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individuals who pose no threat to political stability, perhaps because they are small, or because they are politically withdrawn.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

Art

Awe and wonder

Culture

16 July 2025

5 min read

This gallery refresh adds drama to the story of art

Rehanging the Sainsbury Wing revives the emotion of great art

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

An art gallery arch reveals a suspended crucifix and other paintings in a distant room

The Sainsbury Wing interior.

The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery has recently reopened after closure for two years for building works. There was controversy over the designs for the Sainsbury Wing in the planning stage but its use, once built, to tell the story of the early stages in the development of Western art was widely welcomed and appreciated.

The story that it told is essentially the story of Christian art and so the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing together with the rehanging of the National Gallery’s collection provides an opportunity to review that story. As a result of the completed work over 1,000 works of art - a larger proportion of the collection than has been previously displayed - trace the development of painting in the Western European tradition from the 13th to the 20th centuries from beloved favourites to paintings never previously seen in the National Gallery.

The Sainsbury Wing features works from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Painting came of age during this time. It moved from manuscript illumination to images on panel and canvas, overtaking metalwork, tapestry and sculpture as the most popular and prestigious art form in Europe.

An opening room contains works from the 14th to the 16th centuries, including The Wilton Diptych and Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks, which together ask visitors to consider the full spectrum of what painting can do. This introductory room gives a sense of what these paintings were for and how they were used. Painting’s rise in status was due to all the things it can do such as tell complex stories, convey human emotions, fool the eye, capture a likeness, make viewers laugh, weep, pray and think. This room provides a sample of those achievements and the various functions painting fulfilled.

Throughout the Sainsbury Wing, new display cases are used to show paintings as objects viewed from all sides, not simply as flat panels on walls. Medieval altarpieces often had winged panels that could be opened or closed depending on the season or occasion. An example is included here to show how such hinged panels were used.

From this introductory room spanning the period, visitors can follow either a Northern European route or Italian route around the space, enabling influences between both to be highlighted. The key change explored on both routes is that artists in this period began to create a convincing illusion of reality in their paintings.

The earliest paintings in the National Gallery Collection were made in central Italy nearly 800 years ago. These naturalistic and intimate images of love, grief and suffering responded to a new interest in the humanity of Christ. A chapel-like space is entirely dedicated to Piero della Francesca whose work, with its cool colour palette and keen sense of space and light, possesses a dignified solemnity. Another room focuses on the spiritual power of gold-ground scenes of devotion, exploring the way gold in paintings was used to evoke the timeless, spiritual significance of Christ, the Virgin and saints, and set these holy figures apart from our world.

The galleries in the Sainsbury Wing were designed to evoke, for visitors, a Renaissance Basilica. Its architectural features make it possible to display paintings in a similar way to how they would have originally been encountered. The central galleries form the nave of the basilica and all the altarpieces displayed are now there. These galleries are devoted to works made in Florence, Venice, and Siena. The early Florentine room represents the principal point of departure for this new art. In the Venetian room we see the development of perspective, while the Siena room resembles a side chapel in the basilica.

An altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence by Jacopo di Cione and his workshop has been reconstructed and sits on an altar-like plinth to evoke the view of it originally seen by worshippers. Predella panels by Fra Angelico are displayed in a case in front of this altarpiece giving an indication of the way in which predellas interacted with a larger, grander altarpiece. The positioning of these two works also illustrates the movement in terms of realism found in the paintings of this period. The Ascension scene on the altarpiece depicts a statue-like ascended Christ while Fra Angelico’s resurrected Christ in the predella is more realistically floating in the air.

In a first for the National Gallery, Segna di Bonaventura’s Crucifix is visible down the central spine of the Sainsbury Wing, suspended from the ceiling. This enables today’s audiences to view the work in the way it would have been seen in the 14th century. Painted crucifixes were common in 13th- and 14th-century Italian churches, often displayed high-up like this one. Rood screens on which such crucifixes were originally placed were often destroyed in the Counter Reformation, which led to crucifix’s then being hung from the ceiling, as is the case here.

The rehang also presents several works back on display after long-term conservation projects. The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Piero del Pollaiuolo is back on show after nearly three years of conservation and scientific examination.

The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before.

Despite the religious and political upheaval caused by the Reformation, the arts also flourished in Northern Europe during this time. Prints transformed the exchange of artistic ideas. Christians were encouraged to use images as a focus for meditation on the lives of Christ and the saints and paintings that were meant to be handled and examined close-up were created for the private devotion of members of religious orders and laypeople. Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach were key figures, with Dürer’s prints, portraits, altarpieces and non-religious subjects transforming painting both in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond.

Christianity became the predominant power shaping European culture after classical antiquity, inspiring artists and patrons to evoke the nature of sacred mysteries in visual terms. The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before and with stories flowing across panels in colourful scenes. These displays also promote a greater understanding of how works of art were, and still are, used as models of moral behaviour, as celebrations of the deeds of holy figures or as a plea for one’s hopes, both in this life and in the afterlife.

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