Introduction: Religious freedom: between governance and social perception Introduction: Liberté religieuse : entre gouvernance et perception sociale

Introduction

Religious freedom is among the most contested concepts in contemporary societies. Though it is guaranteed by international human rights treaties and represents one of the main pillars of democratic societies, its protection and implementation are far from being unambiguous and have become increasingly contested. Usually defined simultaneously as freedom of religion and freedom from religion, tensions arise from the very first definition of religion and how the individual right of religious freedom is accommodated with the collective rights of religious groups, particularly in the public arena. For academics, human rights experts, lawyers, and politicians, the search for a relevant conceptualisation of religious freedom in the context of national legal traditions, political systems, and specific socio-cultural settings has become an ongoing exercise, together with the classification of types of state religious restrictions and discriminatory actions. The more research is conducted on the topic, the more evident the link becomes between the governmental practices and prevailing system of societal norms and perceptions of religious freedom, even though there are exceptions and ongoing dynamics between them.

Within the sociology of law, the discussions around the legal definition of religion in its relation to religious freedom (Jamal, 2015; Sandberg, 2014) move scholars to consider what kind of religion may or may not be protected through law (Sullivan, 2005) and how to establish specific socio-legal criteria to produce a more integrative approach to the legal protection of religious freedom (Peroni, 2014). Moreover, the sociology of religious freedom contributed to understanding normative dynamics between positive law and social norms, explaining how the institutional process of the juridification of religion (Cumper and Lewis, 2019) is interlinked with the social norm-making of individuals and groups (Breskaya et al., 2018). Meanwhile, political science highlighted the tensions between the constitutional promises of religious freedoms and practices of state regulation (Grim and Finke, 2011). It is suggested that economic and structural conditions may mediate the compliance gap and social and cultural pressures on religious minorities, indicating that legal and governmental actions may be conditioned by the mechanisms of the religious economy (Mataic and Finke, 2019).

The search for the legal, political, and social determinants of religious freedom assisted in identifying the structural conditions that affect its implementation in a particular context. Four such conditions stand out as the most prominent for this special issue:

The first one is related to political ideologies and secularism as a particular political standpoint about religious and secular worldviews in modernized societies. The rising populist movements (mis)use traditional religions in supposed defences of nation and tradition. Whether religion is just symbolically (mis)used or seen as an alien to basically secular political order, religion becomes an important factor in political debates and processes with a possible far-reaching impact on the definition and implementation of religious freedom. As Jonathan Fox (2015) noted, political secularism with its linkage to secularization theory assists in understanding ‘the extent to which secularism has encroached on the political and social territory of religion’ (Fox, 2015: 18), thus clarifying the issues of religious decline, legitimacy, or the private/public divide in society.

The second structural condition is the type of relationship between religious freedom and traditional state-religion relations that in general reflect the historical development in a given country or region. Despite differences in state-religion models, almost all of them give precedence to some (usually traditional or majority) religions over minority or new religions. Moreover, the rising governmental control over religion and the practice of religion in everyday life, as made evident by various empirical research findings, contribute to restrictions rather than the implementation of complete religious freedom. As Cole Durham (2012) argued, for religious freedom research it is crucial to integrate the analysis of patterns of state-religion relations with the prevailing values of political cultures. This is because the dynamics of state-religion governance, specifically in moments of political change, rely on well-grounded socio-political norms and values.

The third condition encompasses the role of judicial power in producing societal meanings of religious freedom. As a separate power within the governmental structure, the judicial power tends to differ significantly in the way specific religious freedoms are interpreted and implemented, as the concept of judicialization of religious freedom suggests. As James T. Richardson (2006, 2015) emphasized, for understanding religious freedom as a social construct, the institutional analysis of the national judiciary system has to be done in conjunction with the research of the social context of religious pluralism. Still, the implementation of judicial rules varies significantly among different countries, and there are many ways of bypassing such rules by various branches of government. As the most important European body in human rights, the European Court of Human Rights contributes to the blurring concept of religious freedom by the wide use of its ‘margin of appreciation’ doctrine (McCrea, 2016).

The fourth condition encompasses contemporary socio-economic dynamics, especially demographic decline, migration, and globalization. The socio-religious landscape of countries has been changing rapidly, while the religious composition is among the most visible aspect of this dynamic. The pluralization of religions and in general of worldviews and lifestyles poses a question of how new and particular religious outlooks are recognized and protected. The sociological argument formulated by Peter Berger – ‘if secularisation theory must be given up, we need a theory of pluralism to replace it’ (2014: xi) – has a solid reference to the changing socio-religious conditions of modern life. He noted that the paradigm of religious pluralism highlights the two kinds of ongoing socio-religious dynamics, ‘the co-existence of different religions and the coexistence of religious and secular discourses. This co-existence occurs both in the minds of individuals and in social space’ (2014: ix). Namely, the linkage of religious freedom as a fundamental right with religious pluralism as a social arrangement of modern societies (Yang, 2014: 137) provides a sociological explanation regarding how legal and governmental principles respond to new social configurations.

