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118-499: Religious persecution is the systematic oppression of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or their lack thereof . The tendency of societies or groups within societies to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history . Moreover, because a person's religion frequently determines his or her sense of morality , worldview , self-image , attitudes towards others, and overall personal identity to

236-423: A 2019 report, government restrictions and social hostilities toward religion have risen in 187 countries. "Religious cleansing" is sometimes used in reference to the removal of a population from a certain territory based on its religion. More recently, “religious cleansing” has been used in reference to the elimination of all religious structures or all individuals who adhere to a particular religion and live within

354-482: A Church, all those who adhere to them". Sacred things are not, however, limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred". Religious beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and the virtues and powers which are attributed to them. Echoes of James' and Durkheim's definitions are to be found in

472-491: A concrete deity or not" to which the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and gravity. Sociologist Émile Durkheim , in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life , defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called

590-527: A defense of the fragile values of humanism and tolerance . More recent introductions to this period are Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (2000) by John Coffey and Charitable hatred. Tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (2006) by Alexandra Walsham. To understand why religious persecution has occurred, historians like Coffey "pay close attention to what

708-493: A definition of religion. There are, however, two general definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical. The concept of religion originated in the modern era in the West . Parallel concepts are not found in many current and past cultures; there is no equivalent term for religion in many languages. Scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition, with some giving up on

826-421: A god and at worst they can jail them for offences which are dubbed blasphemy". State atheism has been defined by David Kowalewski as the official "promotion of atheism " by a government, typically by the active suppression of religious freedom and practice. It is a misnomer which is used in reference to a government's anti-clericalism , its opposition to religious institutional power and influence, whether it

944-474: A larger community which is composed of people who are members of the same ethnicity. Throughout antiquity , population cleansing was largely motivated by economic and political factors, but occasionally, ethnic factors also played a role. During the Middle Ages , population cleansing took on a largely religious character. The religious motivation for population cleansing lost much of its salience early in

1062-572: A near-universal expression of commitment to religious human rights, the frequency-and severity-of religious persecution worldwide is staggering. Although it is impossible to determine with certainty the exact numbers of people persecuted for their faith or religious affiliation, it is unquestioned that "violations of freedom of religion and belief, including acts of severe persecution, occur with fearful frequency." She quotes Irwin Colter, human rights advocate and author as saying "[F]reedom of religion remains

1180-442: A public disagreement on secondary matters might be serious enough, frequently, it has only led to religious discrimination . On the other hand, the public renunciation of the core elements of a religious doctrine under the same circumstances would have put one in far greater danger. While dissenters from the official Church only faced fines and imprisonment in Protestant England, six people were executed for heresy or blasphemy during

1298-448: A quarter of all countries in the world, the restrictions imposed by governments, or hostilities towards one or more religious groups, are high or very high . Some of the most populous countries in the world belong to this group, such as China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Therefore, around three quarters of the world's population live in them." At the symposium on law and religion in 2014, Michelle Mack said: "Despite what appears to be

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1416-518: A race rather than a religion. In keeping with what they were taught in Nazi propaganda, the perpetrators of the Holocaust made no distinction between secular Jews , atheistic Jews , orthodox Jews and Jews who had converted to Christianity . The persecution of beliefs that are deemed schismatic is one thing; the persecution of beliefs that are deemed heretical or blasphemous is another. Although

1534-600: A religious market. The Churching of America was methodologically noteworthy for demonstrating the utility of quantitative historical data on church membership. Additionally, Finke is the co-author of The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-first Century and Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America's Religious Landscape . He is author or co-author of numerous peer-reviewed articles appearing in edited volumes and journals such as American Sociological Review , Journal for

1652-482: A shift from territoriality to religious voluntarism. It was Locke who, in his Letter Concerning Toleration , defined the state in purely secular terms: "The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests." Concerning the church, he went on: "A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord." With this treatise, John Locke laid one of

1770-405: A significant extent, religious differences can be significant cultural, personal, and social factors. Religious persecution may be triggered by religious or antireligious stances (when members of a dominant group denigrate religions other than their own or religion itself where the irreligious are the dominant group) or it may be triggered by the state when it views a particular religious group as

1888-443: A similar union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. Though traditions, sacred texts, and practices have existed throughout time, most cultures did not align with Western conceptions of religion since they did not separate everyday life from the sacred. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and world religions first entered

2006-655: A subject of interest to philosophers and theologians. The word myth has several meanings: Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Rome , and Scandinavia , are usually categorized under the heading of mythology . Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are similarly called myths in the anthropology of religion . The term myth can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology

