CHARTING THE CIRCUITOUS ROUTE TOWARD RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Extract

Arguably, with respect to religious practice, the United States Constitution sought to metamorphose what had been restricted practices of religious toleration into what we more commonly and with more generous spirit call religious tolerance. The provisions of toleration laws, making legal concessions under the aegis of an official religion, were better than burning heretics at the stake, a practice that after the bloody Thirty Years War in Europe (1618–48) usually caused more trouble than it was worth. Still they extended only a grudging permission to “dissenters.” The category “dissenter” did not include all religious minorities, and it placed the tolerated minorities at a disadvantage in almost all civil capacities. Religious toleration before the end of the eighteenth century gave some religious believers license to be wrong, but it carried no pledge of respect.