Due to all that, it is not surprising that there is a renewed interest in religious rights, religious freedom, the position of religious minorities, or the role of religion in politics. This special issue responds to this interest by applying a range of well-established sociological and political science theories and introducing the new approaches to religious freedom study and locating them at the levels of analysis of the state, the societal systems, and social institutions, as well as groups and individuals. The aim is to stimulate cooperation among various disciplinary approaches. Sociology needs a comparative outlook of political sciences and legal science, in particular, demonstrated by the sociology of law approach. The complementary aim is to look further into significant differences among countries and regions regarding religious freedom. We highlight the comparative research method in this regard, which brings new evidence about the varying contexts and conditions of governance and perceptions of religious freedom. The articles included in this special issue try to balance empirical research and theoretical observations on socio-political and socio-legal theories problematizing the causal relationship between the governmental religion policies and patterns of social norm-making and perceptions that promote/oppose the principles of religious freedom by various actors in society.

The articles published in this special issue bring new insights to the ongoing discussions on theoretical and methodological challenges in the study of religious freedom. They can be considered in the following cross-cutting themes.

Religious freedom as a (contested) value

It is well established that religious freedom is a value firmly enshrined in the development of modern democracy (e.g. Beckford, 2003; Richardson, 2006). It is a normative principle endorsed by a significant number of international and national documents, mainly key international declarations and treaties on human right and national constitutions and special laws. Two usual questions follow. First, if the principle is endorsed by many (documents, countries, regions), what are the ones in opposition? Second, the endorsement does not always guarantee a complete and consistent application. If there is a gap, how to understand it? Indeed, the starting point of two articles presented in this special issue, those by Finke and Matic and by Fox, is a considerable gap between claimed legal principle (constitutional promises of religious freedom) and governmental practice (its application), which pose a fundamental question on the nature of religious freedom and its relation to other rights. However, there is a further question on what is happening with a general endorsement of religious freedom in a more extended period? Is it strengthening, or declining, or shifting in its primary meaning? If it is declining and shifting – as this might be an overall message of this special issue – which social conditions contribute to that? Thus, the social perception of religious freedom, whether this is about how we apply it through various policies at the societal level or how individuals see and understand it, should be analysed in connection with structural changes and conditions of contemporary societies.

Democracy, discrimination and religious freedom

Democracy, with its principle of tolerance and fundamental rights of all human beings, is a vital carrier of a value of religious freedom. It gives essential though not conclusive conditions for implementing various freedoms and rights. If democratic societies are considered critical for freedoms and rights and an overall peaceful environment and economic prosperity (e.g. Dahl, 2015; Lipset, 1981), the question is whether religious freedom brings the same benefits? In his article, Fox lists some research that confirms links between religious freedom and overall security and economic prosperity. The work here needs to be developed further to bring compelling evidence from various social contexts. That becomes even more important in times of declining democracies worldwide, the process in which people’s dissatisfaction rises over the way democracy works and effectively addresses their needs and their essential fears about security and identity (e.g. Freedom House, 2021; Miller, 2021).

Still, the problem requires a more nuanced analysis. The first issue is whether democracies effectively defend religious rights. If it is effective, this appears to be more so on the individual level, while collective rights remain questionable on several grounds. Tensions between respecting individual and collective rights reflect the history of rising individualism in the Western world, which struggles with equally defending rights to manifest beliefs in collective ways (Calhoun, 2011). At least in the European context, increasing diversity revealed that the specific historical trajectory of individualistic societies remained unsettled with the public role of religion (Casanova, 2008). Thus, the issue about how the current crisis of democracies relates to the rising of religious discrimination should be analysed in that dynamic historical perspective and not as an isolated and soon to be overcome challenge. However, the evidence is compelling and worrying. As a recent study of Pew Research (2020) evidenced, from 2007 to 2018, the level of high and very high social hostilities involving religion – ‘acts of religion-related hostility by private individuals, organisations or groups in society’ (Majumdar and Villa, 2020: 12) – increased seven per cent points (from 20% to 27% with a slight decrease in 2018 in comparison with 2017, from 28% to 27%). Simultaneously, the level of high and very high government restrictions on religion is continuing to grow from 2007 (20%) till 2017 (28%). There were no countries with ‘full’ democracies among the countries with very high governmental restriction and a very high level of social hostilities. Meanwhile, among the countries with a low level of social hostilities, 21% had authoritarian regimes with a very high level of governmental restriction. These observations explain that state and society reflect each other’s norms, practices, and past experiences; however, not neglecting the fact that ‘high levels of government control over religion may lead to fewer hostilities by nongovernment actors’ (Majumdar and Villa, 2020: 18).

Therefore, this issue is about a crisis of promising religious freedom and the overall retreat of religious freedom. Recently collected cross-national data (see ARDA, Religion and State (RAS) and Pew Research datasets) support the arguments that along with the state religion policies, the role of individual and group agency, religious institutions, independent judiciary, non-governmental organisations, and social movements can be crucial for making religious freedom a constituent element of legal culture and conscience and a social norm of everyday relations (Beaman, 2017). Thus, larger social conditions do matter. They do matter even in the question of why we can talk today about the dejudicialization of religious freedom. This is efficiently summarised in the article in this issue by Mayrl and Venny which states that political trends toward populism and ethnonationalist movements and away from democracy and global human rights explain the decline of the judicialization of religious freedom or, we can add, the global uncertainties of realizing religious freedom.

Secularity, secularism and religious freedom

Democracy itself cannot explain the social context without considering the secularization process as one of the main and, at the same time, controversial traits of modernity/postmodernity. There is no need, and there is no space, to go into any details of how to understand secularization itself and its impact on guaranteeing various rights. Still, the story this special issue underlines might be of a long history of creating a context in which people would be free to believe or not to believe and would be free of the imposition of a specific worldview on them, to a context that is alien to religion as such, as religions might not be able to compromise with the rising world of a range of human rights. The trajectory is even more complicated as religious freedom was developed in the 1600s within the context of religious wars in the European region (Richardson in this issue), while today threats to specific religious rights are mounting in liberal democracies that sustain the secular culture (as revealed from the overview of different research in Fox’s article) toward a culture emerging as a post-post-secularism in the Australian context. The latter, as Possamai and Possamai-Inesedy explain, allows increasingly a majority religion to discriminate in the very same name of realizing religious rights. Put differently, the historical rise of secularism which, in Taylor’s words (2007: 3), is a fundamental change from ‘a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others,’ has created an immanent frame for achieving human rights. This is secularity, not secularism as a political ideology (Casanova, 2011), but the two are strongly interrelated. Hence, two very different perspectives are discussed. The first perspective is concentrated on religious discrimination and interprets political secularism as a context, besides specific governmental policies, for the rising religious discrimination (the argument in Fox’s article). Meanwhile, the second perspective is more concerned that an increasing sensitivity for the specific religious rights of established religions in the secular context trumps other human rights (the argument of (Possamai and Possamai-Inesedy’s article). Although the latter perspective parallels the mounting body of research on how rising populism (mis)uses dominant religions to curtail the rights of minorities and in particular new and non-historical religion (DeHanas and Shterin, 2020), the accent seems to be quite different: protection of religious rights versus depriving of other rights in the name of religion. Still, both perspectives ask for further studies of how very secular contexts, ideologically and in terms of a large share of populations having no-confessional belonging, relies on dominant religions in quite culturized ways and on the ways these ‘secularized religions’ play an essential role in rather worrying political processes nowadays. Though very different in outlook, the articles by Possamai and Possamai-Inesedy and by Fox struggle with the same social backgrounds.

The perception of what religious freedom is and how we value it may be reflected in the modalities of governmental policies. A unique specificity of this special issue is that four out of six articles are focused on the governance of religious rights in two different though very complementary ways. One is the role of constitutions/legislation, and the other one is the judiciary’s role. Normatively, constitutions (and other related laws) do matter as they summarise fundamental legal principles and social values. Before asking how these fundamental values may be not respected, one should be sure this is the case. Fox’s article is just one in a series by him that offers convincing empirical evidence that the human rights standard of religious freedom enshrined in national constitutions can be claimed by the state and at the same time violated in governmental practices. His analysis relies on unpacking the (indeed) general and not an easily definable concept of religious freedom into a long list of specific measures across 183 countries. Comparing state religious policies worldwide, he shows that religious discrimination is happening everywhere and that it is remarkable in their scope. There is an easily recognized pattern since discrimination differs across a distinct group of countries, which provokes further analysis. Various discriminatory measures against minorities and majorities or all religions, come to light, and the question is how and when this should be analysed separately and/or in conjunction. Finally, (Western) liberal democracies discriminate significantly. Let us, again, put this in a larger context of how democracies and secularity/secularism evolve. If anything, this also questions the possibility of guaranteeing religious freedom related to other freedoms that democracies try to advance.

