Religion, Freedom of

Abstract Religious freedom is part of the more general issue of the role of human freedom, with the latter as the absolute precondition of morality. Without it, genuine moral responsibility seems impossible. In the eighteenth‐century Enlightenment, the idea of the importance of freedom, and individual autonomy, went hand in hand with an emphasis on the role of reason. Freedom and reason were regarded as inseparable. This was a continuation of ideas which had flourished in the seventeenth century at the start of modern science, and of the stress by John Locke ( see Locke, John) on the role of consent ( see Consent) by citizens to government. Without the freedom to believe what one chose, as a basis for such consent, the latter would appear meaningless.