Freedom of belief

Culture

Freedom

Freedom of Belief

20 September 2023

8 min read

Why religious liberty? Love, actually

Claims for religious freedom can be controversial. Nathan Chapman weighs up approaches to accommodating them, not just legally but in the light of love.

Nathan S. Chapman

Nathan S. Chapman is a scholar of constitutional rights, religious liberty, and Christianity and the law. He is a Professor of Law at the University of Georgia.

A montage of people praying with hands held together.

A detail of Norman Rockwell's 1943 Freedom of Worship illustration.

Norman Rockwell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Religious liberty is a cornerstone of liberal democracy. The freedom of religious belief and practice is enshrined in human rights instruments, national constitutions, and legislation. Usually, those rights are uncontroversial. Only when someone claims a right to do something that threatens the rights of others – such as a right to decline to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding – do most observers take notice. Unfortunately, in controversial cases the values underlying both of the competing rights claims tend to get lost in political rhetoric. The arguments against the religious liberty claims may be obvious - concerns about security, or public health, equal treatment of LGBTQIA+ persons - but for many it is harder to see the value of allowing dissenters to peacefully practice their religion.

So, what is the point of religious liberty? Several justifications have deep historical and philosophical roots. Top of the list is reducing conflict: from the view of believers, God demands one thing, society another. Best to let believers have their way so long as they are peaceful about it. Concerns about political conflict were one of the key reasons for the rise of religious tolerance in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

This reason goes only so far, though—only far enough to prevent actual conflict. It does nothing to justify freedom for groups or individuals who pose no threat to political stability, perhaps because they are small, or because they are politically withdrawn. And focusing exclusively on conflict is intellectually unsatisfying; it considers only the effects of religious difference instead of digging into why people adhere to unpopular religious practices. For that, we need an insider's point of view. We need to see why believers have often supported religious liberty not only as a political expedient, but because they have believed religion required religious liberty for everyone.

Consider two Christian statements of rationale for religious liberty that have become canonical among western democracies. The first comes from John Locke:

“true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God.”

Such “persuasion” must be free, and it must be sincere. Under this view, compelled religious belief is an oxymoron; it doesn’t work, and even if it did, it would do the believer no good--salvation requires voluntary belief. Therefore, says Locke, the “civil” jurisdiction and the “spiritual” jurisdiction are strictly separate, with the civil magistrate having no say over spiritual matters. This argument went a long way toward justifying the government’s toleration of dissenting assemblies, preaching, and worship. But toleration goes only so far. It does not include freedom from any legal duty that is rightly within the domain of the civil magistrate. For instance, a religious pacifist--Christian, Buddhist, or otherwise--who objects to mandatory military service is out of luck.

James Madison, the architect of the U.S. Bill of Rights, was more sympathetic to dissenters. When Virginia tried to make taxpayers pay tithes to their local churches, Madison pointed to the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776):

“Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”

At first glance, this may seem to restate Locke’s position: true religion requires intellectual freedom. But it goes much further than Locke did. Madison defines religion as the duty one owes to God and “the manner of discharging it.” And, crucially, Madison jettisons Locke’s binary view of “civil” and “spiritual” jurisdiction. Only one jurisdiction matters for determining the scope of religious liberty: God’s. When we have a duty to God, the civil government should get out of the way. Under Madison’s view, religious liberty resolves inconsistent commands of rulers with overlapping jurisdictions in favor of those issued by the higher authority, God.

This view does not satisfy everyone (including some believers). In the first place, it relies on premises that many reject: the notions that there is a knowable God, that people owe duties to God, and that others should respect those (perceived) duties. In the second place, in religiously pluralistic societies, it often seems like each person claims different duties to different gods. Religious liberty facilitates religious diversity, which proliferates inconsistent claims of divine “duty," thereby diluting each of them. At the same time, it makes accommodating every claim more costly, because there are more of them, and they seek accommodations from a wider variety of laws.

