving special weight to claims that the enforcement of a law that has a legitimate secular purpose and is not on its face motivated by dislike or hostility to any religious group would nonetheless pinch hard against the religious interests of some people, who should on this ground be exempted from the legal requirement to conform to the law. Call this position special-accommodation-for-religion-offsets-the-no-establishment-burden ( Greene, 1993 ).

Objection: The suggestion advanced in this chapter is that the basis for ruling out religious claims as the grounding of laws and public policies is that these views are poorly supported by evidence and argument. We lack reason to believe any of these religious doctrines is true, so we lack reason to put state power behind any of them. But this is not any sort of reason to put a thumb on the scale favoring special protection of religious liberty or favoring religious over nonreligious demands for exemption from requirements to obey otherwise acceptable laws.

The countersuggestion might be that the main reason to favor no-establishment is not that religious doctrines per se have epistemic defects, but rather the judgment that governments are particularly inept at distinguishing better from worse religious doctrines and so should be barred from endorsing any. Reply: The fact that a claim is likely to be controversial is not per se a reason that it cannot figure in a sound justification of state policy. Moreover, even if governments tend to be bad at discriminating better from worse doctrines, that should not inhibit a government that is exceptional in this regard from basing policy on sound judgments.

One possible basis for holding that religion requires special treatment is that religious disputes are specially explosive and likely to cause conflict, reduce people’s disposition to cooperate with those deemed outsiders, and threaten civil peace. Also, adherents of religious views held by a small minority of a society’s population are specially vulnerable to discrimination and even persecution, even in democracies.

Objection: in many modern democracies with diverse populations, the tendency of religious disputes to cause civil strife is very muted, if discernible at all. Where this is so, this argument for special treatment for religion has slight purchase. But also, if it is true that religious discord does gives rise to persecution, the ground for state action here is to protect people from persecution. This we should do in an even-handed way, whether the persecutors are motivated by religion, racial ideology, national chauvinism, contempt for people who do not espouse liberal opinions, or other motives.

Further objection: If religious disputes threaten social cooperation and civil peace, we might suspect that the tendency of people to embrace simplistic religious dogmas insulated from rational reflection and criticism is the underlying problem. So rather than treat religion with kid gloves, perhaps the government should promote secular education and deliberative institutions and practices and campaign against irrational embrace of religious dogmas, while sustaining full civil liberties including free speech for all. This in effect would be a regime of secular establishment.

5. Religion Is Especially Valuable and Should Be Favored

The second line of thought along the “religion is special” path forthrightly affirms that religious activities and practices are on the whole specially valuable in a way that justifies special favorable legal treatment of religion and special protection specifically of religious liberty.

The claim to the special quality of religion takes various forms.

One version of the claim is that religious dictates present themselves to adherents as absolute categorical imperatives that we must obey come what may ( McConnell, 1990 ; McConnell, 1992 ). Religious demands are implacable, and so when they put a believer in conflict with man-made law, the demand for compliance is unreasonable, or at least specially burdensome. Or one might hold that duties to a divine being are orders of magnitude more compelling than any secular obligations to behave in one way or another toward other members of society. The secular obligations are apt for compromise and flexibility; the religious obligations, not so.

Objection: These contrasts fade upon examination. Many versions of morality impose duties that are categorical in the sense that we are bound to obey them regardless of our desires or aims. Some moral duties may be exceptionless, and are deemed to hold come what may. Many people in fact treat requirements of secular morality as imposing obligations of conscience that are of overwhelming importance in their lives and present unyielding demands. Moreover, in fact, people who are religious vary in the degree to which they are religious or uphold religious commandments as overpowering their other aims and concerns, brooking no compromise.

Another version of the claim is that religions offer frameworks of belief that endow life with meaning, significance, and purpose. Religions answer persistent and urgent questions about what kinds of beings we are and what is our proper relationship to other humans and to the natural universe. Art and other human enterprises contribute to this quest for meaning, but by history and tradition, religion is the preeminent human enterprise that plays this role (see Nussbaum, 2008 ; Koppelman, 2006 ).

Objection: First, it is not obvious that the search for cosmic significance or meaning in life is valuable at all, much less of incomparable value. Perhaps the search for enormous significance in human life reflects illusion or the understandable but unjustified wish of humans to see themselves as central players in a narrative of great importance.

Setting this worry aside, we should resist the idea that religion uniquely or specially or in some quintessentially wondrous way endows our lives with meaning and significance. People find meaning and significance in many ways. Any goal that one regards as worth pursuing can give meaning. Religious doctrines often provide adherents with ways of making sense of frightening and distressing aspects of the human condition, and these consoling religious ideas, such as an eternal afterlife and transmigration of souls, are highly appealing and resonate with our deepest aspirations and fears. But consolation and solace come in many varieties, many of them secular.

Martha Nussbaum associates the special value in religion with the human capacity to search for ultimate meaning in life, a full account of the place of humans in the cosmos and of how we should live and what is valuable. The capacity is one all humans have, and its exercises merit special respect and solicitude. A related view suggested by Andrew Koppelman asserts that finding the true ultimate meaning of human life has objective value, and hence searching for ultimate meaning is instrumentally valuable. Since the state is appropriately barred from pronouncing on the comparative worth of different methods and strategies for the search for ultimate significance, the reasonable state policy is a blanket support for any and all of them.

Objection: The ensemble of ways of searching for ultimate meaning encompasses astrology, searching for ways to interact with outer-space aliens, devoting oneself to a family business, extolling the Mafia, and much else. The proposal under review sweeps too broadly, and would if accepted justify a policy of special protection for a very wide range of activities that no one finds deserving of that status. Moreover, even if the capacity to search for meaning is valuable, it is implausible to think that any exercise of the capacity, good, bad, or ugly, has value. If we focus on more narrowly religious exercises of the capacity, taking religion to be whatever is sufficiently similar to paradigm cases of religion such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on, we are back to the question we started with: what makes religion per se specially valuable?

Brian Leiter (2012) denies that religion should be appraised highly, because our ordinary understanding of religion identifies it as, inter alia, beliefs that are chosen and ratified in epistemically defective ways that fall short of standards of scientific method and moral argument. It seems misleading to define religion as a belief system that is epistemically defective. Some religions claim to be rationalist enterprises, and if, for example, we somehow came to decide that Roman Catholicism as defended by St. Thomas Aquinas is a uniquely rational belief system, we would not cease regarding Roman Catholicism as a religion. But Leiter nonetheless might be correct that religious beliefs as a matter of fact are accepted by their defenders, including sophisticated defenders, on the basis of epistemically suspect reasons that pay little heed to standards of rationality we should embrace.

