Sociology of Religious Freedom

In this series, coauthors Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and James T. Richardson provide insights from their 2025 monograph A Sociology of Religious Freedom. They define religious freedom as a multidimensional concept, located at the intersection of five areas of meaning: (a) the autonomy of individuals and religious groups, (b) the societal value of freedom of and from religion, (c) the normative principles of state-religion governance, (d) international human rights standards, and (e) the socio-legal impacts of the judicialization of religion. The combination of social and legal perspectives enriches both sociologists and lawyers with a better understanding of how religious freedom operates in a time of secularization and pluralization of Western societies.

Giordan’s post sets up the theory of religious freedom and explains the aims of sociological studies of this human right. Borrowing from legal sociology, Richardson’s post focuses on the judicialization of religious freedom and the roles of American and European courts in shaping its scope and limits. Breskaya’s contribution discusses empirical methods of investigating religious freedom.

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“You Cannot Harm Your Brother”: Indigenous Rights in Pluriversal World

Cecilia Titizano is core faculty at NAITTS, an Indigenous learning community, and directs the Latina/o Theology and Ministry Leadership Network and the Instituto Hispano of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. This post is based on a presentation given at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 6 October 2025.

The post is the part of the Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights series

Andean Metaphysics: The Interdependence of All Things

In the Andes, everything is alive: plants, animals, water, and even mountains. They are all animated by the same Ajayu or Spirit and share the same organizing and pulsing life force. They all have awareness (each in their own way); they allcommunicate (each in their own fashion); and they all are endowed with a purpose particular to their place in Pacha (all that is). The Aymara and Quechua people describe reality or “what is” as an interconnected web of beings endowed with the same animating life force, where relations constitute beingness or, better yet, becoming (beingness in process). Pacha (all that is) is dynamic and ontologically relational, where relations have priority over substance. Hence, the interdependence of all beings is a constitutive reality of the Andean universe.

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Religious Freedom, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Oak Flat

Dana Lloyd is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Interdisciplinary Studies, Villanova University.

The post is the part of the Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights series

Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, known in English as Oak Flat, is the place where Ga’an (guardians or messengers between Apache peoples and the Creator, Usen) reside. It is a 6.7-square-mile stretch of land within what is currently managed by the U.S. federal government as Tonto National Forest, east of Phoenix, Arizona. Since 2014, a proposed copper mine has threatened to permanently alter the area through an underground mining technique that would cause the earth to sink, up to 1115 feet deep and almost 2 miles across. Apache Stronghold, a grassroots organization, has challenged the proposed mining plan in court, arguing that destroying their sacred sites would infringe on their free exercise of religion, a right promised to them by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993).[1]

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