To make matters worse, the divine duty rationale implies that religious liberty has no limits. The person who believes that God demands human sacrifice has as much a claim to religious liberty as the one who simply doesn’t want to be made to attend a church service. The rationale also rests on a notion that is increasingly difficult for those in secularized societies to view sympathetically: the idea that the Creator of the universe exacts obedience, and that society should honor the individual's perception of that duty, in exchange for... what, exactly?

A more thoroughly Christian view of religious liberty depends on grasping why believers want to obey God. Locke’s answer was straightforward: fear of eternal damnation. What ought to motivate religious tolerance, Locke insists, are differences about what constitutes “true and saving religion.” Here, Locke was understandably a creature of his times, when western Europe and North America were divided by doctrinal disputes about Christian salvation. Although the promise of eternal life through faith in Christ is the core of Christian doctrine, Scripture surely teaches that those who have already acknowledged Christ as their Savior should obey God not out of fear of damnation, but out of love. Jesus said the greatest commandments were these: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Whatever duties we owe to God and others, from the most sublime form of corporate worship to the most mundane task of changing a diaper, flow from love. Love is the framework, the backdrop, the engine for Christian duty.

Where does such love come from? For Jews and Christians alike, such love is a proper response to God’s love for all of creation, and especially for humankind. Consider the evocative imagery of the ancient songwriter/poet known as the Psalmist:

“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”

For Christians, God’s love is shown most thoroughly in the teaching, life, death, and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. As the Apostle John wrote,

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

All too often non-believers seem to appreciate the core of Christian ethics better than many self-proclaimed believers: Christian duty ought to be not merely a private act of personal piety, but an active, self-giving, others-oriented love that mirrors the gentleness, kindness, and sacrifice of Christ.

It turns out that love, actually, is the root of the Christian duty that can sometimes generate conflicts with civil law. The freedom to love God and others according to one's best lights is the most thoroughly Christian basis for religious liberty. "According to one's best lights" is an important qualification. Although Christians agree on the requirements of love in many cases, they have from the beginning disputed whether some conduct is consistent with love. For instance, in the first century, they debated whether it was okay to eat food that had been sacrificed to the idols representing Roman deities. Some thought yes, some no. The Apostle Paul taught those who had no qualms with eating such meat to be understanding of those who did. Christians were to tolerate those with different interpretations of the requirement of love--at least as to matters that were inessential to the gospel.

What difference might love make for religious liberty? Most importantly, it might render claims for religious liberty more legible to those of any (or no) religion who disagree with the claim's morality. Not everyone has experienced fears about eternal salvation, but everyone has experienced a moral duty arising from affection, whether for a favorite sporting club, a family member, or country. Believers regard God as the source of all these good things, and many others besides, so God alone deserves our highest adoration. We may not be able to relate to a God who issues (seemingly) severe commands, but we ought to be able to relate to one who asks for, and merits, our love.

If love is the best motivation for observing a higher duty, we ought to think twice before we condemn those who say their religion will not allow them to follow the law. We ought to presume they have the best of motivations. To be sure, not every one who claims a religious exemption is motivated by love—no one is perfect, and some religiously-motivated conduct (whether in the name of Christianity or another religion) is decidedly unloving. Moreover, believers sometimes disagree about what love requires. In my own country (the U.S.), some religious claimants assert a religious duty to avoid funding contraceptive insurance on the ground that it facilitates abortions, while others claim a religious duty to facilitate an abortion. Those claims are morally inconsistent. If we assume that religious claimants in principle might be motivated by affection for what they take to be the divine, we ought to respect the dilemma that claimants find themselves in--even when the law does not, and should not, exempt their conduct.

