Religious freedom: thinking sociologically

ABSTRACT

Sociology’s engagement with the religious freedom agenda is a comparatively new enterprise compared to legal and political science scholarship. The five contributions included in this collection continue the debate about the role of sociological theory and methods in defining, interpreting, and implementing religious freedom in modern societies. By articulating sociological sensitivity and readiness to address existing lacunae in the social-scientific study of religious freedom, we argue that research attention has to be focused equally on the historical contexts and structural conditions in which religious freedom is implemented, as well as on the multiple stakeholders and socio-religious dynamics of the societies involved. A brief description of five contributions that bring data and cases from Italy and Russia, Iran, Israel, South Korea, and the United States is presented, indicating how they highlight the importance of scholarly attempts to theorise and measure religious freedom sociologically.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious freedom
• social context
• structural conditions of freedom
• everyday life, research methods

Introduction

Over the past three decades, issues related to religious freedom have become increasingly important across a global spectrum, prompting a growing interdisciplinary area of study. The discourses on religion and human rights, citizenship, and religion and state relations have become intertwined due to the shared centrality of the struggle over religious freedom. Scholars in political science, international relations, legal studies, and sociology have all contributed theoretical discussions, case studies, and extensive empirical analysis.

Recent publications on this topic by sociologists of law, political sociologists, economists, and historians have shown that new collaboration of social scientists in the field of religious freedom analysis is important for understanding the modes of political secularism and state-religion policies as well as the structural conditions for the implementation of religious freedom (e.g. Richardson 2006; Finke 2013; Sandberg 2014; Berger 2014; Fox 2015; Hurd 2015; Johnson and Koyama 2019). Important attention has been given to the analysis of religious minorities (Fox 2016) and the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in that respect (Fokas and Richardson 2017; Bretscher 2020). It can be argued that the position of religious minorities, and particularly – although not exclusively – those new and non-traditional in a specific country, is the best test for implementing religious freedom, and the role of the ECtHR in setting standards for that has been crucial. Still, some ECtHR rulings prompted broader criticism, and the implementation of its rulings is also an issue, depending on the specific situation in a country and, in many cases, on local-level actors (Fokas and Richardson 2017). The role of the courts, both international and national, intersects with the dynamic of international actors and state policies towards religion. This is best captured by comprehensive empirical research on state policy towards religion in the broadest possible range of countries (e.g. Fox 2015, 2019, 2020; Finke and Mataic 2021), but also by numerous analyses of church-state relations (e.g. Robbers 2019).

These studies have revealed a gap in the scholarship on religious freedom, emphasising the importance of paying more attention to the sociological dimensions and research methods. Thus, this collection ’Religious freedom: thinking sociologically‘ brings together contributions incorporating sociological sensitivity and lenses in the study of religious freedom, considering two main challenges while analysing this topic. The first one is the deep and persistent gap between normative promises and actual practice, explaining how it is crucial to operationalise the general concepts into detailed, measurable items to understand what religious freedom means in everyday life for various religious and secular actors. The second challenge is to elaborate the concept of religious freedom, and its application to the multiple ways state-religion relations are set up and practised. This challenge reveals how the legacy (in terms of the state’s historical role and major religions’ historical role) plays an important role, together with rival political ideologies and social movements.

This collection highlights that ‘thinking sociologically’ about religious freedom means, first, taking into account the above-described challenges and responding to them with contextually rooted meanings of religious freedom in a concrete society. It also means that along with the legal and political rules for the governance of religion, the social conditions for the implementation of religious freedom must be studied more thoroughly. Second, the editors and authors of this collection emphasise the necessity of looking beyond the state at the level of country analysis, to consider other actors such as nongovernmental organisations, religious institutions, communities, leaders, and members of religious/non-religious groups. Finally, ‘thinking sociologically’ means focusing not only on the policies of state governance but on specific social challenges and processes, such as the pluralisation of societies and increasing migration. The key is understanding how new religious dynamics are related to societal and government-based discrimination against religion (Fox, Finke, and Mataic 2021). It also requires sociological work in interpreting and defining these socio-religious changes for managing religious diversity in pluralist and multicultural contexts (Modood 2014; Beaman 2015; Beyer and Beaman 2019). All these sociological responses imply diverse theoretical approaches and analytical tools in strong collaboration with political science, law, and history, showing how these disciplines complement and challenge each other in their analysis of religious freedom (Breskaya, Finke, and Giordan 2021).

