Fundamentals

Liberalism and Religious Freedom: What a Liberal State Protects

By Daniel Sardá · Published on September 12, 2026

7 min read1,372 words

A liberal state does not decide which faith deserves greater respect: it protects the conscience of believers and nonbelievers alike and limits coercion over its expression.

The relationship between liberalism and religious freedom begins with an uncomfortable question for any authority: may it decide which convictions are acceptable? The liberal answer is no. A person may believe, doubt, leave a faith, or profess none at all without becoming a second-class citizen as a result.

Religious freedom is not a license granted to majority religions, nor an invitation to remove faith from social life. It protects individuals against coercion: against a state that imposes a doctrine, but also against rules that unjustifiably punish a peaceful conviction. Its scope includes believers, converts, agnostics, atheists, and religious minorities.

Key idea: a liberal state need not decide which conviction is true; it must prevent any conviction from being imposed on others by force.

This position does not make every religious practice untouchable. It distinguishes between the realm of conscience, which merits especially strong protection, and external conduct, which may affect others. The challenge is to preserve both sides: each person’s freedom and the common rules that protect everyone’s rights.

What religious freedom encompasses

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. It includes freedom to change one’s religion or belief and to manifest it alone or with others, in public or private, through teaching, practice, worship, and observance.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights sets out the same protection and adds a crucial guarantee: no one should be subject to coercive measures that impair their freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief of their choice. Human Rights Committee General Comment No. 22 clarifies that this encompasses theistic, non-theistic, and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief.

In practical terms, the protection includes, among other things:

• having a religion, having none, or changing one’s religion;
• taking part in worship or choosing not to;
• teaching and passing on a conviction peacefully;
• gathering with others to practice it;
• not being compelled to declare religious adherence.

Not every social disagreement violates this right. Others may criticize, debate, or reject a belief. For liberalism, the line that matters is coercion: punishing, compelling, or excluding someone through public power because of the content of their conscience.

Why conscience limits power

Political liberalism begins from the premise that each individual has a sphere of judgment that does not belong to the government. Religion has an important place in that sphere, but it is not the only one: philosophical convictions and the decision not to embrace a faith also belong there.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill defended freedom of thought and discussion, including on theological questions. His argument is philosophical, not a rule of current law: even an erroneous opinion should not simply be silenced, because coercion impoverishes the search for truth and subjects the individual to others’ judgment. Applied to religion, the liberal point is both more modest and firmer: political power is not entitled to manufacture sincere beliefs through punishments or rewards.

This connects religious freedom with individual rights. Citizenship should not depend on attending a rite, renouncing one, or proving that a conviction is popular. When access to public employment, education, or legal protection depends on the right faith, equality before the law ceases to be equality.

Key idea: protecting conscience does not require everyone to approve of every belief; it requires that no one use public force to turn approval into obedience.

Tolerance is not the same as a right

Tolerance was an important advance over persecution, but it can fall short. Those who tolerate retain, in principle, the possibility of withdrawing permission. A right, by contrast, does not depend on a majority’s goodwill or a ruler’s sympathy.

That is why religious freedom is not a request for indulgence toward a minority practice. It is an enforceable safeguard against unjustified coercion. Liberal tolerance is not indifference to differences; it is the decision to live with them without turning institutions into instruments of moral punishment.

The distinction also prevents privilege. If protection is framed as a special favor for certain churches, those outside them are excluded. If it is framed as freedom of conscience and legal equality, the question changes: is a person being protected from an arbitrary burden, or being granted an advantage denied to others?

Belief is free; action has a shared context

The right to hold or adopt a religion or belief does not permit the state to force a person to change their conviction. Its external manifestation—worship, practice, teaching, or observance—can, however, come into conflict with the rights of others or with general obligations.

That does not authorize vague limits. Article 18.3 of the Covenant provides that restrictions on manifestation must be prescribed by law and necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. General Comment No. 22 stresses that such restrictions must be interpreted strictly.

Consider three situations. A person who changes religion should not be penalized for doing so. A community may hold a peaceful rite and organize its associational life. But a practice involving violence, fraud, or coercion against nonconsenting people is no longer a purely internal matter: it implicates third parties’ rights.

The real difficulty arises in middle cases, when a general rule clashes with a conscientious practice without clear harm to others. There, a liberal approach calls for public reasons, predictable rules, and consideration of less restrictive alternatives. It is not enough that a custom makes the majority uncomfortable; nor is it enough to invoke a conviction in order to immediately override every common duty.

Caution: religious freedom does not make every act an exception to the law, but a general law does not automatically justify placing unnecessary burdens on a minority.

That balance requires the rule of law: known rules, authorities subject to limits, and decisions that can be justified without appealing to prejudice against a religion or against the absence of religion.

Neutrality, secularism, and separation

These terms are often conflated, even though they refer to different levels of analysis. State neutrality is a standard of treatment: institutions should neither privilege nor punish people for their convictions. It does not mean that citizens must hide their faith, or that the state must adopt an anti-religious philosophy. See also state neutrality.

The separation of religious and state institutions is an institutional arrangement that can help prevent a church from using public power, or a government from controlling a church. By itself, it is not a complete definition of religious freedom. Formal separation can coexist with unequal treatment; conversely, regulated forms of cooperation may be legitimate if they respect equality and non-coercion.

Laïcité refers to varied constitutional traditions governing that relationship. Secularism can describe both social processes in which religion has less influence and normative positions on religion’s place in society. Neither term automatically answers the central question: can people believe, not believe, change, and peacefully express their convictions on equal terms?

The best test is not an institutional label but the legal result. A state is neutral when it does not require orthodoxy, distribute protection according to creed, or apply restrictions by standards that cannot be scrutinized.

Pluralism without persecution or privilege

Religious freedom tests the quality of a plural society. It is easy to defend conscience when it aligns with one’s own; it is more demanding to protect it when it is uncomfortable, belongs to a minority, or takes the form of no faith at all.

From a liberal perspective, the answer is not to erase differences from public life. It is to prevent them from becoming grounds for domination. People may argue from religious, atheist, or philosophical convictions; institutions, for their part, must respond through general laws and reasons that do not demean some citizens in relation to others.

Understood this way, religious freedom is a guarantee of coexistence, not a fragile truce. It protects the right to seek meaning without political guardianship and recalls an elementary limit: neither the majority’s faith nor the majority’s skepticism authorizes it to govern another person’s conscience.