We seem to be encountering a dilemma. Attempts to explain why religion is special and therefore merits special legal deference either fail to distinguish religion from other types of human practice and activity or, if they succeed in identifying what is unique about religion, fail to explain why religion so conceived should be thought specially valuable or meritorious. On either horn of the dilemma, we lack good reason to treat religion as special in a way that justifies deference to it, favoring religion over other interests and concerns of citizens.

6. Conscience Should Receive Deferential Treatment

One strategy of response to the puzzle of understanding why freedom of religion is especially important and merits special legal protection identifies freedom of religion with liberty of conscience and proposes a norm of respect for conscience (see Perry, 2007 ; also Arneson, 2010 ; Arneson, 2014 ).

If conscience is a capacity to form a judgment about what is morally required, prohibited, and permissible, respect for conscience might be thought to manifest itself canonically in willingness to exempt from the requirement to do what is legally required a person whose conscience conflicts with that requirement. Someone who is conscientiously opposed to fighting in wars might be exempted from conscription into military service; someone who is conscientiously opposed to paying income taxes might be excused from the requirement to do so.

One immediate worry is that accommodations of religion that many people support do not involve eschewing the attempt to force people to act against their conscience. Another worry is that accommodations of religion that tend to be provided in current societies are overwhelmingly limited to religious claimants, not a broader category of conscientious objectors.

Moreover, it is far from clear or obvious that the fact that someone conscientiously opposes what law requires him to do is in itself a basis for exempting him from the requirement to obey. We might argue that in a well-functioning, diverse democracy one should conform one’s conduct to legal requirements to which one is conscientiously opposed, unless one reasonably believes that the consequence of acting against one’s conscience would be serious violation of some people’s important moral rights. In a diverse democracy people will tend to disagree on important moral matters. Conscientious judgments on many issues do not tend to converge. In this situation, there might well be many sets of rules such that enforcing any one of them would be better from everyone’s moral standpoint than enforcing none. One loses from being required to conform to rules that offend one’s beliefs but gains when others do the same. In this scenario, allowing majority rule to override conscientious judgment as the determiner of what we do can be a fair cooperative practice. Given that we benefit from others suppressing conscience and conforming to majority rule, we should reciprocate when majority rule requires us to act against our own conscience. Here we are going against our first-order conscientious judgment, that just considers the issues on their merits and ignores what others are doing, but we are conforming to our second-order judgment that does take account of the behavior of others regarding the deliverances of their first-order conscientious judgments.

The cooperative practice of being willing to go along with others when we think they are morally in error for the sake of securing the greater moral gains of coordination is important. But quite apart from this consideration, there is a further question about the fairness of accommodating dissenting conscience by allowing conscientious objectors to avoid the costs of conforming to law. On the face of it, shifting the burdens of compliance with law in the way that the exemption for conscientious objectors does is unfair to those required to bear the burdens of conforming.

If an exemption to the general requirement imposed on citizens to obey the law is sparingly granted, the negative consequences for others may be slight. Since almost all citizens are still required to obey the law, even with the narrow exemption in place, whatever legitimate purposes the law was enacted to achieve will still be fulfilled. Since very few persons are exempted from the law, the consequences of shifting the burdens of compliance on the remaining citizens will be very slight. Yet a problem is evident. Unless there is justification for singling out some people for exemption on a narrow basis, the scheme is unfair. In actual fact, if we take recent history as our guide, the supposedly broad norm of accommodation to claims of conscience will in practice become a narrow norm of accommodation to claims of the religious. This occurs because the courts and other legal agencies granting exemptions can see that a wide interpretation would trigger a deluge of claims, and this they want to avoid. So we are left with the initial puzzle: why single out religion for special status, in the form of a disposition on the part of democratic governments to grant exemptions from legal requirements to those who can claim that conforming to the requirements would get in the way of the practice of their religious faith?

7. Equal Citizenship?

A perhaps more promising doctrine of religious liberty starts with the idea that the state is obligated to show equal respect and concern to all citizens and refrain from imposing policies that fail to treat all citizens as equal citizens. (For an argument that core liberal ideas require the state to refrain not just from promoting some controversial religious views but more broadly from promoting any controversial views as to what is intrinsically valuable in life, see Quong, 2011 .) The claim then is that a generous doctrine of accommodation of religion is required to show equal respect and concern to religious adherents along with other citizens and to avoid imposing policies that treat some as second-class citizens.

Laws and other state directives that single out particular religious doctrines or their adherents for disfavored treatment are plausibly ruled out by equal respect and concern. For example, a law that offers a benefit to all citizens except Lutherans would be treating Lutherans as second-class citizens. So would a law that was crafted to disfavor Lutherans specifically without referring to them by name.

The rub here lies in our interpretation of the requirement to disparage none and treat all as equal citizens. This requirement is said to apply to the state and to individuals insofar as they seek to influence state policies. Assume the requirement, suitably interpreted, is acceptable. Without attempting a full interpretation of the requirement, we should accept these constraints on any plausible construal.

First, the fact that a state policy with its justification conflicts with some moral or empirical belief one holds is false does not in itself qualify the policy as failing to treat one with equal respect or denying that one has the status of equal citizen. For example, if my religion tells me that whites are the superior race and good jobs and positions of authority should be reserved for whites only, a state policy that forbids discrimination on the basis of race in employment and assignment to public office opposes my belief. Religious doctrines take clear and substantive stands on a raft of empirical and moral questions, and many of these doctrines are flatly opposed to scientific consensus and any reasonable moral principles.

Second, that the law benefits some citizens more than others, including me, or benefits some and imposes disadvantages on others, including me, does not automatically indicate that I am being disparaged, treated as less than equal. In a pluralistic democratic society, the majority will routinely ends up favoring some and disfavoring others. If we pass banking regulations, some bank stockholders and bank customers may lose, and others may gain. Even if we hold that government should be neutral as between controversial ways of life and conceptions of the good, this neutrality norm does not plausibly require that each government action must be neutral in its effects, bringing about exactly the same net benefit for all citizens who might be affected. So the sheer fact that an otherwise acceptable law happens to bring about worse consequences for those trying to practice Methodism than for others should not in itself raise red flags of warning that something is amiss. However, whenever law pinches some with extra severity, there is the possibility that an accommodation for those especially burdened may be justified.