Religious love is especially deserving of our respect and, when possible, accommodation. We should affirm our neighbors' attempts to follow the demands of divine love, even when we disagree with their understanding of those demands. And we should respect them even when that understanding cannot be squared with the needs of society in any given case. Love should not always be a trump card--no more than divine fear should be a trump card. Some religious freedom claims will not, and should not, win the day. There is no avoiding drawing lines according to law and public conscience. But love for God offers a richer, and perhaps a more attractive, justification for religious liberty in the first place.

Review

Belief

Books

Creed

6 November 2025

7 min read

Alice Roberts’ new book is the Da Vinci Code without the pretence of fiction

Tomes like Domination are part of the problem of public discourse about Christianity, not the solution

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Alice Roberts.

alice-roberts.co.uk.

Alice Roberts would like you to read her book, thank you very much.

She recently took to X to bemoan the “epidemic” of people offering thoughts about her latest offering, without actually having read it. The person who prompted Roberts’ exasperation was a senior lecturer in Biblical Studies and the latest in a long of professional scholars of Christianity who had greeted the release of the book with little more than a weary eyeroll.

The reason so many people felt as though they didn’t need to read it is because it is utterly predictable. Even a cursory glance at any of the marketing that has accompanied the publication of Domination: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity really does tell you all you need to know. It really is the book you think it is.

You already know what this book is going to argue. Just like you already know how this review is going to go. I’m a theology lecturer who works for the Church of England; Roberts is an outspoken atheist and former president of Humanists UK. Of course I’m going to disagree with this book. It’s hardly the sort of plot twist you endure an M. Night Shyamalan film for.

But, for the avoidance of doubt, let me be clear: I don’t dislike Alice Roberts’ book because I’m a Christian and she’s not. I dislike Roberts’ book simply because it’s not very good.

Roberts seeks to “lift the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight.” (Always be wary of someone who claims to have noticed something no-one else has for the last 2,000 years). These ‘secrets’, she suggests, are that “the main reasons [Christianity spread so successfully] were not to be found in the pages of the Bible, but in a powerful alliance born of complex – and very human – incentives”.

For Roberts, the central, overriding reason why Christianity flourished was simply economic and political power. In her own words, “the worldly aspects of the Church are undeniable. Wealth and power go hand-in-hand, and the Church had both in abundance.” It’s never clear who actually is thought to be denying this, except a vague group described as “apologist historians (including some who claim not to be Christian, but seem to be suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome) and theologians”.

And this power-grab has been the aim since the earliest moments of the Church’s existence. The Apostle Paul is painted in cartoonishly Machiavellian tones: “As a Pharisee, a member of an established Jewish sect, Saul would have been a small fish in a big pond. The switch to this new breakaway sect [Christianity] would make him a prominent figure in a small but rapidly growing movement”.

A few pages later – in a section that made me laugh so hard I had to put the book down for a few minutes to collect myself – Roberts offers a genuinely baffling reading of one of Paul’s early letters, to a group of Christians in the city of Corinth. In the letter, Paul speaks about divisions in the Church, with Christians claiming to ‘follow’ different leaders (such as Paul and Apollos). Roberts writes that “there’s a hint that Paul may have viewed Apollos as competitor” and continues:

“When Paul wrote his first letter to ‘the Corinthians’ … he exhorted them to see themselves as united, whether they were following him, [or] Apollos … Paul, however disgruntled he might have been about the competition represented by other, potentially more eloquent, preachers, had decided it was best to team up. Still, he couldn’t quite resist suggesting his superiority – or at least, his priority – to Apollos: ‘I have planted, Apollos watered.’”.

See?! SEE?! It’s all about power!!

Well, that last bit is a quote from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the third chapter and its sixth verse. Now, what Roberts doesn’t tell the reader is that she has left off the rest of the verse, and the verse that follows. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

But this is very different indeed to the impression Roberts gives us. Paul is quite clearly not claiming any sense of superiority over Apollos. No, he claims they’re both nothing, and that God alone deserves credit for anything good done by either of them. Not that you would know this from Roberts’ butchering of biblical texts.

