Part III | Expanded Analysis
Category E | Perspectives
Topic 24 | Everyone is a religious minority
We all belong to a religious minority. Although some religions comprise a majority in one or another particular geographic area, no religion encompasses a majority of the world’s population. According to the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groups in the world are Christians (31.2%), Muslims (24.1%), and the unaffiliated (16%), followed by Hindus (15.1%), Buddhists (6.9%), and folk religionists (5.7%). Perhaps more than any other single realization, remembering that we all belong to a religious minority should help guide how we behave when we find ourselves in a majority position in some particular place and time.659
No global religious majority
It can be hard to remember that everyone is part of a religious or belief minority, particularly in contexts where one is surrounded by people of similar belief. In a world of more than eight billion people,660 and an estimated 10,000 religions and faith (or non-faith) groups,661 each group makes up a small fraction of the world’s population of religious believers. Even the largest religious groups, considered in very general categorical terms, fall far short of majority status662:
- Christians — 31.2%
- Muslims — 24.1%
- Unaffiliated — 16.0%
- Hindus — 15.1%
- Buddhists — 6.9%
- Folk religions — 5.7%
And of course, all of these groups are comprised of various subgroups and variations that make minority status even more pronounced.
Persecuted minorities becoming persecuting majorities
Even given these numbers, humans have a tendency to discriminate against and even persecute those who are “other,” particularly when they are in a position of power as part of a majority in a particular time and place.663 Ironically, many religious majorities who persecute religious minorities were once minorities who were persecuted themselves.664 Historian Edward Gibbon recounts,
"About fourscore years after the death of Christ, his innocent disciples were punished with death by the sentence of a proconsul of the most amiable and philosophic character, and according to the laws of an emperor distinguished by the wisdom and justice of his general administration. . . . [T]he Christians who obeyed the dictates and solicited the liberty of conscience, were alone, among all the subjects of the Roman Empire, excluded from the common benefits of their auspicious government."665
Gibbon continues by noting the irony in the fact that “from the time that Christianity was invested with supreme power, the governors of the church have been no less diligently employed in displaying the cruelty, than in imitating the conduct, of their Pagan adversaries.”666
Unfortunately, this pattern of “the persecuted becoming the persecutor” has been repeated throughout history.667 Religious minorities have internalized mistreatment and then externalized it in a way that perpetuates its effects on others.
Tolerance and humility as correctives
One cause of this historical pattern of persecution is the long-held mistaken belief that the source of societal tension is religious difference and that forced religious homogeneity solves it. In his influential work A Letter Concerning Toleration, philosopher John Locke posits the opposite: that coerced alignment with a majority religion leads to resentments and societal “ferments,” while tolerance of religious pluralism leads to societal peace and stability.668 Locke’s argument was not that minority religions are inherently violent; rather, minority religions that are mistreated will “struggle to cast off an uneasy and tyrannical yoke.”669 Remembering that we all belong to a religious minority—and that all religions should be afforded the same measure of “toleration” and constitutional space to act on their beliefs— helps us promote social stability.
In addition to religious tolerance, humility can serve as a powerful corrective to the evils of “majority hubris” in several ways.
Remembering we are a religious minority even when we are in a temporal or temporary majority can prevent us from seeking special treatment and protections for religious majorities.
Remembering the status of co-religionists. Every group that finds themselves in a numerical majority someplace will have co-religionists who are a numerical minority (or even a tiny minority) someplace else. Remembering this fact helps us resist the assumption that the rules should be dramatically different in places where we find ourselves in the majority.
