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Christianity and Religious Freedom CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM A Sourcebook of Scriptural, Theological, and Legal Texts In partnership with the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University Christianity and Religious Freedom: A Sourcebook of Scriptural, Theological, and Legal Texts The Religious Freedom Project Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs Georgetown University Author of Introduction and Commentary: David Little, Research Fellow, Religious Freedom Project; T.J. Dermot Dunphy Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict, Harvard Divinity School, Emeritus Editor: Karen Taliaferro, Ph.D. Student, Government, Georgetown University DECEMBER 2014 The author and editor gratefully acknowledge the many individuals who contributed to the draft- ing of this sourcebook with their suggestions, comments, and expert review, including Thomas Farr, Timothy Samuel Shah, Nick Fedyk, and Claudia Winkler. The final content of the source- book is the responsibility of the Religious Freedom Project and the principal authors. The research for this RFP publication was carried out in collaboration with the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………….………………………..5 The Ancient Period (500 BCE-475 CE)….….……………….….…9 The Ancient Period: Sources Scriptural Texts ……………...............…………………………..10 Official Religious Texts……………………………………………20 Theological and Philosophical Texts……………...……………….21 Legal and Political Texts………...........………....………………..32 The Medieval Period (476-1453 CE)……….…..………………... 34 The Medieval Period: Sources Official Religious Texts……………………………………………36 Theological and Philosophical Texts …………………………….41 The Early Modern Period (1454-1750 CE)………………………. 45 The Early Modern Period: Sources Official Religious Texts……………………………………………47 Theological and Philosophical Texts…………………….………….51 Legal and Political Texts…………………………….……………..63 The Modern Period (1751-2011 CE)…….………...................……. 71 The Modern Period: Sources Official Religious Texts……….................…....……………………75 Theological and Philosophical Texts………...........……………….96 Legal and Political Texts…………………........…………………..104 Notes........................................................................................................109 4 BERKLEY CENTER FOR RELIGION, PEACE & WORLD AFFAIRS AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Introduction by David Little1 Religious freedom, as currently understood, is the condition in which individuals or groups are permitted without restriction to assent to and, within limits, to ex- press and act upon religious conviction and identity in civil and political life, free of coercive interference or penalties imposed by outsiders, including the state.i Over the centuries, the attitudes and behaviors of Christians aimed at promoting this understanding have been, in a word, deeply ambivalent. This pervasive am- bivalence over the desirability of religious freedom is amply, if variously, evident in the sources included in this sourcebook. These sources, whether ancient, me- dieval, early modern, or modern, should help correct two conflicting and equally inaccurate convictions. One is the strong skepticism that Christianity contributed anything constructive to the rise of religious freedom. The other is the assumption that Christian beliefs and communities invariably favor religious freedom. In reality, Christians have always struggled to reconcile two competing ideals: individual religious freedom, and the religious uniformity thought necessary in order to advance the common good. On the one hand, Christians have long considered themselves “called” or “born anew” into a community separate from government and from ethnic and national ties—a community bound together afresh as “new beings” by the “gifts of the spirit.” Subject to a “kingship not of this world,” members are free to join this new community of their own accord and therein to believe and act, individually and collectively, independent of conven- tional forms of political and social control. i. The understanding of religious freedom adopted by the Religious Freedom Project is robust and has two parts. First is the right to believe or not (freedom of belief or of conscience), to worship, alone or with others, and to exit religious groups because of belief or conscience. These components of religious freedom are essentially interior (belief and conscience) or private (worship). As such, they are, or ought to be, virtually absolute. There is no legitimate rationale for their restriction by any human agent, including governments. The second element entails both individuals and groups, and has distinctive public dimensions. It includes the rights of individuals and groups to act in civil and political society on the basis of religious conscience or belief, within very broad limits equally applied to all—religious or not. This two-part understanding of religious freedom, with its robust public components, is not present within any religious tradition or nation until the modern era. Even then, the degree of religious freedom present in any given nation was, and continues to be, contingent on historical and contempo- rary forces that may or may not be related to the dominant religious tradition. Restrictions on religious freedom, especially in its public forms, result from a variety of conditions, including communism, religious nationalism, violent religious extremism, and aggressive modern secularism. CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 5 At the same time, Christians have often favored the idea that civic order, the com- mon good, and salvation itself depend on religious uniformity, something usually requiring coercive enforcement by the temporal government. Consequently, they are called upon to clarify the relations between what Jesus called the “things that are God’s” and the “things that are Caesar’s.” If, according to St. Paul the Apostle, Christians are required to submit to earthly governments “for the sake of con- science,” how is obedience to government to be made consistent with obedience to God, especially where the two forms of obedience diverge? How, and under what conditions, is the authority of Caesar to be employed in the service of God? The history of Christianity, still continuing, consists of a wide variety of quite dif- ferent and often conflicting answers to these basic questions. The origins of this ambivalence lie deep in the source materials Christians take to be sacred, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures, or what Christians call the Old Testament. On the one hand, deviation from authorized belief and practice was a civil crime in ancient Israel, punishable by death. The Ten Commandments were the foundation of the original “covenant” between God and his people. All of them, whether they pertained to relations with the divine or to relations with fellow human beings, were to be enforced by the civil authority. Strict religious uniformity around a “national religion” was indispensable to the temporal sur- vival and prosperity of ancient Israel. Various Christians in all four periods have enthusiastically reaffirmed one version or another of this central conviction. On the other hand, many Christians over the centuries have also embraced certain Old Testament “prophetic” teachings, which moved in a quite different direction. The book of Jeremiah speaks of a “new covenant” between God and his people, one not like the first covenant, which consists of externally enforceable laws, but something radically different, now placed “within them” and written “upon their hearts” (Romans 2:15).2 For Christians, this anticipated event is inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, instituting, as Paul says, “a new covenant, not in a written code, but in the Spirit; for the written code kills but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Herein lies the basis for the novel com- munity mentioned above—one that is set apart from the institutions of coercive enforcement and is ideally directed by the inward consent and commitment of the members newly bound together by “the spirit” in the “body of Christ.” It is, of course, this second emphasis that in general establishes the importance of religious freedom in Christian thinking. It typically sits uneasily with a belief in religious uniformity that is coerced. There are at least four important themes, often applied in combination, that Christians have invoked as a basis for ground- 6 BERKLEY CENTER FOR RELIGION, PEACE & WORLD AFFAIRS AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ing and developing a doctrine of religious freedom. The first is a belief in the differentiation of religious and political authority, some- times referred to as the “separation of church and state.” A distinction between what is called the “law of the spirit” and the “law of the sword” is anticipated by certain Fathers, or leading theologians of the early Church, and is expressed in the legendary conflicts between the papacy and throne in the medieval period, as well as in the jurisdictional disputes between the church and state before, during, and after the Protestant Reformation. Among other things, this distinction had the effect of limiting the powers of the secular state, thereby creating the possibility of social and civic pluralism, that
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