In Of True Religion, Augustine writes that true religion consists in worshipping the one God, ‘acknowledged with purest piety to be the beginning of all existing things, originating, perfecting and containing the universe’.1 This he contrasts with both pagan worship – the worship of created things – and the worship of vice. For Augustine, worship entails orienting one’s being. The person, in his or her ultimate love, is either directed towards God, the source and sustainer of all creation, or else the empty ‘nothing’ of mere transitory creation.2 This was not a matter of a mere set of beliefs. Augustine describes religion as a ‘binding’.3 In this he echoes the Roman usage, in which religio referred to cultic observances and social obligations. Religio was related to religare, meaning ‘to bind up’ or ‘to bind together’.4 True religion thus meant cultivating through practices a life habitually oriented to God. Nor for Augustine is true religion a matter simply for the individual, or else a domain isolated from political life. Again, in Of True Religion, Augustine writes that true religion entails a body of people – the Church catholic – that acts as the ‘guardians of truth and followers of right’. And this body, he continues, ‘makes use of the nations as material for its operations’.5 Indeed, Augustine considers that the ruler must love perfect justice and thus render what is due to God. This means the ruler is exhorted to ‘cleave to God, the sole ruler of all things’.6

Religious liberty protects the quest for true religion. It facilitates the free creation of communities of solidarity, fraternity, and charity, or what we may call ‘right relationship’, seeking the truth about God and instantiating this in manifold contexts. This claim, developed in this book, is a response to a question: why should we care about religious liberty? What purpose does it serve within a just political community? In recent years, many commentators have argued that religious liberty fundamentally concerns personal autonomy. This fits with the state’s wider duty to promote equal concern and respect between different conceptions of the good or claims of authenticity. Courts have often followed in similar vein. Such a view both challenges treating religious liberty with any special concern, and questions the public role and life of religious traditions more generally. The Muslim woman’s headscarf or a Christian’s cross may be indistinguishable from other curtailed autonomy interests in the workplace. A community adopting a crucifix in civic contexts disrespects its non-conforming citizens. The religious organisation refusing to hire persons who do not adhere to its religious beliefs is suspiciously limiting the self-determination or autonomy interests of members of the public. Religion, according to this liberal egalitarian account of religious liberty and political authority, is both abstracted and perceived as a threat. Paradoxically, it becomes a capacious category of personal autonomy or authenticity, seemingly expanding to a general liberty for all persons, but at the same time it is increasingly subjected to state interests, especially when it runs contrary to the egalitarian ethos. Religion is both flattened out and contained in aid of a vision, ultimately, of ethical individualism.

I have presented two competing accounts of religious liberty. The liberal egalitarian account understands religious liberty as signifying respect for conscience, identity, or authenticity. Religious liberty consequently is not limited to particular traditions of religious belief and practice, but concerns the broader value of personal autonomy or the individual’s capacity for self-definition. This value is supported by a ‘neutral’ state – one that furthers and manages individual claim-rights, potentially against the attempts of traditional religious groups to bind individuals or else shape the ends of civil authority. In contrast, the ecclesiological account is focused on persons in relationship or forming communities of solidarity, fraternity, and charity, oriented to God and neighbour. The liberty of such communities is grounded on this quest for a good end. This does not deny the importance of individual persons. There remains a Romantic sense of the person’s creativity that secures the person’s fundamental value. Rather than being a fungible instance of an individual pursuing a conception of the good, he or she is a unique gift, exercising talents for a common life or changing the network of relations around him or her. Nor does this account ignore pluralism; rather, it casts plural traditions as further contributions to a shared quest. They are not simply vehicles for individual interests but rather are recognised as differently pursuing shared goods integral to our common life. On this account, civil authority is to support this religious quest. It is a complementary arm for pursuing human flourishing or right relationship. It is to respond to the exhortations of the Church, encourage the pursuit of charity at multiple levels of authority, support groups pursuing different goods – like education or welfare – that further this end, and be attentive to claims of conscience shaped by this quest.

In this chapter, I consider three attempts to articulate the special importance of religious liberty, each framed within an argument pointing to the ongoing importance of the Church to questions of political authority or the liberty of civil society. Each attempt – from John Finnis, Richard Garnett, and Nicholas Wolterstorff – is developed by scholars influenced and shaped by Christian thought.

Legal discourse increasingly struggles to understand why religious liberty matters. Many prominent scholars have suggested religion is one possibility in the individual’s cultivation of authenticity, or a species of the individual’s ethical freedom – albeit one that, nevertheless, still raises difficulties for secular authority. On this account, accommodating religious belief when it clashes with the general law, providing favourable tax relief for religious bodies, or endorsing religious belief as part of the state’s identity is problematic. These are possible instances of illegitimate discriminatory action. By singling out religion as a category for special demand or special solicitude, they are contrary to equality. Why religion, rather than any other form of individual commitment? Why should the state, concerned with facilitating and negotiating diverse conceptions of the good life, afford religion such privileges?

Throughout this book, I have been building a contrast between two political imaginaries shaping different accounts of religious liberty. In the first, the modern imaginary leads to the liberal egalitarian account of religious liberty. It characterises politics as a space for negotiating and protecting claims of right, in which religion is now commonly associated with the individual’s capacity to develop his or her own conception of the good, convictions, or authenticity. Such a space is secular; that is, it is differentiated from religion in the end that it must serve. Indeed, it must be secular in order to stand as the neutral arbiter over and above any religious difference. In the previous chapter, I discussed three leading Christian scholars whose arguments tend towards accepting a secularised space of politics, for the sake of protecting pluralism (or the multiple and competing expressions of liberty) or an understanding of natural incommensurable goods. In both cases, politics is differentiated from religious ends. But I also suggested that the historical emphasis has been on a more theopolitical imaginary. Here, the Christian tradition has concerned itself with articulating and forming a community in which a plurality of groups could be understood as oriented towards shared ends under the encouraging and cooperative arms of spiritual and civic authority. I have referred to this end as ‘true religion’, and it is this that religious liberty serves.

I have presented an understanding of religious liberty as part of a wider political imagination, one concerned with the ends of political authority and its relationship to the Church, and the plural associations that are encouraged by this duality. In particular, I have framed religious liberty as central to the quest for true religion – to participate in God’s own life and seek relationships of solidarity, fraternity, and charity. Religious liberty on this account may be manifested as a commitment to the autonomy of different groups forming our common life – in order to be a site of authority, the Church must have independence. But if there was uniform agreement on what pursuing true religion entails, then our questions of liberty may be more limited. Religious liberty could still be a compound signifier for reflection, but it may focus on dividing labour or positioning the authority of different groups in order to best pursue a (known) shared end. However, this is not the reality. Even if we agree that there is a shared quest, we still face disagreement on what its fulfilment requires. We still face difference; we continue to exist in a society with plural beliefs.