Documents

Fides et Libertas

The Journal of the International Religious Liberty Association
1998 Fides et Libertas

Freedom of Conscience: “No Speculation, No Condescension, No Play”

Iris Rezende

 Member of the Senate

Former Minister of Justice of Brazil

Brasilia

                I present this piece as a minister of two governments--God’s and Brazil’s. A minister is one who serves. I want to serve both faithfully. Liberty is a theme that has held my attention since I was a boy in Cristianopolis, a city conceived as a dream community of Christians, a place for people who would be free to exercise their beliefs and live by the inspiration of the word of God. Liberty has always been the greatest desire of humanity. Freedom of choice is  the registered trademark of God. According to Scripture, He even gave humanity the freedom to obey or disobey His divine determinations. The news on television shows some nations curtailing freedom. People endure persecution, even atrocities, because of their religious convictions. So I thank God that I live in a country where, by virtue of the Federal Constitution, a citizen is guaranteed freedom of “conscience and beliefs, being assured the freedom to exercise religious worship and, by law, being guaranteed protection for places of worship and their liturgies” (Chapter I, Article 5-VI).           Religious expression, which is the way we affirm the God in whom we believe, cannot be violated without serious consequences. To prevent a citizen from professing his or her faith is to crush the aspirations with which free nations and civilized people identify.

                The pages of history are marked with the blood of confrontations motivated by religion: the Crusades, the Inquisition. Look up the record of religious persecution in Brazil--the volumes of history by Pedro Tarsier--to be informed of the violence against liberty in my country. But thanks to the education that, little by little, has come to our people, respect for the beliefs of others has become generally accepted.

                In the past, one of the main causes for religious persecution was the predominant model of the time: religion imposed by the state. Even today, alarming crimes are committed in the name of religion. They are related to politics, to the discretionary power of government.

                A brief sweep of history is useful here. Locke affirms that the legitimate sphere of the state is limited to questions outside the spirit of humanity. Accordingly, the state must not relate to religion because it is an internal or private matter. In the Old World the prevalent idea held that a nation, like a family, should profess one religion--the one determined by the sovereign in power. In Greece and Rome religion was a state matter. Those whose beliefs differed from the system set by law were not oppressed provided they respected the institution of national worship. To illustrate, Rome permitted complete freedom to the followers of licitae religiones provided they participated in the worship of the emperor. (It is apparent that there was no religious liberty as such, but rather a pretense of tolerance amid previously established conditions.) 

                Then, during the first centuries of Christianity, there arose men of stature who faced the issue forthrightly.  Such a one was Tertullian: “It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man adopt a religious attitude according to his own convictions. Certainly it is not part of religion to impose religion--to which free will, and not force, should lead us” (Ad. Scapulum, 2). Other church fathers declared religious persecution to be a work of evil.  Athanasius promoted a conciliatory position in the treatment of so-called heretics.

                But in Constantine’s time, the matter was inverted. Everyone was compelled to become a Christian! Gibbon states that Maximilian was the first Christian emperor to shed the blood of his own subjects for reasons of diverging religious opinions.

                According to historian J. C. Rodrigues, in the Portuguese Brazil of 1810 the royal prince signed two treaties with England, one of commerce and one of friendship. For the first time it was assured “that Portugal gave a foreign power the right to build a Christian temple that would hold Reformation worships.” This was a specific grant to English Christians. But the exterior of the authorized “temples” (or chapels) had to look like family residences (J. C. Rodrigues:  Religioes Acatolica [Non-Catholic Religions], p. 105).

                In August of 1819 on Rua dos Borbons (now called Rua Evaristo a Veiga) in Rio de Janeiro, the cornerstone was set for the first Protestant temple in South America, thanks to Article XII of that treaty of friendship with England.

Protests took place in the Catholic sectors, but the treaty was observed.

                Only in 1881 with the passage of the Electoral Reform Law did it become possible for a non-Catholic to run for the General Assembly. Again, loud protests arose. But Senator Cristiano Ottoni referred to the absurdity of “closing the door to non-Catholics who are Christian, who freely proclaim their faith, while opening the door to many nominal Catholics, who hold seats in Parliament, but who are at times free thinkers and at times partisans of protoplasmic theories [of] spontaneous generation [and] annihilation of the spirit through decomposition of matter, but who call themselves Catholic simply because they lack the courage to give up a religion in which they do not believe” (Rodrigues:  op.  cit.).

                In subsequent years, Rui Barbosa became Brazil’s distinguished apostle of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. Perhaps one of the main reasons this illustrious fellow countryman was not permitted to attain the presidency of the republic was his passion for these liberties--liberties which went against many of the interests of individuals and corporate bodies of the time. Said Barbosa: “Every civilization is born in liberty, every liberty in the assurance of the rights of individuals. Liberty and legal security are equivalent terms that may be substituted one for the other.” And this ringing testament: “With the conscience--its liberty, its rights, there is no speculation, no condescension, no play.” Why? Because of the important reason that “of all freedoms, freedom of thought is the greatest and the highest. All other freedoms come from that one freedom. Without it, all other freedoms leave the human personality mutilated, society choked, the government of the state turned over to corruption” (Conference of February 20, 1910, Belo Horizonte, and in Ruinas de Um Governo [Ruins of a Government], 1931).

                Christian liberty is not an ideology, says Julio Barreiro, Uruguayan evangelical and professor of political science: “In a world such as ours, so shaken by ideologies, we often run the risk of interpreting our faith by the various courses set by the ideological thinking of the society to which we belong.” And Barreiro quickly adds: “This risk becomes much greater when we try to interpret Christian liberty in that manner” (Julio Barreiro: A Experiencia da Fe [The Experience of Faith].

                To put limits on religion and to impede the proclamation of faith, yoking it to the power of the state--these are discriminatory attitudes and acts that, in their utmost, nullify all other liberties. Sad to say, religious leaders arise from time to time who practice moral injustices that are part of their systems. Public power is thus constrained to take a position against them because of the infringement of irrevocable constitutional principles. In such moments, it is hoped that true religious parties who know the meaning of religious freedom, will serve as contacts with those who collaborate to do away with the problem, using means of personal communication in addition to their pulpits, to guide their believers and impede the less informed from being led astray by the error and dissent that would inevitably occur.  In all its nuances, liberty must be regulated by balance, social respect, and a sense of justice.

                The great mission of Jesus was to proclaim liberty to those who were bound by their sins and transgressions, so as to return humanity to the ideal set forth in the first chapter of Scripture, when God looked out and saw that everything was good. To establish religious freedom in its fullness, we must remember that only as we know Christ, only as we hold fast to His word, will we be truly free. “‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’” (John 8:32 NIV). The result? The liberty that Christ gives us is freely connected to love for others. Only the person who loves his or her brother is truly free. Only the person who overcomes the world, its lies, and its errors, is truly free in faith, in expression, and in witness.

                Brazil counts itself among those nations that guarantee freedom, not admitting by constitutional prescription any restriction to liberty of belief. Nearly 160 million people throughout the country are free to exercise their faith and proclaim, if they so wish, their religion. This is our tradition. This is our historic position. May God protect us and inspire us to seek this purest and noblest of Christian principles.

                Translated from the Portuguese. Adapted and edited from an address to the IRLA’s Fourth World Congress on Religious Liberty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1997.  At the time, Senator Rezende was Minister of Justice.

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