I’ve been thinking about religious tolerance.
That’s probably a dangerous opening sentence.
Considering Americans have been arguing about religion since before we were technically Americans, I seriously doubt I’m going to settle it in a blog post.
So buckle up. This one’s going to be a long one, and we’re probably going a little deeper than my usual ramblings.
Before you decide where you think I’m going with this, I’d ask one favor.
Read the whole thing.
Religion is one of those subjects where it’s easy to hear something we disagree with and immediately decide what someone else believes or what they’re trying to say.
I’m not writing this to attack anyone’s faith, convince anyone to abandon their beliefs, or suggest that I’ve somehow figured it all out.
I’m simply trying to work through some questions about religious freedom, individual rights, and how we treat people whose beliefs are different from our own.
You may not agree with everything I say.
That’s okay.
All I’m asking is that you hear me out before deciding what you think I’m saying.
And maybe part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this is that religion has been woven through quite a bit of my own life and family history.
Religion Has Been Part of My Story
I grew up in Utah, and my family history includes ancestors who were among the early Utah pioneers.
Religion was an enormous part of their story.
Those pioneers belonged to a religious community that experienced persecution, conflict, violence and eventually migration west in search of a place where they could establish their communities and practice their beliefs.
Their history is a reminder that religious freedom hasn’t always been extended equally to everyone.
But my family’s connection to religious history goes back even further.
While researching my ancestry, I discovered that some of my ancestors were living in the Salem, Massachusetts, area during the witch trials of 1692.
I don’t know what they personally witnessed, or whether they had any direct involvement. I don’t want to invent a family story where the records don’t give me one.
But it does make me stop and think.
Imagine living in a community where religious beliefs, fear, accusations and government authority became so tangled together that people could be imprisoned or executed.
That was nearly a century before the United States Constitution was written.
And it raises a question that still seems relevant today.
What happens when people become so convinced they’re right about their beliefs that they believe they have the authority to impose them on someone else?
My Own Religious Trail
For a significant part of my adult life, I was very involved in church.
During my military years, I attended Wayland Baptist University, and over the years I was involved with both Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God churches. I served as a deacon and in several other church leadership positions.
Church was an important part of my life.
Today, things look different. I haven’t regularly attended church in more than ten years. There wasn’t some dramatic falling out or moment when I decided religion was bad.
I simply got burned out.
I’ve questioned some things, changed my mind about some things, and become more comfortable admitting there are things I simply don’t have the answers to.
I still have friends who are pastors and church leaders, and I know many people whose faith is an enormously positive force in their lives. I respect that.
My own journey has simply convinced me that faith and conscience are deeply personal.
I once sat in church leadership. Today I don’t regularly sit in a church pew.
I’m still the same person, just at a different place along the trail.
And maybe that’s why religious freedom interests me more as I’ve gotten older.
The older I get, the less interested I am in telling someone else what they have to believe and the more interested I am in protecting their right to figure that out for themselves.
Our History Is a Little Messier Than We Sometimes Remember
We often hear that America was founded on religious freedom.
There’s truth in that statement.
But like most things in American history, the complete story is a little more complicated.
Some colonists came to North America seeking freedom to practice their religion.
Others came for economic opportunity, land, trade or a fresh start.
And some of those who wanted religious freedom for themselves weren’t particularly interested in extending that same freedom to people who believed differently.
Several colonies established or favored particular churches.
Religious dissenters could face restrictions, fines or other penalties.
The history of religious liberty in America isn’t simply a story of people arriving here and immediately agreeing that everyone should be free to believe whatever they wanted.
It was a long, often difficult argument over who should have that freedom.
And in some ways, we’re still having it.
It Wasn’t Just About Tea and Taxes Either
When we talk about the American Revolution, we often reduce it to a few familiar ideas.
Taxation without representation.
The Boston Tea Party.
Throwing off British rule.
Those things mattered.
