Religious discrimination can cost individuals their livelihoods, threaten family stability, and take a toll on mental health, yet its impact on households often goes unmeasured, Seventh-day Adventist religious liberty advocate Nigel Coke told international researchers and religious leaders gathered at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, earlier this month.
Coke, former Public Affairs and Religious Liberty director for the Jamaica Union Conference, challenged researchers to look beyond national statistics on religious persecution and examine its personal consequences.
“But today I challenge the BYU researchers to examine the financial and mental health impact it has on individual families,” Coke said.
He spoke during the 33rd Annual International Law and Religious Liberty Symposium, held October 4–6 under the theme “Building an Infrastructure for Freedom of Religion or Belief.” The event brought together more than 200 participants from more than 50 countries, including scholars, legal experts, religious leaders, government officials, and religious freedom advocates.
Coke, the only Jamaican and Seventh-day Adventist among the participants, said religious discrimination can affect anyone, regardless of religious affiliation or background.
He pointed to the potential consequences for families when a breadwinner loses employment because of religious beliefs, including financial instability, loss of housing, and severe emotional distress.
His presentation, titled “The Architecture of Pluralism: Legal Neutrality and Grassroots Literacy—Why Separation of Church and State Is Necessary but Not Sufficient for Interfaith Respect,” explored how governments and religious communities can work toward greater religious freedom.
Two pillars of Religious freedom
Drawing on Martin Luther King Jr.’s declaration that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Coke argued that religious pluralism depends on two essential foundations: legal neutrality and religious education that promotes mutual respect.
He compared the two principles to pillars supporting a building, warning that neither can sustain religious freedom on its own.
“Pillar One is legal neutrality, often understood as separation of church and state. When the state acts as guardian of one religion, even culturally, pluralism becomes difficult, and inequality dominates,” he said.
Coke emphasized that separating church and state does not mean opposing religion but ensuring equal protection for all faiths.
“The state cannot be both a player and a referee,” he said. “Separation does not mean hostility toward religion. It means the state creates a neutral space where no religion needs permission from another to exist.”
Without such protections, he warned, public expressions of interfaith cooperation risk becoming symbolic rather than meaningful.
“We shake hands on stage while the law off stage has already chosen a winner,” Coke said.
Coke identified religious education as the second pillar, urging faith leaders to teach their members to respect people whose beliefs differ from their own.
While interfaith dialogue remains valuable, he said greater attention should be given to what religious communities teach internally about those outside their traditions.
“Intra-faith means let me teach my members what our own religion says about how we must treat you when we believe you are wrong,” he explained.
Coke noted that Christians, Adventists, Muslims, Hindus, and Rastafari may live in the same neighborhoods, yet their attitudes toward one another are often shaped by what they hear in their places of worship.
“The problem is not that they don’t know each other exists; it is what they were taught on their day of worship about that existence,” he said.
He warned against religious teachings that foster contempt for other faiths, urging believers to distinguish disagreement from disrespect, uphold scriptural principles of respect for others, and avoid misrepresenting different religious traditions.
Drawing on Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, Coke reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to religious freedom for all, emphasizing that genuine worship must be freely chosen rather than imposed.
A shared responsibility
Coke concluded by urging lawmakers to uphold impartial protections for religious belief while challenging pastors, imams, rabbis, priests, and teachers to promote respect within their congregations and communities.
He maintained that governments should protect the freedom of every religious community without favoring one tradition, while faith leaders should remain faithful to their convictions without encouraging hostility toward others.
He emphasized the need for both legal safeguards and education to ensure that religious freedom extends beyond constitutional guarantees into everyday relationships among people of different beliefs.
The original article was published on the Inter-American Division news site.
