Is religious freedom really for all people?

That question has become surprisingly controversial. In recent years, I’ve had conversations with Christian friends, many of them specifically Baptists or more broadly, Evangelicals, who sincerely believe religious liberty should belong only to Christians. This has become a more prominent argument in some Christian circles. Some argue that extending religious freedom to other faiths weakens Christianity. Others believe America’s founders intended religious liberty only for those who shared a broadly Christian worldview. There are also those who believe advocating for religious freedom requires abandoning a Christian commitment.

I have had serious conversations with them and find their arguments lacking, but these arguments also deserve to be measured against history. If we are going to claim the American tradition as our own, we should be honest about what that tradition actually teaches.

Few stories in American history are more closely connected to religious liberty than the story of the Baptists. Long before religious freedom became a constitutional principle, Baptists were being fined, imprisoned, and publicly whipped because they refused to allow the government to dictate matters of conscience, even when that government was led by other Christians. Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist church in America and founder of Rhode Island, argued that the civil government had no authority over the soul. His vision of a “hedge or wall of separation” was never intended to keep religion out of public life. It was designed to keep the government from controlling the church and coercing faith. That conviction became deeply woven into Baptist identity. Generations later, Baptist pastor John Leland worked alongside James Madison to secure constitutional protections for religious liberty. Early Baptists did not fight for religious freedom because they expected to be the majority forever; in fact, when they fought for religious freedom, they were often a Christian minority, subject to persecution at the hands of other Christians who disagreed with their theological particulars. No, they fought for it because they believed faith loses its integrity the moment it is compelled by the state and that conviction was not merely political, it was theological. Faith cannot be forced.

Unfortunately, many Christians today seem willing to exchange that historic conviction for political advantage. Some root their concern in a desire to preserve what they believe to be a Christian-influenced culture. Some have begun asking whether religious freedom should apply equally to those whose beliefs we reject.

Thankfully, history helps give us an answer. Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature, in particular, certainly did.

When reflecting on Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom, Jefferson explained both the debate surrounding the legislation and the intentions of its supporters. He wrote:

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. it still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally past; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words ‘Jesus Christ’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion’ the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.

That paragraph deserves careful attention. Jefferson recalled that some legislators wanted to specify that religious liberty existed to protect Christians. This was evidenced by their desire to add ‘Jesus Christ’ to the statute. Had those words been added, the law would have carried an explicitly Christian protection. Instead, the amendment was overwhelmingly rejected.

Why?

Jefferson tells us plainly. The legislature wanted religious freedom to extend to everyone: Jews, Gentiles, Christians, Muslims (“Mahometans,” in the language of the day), Hindus (or Hindoo, in Jefferson’s vernacular), and even those with no religious belief at all.

Whether one agrees with Jefferson’s reasoning or not, it is difficult to argue that he and the early Virginia legislature intended religious liberty only for Christians. Jefferson understood the opposite to be true. Religious freedom was meant to be universal.

That leads to two important observations.

First, religious freedom is for all people.

This principle is clear in Jefferson’s reply, and is not rooted primarily in pluralism or political compromise. It is rooted in human dignity. Every person bears the image of God. Every person possesses a conscience before God. And every person must ultimately answer to God, not to the government, for matters of faith.

Scripture clearly teaches that real faith cannot be manufactured through coercion. Jesus invited people to follow Him; He never coerced them. The apostles preached, persuaded, suffered, and ultimately trusted the Holy Spirit to change people’s hearts. It’s important to note that many who advocate for extending religious freedom exlusively to Christians will also agree that coercion is wrong. But what they often seem to miss is that limiting religious freedom in this way will create a de facto form of coercion, as it privileges Christianity above all other belief systems. It will create a societal impulse to identify with Christianity, without having to actually ever follow Jesus. I am convinced it will create a large category of people who claim to be Christians without ever actually becoming Christians. I am also convinced that it betrays a lack of confidence in the gospel. If we have to artificially privilege it for it to succeed, do we really believe in its beauty and power?

Christians should defend the right of Muslims to build a mosque, Jewish attendence at the synagogue, Hindu right to worship in a temple, and atheist rejection of religion altogether, not because we believe all religions are equally true, but because we believe every human being possesses God-given dignity and must be free to respond to God according to conscience. Every person answers to God for the spiritual decisions they make, not the government or any other human or organization. Ironically, and importantly, protecting someone else’s religious freedom often becomes the strongest protection for our own. History repeatedly reminds us that governments powerful enough to suppress one religion eventually become powerful enough to suppress another.

Second, the majority bears a particular responsibility toward the minority.

Jefferson makes this point plain in his claim that the Christian majority flatly rejected attempts to canonize their own rights and instead protected the religious minorities at that time. This has always been one of the great tests of a free society. Religious freedom matters most when those in power protect those without power. It is relatively easy to defend liberty when our own rights are secure. It is far more difficult, and far more important, to defend the rights of those with whom we profoundly disagree.

Christians should understand this better than anyone.

For three centuries after Christ, believers lived as a religious minority under the Roman Empire. Later, Baptists themselves experienced imprisonment and harassment in both England and colonial America. They appealed for freedom of conscience because they knew firsthand what persecution felt like.

Our own history should make us humble and create in us an awareness that providing religious freedom protections for Christians only does not ensure that your particular brand of Christianity will remain protected. It also leads to the conclusion that the government gets to decide which versions of Christianity are protected, thereby providing them with theological oversight. We don’t have to look far to prove this point. Our own American history makes it for us. It happened here before, and it can happen again.

The measure of our commitment to religious liberty is not how loudly we defend our own freedoms, it is whether we defend the freedoms of our neighbors when they hold beliefs that we reject. That does not require theological compromise. It requires civic and theological conviction.

We should never confuse defending someone’s right to believe with affirming their belief. They are not the same thing. In fact, confidence in the gospel should make us less fearful, not more. We do not need the government to prop up Christianity. The church has flourished under persecution, in hostile cultures and nations through faithful witness rather than political coercion. The gospel has never depended upon government power.

Thomas Jefferson’s words remind us that America’s founders envisioned religious liberty extending to people of every faith and no faith. Baptists helped secure that vision because they understood something we must not forget: religious freedom is not merely protection for people who think like us. It is protection for all people.

And perhaps the greatest measure of our own commitment to religious freedom is whether we are willing to defend it even when doing so protects someone with whom we profoundly disagree.