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Freedom of religion is the individual's right or freedom to hold whatever religious beliefs he
or she wishes, or none at all. This freedom extends mere freedom of
thought by adding the freedom of worship and the freedom of religious
congregation, and has become regarded in the 20th century as one of the basic human rights.
Most importantly the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the freedom to change religions.
Freedom of religion was the normal rule in Antiquity, where a syncretic
point-of-view identified strange deities as foreigner's acceptable conceptions of more familiar gods. A community of traders
could expect to be autonomous in a city under their own laws, with freedom to worship their own gods. Some of the historical
exceptions have been where the revealed religions have been in a position of power: Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and
Islam; others have been where the established order has felt threatened, as shown in the trial of Socrates or where the ruler has been deified, as in Rome or the Persian empire.
Freedom of religion in India was encapsulated in an inscription of Asoka:
- "King Piyadasi (Ashok) dear to the Gods, honours all sects, the ascetics (hermits) or those who dwell at home, he honours
them with charity and in other ways. But the King, dear to the Gods, attributes less importance to this charity and these honours
than to the vow of seeing the reign of virtues, which constitutes the essential part of them. For all these virtues there is a
common source, modesty of speech. That is to say, One must not exalt one’s creed discrediting all others, nor must one
degrade these others Without legitimate reasons. One must, on the contrary, render to other creeds the honour befitting
them.”
During history some countries have accepted some form of freedom of religion, though in actual practice that theoretical
freedom was delimited through punitive taxation, repressive social legislation and political disenfranchisement. Compare examples
of individual freedom in Poland or the Muslim
tradition of dhimmis, literally "protected individuals" professing an officially
tolerated non-Muslim religion. These protections, being highly selective and advanced to communities rather than individual,
could also be withdrawn.
In most parts of European society there was no individual freedom of religion from the suppression of non-Christian worship
with the Theodosian decrees of 391 AD, under the influence of Ambrose of Milan until the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Even 16th
century edicts of toleration (Augsburg, Nantes) left little room for individual freedom of conscience, under the principal of cuius regio eius religio ("to each region, its own religion"), and did not extend toleration
to small powerless minorities, like Anabaptists.
Earlier, the ideas of religious tolerance on the political level were invented in the Central Europe: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Hungary and
Austria and were practised since the 16th century. With the expulsion of Polish
brethren accused of high treason during the Deluge, the Central European
ideas of tolerance were propagated to the Netherlands. Until the Enlightenment it was widely accepted, however not always fully
implemented:
On the other side of the ledger,
In 1944 a joint committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America and the Foreign
Missions Conference of North America, formulated a “Statement on Religious Liberty”
- “Religious Liberty shall be interpreted to include freedom to worship according to conscience and to bring up children
in the faith of their parents; freedom for the individual to change his religion; freedom to preach, educate, publish and carry
on missionary activities; and freedom to organise with others, and to acquire and hold property, for these purposes.”
The struggle to reach that point in the midst of World War II was a
Christian struggle.
The Separation of Church and State
and laïcité are related, but different concepts.
Controversies in freedom of religion
See also
External links
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