The Scope of Religious Freedom in Europe: Tolerance, Democratic Equality and Political Autonomy

Religious freedom is widely claimed as a fundamental principle of liberal democracy, and, yet, the relation between religious freedom, tolerance, and democratic equality is a matter of ongoing negotiation. This chapter clarifies the relationship between two central tenets of liberalism: a robust protection of citizens’ religious freedom, and a view of tolerance committed to public justification that secures the stability ‘for the right reasons’ of liberal institutions. While liberalism suggests that these two tenets are compatible, there is considerable tension between them. This chapter shows that these two can work in harmony on the basis of a fundamental commitment to securing citizens’ political autonomy. Standard liberal egalitarian responses to the problem of accommodating religious freedom, which appeal to a view of equality of treatment, face the problem of disregarding what is really at stake in these cases. To determine the scope of religious freedom is a problem of non-comparative justice, one that guarantees the (equal) access to a constitutional right. This, nevertheless, is still a problem of egalitarian justice as far as it asks to determine the most appropriate view of citizens’ equality, which helps to single out legitimate claims of religious integrity. The chapter suggests that Rawls’ political value of autonomy and the related notion of democratic equality significantly help in determining the scope of religious freedom in contemporary European democracies.