2124-558: A threat to its interests or security. At a societal level, the dehumanization of a particular religious group may readily lead to acts of violence or other forms of persecution . Religious persecution may be the result of societal and/or governmental regulation. Governmental regulation refers to the laws which the government imposes in order to regulate a religion, and societal regulation is discrimination against citizens because they adhere to one or more religions. In many countries, religious persecution has resulted in so much violence that it

2242-600: A transcendent deity and all else, between the creator and his creation, between God and man. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a: ... system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. Alluding perhaps to Tylor's "deeper motive", Geertz remarked that: ... we have very little idea of how, in empirical terms, this particular miracle

2360-450: A wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology , philosophy of religion , comparative religion , and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for its origins and workings, including the ontological foundations of religious being and belief. The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo-Norman (1200s CE ) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what

2478-563: A word or even a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written. For example, there is no precise equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities. One of its central concepts is halakha , meaning the walk or path sometimes translated as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life. Even though

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2596-476: Is a moral virtue; if this is the case, it would follow that intolerance is a vice. But virtue and vice are qualities solely of individuals, and intolerance and persecution [in the Christian Middle Ages] were social and collective phenomena sanctioned by society and hardly questioned by anyone. Religious intolerance and persecution, therefore, were not seen as vices, but as necessary and salutary for

2714-400: Is accomplished. We just know that it is done, annually, weekly, daily, for some people almost hourly; and we have an enormous ethnographic literature to demonstrate it. The theologian Antoine Vergote took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency. He also emphasized the cultural reality of religion, which he defined as: ... the entirety of

2832-468: Is also the product of the dominant Western religious mode, what is called the Judeo-Christian climate or, more accurately, the theistic inheritance from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The theistic form of belief in this tradition, even when downgraded culturally, is formative of the dichotomous Western view of religion. That is, the basic structure of theism is essentially a distinction between

2950-502: Is an important or a central marker of ethnic identity, some conflicts can best be described as "ethno-religious conflicts". Nazi antisemitism provides another example of the contentious divide between ethnic persecution and religious persecution, because Nazi propaganda tended to construct its image of Jews by portraying them as people who were members of an inferior race (see Racial antisemitism and Nazi racial theories ), it dehumanized and demonized Jews by classifying them as

3068-687: Is brought to a point by a statement of the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker : "There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the [English] commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England." Before a vigorous debate about religious persecution took place in England (starting in the 1640s), for centuries in Europe, religion had been tied to territory. In England, there had been several Acts of Uniformity ; in continental Europe,

3186-644: Is confusion between ethnicity and religion. Other acts of violence which are not always committed against adherents of particular religions such as war , torture , and ethnic cleansing , may take on the qualities of religious persecution when one or more of the parties which are involved in them are characterized by their religious homogeneity; an example of this occurs when conflicting populations that belong to different ethnic groups also belong to different religions or denominations. The difference between religious and ethnic identity might sometimes be obscure (see Ethnoreligious ); nevertheless, cases of genocide in

3304-574: Is considered a human rights problem. David T. Smith, in Religious Persecution and Political Order in the United States , defines religious persecution as "violence or discrimination against members of a religious minority because of their religious affiliation," referring to "actions that are intended to deprive individuals of their political rights and force minorities to assimilate, leave, or live as second-class citizens . In

3422-520: Is derived from religare : re (meaning "again") + ligare ("bind" or "connect"), which was made prominent by St. Augustine following the interpretation given by Lactantius in Divinae institutiones , IV, 28. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders : "we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden Fleece , of a knight 'of

3540-559: Is found in texts from the 17th century due to events such as the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and globalization in the Age of Exploration , which involved contact with numerous foreign cultures with non-European languages. Some argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply the term religion to non-Western cultures, while some followers of various faiths rebuke using

3658-550: Is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine , sacredness , faith , and a supernatural being or beings. The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Religions have sacred histories , narratives , and mythologies , preserved in oral traditions, sacred texts , symbols , and holy places , that may attempt to explain

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3776-775: Is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as misinterpreted mythology." Roger Finke Roger Finke earned his doctorate in sociology at the University of Washington in 1984, and held faculty positions at Concordia College in Illinois, Loyola University of Chicago, and Purdue University before joining the faculty at The Pennsylvania State University in 2000. Professor Finke co-authored two books with sociologist of religion Rodney Stark . The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy received

3894-526: Is possible to understand why scientific findings and philosophical criticisms (e.g., those made by Richard Dawkins ) do not necessarily disturb its adherents. The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Traditionally, faith , in addition to reason , has been considered a source of religious beliefs. The interplay between faith and reason, and their use as perceived support for religious beliefs, have been