8. Accommodation: The Welfare Approach

Law is a blunt instrument of social control. Legal rules will employ fairly coarse-grained distinctions, and rightly so, because in many settings the attempt to make the law more nuanced and more closely in conformity to what is morally right would create a fine-grained rule that is difficult and costly to administer, with predictably worse results as assessed from the standpoint of moral principle. So consider a law that is appropriately coarse-grained. For purposes of illustration, let us just assume that a law that prohibits suicide and assisted suicide is morally acceptable, because most suicides are wrong in virtue of bringing about bad consequences for the person who kills herself or for other affected persons. If someone says “I want to kill myself,” you hand the person a loaded gun, with the intention of facilitating the person’s killing himself, and the person shoots himself and dies, you should be criminally liable for the death. Nonetheless some suicides are surely permissible and some may even be morally required, and assisting someone to commit suicide reasonably may be morally permissible or required.

The mechanism of enforcement of law can provide needed flexibility for such cases. A citizen who witnesses a legally prohibited assisted suicide may decline to report the incident to the authorities; a policeman who witnesses such an event may decline to make an arrest; if an arrest is made, a prosecuting attorney may decline to prosecute; and if a trial is held, a jury can vote to acquit even if the facts of the case and applicable law indicate a guilty verdict is called for. Such discretion can go awry, but can also improve the degree to which the legal system protects rights and advances the general welfare.

Even a perfectly fine-grained legal rule tuned with exquisite sensitivity to moral requirements might place greater burdens on some citizens asked to conform to the rule. But consider the broad range of cases in which the achievement of a collective good requires costly conformity to rule, and conformity is far more costly for some citizens, who might be excused from this requirement with little or no loss of achievement of the collective good. In such cases the law is more fair if it bends in one way or another to allow those specially burdened the freedom not to comply. This is accommodation of those specially burdened. The law against assisted suicide induces a morally better outcome if it allows physicians to assist the suicide of those who face painful terminal illness or a devastating chronic medical problem that makes continued life a punishment for self and others. Or consider a legal rule that forbids swimming after dark at the sole local swimming hole, in its application to a handicapped, disfigured, strong swimmer who very much values the activity of swimming but unavoidably finds it psychologically very hard to swim at a public beach in daylight. He should be allowed to swim at night. In all cases the metric for assessing an accommodation claim is the degree to which the person seeking accommodation, compared to others, would suffer a welfare loss if it is not granted, balanced against the degree to which either (1) the ends of the law are less fulfilled or (2) the burdens on those expected to conform to law are increased, if the exemption is granted.

So far we have been considering informal accommodation, but sometimes a degree of formality is helpful. Confronted with a legal ban on nude swimming on public beaches and a well-known proclivity of nudist enthusiasts to frolic without clothes on a certain remote beach, the police may announce publicly that they will devote zero resources to enforcing the nudity ban at that particular beach. But there might also be a court-ordered rule or an exemption written into a statute by lawmakers. (These maneuvers make the law more fine-grained and possibly more difficult to administer, but without triggering prohibitive practical difficulties.)

For any accommodation, the question arises: is it fair? It may be unfair to single out one class of persons and not others from exemption. Granting an exemption to some may also increase the burdens of compliance with the law on others, and this can be unfair. The welfare accommodation account just outlined provides a framework, not a formula for resolving these issues. The suggestion then is that religious interests and concerns as such should get no special priority or privilege in the determination of whether any accommodations should be made with respect to the enforcement of any particular law. In the determination as to whether an otherwise acceptable law unduly pinches some who fall within its scope by imposing disproportionate burdens of welfare loss on them, religious interests and nonreligious interests should be treated evenhandedly.

9. Religious Accommodation

The approach to accommodation outlined here can be compared to other approaches to accommodation of religion advanced by legal and political theorists. Attention here is focused on discussions concerned to interpret the religion clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, but readers should keep in mind that our topic is what morality requires, not what the U.S. Constitution or any other country’s written constitution is best interpreted as asserting.

At some time in the past the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to be committed to a position that singles out religious freedom as taking special priority. On this view, a citizen can successfully claim entitlement to accommodation in the form of exemption from the requirement to obey an otherwise applicable law if she can show that (a) the law applied to her imposes substantial burden on the free exercise of her religion and (b) no compelling state interest opposes granting her an exemption. If there are few religious claimants, the degree to which the law’s purposes are fulfilled would typically be only slightly lessened if exemption is granted, so a compelling state interest opposing the granting of the exemption sought will rarely be identifiable. The manifest problem with this approach is that it puts a heavy thumb on the scale favoring citizens with religious commitments and religious interests over other citizens, and this is unfair.

A hypothetical example of a case in which accommodation to facilitate religious freedom would probably be acceptable according to the approach to accommodation endorsed in this chapter may help to show where lines of controversy emerge. Imagine that there is a public school system in place funded by general tax revenue, and the public school system operates alongside privately funded and operated schools. Suppose the privately funded schools are either exclusive schools attended by the children of wealthy parents or religious schools. The curricula of all private schools are vetted and regulated by the state to ensure all children receive adequate education. The nonwealthy parents who want to provide religious schooling for their children complain that the requirement to pay tuition and fees for religious schools and also to contribute as taxpayers to the public school system poses a special onerous burden on them, which neither wealthy parents placing their children in nonreligious private schools nor parents sending their children to public schools have to bear. They ask for either state contributions to tuition payments paid by parents sending their children to religious schools or tax relief from the full burden of contributing to the public school system ( Galston, 2002 ; Macedo, 1995 ). This claim on its face has merit.

One might endorse aid to religious schools or a voucher system to the same effect without accepting the idea that parents have a right to determine the content of their children’s education. Parents generally have a strong right to raise their children as they see fit so long as the parents are adequately competent. These parental rights must be balanced against the independent rights of children. Prominent among these rights is the right of each child to be educated in ways that expose her to alternative perspectives on the world and that give her the capacity to think critically and independently about the beliefs instilled into her by others, including her parents. Parents have rights to indoctrinate their children into their own favored beliefs, but children have rights to be trained and socialized in ways that equip them to seek the truth by their own lights. Along the same line, each child has the right to be trained in general-purpose skills that will help her to flourish in any of a wide variety of plans of life that she might as an adult choose for herself.

What exactly the child’s right to independence requires by way of state assistance is not obvious and clearly varies with circumstances. One boundary line is evident in the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder . In that case the parents of a religious sect demanded exemption from a state law requiring attendance at school by all children through the age of sixteen. The parents claimed that attendance at secondary school would reduce the prospects that the child would eventually maintain allegiance to the religious sect community and would interfere with the religious community’s efforts to socialize adolescents into community sect loyalty. The child’s right to independence and an open future should have trumped these considerations and brought about denial by courts of this demand for religious accommodation. In the same way, a demand by nonreligious farming parents that their children be excused from secondary-school attendance in order to increase the children’s willingness and ability to work as adults on the family farm does not add up to a justified claim for exemption from applicable state law.

