Ensuring individual rights through institutional freedoms: The role of religious institutions in securing religious rights

Jonathan Fox; Roger Finke

doi:10.3390/rel12040273

Ensuring individual rights through institutional freedoms: The role of religious institutions in securing religious rights

Jonathan Fox, Roger Finke

Department of Political Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

6 Scopus citations

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Abstract

Understanding the restrictions placed on religious institutions and associations, or the freedoms that they are denied, is essential for understanding the limits placed on individual religious freedoms and human rights more generally. This study uses the Religion and State round 3 (RAS3) dataset to track restrictions faced by religious organizations and individuals between 1990 and 2014 and explores how reduced institutional freedoms results in fewer individual freedoms. We find that restrictions on both institutional and individual religious freedoms are common and rising. Restrictions on institutional religious freedom are harsher against religious minorities than restrictions on individual freedoms. However, against the majority religion, restrictions on individual religious freedoms are harsher.

Original language	English
Article number	273
Journal	Religions
Volume	12
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12040273
State	Published - Apr 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
1 This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 23/14), The German-Israel Foundation (Grant 1291-119.4/2015) and the John Templeton Foundation. Any opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the supporters of this research. 2 UN Universal Declaration of Human RIghts Available online: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/ (accessed on 12 April 2021). 3 This is evident in the area of religion as well. Later UN documents, both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance (1966) and Discrimination Based on Religion and Belief (1981), acknowledge the importance of the religious collective, but they remain focused on individual rights (Scolnicov 2011).

Funding Information:
Funding: The Israel Science Foundation (Grant 23/14), The German-Israel Foundation (Grant 1291-119.4/2015) and the John Templeton Foundation.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

Human rights
Religious freedom
Religious institutions

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10.3390/rel12040273

Cite this

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abstract = "Understanding the restrictions placed on religious institutions and associations, or the freedoms that they are denied, is essential for understanding the limits placed on individual religious freedoms and human rights more generally. This study uses the Religion and State round 3 (RAS3) dataset to track restrictions faced by religious organizations and individuals between 1990 and 2014 and explores how reduced institutional freedoms results in fewer individual freedoms. We find that restrictions on both institutional and individual religious freedoms are common and rising. Restrictions on institutional religious freedom are harsher against religious minorities than restrictions on individual freedoms. However, against the majority religion, restrictions on individual religious freedoms are harsher.",

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Ensuring individual rights through institutional freedoms: The role of religious institutions in securing religious rights

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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