Conscience's orientation toward action contributes to its relational nature by drawing the believer beyond the boundaries of her mind and into her social environment. When Daniel Seeger sought an exemption from military service based on his conscientious opposition to war, he defied any effort to equate conscience with belief. If the government had responded to his claim by assuring him that the United States would never coerce him to abandon his belief that war is immoral, the gesture would have been properly ridiculed as absurd. Defining freedom of conscience as freedom of belief avoids the tough questions (how often does the state attempt to compel belief today?), but it eviscerates the power of conscience, which is more properly understood as moral belief applied to conduct.

This understanding of conscience, however, does not always prevail. Both houses of the British Parliament recently issued a report analyzing new regulations prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in the provision of public services. The report addressed whether the prohibition was problematic as applied to religious providers, particularly as applied to religious schools that were now forbidden from teaching that homosexuality is immoral. What is noteworthy is not so much that the government approved the regulations, but that it did so by explicitly equating conscience with belief: