One noteworthy aspect of Constantine’s policy is that, while making it legal to follow Jesus, he allowed the polytheistic pagans to continue their practices. He instituted freedom of religion.
This was perhaps in some ways unexpected, because the followers of Jesus had been persecuted - jailed, beaten, tortured, and killed - for nearly three centuries. Historians estimate that anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000 Jesus followers were executed. It is difficult to form a precise estimate, given the sketchy data.
When the followers of Jesus finally gained legal status, nature and human psychology would seem to have dictated that they would use this status to gain revenge. Finally being legal, would they use that opportunity to inflict retribution upon the pagans?
Surprisingly, the Constantine, himself a follower of Jesus, instituted tolerance. The followers of Jesus allowed their former persecutors to freely and peacefully practice their polytheism.
At the same time, another dimension of the freedom of religion would impact the Jews during the last two centuries of the Roman Empire and into the early Middle Ages. The situation was mixed, with horrific pogroms alternating with periods of constructive coexistence. Previously, they had suffered under uninterrupted persecution.
In 1215 A.D., King John signed the Magna Carta in England. This document stated that the government should not interfere in the organization of the Jesus followers. This created a “safe zone” and prevented the government from intruding into spiritual matters.
The freedom of religion would manifest itself again as modes of coexistence were developed in the wake of the Reformation. As different groups of Lutherans, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics learned to lived peacefully with each other, further tolerance was extended to the Jewish community.
In North America, freedom of religion became most explicit in the revolution of 1776. As religious freedom expanded based on the American model, it also spread to other parts of the world, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
Even in those places and times in which the implementation of religious freedom failed - e.g., in the French Revolution of 1789, which began by seeking such freedom ended by reducing it - the language of religious tolerance became accepted and even expected.
Thus discourse about religious freedom became de rigueur, both sincerely on the part of governments which attempted to grant it, and cynically on the part of governments which had no intention of granting it.
A well-intended statement on the topic was issued in 1982 by the United Nations. In that year, Martin Scharlemann wrote:
In a way the concept of religious freedom was already implied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations as far back as 1948. The International Covenant on Human Rights, prepared somewhat later, could hardly be fully appreciated without assuming that it, too, stood for this somewhat basic liberty. Yet, ever since the early sixties, some countries kept calling for a separate UN document dealing specifically with religion and personal belief.
The 1982 statement was intended to move religious freedom from an implicit agenda item to an explicit agenda item.
The text of the statement seems, at first, to be a clear statement of tolerance.
Such a declaration now exists. It took some twenty years of discussion and debate to bring it to birth. Just before last Christmas, the UN General Assembly officially adopted a statement on the elimination of religious intolerance. Taking into account the diverse ideologies and religions in today’s world, this document affirms “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Its second sentence continues by asserting that “this right shall include freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of one’s choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.”
But the text also contained qualifications which could be exploited by regimes which had no intention of exercising tolerance. In 1982, the religious freedom faced a double threat.
On the one hand, the Cold War was still shaping international diplomatic relations. Stalinist and other communist-statist governments worked to impose militant atheism in places like the Soviet Union, Cuba, mainland China, North Korea, etc.
On the other hand, Islam was at work. Although militant Islam gained the attention of the American public a few decades later, it was already a major factor in other parts of the world.
The UN statement did not wish to confront those regimes which were determined to restrict or prohibit religious belief. The 1982 statement therefore contained a loophole or escape clause. Martin Scharlemann continues:
The first drafts of this declaration were content to condemn religious persecution wherever it occurred, including particularly the Muslim practice of harassing and even killing Christians. However, as the discussion moved forward, the parameters of the document were broadened to incorporate the right of any person to share in religious liberty. The second sentence, just quoted above, reads as though freedom of belief, as we know it in the United States, were now being advocated for the whole world. There is a catch, however, in what the UN adopted; namely, the proviso that such liberty be “subject [only] to such limitations as are prescribed by law.”
The United Nations was content to express a sentiment, but did not want to risk arousing opposition by taking significant action.
Observers at that time wondered whether the statement should be counted as a victory, because the sentiment was at least expressed, or if it should be counted as a loss, because a toothless statement lacking meaningful impact would only embolden cynical states who mouthed the rhetoric of religious freedom but had no intention of implementing it.
Returning now to the UN declaration on religious freedom, we might also point out that no Muslim nation would have voted for the kind of document which took two decades to prepare if it did not contain the kind of hedge expressed in the proviso: “subject [only] to such limitations as are prescribed by law.” Even Anwar Sadat could not have allowed such a development, even though he had with him the Coptic patriarch of Egypt on the reviewing stand the day he was assassinated. (In point of fact, the patriarch died from the same hail of bullets that killed Sadat.)
Anwar Sadat, himself Sunni Muslim, had extended very little religious tolerance to Egypt’s Copts. (The Copts are Egyptian Jesus followers.) Leaders of the Copts were subject to harassment and arrests.
But certain Islamic groups in Egypt were dissatisfied that Sadat had not been harsher toward the Copts. They were also unhappy that Sadat had taken symbolic actions like establishing diplomatic connections with the Vatican, or speaking with Jesus followers while making state visits to other countries.
Islamic dissatisfaction with Sadat culminated in the assassination, when Sadat was killed together with the Coptic leader whom he’d recently released from prison.
In the face of this Islamic aggressiveness, the United Nations was willing, in 1982, to make a symbolic statement. But it was not willing to take any action which might have measurably promoted religious freedom.