Remembering the impermanence of majority status/power. As Elder Neil L. Anderson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has noted, humility can help us remember that seeming majority and minority groups “often trade places. What is popular at one time becomes unpopular at another. The cultural or religious group that enjoys privilege today may lose it tomorrow. Power is not permanent.”670 Elder Anderson explains that, due to the impermanence of power or supposed majority status, “religious freedom that protects the little guy is also the best security for the big guy. Safety is not in numbers; safety is in justice. Therefore, religious freedom only for some is really religious freedom for none.”671
Remembering the paradox of religious freedom. Law and religion scholar W. Cole Durham, Jr., has explained that humility and empathy are required for understanding and living the “religious freedom paradox.”672 According to Durham, the paradox of religious freedom is that “the right to enjoy religious freedom for ourselves carries with it a reciprocal obligation . . . to tolerate and respect beliefs with which we disagree—though it does not require us to accept, endorse, or support them. . . . In the words of the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”673 This rule applies to “majority” and “minority” religions alike, if we ourselves want to enjoy robust rights to freedom of religion or belief.
Conclusion
In our often-insular spheres of association, it is easy to forget that we all belong to a religious minority. Forgetting this fact may lead us to make mistakes based in “majority hubris”— discriminating against other minorities, demanding uniformity, or otherwise communicating intolerance toward “others.” Practicing tolerance and humility in remembering we are all religious minorities helps us keep such hubris and bay and uphold the reciprocal obligations that sustain religious freedom for all.
References
659. Toolkit Topic 24 (Everyone is a religious minority) was originally drafted by Tate Frodsham, 2023 ICLRS Summer Fellow.
660. U.S. and World Population Clock, UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU, https://www.census.gov/popclock (last visited Dec. 2024).
661. Pam Wasserman, World Population by Religion: A Global Tapestry of Faith, POPULATION EDUCATION: POP ED BLOG (Jan. 12, 2024), https://populationeducation.org/world-population-by-religion-a-global-tapestry-of-faith. Note, however, that “hard data” and original sources are difficult to find regarding the number of religious groups worldwide.
662. Conrad Jackett & David McClendon, Christians Remain World’s Largest Religious Group, but They Are Declining in Europe, PEW RESEARCH CENTER (Apr. 5, 2017), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/05/christians-remain-worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe.
663. Jonathan Fox, Religious Discrimination: A World Survey, 61 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, 47 (2007), https://www.jstor.org/stable/24358079?seq=13.
664. W. COLE DURHAM, JR. & BRETT G. SCHARFFS, LAW AND RELIGION: NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL, AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 6 (2d ed. 2019).
665. 1 EDWARD GIBBON, THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 621 (1782), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_t/Myg-AAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.
666. Id.
667. See, e.g., Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, America as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century, Part 2, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (“Although they were victims of religious persecution in Europe, the Puritans supported the Old World theory that sanctioned it, the need for uniformity of religion in the state. Once in control in New England, they sought to break ‘the very neck of Schism and vile opinions.’ The ‘business’ of the first settlers, a Puritan minister recalled in 1681, ‘was not Toleration, but [they] were professed enemies of it.’ Puritans expelled dissenters from their colonies. . . . Those who defied the Puritans by persistently returning to their jurisdictions risked capital punishment, a penalty imposed on four Quakers between 1659 and 1661.”) (last visited Dec. 2024); WILLIAM B. HUSBAND, GODLESS COMMUNISTS: ATHEISM AND SOCIETY IN SOVIET RUSSIA, 1917–1932 (2000) (discussing how atheist “Bolsheviks,” who were marginalized and persecuted in pre-Revolution Russia, pursued a brutal anti–religion/Russian Orthodox agenda after coming to power in 1917).
668. JOHN LOCKE, A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION 41–42 (William Popple trans., 1689), https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Letter_Concerning_Toleration_Written_b/L9jYMVtd7vsC?hl=en&gbpv=0 (spellings and capitalization modernized).
669. Id. at 41.
670. Neil L. Andersen, The Human Dimension of Religious Freedom, ICLRS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM LIBRARY (May 20, 2018), https://www.religiousfreedomlibrary.org/documents/the-human-dimension-of-religious-freedom (Address given at the Sixth Annual Conference of the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS)).
671. Id.
672. W. Cole Durham, Jr., The Doctrine of Religious Freedom, ICLRS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM LIBRARY (Apr. 3, 2001), https://www.religiousfreedomlibrary.org/documents/the-doctrine-of-religious-freedom (BYU Forum address).
673. Id.