Until the fourth century, Christians were in no position to affirm religious rights in the Roman Empire. Rome had an official religion, and those who adhered to other faiths were outlaws. Christians experienced some severe persecutions, and also lengthy placid periods when imperial authority did not pay much attention to this faith group.  

In 313, almost 1,700 years ago, the emperor Constantine I decided to legalize Christianity. In 380, the emperor Theodosius I declared that only the Christian religion would be recognized in the Empire. In a span of decades, to be Christian went from being forbidden to being mandatory.

For centuries, the idea of religious freedom was not entertained or discussed. Christianity simply was. One result of this state of mind was that non-Christians, such as the Jews and the adherents of a seventh-century religion called Islam, were looked upon as problems, as threats to the social order.  

Many of the movements which led to the break-up of western Christianity were rooted in a sense of the need for individual autonomy in embracing and adhering to a religious faith. We lament the disunion of Christians, but we can also appreciate the situations which led to the break between the established church and conscientious Christians who did not feel free to be disciples of Christ under the circumstances in which they lived.

We as American citizens must remember that our constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion were entirely new and unheard-of in the 18th-century world. As we consider the provisions of the First Amendment, and the delicate balancing act performed by the free exercise clause and the non-establishment clause, we remember the Catholic immigrants to America who enjoyed the recognition of the right to religious practice, but we also keep in mind that the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were making a response to the experience of an "established church" in England — the successor, of course, to the established Catholic Church in that land.

The American experiment was not immediately embraced in Rome. Indeed, it was looked upon with suspicion. The many who argued against religious liberty reasoned that "error has no rights."  

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council affirmed, in the declaration Dignitatis Humanae (Human Dignity), that all human beings have a fundamental right to religious liberty.  This declaration owed a great deal to the American experiment and the U.S. council fathers and experts who illuminated the American experience. Indeed, error has no rights. For it is people who have rights. Every human being has the right and the responsibility to adhere to the true and the good.

Religious freedom, of course, means that we live in a world which is much more "untidy" than previous arrangements. We are free to influence others, proclaiming the truth as we understand it. We do not suppose that everything will go our way. What has been called a "wall" of separation or protection of religion is perhaps better understood as a "line," constantly being renegotiated in society, as truth forms the human family. This is precisely the vitality in which religious faith seeks to be involved.