(As a slightly technical aside, the bit Roberts does quote should read ‘I planted,’ not ‘I have planted’. This sounds trivial but in the Greek text, Paul writes in a different tense than the one Roberts translates it as. This made me wonder what translation of the Bible was using or whether it was her own. However, there are no notes in the book. At all. And no mention of Bible translation that I could find. If we’re engaging in character assassinations of folk no longer alive to defend themselves, we might think that attention to the precise wording of their thought might be important. Apparently not).

And there’s the rub. Roberts leave precisely zero room for earnest belief in God. Not her belief in God, obviously, but that the people whose words she has hacked and placed before us might earnestly think that their actions seek the betterment of those around them because of their belief in God. No. It’s all about power. I’ve highlighted her treatment of Paul in particular (again, because I found it genuinely hilarious), but time would fail me if I tried to recount all the ways that other figures in Church history are treated similarly.

Roberts’ has complained about Frank Cottrell-Boyce (whom, she notes, is “a Catholic” as though this is in any way relevant to whether he’s right) for describing Domination as ‘cynical’. But how else could we possibly describe this? Yes, it is – of course – completely reasonable to highlight the social, cultural, political, and economic forces at work in and around the development of Christianity (is anyone actually suggesting otherwise?). And yes, of course some people have used Christianity for personal gain (seriously: is anyone actually suggesting otherwise?).

But Roberts goes far beyond both points. Instead, she is simply stripping back the theological content of Christianity and claiming to have found “secrets that have been hidden in plain sight” having done so. But of course human motivation is all that is left once you strip belief in God out of religion, because what else could there be? Roberts’ prose may be captivating, but her argument is deeply immature and reductive. It’s like a toddler who’s just read Michel Foucault’s work on social power for the first time: an impressive toddler, to be sure, but a toddler nonetheless.

Roberts does acknowledge that “people are complex, human societies are complex”, but this is little more than lip-service to nuance. None of this complexity is found in the actual argument of her book. It reminds me of someone saying, “no offence, but …” before going on to say something deeply offensive. A fleeting caveat doesn’t redeem a simplistic argument.

In this respect, it’s quite telling that the front-cover endorsement comes from Stephen Fry who describes it as “a historical thriller of the highest quality.” In one respect, he’s not wrong. It reads like a thriller and – questions of content aside – might easily grip read readers with its compelling prose and rhetorical flourishes. But that’s because this is The Da Vinci Code without the pretence of fiction. A compellingly told conspiracy theory dressed up in just enough spliced-together reality to feign plausibility.

Public discourse about religion and faith is too often conducted with a sneering cynicism that seeks to ride roughshod over the sincerely held beliefs of actual people who would actually describe themselves as religious. Books like Domination are part of the problem, not the solution.

Maybe this is why I find Domination bordering on offensive. Not because of its content. (If I got upset every time someone ascribed bad motivations to the Church I’d never leave the house.) No, I find it borderline offensive because of its sheer existence. Whether you like it or not, religion has been and is an irrevocably vital part of who we are and where we’ve come from. Religious belief deserves at the very least to be understood, even if not agreed with. And so, when I finished Domination, I was left wondering: is that is? Is this the highest standard of discourse society can really be offered about religion? Dan Brown in an academic gown? Heaven help us, if so.

The covers may be similar, and the titles may sound alike, but this is not Tom Holland’s Dominion. Where Holland’s work remains one of the most insightful and thoughtful accessible books about the development of Christianity and modern society, Roberts’ cynicism (for that is what it is) is both tiresome and tiring. (Moreover, that Holland’s book is not even mentioned once speaks volumes about Roberts’ work. That Roberts insists she has read it only makes that absence more baffling).

The Church deserves more rigorous champions of atheism to scrutinise its belief; society needs a better class of conversation about religion and its role in our history. I fear Alice Roberts is not the former; Domination is certainly not the latter.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Pledge now