Some examples that might be construed as religious accommodation cases are better understood as free speech cases, with the understanding that religious speakers have the same free speech rights as anyone else. Consider compelled speech in public schools, by way of such practices as compulsory saluting of the national flag in the classroom and compulsory recitation of a Pledge of Allegiance affirming loyalty to the nation’s basic political arrangements. Freedom to speak as one wishes on matters of public concern includes the right not to speak at all, and a fortiori not to speak in favor of views one rejects. Hence it would be wrong to force or pressure adult citizens to salute the flag or recite a pledge of allegiance. What about children? Children lack the full free speech rights of adults, but gradually acquire some rights of freedom of expression as they grow older. It would be wrong to prevent high-school-age children from having some opportunity to express their views on controversial matters in the school setting, by speech and also by symbolic means such as wearing pins, medallions, or shirts with slogans printed on them. Some residue of free speech rights attaches even to primary-school youngsters, mainly rights not to be compelled to engage in speech or symbolic acts with speech content against their convictions.

Consider now another range of cases. If state law forbids consumption of LSD, peyote, mescaline, and other hallucinogenic drugs, should an exemption be granted to members of a religious sect whose central church rituals revolve around consumption of some hallucinogenic drugs? (See Marshall, 2000 ; Galston, 2002 .) The example is perhaps clouded by initial doubts that there could be a reasonable justification of any law along these lines in the first place. Let us set this concern to the side, as irrelevant for our purposes. The welfare accommodation approach would not rule out the possibility that accommodation could be justified, but would rule out favoring the religious by granting an exemption to the law for those who need (say) peyote for religious ceremonies while denying an exemption for those who need peyote for serious enhancement of nonreligious activities (such as climbing or surfing). If widening the exemption would be too costly or destructive of the law’s purposes, and no nonarbitrary, narrowly crafted exemption can be devised, there should be no exemptions, and certainly not a special exemption just for the religious claimants.

The welfare accommodation approach might prompt the objection that it is fatally tone-deaf to the special nature of claims of conscience and improperly assimilates them to concerns about people’s welfare or well-being. The objection would be that it is not that one would be worse off in self-interested terms if one acts against conscience, but that acting against conscience is wrongful behavior, destructive of one’s integrity, and the state should make every effort to avoid presenting its citizens with the choice of acting against conscience or being faced with serious criminal penalties for violation of the state’s law.

This objection raises issues already discussed in this chapter. Roughly, if the state forbids an act that is permissible or even morally obligatory, this is wrong (sometimes horrendously wrong) and a serious violation of the autonomy of the citizen whose chosen course of action is forbidden. If the state forbids what is anyway wrongful (e.g., theft or murder), and this prohibition conflicts with the individual’s conscientious judgment, the affront to autonomy should have no weight on the scales. If the state forbids what would be permissible except for the state’s scheme, including prohibition, to advance some legitimate purpose, the issue is more subtle. However, if the state’s plan, including coercion, is morally acceptable, the sheer fact that one conscientiously disagrees is not a reason to exempt one from the requirement. Conscientious objection to a law might in some cases reasonably prompt supporters of the law to lessen their degree of confidence in its justification, but sometimes is not always.

We do all have a general interest in living by our own lights and being guided by our own views of what is right and good and appropriate and what strikes our fancy (so coercion always requires a justification). Being confronted with a conflict between the state’s commands and one’s conscience presents one with a messy and unpleasant situation, which anyone would reasonably prefer to avoid. If a grievous and especially aggravating situation of this sort can be avoided by minor adjustment on the part of others, at small cost to them, this is an accommodation the others ought to extend. This welfarist reading of the generic case for accommodation does not in any obvious way make hash of claims of conscience.

Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager (2007) propose an interpretation of religious liberty as demanded by the U.S. Constitution that is in some respects close to the welfare accommodation approach this chapter is defending. (Recall that our issue is not what this or that country’s constitution asserts, but what morality requires. Thus the concern of this chapter and the issue that Eisgruber and Sager are addressing are different.) Let us imagine that someone might propose that the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by Eisgruber and Sager gets it right so far as the morality of religious liberty is concerned. Whether or not they are right as a matter of constitutional interpretation, what they propose might be right as a claim about political morality—what we owe to one another by way of uses of state power.

Their suggested approach has three components. One is the insistence that religious people, like others, have robust rights of free speech and expression, freedom of association and assembly, and other basic civil liberties. We should agree with them on this point. A second component in their view is that “no members of our political community ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundations of their important commitments and projects. Religious faith deserves special constitutional solicitude in this respect, but only because of its vulnerability to hostility and neglect” ( Eisgruber and Sager, 2007 : 52). The third component is a claim that government should be neutral in its treatment of citizens’ religious and nonreligious concerns—that is to say, apart from concern to prevent religious discrimination, “we have no constitutional reason to treat religion as deserving special benefits or as subject to special disabilities” (ibid.).

Regarded as a claim about how a decent society should set its political arrangements, the nondiscrimination or “no devaluation” view is appealing but problematic. A decent society seeks to regulate its affairs according to what is truly just and right. The just state does not aspire to be neutral between correct and incorrect views about what ways of treating people are fair and unfair and what life outcomes for people are advantageous and disadvantageous for them. Nor can the just state be neutral between empirically adequate and empirically inadequate views as to what the actual and likely consequences will be of the policies it might enact. Religions pronounce on these matters. Insofar as religious views dovetail with our best accounts of what is right and good, the laws and public policies of a just state will not conflict with religious views. Insofar as the state succeeds in enacting just policies, and these conflict with religious doctrines, in a clear and obvious sense the state does devalue or disparage these views.

We need to be careful to avoid a sort of Orwellian doublespeak here that pretends that religious people who experience state policies as hostile to their cherished beliefs are simply mistaken or confused (see Smith, 1995 , and Smith, 2001 , for a sympathetic account of the plight of the religious under a secular constitutional regime). For example, if my religion tells me that whites are the superior race and good jobs and positions of authority should be reserved for whites only, a state policy that forbids discrimination on the basis of race in employment and assignment to public office opposes my belief. If my religion tells me that God created the world in six days, a public-school curriculum that includes a scientifically sound biology class puts the weight of state authority against my religious belief. Religious doctrines take clear and substantive stands on a raft of empirical and moral questions, and many of these doctrines are flatly opposed to scientific consensus and any reasonable moral principles.

