Religious Freedom Why Now? Quotes

“But the acts by which governments and societies repress and control the religious lives of people are mostly quotidian and unspectacular, taking place well beyond the gaze of journalists and other observers.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“fact, by any reasonable standard, global religious repression constitutes a human rights catastrophe. As noted earlier, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center concluded in 2009 that 70 percent of the world’s population lives in countries in which restrictions on religion are severe.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“Religious freedom is embedded within a much larger bundle of civil liberties. At the core of religious expression is the freedom of speech and at the core of freedom to worship is the freedom to assemble. To claim freedom of speech without allowing for a freedom to express religious beliefs quickly erodes freedom of speech in other areas. Likewise, allowing for restrictions on the assembly of religious groups opens the door for curtailing the activities of other groups as well. The denial of religious freedom is inevitably intertwined with the denial of other freedoms.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“Religious freedom, then, is the freedom of human will, reason, and conscience, of human souls and spirits, to explore and embrace whatever they can discover concerning the origin and meaning of all things and of all reality. It is the freedom of who we are to embrace the ultimate truth about all that is. Whether “alone” or “in community,” whether in “private” or in “public,” as the Universal Declaration emphasizes, it is our freedom to hold and manifest what we believe to be true about the deepest realities and highest things.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“Thus individuals and communities of all faiths, or of none, enjoy two basic rights. One is the right to an autonomous social existence, free of unwarranted suppression or intrusion by government or other social actors. The other is the right to full civic and political participation, equal to that of other citizens and social or political actors.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“This is what is meant by conscience: it is not a mysterious, extra-rational faculty, but the best and final judgment of our reason concerning what is true. “Conscience is a judgment of reason,” Christopher Tollefsen explains, “and an upright will acts in accordance with reason.”35 Whatever one’s conscience judges to be the truth about transcendent reality, one’s duty is to align his will, emotions, dispositions, and choices with its implications.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“Any government that presumes to direct how its people relate to ultimate truths either believes it is the only guide to those truths, or that government itself is the source of truth and its citizens must believe that nothing exists beyond the material world. To dictate human beings’ relation to the transcendent is to lower the horizons of political life by rendering it entirely self-justifying—a law unto itself. This is the end of democracy and the beginning of tyranny.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“The Hudson Institute study found that religious liberty is powerfully associated with civil and political liberty, press freedom, economic freedom, and prolonged democracy.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“We believe that liberty of religious faith is the first and foremost freedom in human society, is a universal value in the international community, and is also the foundation for other political and property rights. Without the universal and equitable liberty of religious faith, a multi-ethnic, multi-religion country would not be able to form a peaceful civil society, or bring about social stability, ethnic solidarity or the nation’s prosperity. —THE PASTORS OF THE SHOUWANG CHURCH BEIJING, CHINA, MAY 2011”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“First, societies lacking full religious liberty lack a critical restriction on state power. When citizens are free to have an ultimate commitment to something more than human, something beyond the authorities of society and state, the power of the state is thereby limited.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“The fourth and final dimension of religious freedom in full is the right—both individually and as part of a larger religious community—to express religious beliefs freely in civil society and political life on a basis no less favorable than is accorded to non-religious expression. This aspect of religious freedom encompasses the right of religious individuals and groups to own and sell property, or to establish and run religious schools, charitable organizations, and other institutions of civil society. It includes the right to form political parties, or to make arguments in the public square, on the basis of religious teachings. This is the religious freedom of political and legal expression.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“It follows from this that it is those who fail to promote religious freedom for all people with the same vigor with which they promote freedom of expression, democratic elections, and the rights of women, and those who invent reasons to demote religion to a lower and optional category of rights and freedoms, who are guilty of special pleading. Such persons often defend human rights of every other kind, but find special, ad hoc reasons for removing religion from normal democratic protections, or depriving religious persons and communities of rights and freedoms to which they have every claim. This kind of special pleading, sadly, is an equal-opportunity myopia, afflicting conservatives and liberals, Muslims and Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, atheists and the indifferent alike.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“Religious repression is the denial of the very essence of what it means to be human.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right

“freedom of religion has both private and public dimensions. It is the freedom to pray, to worship, to commune with one’s fellows of like mind and heart in the private practices of faith. But it is also the freedom to bear witness to one’s beliefs and commitments, to be visibly religious in public life, to associate freely on the basis of religion and peacefully to encounter others with differing views on a basis of equality. It is the freedom to organize and act politically, to vote, to make arguments about public policy, and to legislate, on the basis of one’s religious beliefs, consistent with principles of universal justice toward others.”
― Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right