page_title: John Locke
section_title: Theories of religious tolerance
hierarchical_section_title: John Locke / Ideas / Theories of religious tolerance
caption_attribution_description: English: John Locke by Richard Westmacott
context_page_description: John Locke FRS was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism." Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.
  Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate, or tabula rasa.
context_section_description: Locke, writing his Letters Concerning Toleration (1689–1692) in the aftermath of the European wars of religion, formulated a classic reasoning for religious tolerance, in which three arguments are central:
  Earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings generally, cannot dependably evaluate the truth-claims of competing religious standpoints;
  Even if they could, enforcing a single 'true religion' would not have the desired effect, because belief cannot be compelled by violence;
  Coercing religious uniformity would lead to more social disorder than allowing diversity.
  With regard to his position on religious tolerance, Locke was influenced by Baptist theologians like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, who had published tracts demanding freedom of conscience in the early 17th century. Baptist theologian Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636, where he combined a democratic constitution with unlimited religious freedom. His tract, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644), which was widely read in the mother country, was a passionate plea for absolute religious freedom and the total separation of church and state. Freedom of conscience had had high priority on the theological, philosophical, and political agenda, as Martin Luther refused to recant his beliefs before the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms in 1521, unless he would be proved false by the Bible.
caption: John Locke by Richard Westmacott, University College, London
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 450D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer 6.1.7600.16385", "Image DateTime": "2015:07:17 23:46:40", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2310", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "13848", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3563", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/40", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1600", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:07:17 15:25:58", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:07:17 15:25:58", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "43/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "23", "EXIF SubSecTime": "66", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "66", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "66", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2056", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3088", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "13704", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1544000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "257000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4198"}