While modern societies advance religious freedom promises by various legal and social mechanisms, they nevertheless face the basic challenge of how these promises are to be defended, especially when ethnic, religious, or class differences are factored into the picture. Therefore, the question remains: ‘What is religious freedom and who has it?’ (Fox 2021). Starting from the normative position, it is defined by major international documents, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), adopted and further implemented by national legal order. Summarising key points from these documents, religious freedom is: (1) freedom to have religion or belief of one’s choice; (2) freedom to change one’s religion or belief, and (3) freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief. However, as clearly stated, two additional aspects are crucial for exercising this freedom. First, freedom to have, or not to have, or to change and manifest, can be exercised individually or in community, and in public or private. Second, the freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs can be limited only as prescribed by law and if necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. As demonstrated by scholarship and as witnessed in public debates, there are controversies about exercising religious freedom, particularly concerning the communal and public manifestation of one’s religion or belief. The issue is whether the state-imposed public order may require compromise in religious worldviews and how to accommodate very different religions and their ways of believing and practising in public. This is the point and the cause of discrimination towards many religions. The importance of sociological interventions becomes more evident and urgent when new social reality challenges established legal principles and institutional arrangements of religious freedom with new individual and collective claims. The necessity of defining the social conditions of religious freedom, the processes of claiming this right, the social effects it produces, and intersectionality of religious freedom with other rights, all have to be specified when we apply the sociological method to human rights research (see Frezzo 2015).

Two recent global events demonstrate how the implementation of religious freedom is connected with its potential conflictual relation with other rights, how one’s achieved rights can be reversed, and how complex social processes condition the meaning of religious freedom in society. The first event is the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade 1973 ruling, allowing federal states to ban or severely restrict abortion (see Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization 2022).¹ This does not speak directly about religious freedom, but religion-politics entanglement is a significant factor behind this decision and future decisions at the state level. This is also confirmed by other recent Supreme Court rulings aiming to promote religious liberty further, even against other rights and for the sake of a redefinition of separation of church and state in the United States.² Along with political divisions, religious divisions are apparent here. The Pew Research data from 2022 revealed that about three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants (74%) think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, which is in sharp contrast to 84% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, 66% of Black Protestants, 60% of white Protestants (not evangelical), and 56% of Catholics who say abortion should be legal (Pew Research Center 2022).

The second event is the expulsion of Russia from the Council of Europe due to its military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Hence, Russia ceases to be a High Contracting Party to the European Convention on Human Rights on 16 September 2022.³ Knowing how many religious cases Russia has lost at the ECtHR and how difficult or almost impossible it has been to implement such rulings (Richardson 2021), the new development is likely to further erode religious freedom for many religious groups and believers in Russia.

These two events, although happening after this collection was first in preparation, illustrate nicely the idea of the title ’Religious freedom: thinking sociologically‘. They show how complex social changes, sometimes unprecedented and controversial, affect the importance, understanding, and implementation of religious freedom, and how social conditions may change significantly in that respect. Although not all contributions to this collection are written from a sociological perspective, they perfectly illustrate the importance of situating the religious freedom debate in the larger social context, which varies considerably across countries and regions. A brief presentation of the five contributions demonstrates that.

