The unfortunate influence of John Rawls’s argument for liberalism as a counterweight to a Christian-dominated, Western history of illiberalism and intolerance is the starting point for this volume of essays. While acknowledging that there is reason to be concerned about the historical role of Christianity in persecutions of others, this volume argues the intellectual resources for a robust concept of freedom—particularly freedom of religious expression—have been latent in Christian writing since the second century. Furthermore, it is argued that Rawls's (and that of earlier, like-minded Enlightenment-era thinkers) concept of freedom and liberalism actually derive from these very Christian sources. In fourteen chapters, the book surveys Christian literature from the second through eighteenth centuries. A fifteenth chapter looks back to resources in scripture that inspired later Christians to think of liberty and freedom not as political but as humanistic concepts.

Across the essays, readers discover that Tertullian was the first in western history to use the phrase libertatem religionis (52), that Lactantius repackaged Tertullian's ideas to promote policies of toleration to an increasingly Christian-oriented imperium (93), that the Cappadocians’ critique of slavery and other human mistreatment cemented Christian commitment to the dignity of every person (131–142), and that Augustine, ever a complex figure, had several moments of defending religious freedom and toleration even if his treatment of the Donatists left something to be desired (106–113). In the High Middle Ages, religious freedom took the form of toleration for Jews (at least officially), an insistence that religious truths be demonstrated (rather than enforced), and that individuals retain a freedom of conscience (chapter 6). In the aftermath of the Reformation, Johannes Althusius articulated a “symbiotic theory” of human nature and “covenantal theory” of society that, combined, contribute to a robust freedom of the human person to associate with others of their choosing (223–224). These ideas, from Tertullian to Althusius, would influence the religious liberty protections encoded within the rules of the Rhode Island Colony (237) and in the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court (291–293).