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This chapter details the end of exclusive religious establishments and the birth of a more civil religious climate in America. As the Revolution neared, the ideal of “religious liberty” assumed prominence. At the same time, the traditional ideal of toleration was rejected by those whose ancestors would have gladly received it. Voluminous newspaper and pamphlet disputes over a colonial Anglican bishop and the campaigns for religious liberty in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania revealed the contours of a new cultural environment. In the integrated religious setting of pre-revolutionary America, harsh language itself could seem like a violation of religious liberty. With a much larger range of groups participating freely in the discussion of public problems, the scope of injury was widened to include the intangible slights that once would have gone unnoticed. The end of toleration left revolutionary-era Americans with the challenging task of articulating their differences through inoffensive rhetoric.

Although the religious convictions and practices of many presidents have been ignored, Washington’s have been closely scrutinized and endlessly debated. Some authors have portrayed the Virginian as the epitome of piety, while others have depicted him as the patron saint of skepticism. Washington was a life-long Episcopalian, but the fact that he said almost nothing publicly or privately about the precise nature of his beliefs has evoked competing claims that he was a devout Christian, a Unitarian, a “warm deist”, and a “theistic rationalist”. One point, however, is not debatable: Washington strongly believed that providence played a major role in helping the United States win the Revolutionary War and function successfully as a republic. Arguably no president has stressed the role of providence in the nation’s history more than Washington. His religious convictions are clearly evident in the pivotal role he played in helping establish religious liberty and toleration as key principles of the new nation. As president, Washington was the first major spokesperson and practitioner of American civil religion, and after his death he became a principal figure in its development.

Recognizing that the construction and institutionalization of religious liberty rights is at once a political and a legal project, this chapter proceeds in two main sections. The first focuses on the political and socio-cultural processes in Muslim states that have interacted over time to institutionalize Islamic law and identity at national and transnational levels. This history is essential, not least because the modern constitutions of many relevant states were adopted during the 1970s and 1980s amidst struggles marked by Arab nationalism, Islamism, and Islamic identity formation. Hence, in the second section, the constitutional consequences of these historical-political processes are explored via specific examination of religious liberty in the laws and practices of four influential countries—Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan.

This introductory chapter discusses first, the relationship between religious liberty and human rights; and second, the global resurgence of religion and its significance for contemporary international law and politics. Religious liberty rights merit special attention in part because they are closely correlated with the observance of other human rights. This connection assumes even greater significance in view of the second point, namely, that the world is experiencing a religious resurgence with profound implications for contemporary international relations. To be more precise, it is not so much that greater numbers of people are religious but rather that their religiosity has acquired new theoretical and empirical salience for international law and politics.

This chapter examines Priestley's political ideas and radical reputation. It argues that the most important dimensions of Priestley's political philosophy are his delineation of a specific sphere for civil liberty, his arguments for freedom of inquiry, and his belief that political activity should aim at creating the optimal conditions for preserving civil liberty and for a free and open society in which truth would progress. Both in his insistent arguments for liberty of thought and in his radicalization of Locke on sovereignty and toleration, he conformed and contributed to major trends within the Enlightenment.

Religious liberty depends on keeping the government out of religious matters, whereas religious toleration is a gift of government. Virginia's Bill for Religious Liberty and Massachusetts’ Constitution of 1780 illustrated these contrasting concepts. The modern preoccupation with the meaning of establishment of religion overlooks the significance to Americans in 1789, of the free exercise of religion. So, too, modern emphasis on the image of “separation of Church and State” leads scholars away from an appreciation of the historical meaning of the Amendment.

The enactment of the First Amendment did not automatically guarantee religious liberty. Americans came to see themselves as a Protestant Nation and enacted a de facto establishment of religion. The advent of Catholic immigrants provided the opposition and diversity needed to vindicate religious freedom. Historians have generally failed to recognize this development, and many of them continue to advocate an unhistorical nonpreferential establishment of religion, or to erroneously describe the Amendment as creating a “wall of separation” between Church and State.

The American Revolution heightened the differences between Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists as the dissenters addressed the political crisis through petitions and met the resultant disestablishment of the Church of England on their own terms. Presbyterians generally embraced the Revolutionary cause, but they maneuvered primarily to achieve their long‐sought goal of gaining parity with the Anglican, now Protestant Episcopal Church, allowing for multiple establishments when the plans included Presbyterians. Baptists faced the matters resolved to maintain their absolute principles, and they were pleasantly surprised when Virginia, prompted by Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, seemed to embrace some Baptist truth by striking down establishment. Francis Asbury dreamed that Methodists could stay neutral, truly separating religion from unholy matters, but he suffered when John Wesley rebuked the patriots and when most Methodist leaders fled the troubled colonies. Methodism would recover, but only by transforming into an American denomination and joining the other evangelicals already in contention for their own particular notions of religious liberty.

Outlines the extent to which modern scholars have strayed from an understanding of the history surrounding the First Amendment, and elevated logic over history. Instead of recognizing religious liberty as a “natural right,” and the Constitution as a limitation on government, they have interpreted the First Amendment as augmenting the power of government. This development has brought about what both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton especially feared.

