The first resource establishes a common understanding and language for freedom of religion or belief. This toolkit, best read in combination with Articles 18–20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, sets out a foundation for religion and belief as a crucial human right. While it is best used as a reference or glossary, it is a helpful starting point when comparing instances where these liberties are infringed upon.

Finke’s article provides an accessible overview of religious restrictions generally, as he addresses a shift in attention to this issue in the 21st century. What Finke does particularly well is articulate the social and political reasons why these restrictions arise, such as the state’s relationship with a dominant or institutional religion, or a religious group’s role in cultivating an exclusive cultural or national identity, which limits religious diversity and freedom. While these efforts are done to ‘curb potential conflicts’, Finke notes that this often has the opposite impact: religious restrictions rather ‘provide the very conditions for religious social conflicts to occur’.

The Pew Research Center has undertaken much research into religious demographics and global patterns in restricting religion. The Center’s various reports on subjects over the last decade are worth looking into (two are listed in the Further Materials section below). This brief article of 2022 on the subject of religious restrictions provides an interactive scatterplot, which measures restrictions by government intervention or hostilities on individual and social levels. The scatterplot could very well be used for a classroom research activity or as a basis for a more in-depth case study on religious restrictions in a specific country or region. 

This briefing provides an accessible introduction to religious persecution of Christians around the world. This report does well to address the fact that Christianity’s majority worldwide should not obscure the fact it is a minority religion in various places. While the report is from 2015 – and can be read in tandem with more recent case studies – it works well to encourage discussions about the discrimination and persecution of Christians, which may be unfamiliar or surprising for some students.