But in order to really participate, we need to know our rights -- otherwise we may lose them. The highest law in our land is the U.S. Constitution, which has some amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees that the government can never deprive people in the U.S. of certain fundamental rights including the right to freedom of religion and to free speech and the due process of law. Many federal and state laws give us additional rights, too.
Our country's founders -- who were of different religious backgrounds themselves -- knew the best way to protect religious liberty was to keep the government out of religion. So they created the First Amendment -- to guarantee the separation of church and state. This fundamental freedom is a major reason why the U.S. has managed to avoid a lot of the religious conflicts that have torn so many other nations apart.
Religious Freedom
No. The public schools are run by the government. Therefore, they must obey the First Amendment. This means that while they can teach about the influences of religion in history, literature, and philosophy -- they can't promote religious beliefs or practices as part of the curriculum. Since private and parochial schools aren't run by the government, the First Amendment doesn't apply to them.
Think about your friends who have different faiths or no religious beliefs at all. They'd still feel excluded from their own graduation exercises. Or worse, they'd feel like the school thought your religion was better than theirs. Put the shoe on the other foot for a second and think about how that would make you feel!
It depends. Making Christmas stockings, Easter eggs or Hannukah dreidels is probably okay because, over the years, these have become secular customs that people of many different backgrounds enjoy. But a Nativity pageant, which is full of religious meaning, could be considered unconstitutional.
The organized distribution of Bibles or any other holy book during the school day is unconstitutional, even if teachers aren't the ones actually handing out the Bibles, and even if they're not used as a part of the school's educational program. That's because the school building or grounds are still being used to spread a religious doctrine at a time when students are required to be there.
Religious freedom is a fundamental human right and the first among rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. It is the right to think, express and act upon what you deeply believe, according to the dictates of conscience. Read more.
Religious freedom, or freedom of conscience, is critical to the health of a diverse society. It allows different faiths and beliefs to flourish. Religious freedom protects the rights of all groups and individuals, including the most vulnerable, whether religious or not.
Religion has a vital place in society. To exert its positive influence, religious organizations and people need physical, social and legal space to practice their religion. All lawful voices should be heard in the public square. Neither religious nor secular voices should be silenced. Religion is not just private worship; it involves public expression on social and moral issues.
Religious freedom is as much a duty as it is a right. Religious freedom and civility depend upon each other and form a mutual obligation founded on the inherent dignity of each person. Religious organizations and people are responsible to state their views reasonably and respectfully.
Freedom House provides emergency assistance to religious freedom defenders, civil society organizations, and survivors of religious persecution in dozens of countries. This assistance has benefitted individuals from more than a dozen different faiths. It covers medical treatment, legal representation, prison visits, trial monitoring, dependent support, and temporary relocation. We also support local initiatives to promote tolerance and proactively address hostility toward religious minority groups and ongoing tensions between different faith communities. If you would like to interview a Freedom House expert on this topic, please email [email protected].
Jailed Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti was honored with Freedom Award in absentia by the democracy watchdog group Freedom House. An outspoken economics professor who regularly highlighted the religious and cultural persecution of the Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority in China, Tohti was charged with promoting ethnic separatism and was handed a life sentence.
More often than not, Wenger demonstrates, religious freedom talk worked to privilege the dominant white Christian population. At the same time, a diverse array of minority groups at home and colonized people abroad invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life. In so doing they posed sharp challenges to the racial and religious exclusions of American life. People of almost every religious stripe have argued, debated, negotiated, and brought into being an ideal called American religious freedom, subtly transforming their own identities and traditions in the process. In a post-9/11 world, Wenger reflects, public attention to religious freedom and its implications is as consequential as it has ever been. About the Author Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale University, is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom. For more information about Tisa Wenger, visit the Author Page.
Religious freedom allows the Church, and all religious communities, to live out their faith in public and to serve the good of all. Beginning June 22, the feast of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher, the USCCB invites Catholics to pray, reflect, and act to promote religious freedom.
Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom to change one's religion or beliefs,[1] "the right not to profess any religion or belief",[2] or "not to practise a religion" (often referred to as "freedom from religion").[3]
Freedom of religion is considered by many people and most nations to be a fundamental human right.[4][5] In a country with a state religion, freedom of religion is generally considered to mean that the government permits religious practices of other sects besides the state religion, and does not persecute believers in other faiths (or those who have no faith).
Freedom of religion goes beyond freedom of belief, which allows the right to believe what a person, group, or religion wishes, but it does not necessarily allow the right to practice the religion or belief openly and outwardly in a public manner, which some believe is a central facet of religious freedom.[6] Freedom of worship is uncertain but may be considered to fall between the two terms. The term "belief" is considered inclusive of all forms of irreligion, including atheism, humanism, existentialism or other schools of thought. Whether non-believers or humanists should be considered for the purposes of freedom of religion is a contested question in legal and constitutional contexts. Crucial in the consideration of this liberty is whether religious practices and motivated actions which would otherwise violate secular law should be permitted due to the safeguarding freedom of religion, such as (in American jurisprudence) United States v. Reynolds or Wisconsin v. Yoder, (in European law) S.A.S. v. France, and numerous other jurisdictions.
Historically, freedom of religion has been used to refer to the tolerance of different theological systems of belief, while freedom of worship has been defined as freedom of individual action. Each of these have existed to varying degrees. While many countries have accepted some form of religious freedom, this has also often been limited in practice through punitive taxation, repressive social legislation, and political disenfranchisement. An example commonly cited by scholars is the status of dhimmis under Islamic sharia law. Stemming from the Pact of Umar and literally meaning "protected individuals", it is often argued that non-Muslims possessing the dhimmi status in medieval Islamic societies enjoyed greater freedoms than non-Christians in most medieval European societies, while duly noting that the protection was limited because of regulation by and obligations to government such as taxation (compare jizya and zakat) and military service differed between religions. In modern concepts of religious freedom, the law is usually blind to religious affiliation in conferring such matters.
The Romans tolerated most religions, including Judaism, and encouraged local subjects to continue worshipping their own gods. They did not however, tolerate Christianity until it was legalised by the Roman emperor Galerius in 311. Holmes and Bickers note that as long as Christianity was treated as a part of Judaism it enjoyed the same freedom, but the Christian claim to religious exclusivity meant its followers found themselves subject to hostility.[10]
The early Christian apologist Tertullian was the first-known writer referring to the term libertas religionis.[11] The Edict of Milan guaranteed freedom of religion in the Roman Empire until the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which outlawed all religions except Christianity.
Following a period of fighting lasting around a hundred years before 620 AD which mainly involved Arab and Jewish inhabitants of Medina (then known as Yathrib), religious freedom for Muslims, Jews and pagans was declared by Muhammad in the Constitution of Medina. In early Muslim history (until mid 11th century), most Islamic scholars maintained a level of separation from the state which helped to establish some elements of institutional religious freedom. The Islamic Caliphate later guaranteed religious freedom under the conditions that non-Muslim communities accept dhimmi status and their adult males pay the jizya tax instead of the zakat paid by Muslim citizens.[12] Though Dhimmis were not given the same political rights as Muslims, they nevertheless did enjoy equality under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.[13][14][15] 2ff7e9595c
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