Moreover, a society that eschews endorsing particular or generic religious claims and does not eschew endorsing particular moral and scientific claims in effect has embraced a secular establishment. Its treatment of religious and nonreligious claims is asymmetrical and nonneutral. From the religious believer’s point of view, not only does the state refrain from endorsing particular religious views that she regards as true and of the greatest importance for our lives, the state also implicitly or explicitly rejects the methods that she considers appropriate for discerning the fundamental truths that we must accept in order to live well. These methods include absorption of divine revelation as recorded in a sacred book authenticated by one’s religious tradition, and as plumbed by interpretations of its message, along with introspection and meditation on one’s own religious experiences. They are given no credence whatsoever in the public culture of a secular society striving to be just.

10. Conclusion

The argument of this chapter may seem to have come full circle in a disastrous way. Its starting point is that religious liberty is violated by state establishment of religion—the state’s endorsing some religious doctrine or favoring adherents of some religious doctrines over others. But we added that religious liberty is not violated if—a big if—the state’s laws and other directives enact justice (are justified by correct moral principles), even if just laws make it more burdensome for people to live according to their religious faith. Doesn’t this amount to an embrace of an unfair state establishment of secular humanism or atheist morality or the like? Is the suggestion supposed to be that secular ideas are privileged as possibly acceptable justifications for state laws whereas religious doctrines are ruled out as inadmissible? Why would this be fair?

Some respond to this worry by maintaining that state power should be used only in ways that are justifiable from any reasonable citizen’s standpoint, be it religious or nonreligious ( Rawls, 1996 ; Weithman, 2010 ). The trick in carrying out this strategy successfully would be to identify uncontroversial and consensual justifications of policies that meet this constraint without ruling out as inadmissible policies that surely ought to be established and enforced (no slavery, no totalitarian intrusions on privacy, no discrimination on the basis of race or skin color). The suggestion advanced in this chapter is that only secular moral ideas will be suitable bases for state policies—not any and all such ideas, only correct ones, or ones that in our present state of moral knowledge are singled out as most likely to be correct. The suggestion licenses a form of secular establishment. But the claim that only certain secular moral ideas are picked out by the balance of moral reasons properly weighed is just an assumption we have made, not a claim we have tried to support by argument. Reason goes where it goes. So far as the arguments of this chapter go, it could turn out to be the case that some particular religious doctrine—for example, some version of evangelical Christianity or the Sunni Muslim faith—is singled out as correct by the balance of reasons properly weighed (for skeptical arguments against theistic claims see Mackie, 1982 ). If so, the correct religious liberty doctrine would scrap no-establishment while still embracing religious liberty in the form of toleration (wide civil liberties for all, including adherents of any and all faiths and doctrines). In the same spirit, we should conclude by noting that the acceptability of the welfare accommodation approach to the problem of whether to make special legal provision so that state laws do not prevent people from living according to the dictates of their religious faith depends on arguments, which we have not tried to supply, showing that this approach is supported by decisive moral arguments and required by justice rightly understood.

The author thanks two anonymous reviewers for sage comments on a draft of this chapter.

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Freedom of Religion

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 28, 2023 | Original: December 7, 2017

Freedom of religion is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits laws establishing a national religion or impeding the free exercise of religion for its citizens. While the First Amendment enforces the “separation of church and state” it doesn’t exclude religion from public life. From the colonial era to present, religion has played a major role in politics in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court over the years has ruled inconsistently on matters of religious freedom, such as the display of religious symbols in government buildings.

Religion In Colonial America

America wasn’t always a stronghold of religious freedom. More than half a century before the Pilgrims set sail in the Mayflower , French Protestants (called Huguenots) established a colony at Fort Caroline near modern-day Jacksonville, Florida .

The Spanish, who were largely Catholic and occupied much of Florida at the time, slaughtered the Huguenots at Fort Caroline. The Spanish commander wrote the king that he had hanged the settlers for “scattering the odious Lutheran doctrine in these Provinces.”

The Puritans and Pilgrims arrived in New England in the early 1600s after suffering religious persecution in England. However, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony didn’t tolerate any opposing religious views. Catholics, Quakers and other non-Puritans were banned from the colony.

Roger Williams

In 1635 Roger Williams , a Puritan dissident, was banned from Massachusetts. Williams then moved south and founded Rhode Island . Rhode Island became the first colony with no established church and the first to grant religious freedom to everyone, including Quakers and Jews.

As Virginia’s governor in 1779, Thomas Jefferson drafted a bill that would guarantee the religious freedoms of Virginians of all faiths—including those with no faith—but the bill did not pass into law.

Religion was mentioned only once in the U.S. Constitution . The Constitution prohibits the use of religious tests as qualification for public office. This broke with European tradition by allowing people of any faith (or no faith) to serve in public office in the United States.

First Amendment

In 1785, Virginia statesman (and future president) James Madison argued against state support of Christian religious instruction. Madison would go on to draft the First Amendment , a part of the Bill of Rights that would provide constitutional protection for certain individual liberties including freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the press, and the rights to assemble and petition the government.

The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791. It established a separation of church and state that prohibited the federal government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” It also prohibits the government, in most cases, from interfering with a person’s religious beliefs or practices.

The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, extended religious freedom by preventing states from enacting laws that would advance or inhibit any one religion.

Religious Intolerance In the United States

Mormons , led by Joseph Smith , clashed with the Protestant majority in Missouri in 1838. Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs ordered that all Mormons be exterminated or expelled from the state.

At Haun’s Mill, Missouri militia members massacred 17 Mormons on October 30, 1838.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the U.S. government subsidized boarding schools to educate and assimilate Native American children. At these schools, Native American children were prohibited from wearing ceremonial clothes or practicing native religions.

While most states followed federal example and abolished religious tests for public office, some states maintained religious tests well into the twentieth century. Maryland , for instance, required “a declaration of belief in God,” for all state officeholders until 1961.

Landmark Supreme Court Cases

Reynolds v. United States (1878): This Supreme Court case tested the limits of religious liberty by upholding a federal law banning polygamy. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment forbids government from regulating belief but not from actions such as marriage.

Braunfeld v. Brown (1961): The Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania law requiring stores to close on Sundays, even though Orthodox Jews argued the law was unfair to them since their religion required them to close their stores on Saturdays as well.

Sherbert v. Verner (1963): The Supreme Court ruled that states could not require a person to abandon their religious beliefs in order to receive benefits. In this case, Adell Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, worked in a textile mill. When her employer switched from a five-day to six-day workweek, she was fired for refusing to work on Saturdays. When she applied for unemployment compensation, a South Carolina court denied her claim.