4012-636: Is real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. State atheism was first practiced for a brief period in Revolutionary France and later it was practiced in Revolutionary Mexico and Marxist-Leninist states . The Soviet Union had a long history of state atheism, in which social success largely required individuals to profess atheism, stay away from churches and even vandalize them; this attitude

4130-471: Is sacred, reverence for the gods. It is ultimately derived from the Latin word religiō . According to Roman philosopher Cicero , religiō comes from relegere : re (meaning "again") + lego (meaning "read"), where lego is in the sense of "go over", "choose", or "consider carefully". Contrarily, some modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell have argued that religiō

4248-578: Is taken for granted, but actually, this legal separation of Church and State only started to emerge a few centuries ago. In the Christian debate on persecution and toleration , the notion of civil tolerance allowed Christian theologians to reconcile Jesus' commandment to love one's enemies with other parts of the New Testament that are rather strict regarding dissent within the church. Before that, theologians like Joseph Hall had reasoned from

4366-574: Is the location of one of the seventh largest Baháʼí population in the world, with just over 251,100 as of 2010. Baháʼís in Iran have been subject to unwarranted arrests, false imprisonment, beatings, torture, unjustified executions, confiscation and destruction of property owned by individuals and the Baháʼí community, denial of employment, denial of government benefits, denial of civil rights and liberties, and denial of access to higher education. More recently, in

4484-404: Is these communities, which can be a majority or a minority, that generate violence. Since the development of identity involves 'what we are not' as much as 'what we are', there are grounds for the fear that tolerance of 'what we are not' can contribute to the erosion of identity. Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke say that the perception that plurality is dangerous leads to religious persecution. Both

4602-486: The Abrahamic religions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism , while others are arguably less so, in particular folk religions , indigenous religions , and some Eastern religions . A portion of the world's population are members of new religious movements . Scholars have indicated that global religiosity may be increasing due to religious countries having generally higher birth rates. The study of religion comprises

4720-484: The Christian and Muslim worlds during the Middle Ages . Today, atheism is punishable by death in 12 countries ( Afghanistan , Iran , Malaysia , the Maldives , Mauritania , Nigeria , Pakistan , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , Somalia , Sudan and Yemen ), all of them Muslim-majority, while "the overwhelming majority" of the 193 United Nations member countries "at best discriminate against citizens who have no belief in

4838-716: The Dogon people , an ancient tribe in Mali had faced religious and ethnic persecution—through jihads by dominant Muslim communities. These jihadic expeditions were undertaken in order to force the Dogon to abandon their traditional religious beliefs and convert to Islam. Such jihads caused the Dogon to abandon their original villages and move up to the cliffs of Bandiagara in search of a place where they could defend themselves more efficiently and escape persecution—which they often did by building their dwellings in little nooks and crannies. In

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4956-781: The Kuomintang Pacification of Qinghai , the Muslim General Ma Bufang and his army wiped out many Tibetan Buddhists in the northeast and eastern Qinghai, and destroyed Tibetan Buddhist temples. Religion Antiquity Medieval Early modern Modern Iran India East-Asia Religion is a range of social - cultural systems , including designated behaviors and practices, morals , beliefs , worldviews , texts , sanctified places , prophecies , ethics , or organizations , that generally relate humanity to supernatural , transcendental , and spiritual elements —although there

5074-439: The Middle Ages "provides a striking illustration of the classic deviance theory , [which is based on identity formation], as it was propounded by the father of sociology, Émile Durkheim ". Persecution is also, often, part of a larger conflict involving emerging states as well as established states in the process of redefining their national identity. James L.Gibson adds that the greater the attitudes of loyalty and solidarity to

5192-848: The Ogossagou massacre of Fulanis in March 2019, and the Fula retaliated by committing the Sobane Da massacre in June of that year. In the wake of the Ogossagou massacre, the President of Mali , Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and his government ordered the dissolution of Dan Na Ambassagou—whom they hold partly responsible for the attacks. The Dogon militia group denied its involvement in the massacre and it also rejected calls to disband itself. The persecution of

5310-643: The Popish Plot , an alleged plan to assassinate King Charles II and massacre the Protestants of the British Isles . In reality, the plot was a fictitious concoction by Titus Oates and Whig politician Lord Shaftesbury . Before the falsity of their claims were exposed, however, at least 22 innocent clergy and laity, including Archbishop Oliver Plunkett , had been unjustly convicted of high treason and executed at Tyburn . The descriptive use of