The first contribution, by Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and Sergey Trophimov, offers comparative research of perceptions of religious freedom by Italian and Russian youth based on primary data analysis. The theory of social constructionism, which refers to the work of Berger and Luckmann (1966), and a normative approach towards perceptual experiences, are integrated in this study, presenting a theoretical background for measuring the degrees of endorsement of religious freedom in two contrasting political environments. The sociological exercise the authors undertake is aimed at explaining how claims of religious freedom and the process of establishing its meaning are linked to the religious and political conditions of individuals, the dominant religion, and broader societies. Despite contrasting political contexts and records in human rights protection, the structural conditions for endorsing religious freedom are robust. They are religious pluralism, political secularism supporting religion’s presence in the public sphere, and pro-democratic political views. The discussion about the role of sociopolitical context and human rights culture is supported by observations about the higher value of religious freedom and, specifically, its human rights meaning for Italian youth, while the importance of claims of individual autonomy is endorsed by Russian youth more strongly instead. Against this background, the authors explore structural and individual conditions for religious freedom, explaining how a society with a stronger human rights culture and public discourse (such as in Italy) contributes to young people’s understanding of religious freedom in socio-legal terms while a lack of public freedom (such as in Russia) may be linked to more subjective claims of religious freedom oriented to the search for individual truth.

In yet another context, this time Iran, some similar challenges concerning religious freedom and the state’s role are presented in the contribution by Fateme Ejaredar, Abdolmohammad Kazemipur, and Seyed Mahdi Etemadifard. Drawing on a large number of face-to-face interviews with the graduates of Iran’s modern religious schools, the authors analyse the success of these schools as a key means of the Islamisation of society. Using Merton’s well-known concept of manifest and latent functions, the analysis shows how the state-imposed and strict sacralisation project results in unintended consequences: tangible secularisation tendencies among pupils. Highlighting the difference between secularism and secularisation, the Iranian case shows – as has been noted in other contexts – how the interplay between state and society is complex and unpredictable. This also reveals the limited power of state rule. State-imposed secularism in pre-revolutionary Iran resulted in a religious backlash and consequently in the Iranian 1979 Revolution, while quite the opposite is happening now. Finally, as the authors convincingly argue, one of the critical reasons for the failure of strict Islamisation is the absence of religious freedom. Not respecting individual autonomy or diversity has triggered opposition to religion among those who attended religious schools.

The role of the state and religious freedom is also the topic of the contribution to this collection written by Shai Wineapple and Ruth Kark. The context is Israel, and missionary activities by various Christian groups, primarily Protestants, over an extended historical period and as part of colonialism. Given the specificity of the history of Jewish people, the 1948 foundation of the State of Israel prompted the state’s obligation to protect Jews against continuing proselytising tendencies by various Christian groups. Focused on the 1966–1986 period, the authors analyse the activities of the state and NGOs to reduce the impact of missionary organisations and the overall influence of Christian churches through, for instance, Catholic and Protestant schools. There were also attempts to forbid all missionary activities, and many violent acts towards missionary groups and churches have been recorded. The challenge was also the appearance of new religious groups, like Pentecostal, Adventist, Mormon, and various evangelical Christian groups with their missionary intentions. Still, the commitment to freedom of religion stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the wish to maintain good relations with nations in which Christianity plays an important role, prevented some harsher reactions such as tightening of legislation against missionary activities. This shows how, although the concept of religious freedom can be labelled as vague, it retains an essential and functioning value. However, multiple geopolitical constellations determine its functioning in everyday life.

The following contribution, by Kin Cheung and Minjung Noh, covers a particular story of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony in South Korea, as evidenced by governmental action during the COVID-19 pandemic. Already labelled as a ‘cult’ or ‘bad’ religion due to its messianic theology and aggressive proselytism, the Church has been attacked by the government as a main source of virus spread in the beginning of the pandemic. The analysis shows the differential treatment of various religions, apparently visible in the preferential treatment of Protestant churches compared to the Shincheonji Church. In addition, it raises the question of how much religious freedom (exemplified by internal ways of running a religious business) can be restricted by the government in the cause of public safety. In other words, what is the relationship between state power and the basic principle of religious freedom? The differential treatment and the power of the secular authority is found in the way secularity and the perception of ‘legitimate’ religion(s) historically developed in South Korea under the influence of Protestantism. Cheung and Noh bring readers to the centre of the discussion of the dichotomy of ‘good’/‘bad’ religion; however, considered not in terms of the role of religion in the public sphere in overcoming conflicts or producing them (Appleby 2000) but in terms of the ‘social construction’ of a negative image of religious minorities (Richardson 1993) and the consequences it has for religious pluralism in society.