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971): This Supreme Court decision struck down a Pennsylvania law allowing the state to reimburse Catholic schools for the salaries of teachers who taught in those schools. This Supreme Court case established the “Lemon Test” for determining when a state or federal law violates the Establishment Clause—that’s the part of the First Amendment that prohibits the government from declaring or financially supporting a state religion.

Ten Commandments Cases (2005): In 2005, the Supreme Court came to seemingly contradictory decisions in two cases involving the display of the Ten Commandments on public property. In the first case, Van Orden v. Perry , the Supreme Court ruled that the display of a six-foot Ten Commandments monument at the Texas State Capital was constitutional. In McCreary County v. ACLU , the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that two large, framed copies of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky courthouses violated the First Amendment.

Muslim Travel Bans

In 2017, federal district courts struck down the implementation of a series of travel bans ordered by President Donald J. Trump , citing that the bans—which discriminate against the citizens of several Muslim-majority nations—would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

America’s True History of Religious Tolerance; Smithsonian.com . Religious Liberty: Landmark Supreme Court Cases; Bill of Rights Institute . First Amendment; Legal Information Institute .

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Freedom of religion or belief is viewed by the international community as a basic human right, yet its manifestations vary greatly from society to society. These resources examine and debate the contours of religious freedom; the evolution of international religious freedom policy; and the relationship between religious liberty and democracy, politics, and social and economic development.

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If you want to preserve religious freedom, teach your kids to value it

Family life and religious freedom experts said families teaching their kids about religious freedom and tolerance can have ripple effects across communities and nations.

By Hanna Seariac

“I hope that as people of all nations are tending to lose trust in institutions, I hope that we do not lose faith in the institution of the family and its formative value,” Rick Larsen, president and CEO of the Sutherland Institute, said in a webinar on the intersection of religious freedom and family.

The webinar Friday morning was the third in a series hosted by the Sutherland Institute and the European Union & International Affairs Office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the symbiotic relationship of family and faith.

Larsen shared a story that he heard from the late Clayton Christensen about a scholar who traveled from China to the U.S. for a study program. At the conclusion of the scholar’s studies, Christensen asked him if he learned anything surprising. The scholar responded, “Yes, I’m surprised at the importance of faith in relation to freedom.”

As the Chinese scholar had explored different communities, he saw a church or synagogue or a mosque at every turn. In Larsen’s recounting, the scholar observed, “In such an environment, people are more inclined to voluntarily do the right thing, to treat people with respect, with fairness, with compassion. And should that predominant influence ever go away, freedom and democracy would be in jeopardy.”

Larsen’s recounting of the story encapsulated the theme of remarks from a panel of family life and religious freedom authorities including David Dollahite, William Duncan, Alessandro Calcagno and Marcela Szymanski.

The panel made the case that religion is a force for good and democracy thrives in tandem with faith.

Family is where respect for religious freedom starts

Social science research shows religious beliefs and community, when done in a healthy manner, has positive associations with the health of families, said Dollahite, family life professor at Brigham Young University and co-director of American Families of Faith.

“Religion tends to benefit and strengthen marriages and families; and individuals who are religious tend to want to have strong marriages and strong families or at least to support strong marriages and strong families in their lives,” Dollahite said. He referred back to a study he did showing that regular family prayer cultivated strong family relationships in Muslim, Christian and Jewish families. They felt closer to God and closer to each other.

Dollahite acknowledged there’s a diversity of belief in families — both in cases where family members share the same religion and when they do not. It’s important for family members to respect the diversity of belief within their own families, he said.

“In some ways, every marriage is an interfaith marriage in the sense that even if two people that are married are in the same faith, there’s a very good chance that they have different perspectives, different ways of living that faith, different ideas about what’s most important in that faith,” said Dollahite. Sometimes children may decide to live a different faith. He encouraged parents to be respectful of their children in those cases.

Modeling love, patience and working together across differences in a family can have a ripple effect across local communities and the world, he said. More people are saying they are not religious and Dollahite said it’s important to foster tolerance of the increasing religious diversity.

Teaching children to respect other religions is integral to the preservation of religious freedom. Calcagno, assistant secretary general for the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, said families also have the ability to transmit values down to their children. Sometimes these values are related specifically to a particular religion, other times it’s the value of tolerance.

“Integration starts from the family,” Calcagno said. He explained that it’s the responsibility of families to instill in their children respect for other religions as well as cultures and the laws of the country. This not only helps with religious freedom, but also respect for others.

Calcagno suggested that volunteer groups with people of different religious backgrounds should be formed and engage in charitable initiatives. He also encouraged more interfaith dialogue to cultivate the respect for others of which he spoke.

“I’m firmly convinced that ignorance is really the main root of hatred of violence,” Calcagno said, noting that respect for other people’s religious freedom stems from knowledge of other religions.

Religious freedom on a policy level

Protecting the freedom of belief and religion goes hand-in-hand with protecting the integrity of the family, Duncan, constitutional law and religious freedom fellow at the Sutherland Institute, said. “Both are great examples of how rights really flow from responsibility.”

Parents in families have the responsibility of rearing children, which is “a critical role that really no one else could fulfill in exactly the same way.” In a similar way, religion has a critical role in “a sense of accountability to a higher power, social goods, providing social services, taking care of the vulnerable.” Also, Duncan noted, religion can be integral in pushing back on ideologies that may threaten society.

Duncan in the future, and perhaps even in the present, anticipates issues around school choice in addition to social media regulation, foster care, adoption and the ability of parents to engage in public school. He spoke about the U.S. with an eye toward the rest of the world. These topics “can be informed by this understanding of the importance of protecting the overlapping rights of parents and religious freedom.”

One example Duncan gave of a family policy that protects religious freedom and does not infringe on others’ rights is the ability of parents to choose a religious school for their children. He also said church autonomy — the ability of churches to freely share their messages — is also a positive example of a U.S. policy that preserves religious freedom and others’ rights as well.

When policymakers respect a diversity of religions, Duncan said they have the ability to create accommodations for people — such as ensuring that athletes can participate in sports while not being forced to violate their religion’s standards around attire.

Zooming out from the U.S., Szymanski, European Union representative for Aid to the Church in Need, spoke about global religious freedom. “The exercise of freedom of religion does not recognize any borders, but the same traveling speed applies to violations of this fundamental right with the violations sometimes going from west to south.”

Religious freedom violations impact families and also lead to the erosion of women’s rights globally. In countries with a majority religion connected to political power, Szymanski said women are deprived of many different freedoms, including the freedom to teach their children how they would like to about belief and religion.

The governments in the West often overlook these sorts of situations due to dependence upon certain energy supplies, Szymanski said. This can negatively impact religious minorities globally.