5428-511: The Serer people of Senegal , Gambia and Mauritania is multifaceted, and as a result, it includes religious and ethnic elements. The religious and ethnic persecution of the Serer people dates back to the 11th century, when King War Jabi usurped the throne of Tekrur (a part of present-day Senegal) in 1030, and in 1035, he introduced Sharia law and forced his subjects to submit to Islam . With

5546-558: The United Nations Commission on Human Rights on freedom of religion or belief, in a 20 March 2006 press release [2] . In the press release the Special Rapporteur states that she "is highly concerned by information she has received concerning the treatment of members of the Baháʼí community in Iran." She further states that "The Special Rapporteur is concerned that this latest development indicates that

5664-517: The lamanes . The persecution of the Serer people continued from the medieval era to the 19th century, resulting in the Battle of Fandane-Thiouthioune . Since the 20th century, the persecution of the Serers has been less visible, nevertheless, they are still the objects of scorn and prejudice. Used before the 18th century as an insult, atheism was punishable by death in ancient Greece as well as in

5782-561: The medieval period . In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations, but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed din as "law". The Sanskrit word dharma , sometimes translated as religion, also means law. Throughout classical South Asia , the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions . Medieval Japan at first had

5900-574: The origin of life , the universe , and other phenomena. Religious practices may include rituals , sermons , commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints ), sacrifices , festivals , feasts , trances , initiations , matrimonial and funerary services, meditation , prayer , music , art , dance , or public service . There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, though nearly all of them have regionally based, relatively small followings. Four religions— Christianity , Islam , Hinduism , and Buddhism —account for over 77% of

6018-527: The religion of Avys '". In classic antiquity, religiō broadly meant conscientiousness , sense of right , moral obligation , or duty to anything. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religiō was understood as an individual virtue of worship in mundane contexts; never as doctrine , practice, or actual source of knowledge . In general, religiō referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God . Religiō

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6136-492: The 1500s to distinguish the domain of the church and the domain of civil authorities ; the Peace of Augsburg marks such instance, which has been described by Christian Reus-Smit as "the first step on the road toward a European system of sovereign states ." Roman general Julius Caesar used religiō to mean "obligation of an oath" when discussing captured soldiers making an oath to their captors. Roman naturalist Pliny

6254-495: The 195 countries in the world. Between 2007 and 2017, the PEW organization found that "Christians experienced harassment by governments or social groups in the largest number of countries"—144 countries—but that it is almost equal to the number of countries (142) in which Muslims experience harassment. PEW has published a caution concerning the interpretation of these numbers: "The Center's recent report ... does not attempt to estimate

6372-804: The 1993 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion . Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion received the 2001 Book Award from the American Sociological Association 's Sociology of Religion Section. These books extended what is often called the New Paradigm or the Rational Choice theoretical perspective, conceptualizing denominations as competitors in

6490-692: The 20th century cannot be fully-explained by the citation of religious differences. Still, cases of genocide such as the Greek genocide , the Armenian genocide , and the Assyrian genocide are sometimes seen as cases of religious persecution and as a result, the lines between ethnic violence and religious violence are sometimes blurry. Since the Early modern period , an increasing number of religious cleansings were entwined with ethnic elements. Since religion

6608-801: The 5th and 10th century led to the Four Buddhist Persecutions in China of which the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution of 845 was probably the most severe. However Buddhism managed to survive but was greatly weakened. During the Northern Expedition , in 1926 in Guangxi , Kuomintang Muslim General Bai Chongxi led his troops in destroying Buddhist temples and smashing idols, turning the temples into schools and Kuomintang party headquarters. During

6726-746: The Command Headquarters of the Armed Forced in Iran states that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei has instructed the Command Headquarters to identify people who adhere to the Baháʼí Faith and to monitor their activities and gather any and all information about the members of the Baháʼí Faith. The letter was brought to the attention of the international community by Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur of

6844-510: The Congress. The report contains data which the United States collects from U.S. embassies around the world in collaboration with the Office of International Religious Freedom and other relevant U.S. government and non-governmental institutions. The data is available to the public. The 2018 study details, country by country, the violations of religious freedom taking place in approximately 75% of

6962-528: The Elder used the term religiō to describe the apparent respect given by elephants to the night sky . Cicero used religiō as being related to cultum deorum (worship of the gods). In Ancient Greece , the Greek term threskeia ( θρησκεία ) was loosely translated into Latin as religiō in late antiquity . Threskeia was sparsely used in classical Greece but became more frequently used in

7080-567: The English language. Native Americans were also thought of as not having religions and also had no word for religion in their languages either. No one self-identified as a Hindu or Buddhist or other similar terms before the 1800s. "Hindu" has historically been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent . Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion since there

