Historical Origins of Religious Freedom

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, do Middle Eastern nations need a new relationship between religion and state? On May 14, Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Project held a policy briefing with top experts designed to identify specific policy lessons concerning religion's future political role in Arab Spring countries.

Religious freedom has been called America’s “first freedom.” But does it warrant such a special status? What, if anything, distinguishes religious freedom from other protected rights like the freedom of speech or assembly? Is religious freedom a right that stands on its own, or is it a subset of a broader freedom of conscience?

How such questions are answered carries profound consequences for the treatment of religion in American public life and in American foreign policy. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the Religious Freedom Project hosted a keynote debate at Georgetown University on the question of the uniqueness of religious freedom. Debating this critical issue were Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman and Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell.

Coinciding with the debate, the event featured two related panels to examine the meaning and reach of religious freedom. The morning panel explored the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and secular influences on religious freedom in the West. The afternoon panel addressed the universality of religious freedom and its compatibility with non-Western cultures.

On April 29, 2011 the Religious Freedom Project gathered a group of eminent scholars of religion to critically review a sourcebook of texts, compiled from the five major world religions, that traces the conceptual development of religious freedom within each tradition. Though the idea of a right to religious freedom emerged from the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism have rich histories of thinking through many of the component elements which constitute religious freedom in full such as the treatment of other religions and the place of religion in public life. The seminar resulted in a lively and constructive discussion of great benefit to the published and web-based versions of the sourcebook on the historical origins of religious freedom.