Given dissenters' central role in Virginia's adoption of religious liberty, their understanding of the meaning of religious freedom takes on particular importance. Virginia's evangelical dissenters, for both religious and political reasons, supported a strict separation of church and state and opposed any formal notion that the United States was a “Christian nation.” They insisted that all government privileges and rights be equally available to all people, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist. Contrary to modern suggestions that such views are secular, dissenters were deeply concerned about the corrupting influence of the state on the church. Dissenters also supported a very robust free exercise of religion, including a public religious discourse. They would have supported exemption from some laws which, while nominally nondiscriminatory towards religion, particularly impacted worship or religion.

Virginia's history of religious persecution and religious freedom played a central role in adoption of the First Amendment to the Constitution and the subsequent evolution of American religious freedom, and it is appropriate that the Virginia experience continue to be given a central place in its understanding. Unfortunately, the role of dissenters has often been underestimated. This has occurred, in part, by the elevation of the views of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in spite of Madison's particular interest in promoting the dissenters' views. Historic forgetfulness has also been encouraged by the triumphant role that former dissenters claimed in the Revolution—not wishing to stress the contingent nature of their support—and the desire of former Anglicans to minimize any religious conflict. The dissenters' story demonstrates the highly contingent nature of the development of religious freedom in early America and the significance of their fight. Further, the politicization of the dissenters in the Revolutionary negotiations for religious freedom and the resulting republicanization of Virginia were to play an important role in the development of the new republic.

This chapter is divided into the following sections: the illusion of neutrality, is the state self-sufficient?, and a common rationality. Democracy has resulted in the contemporary stress on human rights, which provide protection against the tyranny of the majority. Religious liberty has always been seen as one of the most prominent among those rights, going to the heart of what it is to be a human being, and being able to choose what kind of life to live. The first section argues that advocating neutrality restricts the scope of religion. The second section discusses that separation of religion and religious forms of reasoning, from any relevance to the public is far from neutral in its effects. The last section recommends that religious voices should be heard in a public debate about the proper basis for society.

This chapter provides an overview of religion-based medical neglect of children, in which devout parents forego providing adequate medical care to their ailing sons and daughters because the doctrines of their religious faiths prohibit it. It outlines the pervasiveness of the phenomenon among members of particular Christian churches (including Christian Science) in the United States, describing in general terms how, since the late 19th century, it has resulted in numerous deaths and injuries to children. The chapter then details how these injuries have generated tangled legal conflicts – implicating such issues as religious liberty and children's rights – when prosecutors have filed criminal charges against parents who have chosen faith-healing practices over medicine. The chapter pays particular attention to how murky manslaughter and child neglect statutes have complicated such legal cases.

According to the prevailing view, freedom of religion is necessarily a condition that can exist only in the absence of an established church or faith. A nation that singles out a church for special privileges or accords it a unique higher status is, broadly speaking, being ‘unfair’ and unjustly discriminates against adherents of other faiths (including those of no religion). Those who do not belong to the established faith may feel marginalised, perhaps even demeaned. This chapter argues that establishment is not antithetical to religious freedom and that religious liberty, properly understood, can co-exist with religious establishment as a matter of principle. It rejects the incompatibility position, namely, that the two concepts, religious freedom and establishment, are inherently at odds with one another. The contrary view, the compatibility position, is a stance that sees no inherent dissonance between the two concepts. The chapter concludes by looking at the principal objections to the compatibility defence — the alienation and inequality charges — and briefly reiterates the practical impossibility of perfect state neutrality.

This chapter considers the approach to limits to religious liberty, together with the questions of clashes between religious liberty and other constitutional or human rights and the application of religious liberty between private parties. There are various ways that religious freedom can be restricted to more ‘manageable’ proportions. There are at least five such limiting strategies, four of which involve making a distinction between the realm that is unhampered by the law and the restricted realm by focusing on the type of belief or the consequences of the action involved. These are the belief-action distinction; distinction between other-regarding and self-regarding acts; distinction between religiously compelled and religiously motivated acts; and distinction between core and peripheral beliefs. After explaining and critiquing each one, a fifth strategy, reasonable limitation, is discussed along with the reasons why this strategy is preferable over the others.

This chapter confronts the question of what to do about our Sikh boy and rural boy discussed in the introduction if there really is no reason to tolerate only the former's claim of conscience for carrying a weapon in places where that is ordinarily prohibited. It argues that both boys should be out of luck: that there should not be exemptions to general laws with neutral purposes, unless those exemptions do not shift burdens or risks onto others. It also considers whether the moral ideal of toleration, as articulated and defended in this book, is incompatible with state establishment or disestablishment of religion generally. The chapter argues that it is not, and that a tolerant state could, in principle, be either a religious or antireligious one.

In 1791, the authors of the American Bill of Rights thought religious freedom was so fundamental to the liberty of the individual and to justice in their communities that they picked it to be the first guarantee in the First Amendment they made to their constitution. So far none of the major theorists has been able to provide a satisfactory account of what rights and freedoms can be claimed in the name of some higher spiritual or moral force. Religious rights are an anomaly for those who say judicial review is all about process and democracy, and are either explained away or just ignored. This chapter discusses the interpretivism of American judges and the pragmatism of the German judges in dealing with issues on freedom of religion, along with religious liberty and popular sovereignty, religious liberty on the Sabbath, religious liberty and state morality.