7198-567: The Latin phrase " cuius regio, eius religio " had been coined in the 16th century and applied as a fundament for the Peace of Augsburg (1555). It was pushed to the extreme by absolutist regimes , particularly by the French kings Louis XIV and his successors. It was under their rule that Catholicism became the sole compulsory allowed religion in France and that the huguenots had to massively leave

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7316-627: The Ottoman Empire and the Venetian Republic", are not examples of tolerance in the modern sense of the term. The sociological view regards religious intolerance and persecution as largely social processes that are determined more by the context within which the social community exists than anything else. When governments ensure equal freedom for all, there is less persecution. Statistics from Pew Research Center show that Christianity and Islam are persecuted in more countries around

7434-525: The Scientific Study of Religion , Review of Religious Research , Social Science Research , and The Sociological Quarterly . In November 2015, Finke and fellow Pennsylvania State University professor Dane Mataic published a report entitled "Exploring the Trends and Consequences of Religious Registration: A Global Overview." In this report, Finke and Mataic outlined a "significant increase" (from 13% to 18%) in countries that required religious registration around

7552-547: The West (or even in the West until after the Peace of Westphalia ). The MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions states: The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and scientific disposition. It

7670-465: The aspect of a state's policy, it may be defined as violations of freedom of thought , conscience and belief which are spread in accordance with a systematic and active state policy which encourages actions such as harassment , intimidation and the imposition of punishments in order to infringe or threaten the targeted minority's right to life , integrity or liberty . The distinction between religious persecution and religious intolerance lies in

7788-491: The assistance of his son Leb, their Almoravid allies and other African ethnic groups which had embraced Islam , the Muslim coalition army launched jihads against the Serer people of Tekrur because they refused to abandon the Serer religion in favour of Islam. The number of Serers who were killed is unknown, but the defeat of the Serers at Tekrur triggered their exodus from Tekrur to the south, where they were granted asylum by

7906-422: The belief in spiritual beings exists in all known societies. In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience , the psychologist William James defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine". By the term divine James meant "any object that is god like , whether it be

8024-430: The beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, ancient Jews saw Jewish identity as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or regulated rituals. In the 1st century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term ioudaismos (Judaism) as an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs. The very concept of "Judaism"

8142-608: The communication of supernatural beliefs, defining religion as: ... the communicated acceptance by individuals of another individual’s “supernatural” claim, a claim whose accuracy is not verifiable by the senses. Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl , commonly translated as "the feeling of absolute dependence". His contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through

8260-414: The country. Persecution meant that the state was committed to secure religious uniformity by coercive measures, as eminently obvious in a statement of Roger L'Estrange : "That which you call persecution, I translate Uniformity". However, in the 17th century, writers like Pierre Bayle , John Locke , Richard Overton and Roger William broke the link between territory and faith, which eventually resulted in

8378-443: The degree of religious diversity that is tolerated within the state. In the absence of civil toleration, someone who finds himself in disagreement with his congregation does not have the option to leave and chose a different faith—simply because there is only one recognized faith in the country (at least officially). In modern western civil law any citizen may join and leave a religious organization at will; In western societies, this

8496-610: The early era of French colonialism in Mali, the French authorities appointed Muslim relatives of El Hadj Umar Tall as chiefs of the Bandiagara —despite the fact that the area has been a Dogon area for centuries. In 1864, Tidiani Tall , the nephew and successor of the 19th century Senegambian jihadist and Muslim leader—El Hadj Umar Tall, chose to make Bandiagara the capital of the Toucouleur Empire thereby exacerbating

8614-529: The ecclesiastical intolerance of the early Christian church in the New Testament to the civil intolerance of the Christian state. The Bishop of Vladimir Feodor turned some people into slaves, others were locked in prison, cut their heads, burnt eyes, cut tongues or crucified on walls. Some heretics were executed by burning them alive. According to an inscription of Khan Mengual-Temir, Metropolitan Kiril

8732-491: The eighth century, Christianity had attained a clear ascendancy across Europe and neighboring regions, and a period of consolidation began which was marked by the pursuit of heretics , heathens , Jews, Muslims , and various other religious groups. By contrast to the notion of civil tolerance in early modern Europe , the subjects were required to attend the state church ; this attitude can be described as territoriality or religious uniformity , and its underlying assumption

8850-569: The established polytheistic order than Judaism had been, because of the importance of evangelism in Christianity. Under Nero , the Jewish exemption from the requirement to participate in public cults was lifted and Rome began to actively persecute monotheists . This persecution ended in 313 AD with the Edict of Milan , and Christianity was made the official religion of the empire in 380 AD. By