It’s for this and other reasons Szymanski admonished against developing apathy around the concept of religious freedom. The abstract idea of equal dignity for all, alongside the International Religious Freedom Act, protects religious freedom, but Szymanski said, people need to actively engage in defending these principles.

Moving forward

If families want to pass on religious ideas and be respectful of religious diversity, Dollahite said there’s need to be a balance of religious firmness with religious flexibility.

Religious firmness is loyalty to the principles of one’s religion and religious flexibility is developing the ability to appreciate other people’s perspectives when they make choices different from you. “Balancing religious firmness and religious flexibility within the home, we found to be very important for good family relationships,” Dollahite said.

Wrapping up the panel’s discussion, Larsen said he hopes it’s from parents, not intellectual elites, that children hear principles of family that can lead to their happiness.

“Lessons of faith and principle taught and demonstrated in the home are uniquely powerful because those are embedded in children who become citizens, who become leaders.”

How Religious Freedom Could Help Liberals Win the Abortion Rights War

The right has successfully wielded the idea of sincere religious beliefs as an antisocial legal cudgel. should the left be using it to further its own ends.

Earlier this month, an Indiana appeals court delivered a great victory to two causes that often find themselves in opposition: reproductive freedom and religious freedom. A group of women successfully argued that the state of Indiana’s ban on abortion, enacted in the immediate wake of Dobbs, violated their rights to religious freedom. The state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act , or RFRA—signed into law, not incidentally, in 2015, following Obergefell and the national legalization of same-sex marriage—guarantees that sincere religious individuals can be exempt from government actions that “substantially burden” their exercise of religion.

In this case, unlike many other religious freedom controversies, the claimants’ beliefs and practices involve bodily autonomy, the beginning of life at birth, and the precedence of a pregnant patient’s physical and emotional health over that of the potential life. This issue is far from settled, though. The decision will likely be appealed, and this case is one of many to come. Now, and in the coming years, the religious right to abortion will be a pivotal political issue. As more states criminalize reproductive health care, and abortion specifically, religious freedom has become a potentially powerful tool, a “ sleeper strategy ,” in the fight for reproductive freedom.

For the past decade, many of the most prominent and successful religious freedom claimants have been conservative Christians. Judges and lawyers, even the liberals among them, have had no trouble understanding these claimants as obviously sincere and paradigmatically religious. Powerful right-wing organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute have leveraged religious freedom into expansive protections for their claimants, carving out space for them to flout antidiscrimination law, reject vaccines, and avoid “complicity” in practices with which they disagree. From liberal and left perspectives, these cases already have caused great societal harm , with more of the same likely on the way. To allow a sincere believer to break laws with such ease could be, as the Supreme Court feared in 1879 , to make “the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

Whether religious freedom should function this way is one question. But there are other pertinent questions about how to respond to the current moment. Since religious freedom is often a right-wing tool for oppression and discrimination, should liberals and leftists be fighting to beat it back, or does it make more sense to embrace this doctrine and use it to further their own ends? Is it possible to do both?

Progressive cases for the free exercise of religion could be understood as a reversal to the decade-long rightward lurch of religious freedom. Or they could extend and abet it, exceptions that help legitimate the rule. On the one hand, showing that abortion is a matter of religious conscience demonstrates that religious belief is not just for the right. If progressives leave religious freedom to conservatives, they end up tacitly agreeing that only conservative Christians are truly and sincerely religious and that other people are not. Using free exercise law to (attempt to) protect the right to abortion access, to operate safe injection sites , or to give aid to migrants at the border is to argue credibly that these believers are, in fact, both sincere and religious. There is no reason that sincere believers have to be conservatives. And ultimately, contesting their special access to free exercise protections could undermine the whole system.

On the other hand, selective progressive inclusion will not stem the tide of right-wing free exercise lawsuits. Indeed, it might even give them cover, offering evidence that religious freedom is not just a right-wing strategy. Conservatives maintain a well-organized legal network, not to mention control of the courts. They are unlikely to start losing just because others also win sometimes.

The Indiana decision is notable for its unambiguous acknowledgment of the religiosity and sincerity of the plaintiffs’ beliefs. While conservative Christian beliefs have generally been assumed to be sincere and religious, especially when they are focused on sex and gender issues, progressives have received more scrutiny. This discrepancy exposes the normative assumptions embedded in public understandings of religion, even among judges and lawyers. The court’s rejection of these assumptions could mark an important shift.

The state’s primary argument was that the plaintiffs’ objections to the abortion ban were insincere. Becket —a law firm whose motto is “Religious Liberty for All,” and which represents some claimants who are neither conservative nor Christian—filed an amicus brief on the side of the state, arguing that there is “powerful evidence that [the] Plaintiff’s beliefs are not sincere.” They alleged that the plaintiffs “think RFRA will serve as a ‘cloak’ for their non-religious objections” to the abortion ban.

These insinuations express what legal scholar Elizabeth Sepper has called “the worry about lying women.” Sepper shows how arguments that such believers are really political, not religious, “alternate between painting women as unscrupulous political actors and describing them as pawns of the abortion rights movement.” As I have argued elsewhere , the sincere religious believer is often imagined against her opposites, the credulous fool and duplicitous knave. The former does not understand her own beliefs well enough to hold them sincerely; the latter does not believe what she says, and she dupes others along the way. When Becket and others accuse these women of lying, they imply that they knavishly mask (or “cloak”) their true intentions, while also being duped by political actors above them who are really pulling the strings. Either way, they are not eligible to play the role of the sincere believer.

A common objection to progressive claims is that the beliefs are not just insincere but fundamentally not religious. Speaking to Politico last year about the abortion challenges, Becket attorney Lori Windham said , “I think these are much more like political stunts than they are viable court cases.… You can have a sincere political belief or policy preference, and it can be passionate and deeply held, but that doesn’t make it a religious practice.”

The precedents for many contemporary free exercise issues can be traced to conscientious objection cases. In the 1960s and early 1970s, courts counted huge numbers of individual objectors as religious, as long as they could, in keeping with the draft act , explain how their beliefs were religious and not “political, sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code.” This framework implied that religious beliefs had to be disconnected somehow from real-world concerns, abstract concepts not related, or at least not responding, to particular political situations. Politically involved objectors, especially those who were Black and/or had connections to civil rights organizations, were disproportionately interpreted as political actors and, therefore, not religious.