But the broader argument involved political representation, individual rights, self-government and how much authority a government should have over the people it governed.
Religious liberty was part of the larger discussion about individual conscience and government power, even though it wasn’t the single cause of the Revolution.
And when the new country began developing its system of government, the relationship between religion and government was important enough to address directly.
Which brings me to something I find particularly interesting.
Apparently They Thought This Was Pretty Important
When the Constitution was written, Article VI said that no religious test could be required as a qualification for federal office or public trust.
Then came the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment begins:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
There are two ideas sitting right next to each other.
Government isn’t supposed to establish religion.
Government isn’t supposed to prohibit its free exercise.
Those are remarkably few words considering how many arguments we’ve managed to have about them over the last couple hundred years.
Originally, those provisions restricted the federal government. Their application to state and local governments developed later through constitutional law.
And the people who wrote and ratified these provisions weren’t living in a country where everyone agreed about religion.
Far from it.
They knew about established churches.
They knew about religious tests.
They knew about religious minorities.
They lived among states and communities with very different religious traditions.
And they certainly didn’t all agree with one another about religion.
I don’t want to oversimplify that history and suggest all of the Founders thought exactly alike about religion. They didn’t.
But clearly the relationship between government and individual conscience mattered enough to address directly in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
That gets my attention.
Freedom for Whom?
Here’s where I think religious freedom becomes more complicated.
It’s relatively easy to support religious freedom when we’re talking about people who believe the same things we do.
But what about someone whose beliefs are completely different?
A Christian.
A Jew.
A Muslim.
A Hindu.
A Buddhist.
A Latter-day Saint.
Someone following another religious tradition.
Or someone who doesn’t believe in God at all.
Do we believe all of them deserve the same freedom of conscience?
Even when their beliefs contradict our own?
Even when we believe they’re completely wrong?
Because that’s where the principle actually gets tested.
If religious freedom only applies to people who agree with us, I’m not sure we’re talking about religious freedom anymore.
We might just be asking for religious preference.
And those are two very different things.
When Belief and Individual Rights Collide
Religious freedom sounds fairly simple until someone’s religious beliefs come into conflict with someone else’s rights.
History certainly gives us examples of religious leaders, institutions and governments using faith and authority to control, exclude or harm people.
But history also teaches us something from the other direction.
Calling a religion strange, unpopular or even wrong can become its own form of intolerance, particularly when that judgment becomes an excuse to deny its followers equal rights.
That’s something I have to think about when I look at my own family history.
My Utah pioneer ancestors belonged to a religious minority whose beliefs were viewed with considerable suspicion and hostility.
Their beliefs were different from those of many of their neighbors.
But isn’t that exactly when religious freedom becomes important?
If religious liberty only protects beliefs the majority considers acceptable, then the majority ultimately gets to decide which religions deserve protection.
That doesn’t sound much like religious freedom either.
There’s another side of religious freedom that troubles me.
Throughout history, some religious groups and leaders have used their authority to control the very people who belong to their communities.
Sometimes that control comes through fear, guilt, intimidation, or the threat of losing family, friends, and the only community a person has ever known.
People may be discouraged from asking questions, questioning leadership, making personal decisions, or even leaving.
And that’s where I begin to struggle with the idea of religious freedom.
If someone is free to join a religion but isn’t truly free to question it or walk away, how free are they?
I understand that religious communities have beliefs, expectations, and standards for their members. People voluntarily accepting those expectations is part of religious freedom too.
And I understand that leaving a religious community can have painful social consequences without necessarily meaning anyone has broken the law.
But there’s a difference between choosing to follow a religious teaching and being controlled through fear, coercion, or abuse.
Religious freedom should protect the individual, not simply the institution.
There’s an important legal distinction here, too.
The First Amendment generally protects religious freedom against government interference. It doesn’t automatically make every harmful action by a private religious group a constitutional violation.