8968-518: The fact that in most cases, the latter is motivated by the sentiment of the population, which may be tolerated or encouraged by the state. The denial of people's civil rights on the basis of their religion is most frequently described as religious discrimination , rather than religious persecution. Examples of persecution include the confiscation or destruction of property, incitement of hatred , arrests, imprisonment, beatings, torture , murder, and executions. Religious persecution can be considered

9086-520: The fictitious Popish Plot . Mehdi Ghezali and Murat Kurnaz were among the Muslims who were imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp , but they were not found to have any connections to terrorism , because they had previously traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to pursue their religious interests. The United States submits an annual report on religious freedom and persecution to

9204-450: The finite spirit." Edward Burnett Tylor defined religion in 1871 as "the belief in spiritual beings". He argued that narrowing the definition to mean the belief in a supreme deity or judgment after death or idolatry and so on, would exclude many peoples from the category of religious, and thus "has the fault of identifying religion rather with particular developments than with the deeper motive which underlies them". He also argued that

9322-527: The government. This dramatically worsened the persecution of Catholics in England. The 1584 Parliament of England , declared in " An Act against Jesuits, seminary priests, and such other like disobedient persons " that the purpose of all Catholic missionaries who had come to Britain was "to stir up and move sedition, rebellion and open hostility". Consequently, even strictly apolitical priests like Saint John Ogilvie , Dermot O'Hurley , and Robert Southwell were subjected to torture and execution, as were members of

9440-406: The group identity, and the more the benefits to belonging there are perceived to be, the more likely a social identity will become intolerant of challenges. Combining a strong social identity with the state, increases the benefits, therefore it is likely persecution from that social group will increase. Legal restriction from the state relies on social cooperation, so the state in its turn must protect

9558-401: The historians as a place and time in which literally "hundreds of books and tracts were published either for or against religious toleration." The most ambitious chronicle of that time is W.K.Jordan 's magnum opus The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 1558–1660 (four volumes, published 1932–1940). Jordan wrote as the threat of fascism rose in Europe, and this work is seen as

9676-534: The inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict. In recent years, the Dogon have accused the Fulanis of supporting Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and they have also accused the Fulanis of sheltering members of these same terrorist groups in Dogon country, leading to the creation of the Dogon militia Dan Na Ambassagou in 2016—whose aim is to defend the Dogon against systematic attacks. That action resulted in

9794-533: The laity like Sts. Margaret Clitherow and Richard Gwyn . This drastically contrasts with the image of the Elizabethan era as a golden age, but compared to the antecedent Marian Persecutions there is an important difference to consider. Queen Mary was motivated by determination to exterminate Protestantism from all her Kingdoms and to restore the independence of the English Church from control by

9912-463: The later months of 2005, an intensive anti-Baháʼí campaign was conducted by Iranian newspapers and radio stations. The state-run and influential Kayhan newspaper, whose managing editor is appointed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei The press in Iran, ran nearly three dozen articles defaming the Baháʼí Faith. Furthermore, a confidential letter sent on 29 October 2005 by the Chairman of

10030-424: The linguistic expressions, emotions and, actions and signs that refer to a supernatural being or supernatural beings. Peter Mandaville and Paul James intended to get away from the modernist dualisms or dichotomous understandings of immanence/transcendence, spirituality/materialism, and sacredness/secularity. They define religion as: ... a relatively-bounded system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses

10148-431: The modern era, but until the 18th century, ethnic enmity in Europe continued to be couched in religious terms. Richard Dawkins has argued that references to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq are euphemisms for what should more accurately be called religious cleansing. According to Adrian Koopman, the widespread use of the term ethnic cleansing in such cases suggests that in many situations, there

10266-562: The monastery and throwing them mercilessly in icy 'vises'. The words step back, the pen does not move, in eternal darkness the ancient Solovetsky monastery is going. Of the more than 500 people, only a few managed to avoid the terrible court. Although his book was written before the September 11 attacks , John Coffey explicitly compares Islamophobia in the contemporary Western world to the English Whig Party 's paranoia about

10384-476: The most important intellectual foundations of the separation of church and state , which ultimately led to the secular state . One period of religious persecution which has been extensively studied is early modern England, since the rejection of religious persecution, now common in the Western world, originated there. The English 'Call for Toleration' was a turning point in the Christian debate on persecution and toleration , and early modern England stands out to

10502-744: The most persistently violated human right in the annals of the species." Despite the ubiquitous nature of religious persecution, the traditional human rights community typically chooses to emphasize "more tangible encroachments on human dignity," such as violations which are based on race , gender , and class by using national, ethnic, and linguistic groupings rather than religious groupings. Traditional African religions have faced religious persecution from Christians and Muslims. Adherents of these religions have been forcefully converted to Islam and Christianity , demonized and marginalized . The atrocities include killings, waging war, destroying of sacred places, and other atrocities. For almost 1000 years,