A rigid religious/political binary is untenable. The state of Indiana seemed to suggest that any action or belief that might also be secular or political cannot then be religious. But this makes no sense: As the court recognized, many practices stem from religious beliefs but could also stem from nonreligious ones. You could, for example, reject a vaccine because you believe it was created with tissue from aborted fetuses, or it contains microchips used to control you, or the Bible tells you to keep your body pure. Which of these reasons is religious, and which is political? Whatever the case, it is clear that someone could do a particular activity—feeding the poor, to take a different example—for a religious reason or a political one, or some combination of the two. Trying to isolate something called “religion” from other aspects of life is an incoherent project from the start. And yet, religious freedom rests on such an impossibility .

The best arguments liberals and leftists can make, in my view, do not hinge on demonstrating that conservatives are actually the political-not-religious ones. That is a trap. Rather, they ought to argue that if those conservatives are religious, then these liberals are as well. They should point out inconsistencies. Here is one example. Conservative legal scholars such as Josh Blackman have argued (or offered “ tentative thoughts ”) that liberal Jews are insufficiently religious, as their doctrines lack seriousness because they are not “binding” or required by religious authorities. This is basically what Becket argued in its brief, saying that the Jewish plaintiffs had not specified just how much “‘physical, mental, or emotional’ impairment” they would suffer from an unwanted pregnancy, and “testified that [abortion] is ‘ultimately an individual decision.’”

An individual decision is somehow less religious or less sincere? The premise of that argument, as legal scholars Micah Schwartzman and Dahlia Lithwick explained in response to Blackman’s piece, is “absolutely wrong.” A tentpole concept of contemporary free exercise law is that sincere individuals, even those with idiosyncratic beliefs , are guaranteed the right to free exercise. Consider Coach Joe Kennedy, the football coach whose free exercise of religion (praying on the field while serving as a public school employee) was important enough to the Supreme Court that it decided to protect it , despite establishment clause concerns. Kennedy’s own beliefs were unsystematic, far from doctrinaire, and, one could argue, theologically unserious. But that does not matter. My point is not that Kennedy is not a sincere religious believer. It is that it is difficult to argue in good faith that he is but the Indiana plaintiffs are not.

The state of Indiana, along with Becket and other allies, does not make a serious constitutional argument. But it does take a view of religion that rings true to plenty of Americans. Some of those Americans might be judges. One reason that people might not understand liberal Jews, or progressives in general, to be really religious is that they do not know very much about progressive religions. For this reason, a group of historians filed an amicus brief explaining the history of religious belief and activity in support of abortion rights. They attempt to correct the record, showing that progressive religions do in fact exist, have a long history, and are not convenient “cloaks” for political activity. If judges do not know that, then they lack important historical information and context.

The history of American religion is complex and diverse, and few people know much about it. As Sepper notes , “We rarely hear from religious people who choose abortion. Less often still do we encounter religion as a motivating factor in their decisions.” These are stories that need to be told and heard. Learning these histories or understanding Jewish theology will not change everyone’s mind. People can still make their arguments, defining religion or politics as they will, but ignorance should not be an excuse. And over time, a better understanding of American religion in all its diversity could lead to more respect, rights, and protections for religious minorities. However, bigots are not always ignorant. Often, they know exactly what they are doing and who their targets are.

Given the current composition of the courts and recent politics of religious freedom, is free exercise litigation a viable path toward justice and progress? Won’t it just extend the reach of bad laws that are so often used for ill? And what about nonreligious people? Our dignity, self-determination, bodily autonomy, and so much else should not depend on whether we can convincingly play the role of the sincere religious believer. Carving out exceptions to a rule generally does not help dismantle the rule. But what if it is true that, as legal scholar Xiao Wang has put it , “religious free exercise today is our most powerful and effective means of civil disobedience”? First, it shouldn’t be. Second, if it is, then it should be used, as much as possible, toward just ends. In a better world, we wouldn’t need religious freedom. In this one, maybe we do.

Charles McCrary is an assistant professor of religious studies at Eckerd College and the author of Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers .

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Freedom of speech and LGBT rights: Americans’ views of issues in Supreme Court case

A majority of Americans think business owners should be able to refuse to provide services in situations where providing them may “suggest support for beliefs about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) issues” to which they have personal or religious objections, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to provide insight into Americans’ views about a prominent issue currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. We surveyed 5,079 adults from March 27 to April 2, 2023. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology .

In earlier surveys, the public has expressed positive views of the impact of legalization of same-sex marriage and broad support for policies aimed at preventing discrimination against transgender Americans.

But in a question reflecting the arguments in a pending Supreme Court case, 60% of Americans think business owners should not have to provide services if it might signal support for beliefs on LGBT issues that they oppose, according to the survey conducted in early April. Around four-in-ten (38%) say business owners should be required to provide services in these situations.

The Supreme Court case centers on a challenge to Colorado’s public accommodations law by website designer Lorie Smith, who says the law violates her right to freedom of speech by requiring her to design wedding websites for same-sex couples.

The oral arguments in the case highlighted the competing rights at issue. Smith’s attorney said her client’s complaint is based on the message being conveyed by her work, not the customers who may be affected. However, Colorado’s solicitor general said that by ruling in favor of Smith, the court would undermine the state’s accommodations law and open the door to discrimination because of a person’s race or religion, in addition to their sexual or gender identity.

The survey question does not ask whether business owners should have the right to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. Rather, it asks whether business owners who object to providing services that could suggest beliefs on LGBT issues – such as a “designer of wedding websites who has objections to same-sex marriage” – should be required to provide these services or be able to refuse to do so.

Views by party, religion

As with opinions on same-sex marriage and transgender issues, there is a wide partisan gap in views of whether business owners should be able to refuse to provide services if it conflicts with their views on LGBT issues. Republican and Republican-leaning independents overwhelmingly side with business owners who object to providing services in these situations (82% vs. 17%). By a smaller margin (59% to 40%), Democrats and Democratic leaners say business owners should have to provide services in these cases.

Opinions also differ by religious affiliation. For example, while 83% of White evangelical Protestants say business owners should be able to deny services in situations where it could conflict with their beliefs, just half of religiously unaffiliated adults say the same.

Note: Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology .

• Free Speech & Press
• Gender & LGBTQ
• LGBTQ Acceptance
• Partisanship & Issues
• Religion & LGBTQ Acceptance
• Religious Freedom & Restrictions

Jane Doe is a a research analyst focusing on social and demographic research at Pew Research Center

Carroll Doherty is director of political research at Pew Research Center

Most Americans say a free press is highly important to society

­most americans favor restrictions on false information, violent content online, most u.s. journalists are concerned about press freedoms, the role of alternative social media in the news and information environment, more so than adults, u.s. teens value people feeling safe online over being able to speak freely, most popular.

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