But religious organizations aren’t automatically exempt from otherwise applicable laws against violence, abuse or other unlawful conduct simply because they invoke religion. Exactly where legal protections and restrictions apply can be complicated.
And beyond the legal questions, I think there’s a moral one.
Shouldn’t people be able to question their beliefs, make decisions about their own lives, and leave a religious community without being subjected to coercion or abuse?
I don’t believe invoking religion should give anyone a free pass to strip another person of their dignity, independence, or basic human rights.
That doesn’t mean government should decide which religions are acceptable.
It means we need to remember that the freedom we’re trying to protect ultimately belongs to people.
Including people who question, disagree, change their beliefs, or decide to leave.
So I’m left wrestling with two ideas at the same time.
People should be protected from coercion, abuse and having someone else’s religious beliefs imposed upon them.
But…
People should also be protected from government or the majority deciding their religion is too strange, unpopular or different to deserve protection.
I don’t have a neat answer for exactly where that line should always be drawn.
That’s probably why I’m writing about it.
But Does Tolerance Mean Agreement?
I think this is where we sometimes get ourselves tangled up.
Religious tolerance doesn’t require us to agree with every religious belief.
It doesn’t require us to abandon our own convictions.
And it doesn’t mean every action becomes acceptable simply because someone claims a religious justification.
We can disagree about theology.
We can debate morality.
We can question religious teachings.
We can even believe someone else’s religious beliefs are completely wrong.
But disagreement and government coercion are two different things.
There’s a difference between saying:
“I believe this is right.”
And saying:
“Because I believe this is right, everyone else must live by it.”
That distinction matters.
Of course, deciding how religious freedom interacts with laws that apply to everyone isn’t always simple. Religious people also have the right to participate in public debate and advocate for their beliefs.
And religious freedom means government shouldn’t be hostile toward people simply because they practice a religion.
Protecting freedom of conscience has to work in more than one direction.
Maybe the Tension Is Part of the Point
I sometimes wonder whether we expect religious freedom to eliminate disagreement.
But perhaps that’s not what it was designed to do.
Maybe religious freedom exists because disagreement is inevitable.
People have different histories.
Different experiences.
Different beliefs.
Different understandings of God, morality and the purpose of life.
And some people have no religious beliefs at all.
We’re probably never going to settle all those differences.
I certainly don’t expect to.
But we still have to figure out how to live together.
How to respect one another’s rights.
How to protect religious practice without allowing religious authority to become a substitute for civil law.
How to protect people who don’t practice religion without treating religious people as though their beliefs are unwelcome.
None of that is particularly simple.
But maybe protecting a freedom that only works when everyone agrees wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment anyway.
I’ve Been Thinking…
Maybe religious freedom was never supposed to mean that someday we’d all agree about religion.
Maybe it exists precisely because we never will.
Religious freedom should be a shield that protects our conscience, not a sword we use to impose our conscience on somebody else.
If I expect the Constitution to protect my right to believe, worship, question, change my beliefs, or even walk a different religious path altogether, then I should be willing to defend that same freedom for you.
Even when I think you’re wrong.
Maybe especially then.
Because if religious freedom only applies to people who believe the same things we do, I’m not sure we can really call it freedom.
Sources & Further Reading
For anyone interested in digging a little deeper into the history and constitutional principles discussed here, these are some useful resources:
- The Constitution of the United States, National Archives. Article VI and the prohibition on religious tests for federal office.
- The Bill of Rights, National Archives. The First Amendment’s protections for religious freedom.
- Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, Library of Congress. Religion in colonial America, the Revolution, and the early United States.
- Constitution Annotated, Library of Congress. Historical and legal explanations of the First Amendment.
- The Salem Witch Trials, University of Virginia. Historical records relating to the 1692 trials.
- Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail, National Park Service. Historical background on the westward migration of Latter-day Saint pioneers.
These resources provide historical context for the article. The personal reflections and conclusions are my own.
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