10620-593: The nature of existence, and in which communion with others and Otherness is lived as if it both takes in and spiritually transcends socially-grounded ontologies of time, space, embodiment and knowing. According to the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions , there is an experiential aspect to religion which can be found in almost every culture: ... almost every known culture [has] a depth dimension in cultural experiences ... toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for

10738-729: The number of victims in each country... it does not speak to the intensity of harassment..." No religious group is free from harassment in the contemporary world . Klaus Wetzel, an expert on religious persecution for the German Bundestag , the House of Lords , the US House of Representatives , the European Parliament , and the International Institute for Religious Freedom, explains that "In around

10856-482: The opposite of freedom of religion . Bateman has differentiated different degrees of persecution. "It must be personally costly... It must be unjust and undeserved... it must be a direct result of one's faith." From a sociological perspective, the identity formation of strong social groups such as those which are generated by nationalism , ethnicity , or religion, is a causal aspect of practices of persecution. Hans G. Kippenberg  [ de ] says that it

10974-459: The persecutors said they were doing." No religion is free from internal dissent, although the degree of dissent that is tolerated within a particular religious organization can strongly vary. This degree of diversity tolerated within a particular church is described as ecclesiastical tolerance , and is one form of religious toleration . However, when people nowadays speak of religious tolerance, they most often mean civil tolerance , which refers to

11092-428: The possibility of a definition. Others argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply it to non-Western cultures. An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations about ever defining the essence of religion. They observe that the way the concept today is used is a particularly modern construct that would not have been understood through much of history and in many cultures outside

11210-494: The preservation of religious truth and orthodoxy and all that was seen to depend upon them." This view of persecution is not limited to the Middle Ages. As Christian R. Raschle and Jitse H. F. Dijkstra, say: "Religious violence is a complex phenomenon that exists in all places and times." In the ancient societies of Egypt , Greece and Rome , torture was an accepted aspect of the legal system. Gillian Clark says violence

11328-885: The reign of Elizabeth I , and two other people were executed in 1612 during the reign of James I . Similarly, heretical sects like Cathars , Waldensians and Lollards were brutally suppressed in Western Europe, but in the borderlands of Eastern Europe, at the same time, Catholic Christians and 'schismatic' Orthodox Christians lived side by side after the East-West Schism . More than 300 Roman Catholics were put to death for treason by English governments between 1535 and 1681, thus they were officially executed for secular rather than religious offenses . In 1570, Pope Pius V issued his papal bull Regnans in Excelsis , which absolved Catholics from their obligations to

11446-419: The rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience—varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture. Anthropologists Lyle Steadman and Craig T. Palmer emphasized

11564-606: The situation with regard to religious minorities in Iran is, in fact, deteriorating." [3] . The persecution of Buddhists has been a widespread phenomenon throughout the history of Buddhism , a phenomenon which continues to occur today. As early as the 3rd century AD, Buddhists were persecuted by Kirder, the Zoroastrian high priest of the Sasanian Empire . Anti-Buddhist sentiments in Imperial China between

11682-461: The social group that supports it, increasing the likelihood of persecution from the state as well. Grim and Finke say their studies indicate that the higher the degree of religious freedom, the lower the degree of violent religious persecution. "When religious freedoms are denied through the regulation of religious profession or practice, violent religious persecution and conflict increase." Perez Zagorin writes "According to some philosophers, tolerance

11800-457: The state and any dominant religion, share the concern that to "leave religion unchecked and without adequate controls will result in the uprising of religions that are dangerous to both state and citizenry," and this concern gives both the dominant religion and the state motives for restricting religious activity. Grim and Finke say it is specifically this religious regulation that leads to religious persecution. R.I. Moore says that persecution during

11918-463: The state. During her short reign from 1553 to 1558, about 290 Protestants were burned at the stake. While Mary's sister Queen Elizabeth I allegedly, "acted out of fear for the security of her realm", she sought to coerce both Catholics and Protestants to embrace a national church that was completely subservient to the state . Over the centuries that followed, English governments continued to fear and prosecute both real and imaginary conspiracies like

12036-413: The term superstitio (which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame) to religiō at times. When religiō came into English around the 1200s as religion, it took the meaning of "life bound by monastic vows" or monastic orders. The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious and worldly things were separated, was not used before the 1500s. The concept of religion was first used in