All that does not lead to the conclusion that constitutional/legal promises do not matter at all. Another set of contextual variables, which this special issue touches only superficially, is governance through state policies toward religions, usually and very sketchily captured by the notion of state-church relations. Constitutional/legal promises stem from ideas about how religions should be regulated and further conditioned by implementing these ideas. And, there is a subtle meaning of such concepts as freedom or equality. The article of Finke and Mataic concludes that constitutional promises matter, though in a specific way. If talking about discrimination against religious minorities, the article argues that the constitutional frame of respect for religious equality does matter and does matter more than the respect for religious freedom. Such a stance supports individuals more than religious organisations (another question mark on how to address collective rights ?) and is beneficial when some important democratic(!) governance structures are lacking, such as the independent judiciary or free elections. Further analyses on differential treatment of various religious minorities should complement these findings.

(De)judicialisation and religious freedom

Another pair of concepts – the judicialization or (de)judicialization of religious freedom – is considered in two original articles (Mayrl and Vanny; Richardson). Do they present antithetical processes or should both perspectives be considered in a complementary way? As informed by both articles, the (de)judicialization of religious freedom comes from the notion of the judicialization of politics, the process in which an increasing number of political and social issues, mainly controversial ones, are delegated to courts. There is controversy already here. When they are autonomous, courts act as the leading carriers of expanding human rights, bringing social promises enshrined in legal documents into reality. In that way, courts may serve as the main branch of liberal democracies. However, the judicialization of politics shrinks the fields of democratic decisions. What has been seen as a liberal victory (courts as promotors of liberal values) turns to be perceived as the main threat to a democratic process. The same is visible in what becomes increasingly studied in the scholarship on the judicialization of religious freedom. Richardson provides a thorough overview of how the judicialization of religious freedom works worldwide. The contexts are different, but countries and regions which value religious freedom more and which administrative structures allow independent judiciary are those in which judicialization brings more religious freedom. That becomes more visible if adjudicated cases concern minority religions. It would be completely wrong to see this process as smooth or not controversial and not conditioned by a range of specific social circumstances. However, countries supporting this human right are different from those countries and regions that do not value it. The countries vary in their record of religious freedom, depending on the presence or lack of independent judiciaries and degrees of more or less democratic governance.

Mayrl and Venny’s article on the dejudicialization of religious freedom elaborates on that by looking at larger social-structural conditions not supportive of the judicialization of politics and the consequent role of courts. Political and social conditions may change, thus indicating the need for much more empirical evidence on why and how it is happening. The article also warns us to not be blind to the importance of other actors and venues, besides the courts, of effective implementation of religious freedom. What is particularly striking and worth future studying is that discontent with the judicialization of politics for democratic reasons is effectively used by anti-democratic and populist movements, which can significantly change the way various political groups in society interpret religious freedom.

Social perception and religious freedom

While the title of only one article of this special issue is specifically on the social perception of religious freedom (that by Breskaya et al.), this Introduction has already offered much evidence that all the articles struggle with the perception of religious freedom. This is visible from explicit statements – e.g. Fox’s observation that religious freedom is a contested topic, religious freedom is relatively new, quite fragile, and not universal, as Richardson notes – or from discussions by other contributors about how to measure it, or why it is not seen as a value that receives greater support. Therefore, the idea of the article by Breskaya et al. is complementary: to assess empirically how individuals perceive religious freedom as a multidimensional concept and what kind of meanings they favour to varying degrees. The social perception of religious freedom is discussed as a complex concept that holds many implications for subjective experiences and public life. By emphasising the link between legal, political, and religious connotations that individuals prescribe to the concept, the authors present empirical evidence that political engagement, social inclusion, religious identities, and practices of individuals matter in defining the shared religious freedom meaning in society. With a theoretical linkage to the social constructivist perspective, the authors question how individuals produce domains of meanings and what kind of identities and practices contribute to the differences in perceptions of religious freedom. The article suggests measures and results concerning attitudes toward political secularism and state-religion relations, arguing for the necessity of empirical sociological analysis of these concepts at the individual level. Specifically, the authors reveal how individuals perceive different kinds of secularist views (relying on a theory of ‘passive’ and ‘assertive’ secularism of Ahmed Kuru) and of particular types of state-religion models (referring to the Cole Durham conceptualization scheme). The analysis was done only on the sample of Italian university students. Still, it shows clearly how the very notion of religious freedom may be operationalized (e.g. Breskaya and Giordan, 2019) and how the specific ideas of secularism and state-church relations influence its endorsement.