FREEDOM OF RELIGION
From Tolerated Practice to Human Right
Keywords:
Freedom, Religion, Tolerance, Humanity, Anthropology, Human RightsAbstract
Freedom of religion is asserted in the constitutions and the charters and bills of rights of nations around the world, and yet it is one of the most contested of the basic human freedoms. From the ‘Rock Edicts’ of King Piyadasi in the third century BCE, to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities of 1992,1 we find repeated the statement that communities and individuals should be free to believe and to worship as they wish, and not be subject to compulsion or restriction on matters of religion. At the same time, however, such freedom has consistently met with resistance if not outright opposition, and even today many countries attempt to restrict not only change of belief or conversion, but the exercise of religious practice.
References
General Assembly resolution 47/135, 18 December 1992; for the text, see http://www.unhchr.ch/html/ menu3/b/d_minori.htm.
The 14 Rock Edicts, # 12; see M. Searle Bates, Religious Liberty: An Inquiry, New York: International Missionary Council, 1945, 196.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 edition, s.v. “Constantine the Great,” by Charles G. Herbermann and Georg Grupp.
Ad Scapulam, Chapter ii, trans. S. Thelwall, http://www.earlychristian writings.com/text/tertullian05.html [From the Christian Classics Electronic Library server, at Wheaton College; modified for the Tertullian Project, 6 July 2001].
The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 edition, s.v. “History of Toleration,” by Herbert Thurston.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia, 1914 edition, s.v. “Religious Toleration,” J. Pohle.
Aron Rodrigue, “Difference and Tolerance in the Ottoman Empire” (Interview by Nancy Reynolds), Stanford Humanities Review 5 (Fall 1995), 81-92; available also at http://www.stanford.edu/ group/ SHR/ 5-1/text/rodrigue.html.Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453-1923, London: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
American Forum for Global Education, “Turkish Toleration,” in Spotlight on Turkey: Continuity and Change. An Interdisciplinary Curriculum, ed. Linda Arkin, Hazel Sara Greenberg, and Abby Barasch, New York: American Forum for Global Education, 1992; see http://www.globaled.org/nyworld/ materials/ottoman/turkish. html.
Sanford H. Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America: A History, New York: Macmillan, 1902, 13.
Archives of Maryland, Baltimore, 1883, 1: 244-47; See http://www. swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/56-mar.html.
Cyrus Adler, Max J. Kohler, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, and D. M. Hermalin, “New York,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 190106; this resource is available online at www.jewishencyclopedia.com.
A Letter Concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple, London, Awnsham Churchill, 1689.
A Letter Concerning Toleration, Latin and English texts revised and edited with variants and an introduction by Mario Montuori, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963.
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in The Works of John Locke in Nine Volumes, 12th ed., London: Rivington, 1824, vol. 2.
Leslie Armour, “Philosophical Anthropology, the Saumur Philosophers, and Economic Rights,” in Philosophical Theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ed. William Sweet, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2003, 57.
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html. See also W. W. Hening ed., Statutes at Large of Virginia, 12 (1823), 84-86.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/ P9SYLL.HTM; the document refers the reader to Pius IX’s allocution “Maxima quidem” (9 June 1862) and Damnatio “Multiplices inter” (10 June 1851).
Leo XIII, Encyclical “Immortale Dei” (1 November 1885); see H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 9th ed., Freiburg, 1900, n. 1701.
John Henry Newman, A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation: Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (1874), New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900, vol. 2. See http://www.newmanreader.org/ works/ anglicans/ volume2/ gladstone/ section7.html.
Jacques Maritain, Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice, ed. William Sweet, South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s, 2001, 79.
General Assembly Resolution 36/55 of 25 November 1981; for the text of this document, see http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/religion.htm.
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/ comment/story.html?id=b990cbe4-0284-4fbc-a062-7621b49a7961.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw. com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=322&invol=78.
http://members.aol.com/patriarchy/ definitions/humanism_religion.htm and “Secular Humanism in U. S. Supreme Court Cases,” http://members.tripod. com/%7Ecandst/sec-hum3.htm.
people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/justicepaptop3.html; see Wisconsin V. Yoder Et Al., No. 70-110 Supreme Court of the United States - 406 U.S. 205; 92 S. Ct. 1526; 32 L. Ed. 2d 15; 1972 U.S. LEXIS 144 - December 8, 1971, Argued - May 15, 1972, Decided. See http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/yoder.html.