12154-487: The term religious persecution is rather difficult. Religious persecution has occurred in different historical, geographical and social contexts since at least antiquity . Until the 18th century, some groups were nearly universally persecuted for their religious views, such as atheists , Jews and Zoroastrians . Early Christianity also came into conflict with the Roman Empire, and it may have been more threatening to

12272-521: The word to describe their own belief system. The concept of "ancient religion" stems from modern interpretations of a range of practices that conform to a modern concept of religion, influenced by early modern and 19th century Christian discourse. The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries, despite the fact that ancient sacred texts like the Bible , the Quran , and others did not have

12390-412: The world than other religions, and that Jews and Muslims are "most likely to live in countries where their groups experience harassment". As of 2018, Christians face harassment in 145 countries, Muslims face harassment in 139 countries, and Jews face harassment in 88 countries. Respectively: Christians account for 31% of the world's population, Muslims account for 24%, and Jews account for 0.2%. According to

12508-502: The world's population, and 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as nonreligious , meaning that the remaining 9,000+ faiths account for only 8% of the population combined. The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists , and agnostics , although many in the demographic still have various religious beliefs. Many world religions are also organized religions , most definitively including

12626-767: The world. Professor Finke was the founding director of the American Religion Data Archive, which was renamed as the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) in 2006. Supported by the Lilly Endowment and the John Templeton Foundation , the ARDA provides free data on American and international religion, along with tools and resources to assist educators, journalists, religious congregations, and researchers. Finke

12744-400: The writings of Josephus in the 1st century CE. It was used in mundane contexts and could mean multiple things from respectful fear to excessive or harmfully distracting practices of others, to cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word deisidaimonia , which meant too much fear. Religion is a modern concept. The concept was invented recently in the English language and

12862-439: The writings of, for example, Frederick Ferré who defined religion as "one's way of valuing most comprehensively and intensively". Similarly, for the theologian Paul Tillich , faith is "the state of being ultimately concerned", which "is itself religion. Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of man's spiritual life." When religion is seen in terms of sacred, divine, intensive valuing, or ultimate concern, then it

12980-424: Was considered an underground pit, where rats lived. Some people had been imprisoned and tied to the wall there, and untied after their death. Old Believers were persecuted and executed, the order was that even those renouncing completely their beliefs and baptized in the state church to be lynched without mercy. The writer Lomonosov opposed the religious teachings and by his initiative a scientific book against them

13098-518: Was especially militant during the middle Stalinist era from 1929 to 1939. The Soviet Union attempted to suppress religion over wide areas of its influence, including places like central Asia, and the post- World War II Eastern bloc . One state within that bloc, the Socialist People's Republic of Albania under Enver Hoxha , went so far as to officially ban all religious practices. The Baháʼís are Iran's largest religious minority, and Iran

13216-780: Was granted the right to heavily punish with death for blasphemy against the Orthodox Church or breach of ecclesiastical privileges. He advised all means of destruction to be used against heretics, but without bloodshed, in the name of 'saving souls'. Heretics were drowned. Novgorod Bishop Gennady Gonzov turned to Tsar Ivan III requesting the death of heretics. Gennady admired the Spanish inquisitors, especially his contemporary Torquemada , who for 15 years of inquisition activity burned and punished thousands of people. As in Rome, persecuted fled to depopulated areas. The most terrible punishment

13334-493: Was invented by the Christian Church , and it was in the 19th century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity. The Greek word threskeia , which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus and Josephus, is found in the New Testament . Threskeia is sometimes translated as "religion" in today's translations, but the term was understood as generic "worship" well into

13452-434: Was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context such as hesitation , caution, anxiety , or fear , as well as feelings of being bound, restricted, or inhibited. The term was also closely related to other terms like scrupulus (which meant "very precisely"), and some Roman authors related

13570-472: Was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning, but when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this idea. According to the philologist Max Müller in the 19th century, the root of the English word religion, the Latin religiō ,

13688-424: Was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence). Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law. Scholars have failed to agree on

13806-481: Was published. The book was destroyed, the Russian synod insisted Lomonosov's works to be burned and requested his punishment. ...were cutting heads, hanging, some by the neck, some by the foot, many of them were stabbed with sharp sticks and impaled on hooks. This included the tethering to a ponytail, drowning and freezing people alive in lakes. The winners did not spare even the sick and the elderly, taking them out of

13924-532: Was taken for granted in the fourth century as part of both war and punishment; torture from the carnifex, the professional torturer of the Roman legal system, was an accepted part of that system. Except for a few rare exceptions, such as the Persian empire under Cyrus and Darius , Denis Lacorne says that examples of religious tolerance in ancient societies, "from ancient Greece to the Roman empire, medieval Spain to

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