Katrina Lantos Swett is president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, cochair of the International Religious Freedom Summit, and former chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. The following post is based on her remarks during the panel “Understanding Religious Freedom: Why Does It Matter?” at the ICLRS 31st Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 7 October 2024.

At its core, religious freedom matters because it speaks to and honors that which makes humans utterly unique among all creation. We are the only inhabitants of this world who are uniquely hardwired to ask questions about the meaning of life: Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Where are we going? This unique and profound singularity of humans is the key to what gives meaning, purpose, and dignity to our lives. Socrates famously said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”[1] Because this singular curiosity is so intrinsic to what it means to be human, protecting the quest to answer these questions and then, importantly, being allowed to live one’s life in accordance with the answers one receives truly is foundational to the whole human rights project. So many other fundamental rights flow from this wellspring right: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association—the most basic parental rights that are protected in the Universal Declaration. All of these flow from this wellspring right of freedom of conscience and belief. So religious freedom is important, first and foremost, because it is intrinsic to our identity and our dignity as human beings.

It also turns out that religious freedom is good social policy for building strong and resilient societies. A historical example from hundreds of years ago has relevance for our time. In 1685, King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had been adopted in 1598 and had granted a measure of religious freedom to religious minorities in France, primarily the Huguenots, who were a Protestant sect in what was an overwhelmingly Catholic nation. This had been a significant step forward from the traditional doctrine of religious nationalism. Back then, religious nationalism was explicitly embodied in a Latin phrase, Cuis regio, eius religio: “Whose realm, his religion.” In other words, if you lived in the realm of a monarch, you were obligated to practice the monarch’s religion.

While the Edict of Nantes was something of a step forward in the journey toward religious freedom, its revocation was clearly a big step backward that placed the Huguenots in an excruciating position. They had very few options. They could either convert, face prison (in the case of women, face a sort of mandatory “imprisonment,” if you will, in a convent), or flee. Some 200,000 of them chose to flee, and many of those refugees came to Berlin. And here is the very interesting lesson for our day: these Huguenot refugees ended up establishing many of the core industries that became the backbone of the economy in the region of Berlin and the surrounding areas. The society in France that had driven them out lost enormously in that process, and the society that welcomed them benefited. The analogies to our time are clear: a society that encourages and permits a degree of religious freedom is going to prosper.

Indeed, modern research bears this out. Widely known research by the Pew Research Center has shown that societies that robustly protect freedom of religion and belief are more stable, are more prosperous, are likely to be more democratic, are much less likely to become incubators of extremism and violence, and interestingly, are also societies where women overall have a higher socioeconomic status.[2] So I would argue that defending religious freedom is good not only for the individual believer but for the broader community.

I would be unforgivably remiss if I did not pause to reflect on this somber one-year anniversary of the massacres of 7 October. Today we are compelled, once again, to think about the sense of freedom of religion in a world where the oldest and perhaps ugliest hatred based on religious identity has once again been unleashed in horrifying ways. As some of you may know, I am the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. My late father, Tom Lantos, was the only survivor of the Holocaust ever elected to serve in the United States Congress and became its most ardent and eloquent defender of human rights. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I consider myself to be the most recent link in a chain that extends back 4000 years. In some ways, I could argue that the descendants of Abraham and Sarah could be considered the ultimate community that sought and fought to defend and preserve their religious freedom rights against all obstacles across the millennia—through slavery, war, exile, Assyrians, Babylonians, Macedonians, Romans, diaspora and scattering, inquisitions, pogroms and persecution—all culminating in the Shoah, the extermination of six million at the hands of the Nazis. Through all of this, these descendants refused to abandon their faith and their covenant relationship with their God.

This minuscule, largely stateless minority and so often despised community has modeled for the rest of us why defending freedom of religion is truly of ultimate importance. The right to live our lives in accordance with our deepest convictions goes to the very essence of our human dignity. It is the foundation on which the entire architecture of the human rights movement is built. And if we do not defend this fundamental right, we will have lost our shared civilization.

I can’t fully express to you today how disturbing it has been for me, and especially for my 93-year-old survivor mother who lives with me, to witness the tsunami of hatred that the Jewish people have been subjected to since the savage massacre of 7 October. I won’t detail it now, but I think this moment is a test for each one of us. Will we stand up to defend these fundamental conscience rights against attacks, wherever those attacks come from? It is surely a time for us to redouble our work in behalf of religious freedom for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

One result of protecting religious freedom for everyone is that it almost always leads to religious pluralism. Such pluralism is a powerful antidote to hatred and extremism of the kind that we witness in too many parts of the world. The famous French philosopher Voltaire said when there is only one religion, tyranny rules. When there are two religious, war reigns. But when there are many, liberty comes. And along with that liberty comes a growing respect and civic fellowship among those who may differ in their most profound beliefs but who share a commitment to defending each other’s rights.[3]

Former U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback and I cochair the annual International Religious Freedom (IRF) summit, the largest civil society gathering of religious freedom activists in the world. We have often commented that the most encouraging and optimistic thing about the IRF Summit is seeing the way different faith communities stand up on behalf of each other. It is wonderful to see Muslims speaking up on behalf of Jews and vice versa, Christians on behalf of Buddhists, Hindus for Bahá’ís, Sikhs in defense of atheists. It is a beautiful and an inspiring thing to behold. It reminds me of the wonderful spirit that attends these fantastic symposia that the International Center for Law and Religion Studies holds annually. This is the 31st—a remarkable and distinguished record.

I learned many lessons from my wonderful father. He faced and experienced personally the very worst of which humankind was capable. But despite that, he remained a remarkably and profoundly optimistic person. Whenever I would feel a sense of despair or dejection about events in our world, my father would say to me in his charming Hungarian accent, “Don’t worry, darling. We are just bending a windy corner of history, and right around this bend will be bright blue skies and wonderful possibilities.”

We are at a very windy corner at this moment in our countries and in the world. But I, too, believe that if we now can summon the courage and conviction to stand by our values and to defend the right of others to stand by and live their values and belief that we will round this bend. And around it there will be bright blue skies and wonderful possibilities.

References:

[1] 1 Plato, Apology, in Plato in Twelve Volumes 37e, 38a (Harold North Fowler trans., Harvard Univ. Press 1966).

[2] See, e.g., Samirah Majumdar & Sarah Crawford, Pew Rsch. Ctr., Globally, Government Restrictions on Religion Reached Peak Levels in 2021, While Social Hostilities Went Down (5 Mar. 2024).

[3] See Voltaire, Letter VI, in Letters Concerning the English Nation 29, 30 (Nicholas Cronk ed., Oxford Univ. Press 1999).