The final contribution, authored by James L. Guth, focuses on the situation in the United States and questions how to resolve the conflict of different rights, exemplified by the conflict between religious conscience (public manifestation of one’s belief!) and the government anti-discrimination provision for LGTBQ persons. Much has already been said about that, particularly concerning the well-known Masterpiece Cakeshop Case when a Christian baker refused to produce a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on the grounds of his religious convictions. Based on public opinion research about how religious liberty is important for Americans and how they evaluate the Masterpiece controversies, the contribution argues for the importance of religious freedom value, which is mainly conditioned by religious commitment and adherence to traditional theology. Deep polarisation is confirmed in this case of conscience objection, best explained by the culture wars theory, although personal attitudes towards LGTBQ persons also play a role. The study suggests that conflict of values and polarisation will remain a significant factor in the US religion-politics nexus. Still, an important question is raised: How will future religious changes (like individualisation and the growth of ‘nones’) affect support for religious liberty and conscience-based exemptions in the near future?

To summarise, five contributions that bring data and cases from Italy and Russia, Iran, Israel, South Korea, and the United States present a broad geographical scope and highlight the importance of scholarly attempts to theorise and measure religious freedom sociologically. In addition, the different analyses and case studies collected here, along with the idea that religious freedom is socially constructed in time and space and thus dependent on historical and political contexts, bring a final observation. There are similar structural and individual conditions for advancing religious freedom in societies and in the ways of denying this freedom. This may be seen as an impetus for future comparative work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Breskaya

Olga Breskaya, PhD is a senior researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education, and Applied Psychology at University of Padova. Her research focuses on the sociology of human rights and comparative study of religious freedom. She recently co-edited a volume of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches (2021) and co-authored articles ‘Human Rights and Religion: A Sociological Perspective’ (2018) and ‘Social Perception of Religious Freedom: Testing the Impact of Secularism and State-Religion Relations’ (2021) developing models of empirical research on religious freedom in sociopolitical analysis.

Giuseppe Giordan

Giuseppe Giordan is a professor of sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education, and Applied Psychology at University of Padova. His research interests include spirituality, religious pluralism, conversion, interfaith dialogue, Eastern Orthodoxy, and religious freedom. He has recently co-edited the volumes Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches (2021), Global Eastern Orthodoxy. Politics, Religion, and Human Rights (2020), Chinese Religions Going Global (2021), and Interreligious Dialogue: From Religion to Geopolitics (2019). He co-authored The Social Scientific Study of Exorcism in Christianity (2020) and Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity (2018).

Siniša Zrinščak

Siniša Zrinščak is a professor of sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. His main scientific interests include religious changes in postcommunism, state-church relations, and comparative social policy. He recently co-edited Global Eastern Orthodoxy. Politics, Religion, and Human Rights (2020), a special issue of Social Compass (2021), and a special issue of Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik. He recently co-authored General Sociology with the Introduction to the Sociology of Law (2020, in Croatian), Ethics and Public Administration (2021, in Croatian), and Well-Being and Extended Working Life. A Gender Perspective (2022, in press).

Notes

1. The full case name is Thomas E. Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, et al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, et al., no. 19–1392, 597 U.S., 2022). For details see: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf.

2. See, for instance, some observations of R. Braunstein’s in ‘The Backlash against Rightwing Evangelicals Is Reshaping American Politics and Faith’, The Guardian, 25 January 2022, online at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/25/the-backlash-against-rightwing-evangelicals-is-reshaping-american-politics-and-faith.

3. See ‘Resolution of the European Court of Human Rights on the consequences of the cessation of membership of the Russian Federation to the Council of Europe in light of Article 58 of the European Convention on Human Rights’, 22 March 2022, online at https://echr.coe.int/Documents/Resolution_ECHR_cessation_membership_Russia_CoE_ENG.pdf.