Religious Freedom Toolkit: An Introduction
The Religious Freedom Toolkit is developed by the International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University. Principal author is ICLRS Director Brett G. Scharffs, with assistance from Associate Director Amy Lynn Andrus and ICLRS personnel and affiliated students. Email questions or comments to amy.andrus@law.byu.edu.
This Religious Freedom Toolkit summarizes useful insights and arguments to facilitate constructive conversations about religious freedom—particularly in this time of the politicization of religious freedom and polarization regarding religion more generally.
Topics are organized into seven categories:
A. Frameworks
B. Principles
C. Discrimination
D. Human Rights
E. Perspectives
F. Doctrines
G. Extrinsic Benefits
These categories aim to provide a helpful organizing structure, but some topics could easily be categorized differently, some topics may overlap, and the structure is not designed to create a hierarchy or systematic theory. Over time, topics may be updated and added.
Structure
The Toolkit is divided into four parts.
• Part I contains a Summary of each topic, comprising 1–4 sentences. The summaries serve as a detailed table of contents that facilitates a quick review of topics.
• Part II contains an Outline of each topic, comprising 1–3 pages, with subtopics listed as bullet points. These outlines are intended for users who want additional summarized background and context for a given topic.
• Part III contains an Analysis of each topic, comprising 3–10 pages, including footnotes and references. These analyses track the structure of the outlines but are written in a more academic style to provide additional information, analysis, and documentation. Cross-referenced footnotes (indicated with supra) are cross-referenced within individual topics only, not across topics.
• Part IV contains Quotes relevant to each topic, from leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many of the quotes could be used to illustrate more than one of the topics in the Religious Freedom Toolkit. As a result, some quotes are repeated, and others are cross-referenced, but cross-references and repetitions are not comprehensive.
The Summaries and Outlines may include quoted material but do not include footnote citations; further elaboration, sources, and documentation can be found in the Analyses.
Intended use
This version of the Religious Freedom Toolkit has been written with a particular audience in mind, though it can be adapted to other audiences. The primary intended audience are leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including General Authorities and General Officers of the Church, Area Presidencies, Area Legal Counsels, and Area Communications Directors.
There are numerous opportunities and ways to engage in discussions about religious freedom that are positive and powerful. The hope is that the Toolkit’s structure will facilitate ease of use and that its content will inform and facilitate productive interactions in promoting religious freedom for all people in all places.
The Religious Freedom Toolkit is a resource for finding brief explanations of a variety of insights and arguments to defend religious freedom. It is not intended to be a treatise or a comprehensive analysis of all arguments that are relevant to defending religious freedom.
Because it is a toolkit, we anticipate that most users will focus on topics that are of interest to them. We do not presume that users have read all topics, which results in some redundancy of coverage between topics.