There is a fear that sits deep in the modern mind. It is the fear that if the Church were ever to regain its voice in the public square, it would immediately set about building a prison. The critic looks at the Christian claim to absolute truth and assumes that it must lead to absolute coercion. "You only want liberty," they say, "for people who think like you."

This is a projection. The modern critic is accustomed to a political world where power is used to silence dissent. They assume the Christian wants to do the same, just with a different set of rules.

But this ignores the specific theological genius of the Christian tradition regarding liberty. The paradox of the Gospel is this: Because we believe in absolute truth, we must defend the absolute freedom of the person to accept or reject it.

The Image and the Enemy

In the ancient pagan world, your value was tied to your tribe. If you were a Roman, you had rights. If you were a barbarian, you were prey. In the modern secular world, your value is often tied to your utility or your ideological conformity. If you are on the "right side of history," you are celebrated. If you are "deplorable," you are socially erased.

The Christian view breaks this cycle. It claims that the Imago Dei -- the Image of God -- is stamped onto every single human being. It is not a badge for the baptized. It is an ontological fact of the human species.

This means that the Christian has a duty to defend the dignity of the person who hates Christianity. We are commanded to love our enemies. This is not a sentiment. It is a political imperative. It means that the rights of the atheist are sacred to the believer, because the atheist is sacred to God.

The Impossibility of Coerced Faith

Why do we want liberty for those who do not follow our religion? Because faith, by its very nature, cannot be forced.

You can force a man to pay taxes. You can force a man to walk in a line. But you cannot force a man to love God. A coerced prayer is an insult to the Creator. As the Church Fathers argued, God seeks the adoration of free sons and daughters, not the obedience of robots or slaves.

Therefore, religious liberty is not a concession the Church makes to the secular state. It is a requirement of the faith itself. We want the "other" to be free so that their "Yes" to the good may be real. A society that forces compliance -- whether to a religion or to a secular ideology -- kills the human spirit.

The True Tolerance

The modern world often confuses dignity with affirmation. It thinks that to respect a person, you must agree with everything they do.

This is a weak form of tolerance. True respect is harder. It means looking at a person who is using their freedom to make a mistake -- perhaps a tragic mistake -- and saying, "I disagree with you. I believe you are wrong. But I will fight to the death for your right to be a person, to follow your conscience, and to be free from violence."

This is the liberty the Church offers. It is a liberty that can withstand disagreement. The secular state, by contrast, is increasingly unable to tolerate dissent. It creates a soft totalitarianism where those who do not follow the new religion of the state are deprived of their dignity.

We do not want a theocracy where all are forced to believe. We want a human city where all are free to seek the truth, protected by the knowledge that they belong to God, not the State.