Illegal Religion / Real Life

• The Ancient Greek and Roman world were tolerant of religion so long as it did not contravene the Gods of the State, i.e. official religion.
  • One of the charges against Socrates at his trial was that he practiced private beliefs against the state religion. This led them to accuse him of impiety, corrupting the youth and subverting the state.
  • The Romans faced one of the greatest struggles during the Jewish Revolts not because they saw Judaism as illegal per se, but because their occupation was violating, perhaps unwittingly, Jewish customs and traditions, namely Pompey marching into the Temple's inner sanctum, the "Holy of Holies", that their Puppet King Herod was unpopular and this sparked a major religious uprising that continued until the Fall of Masada. Judaism would continue to trouble the Romans with further rebellions until Hadrian crushed and scattered the Jews into diaspora and even renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, forbidding the re-establishment of the Temple. Jews who adjusted to Roman customs and accepted Roman rule were not proscribed, but the main tenets of their religion and its ties to Jerusalem were definitely forbidden.
  • Early Christianity in the days of the Roman Empire was in fact an example of this trope contrary to popular belief of Tropers. Under the reigns of the Emperors Nero, Domitian, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, Christians suffered persecution and were even sentenced to death. Tacitus in his Annals writes that Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome simply because of the suspicion of them as a group with "degraded and shameful practices", holding to "a foreign and deadly superstition". Suetonius in the 16th chapter of his biography of Nero wrote that "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition." Pliny the Younger and Trajan's correspondence meanwhile revealed that Christians were often persecuted for simply being Christian with Trajan instructing "If the accused are found guilty of being Christian, then they must be punished."
  • The treatment of Christians changed somewhat during the Third Century Crisis, when increasing turmoil made the Roman Imperial government demand more religious sacrifices from the people. While many Christians during this period continued to perform these sacrifices without incident, a growing number of them refused, and demanded religious exemption, much like the Romans had done with the Jews. These demands were for the most part refused, and as a result were persecuted. Despite popular belief, this was not due to Rome's intolerance of the Christian faith, but rather due to Roman government's practice of carrying out harsh punishments to even the most minor violations of the law. Furthermore, some of the more radical Christian sects of the time saw persecution as a quintessential tenet of their faith, and thus sought to actively seek punishment, specifically execution, by Roman authorities in what can essentially be considered Suicide by Cop.
  • Following the end of Christian persecution in 313 by the Emperor Constantine and especially after Christianity was made the state religion of the Roman Empire in 381 under Emperor Theodosius I, the old pagan religions of Rome became in many respects a straight example of this. Temples of Jupiter and Mars were used as roadside privies, and subject to vandalism and Monumental Damage. Christians also burnt many books from the era critical of them. Pagans were actively persecuted, temples and statues were destroyed (except for those preserved by the state and some responsible bishops and priests), and fell into disrepair.
  • Persecution also happened under Christian Emperors towards smaller Christian sects such as Arians, Gnostics, Nestorians, and Miaphysites, which were all deemed as heresies by the Roman State Church and were actively sought out and persecuted, to an even more intense degree than pagans.
• While Moorish Spain is often noted by scholars for its religious tolerance (often also exaggerated in traditional historiography), this changed when the Almoravids and Almohads rose to power, outlawed Christianity and Judaism, and forced its minorities to convert to Islam or face death — something completely unprecedented in the region's history. They were considered fundamentalists even by their own contemporaries, with the founder of the Almohads being previously exiled from every city he preached in because he accused others of being "insufficiently Islamic". As such, even those who converted were still discriminated against because their rulers felt they weren't sincere enough in their faith (unsurprisingly, since they did it under pressure). It was only after the Almohads declined in power that they abandoned these puritanical doctrines and policies.
• The Roman Catholic Church actively prohibited heresies and declared crusades against The Remnant of pagan communities. Although sometimes this policy was pursued independently — for instance, Charlemagne, who crushed pagans in Saxony — the Church generally condoned or refused to acknowledge this violence. This includes the Wendish Crusade and the notoriously bloody Albigensian Crusade which crushed Catharism, a revival of Manichaeanism that spread from Hungary to Southern France.
  • Contrary to general belief, the Roman Catholic Church never pursued an official coordinated policy to proscribe and persecute Judaism. Some Popes were quite tolerant and even liberal (such as Pope Alexander VI), others were openly antisemitic and limited Jews to ghettoes. Low-level bishops and priests could be openly antisemitic and encourage pogroms during the Black Death and in other eras, while other bishops in Germany and Hungary sheltered and protected Jews during the People's Crusade (the starting point of populist antisemitism in European history). However, kings and queens appealing to the sentiments of their subjects and seeking to expand the control of the local Catholic Church would promote policies of expulsion. Edward I banned Jews from England, Philip the Fair proscribed their property and expelled them, and other nations followed similar policies.
  • In the history of Spain, the Reconquista and the early years of The Spanish Inquisition featured mass persecution of Jews and Muslims across Spain, many of whom were forced to convert. Even after conversion, they were labeled New Christians and treated as second-class citizens to distinguish them from Old Christians. There were also accusations that some Jews and Muslims forced into conversion were Hiding Behind Religion and practicing their old beliefs Beneath Suspicion of Christian piety. Some of these accusations were actually true and would be recognized and celebrated today as an act of resistance on the part of oppressed people preserving their culture from tyranny, but at the time it was a serious slur and led many New Christians to backdate and fake their lineage to fit in. Those who refused to convert became refugees, and many of them, ironically enough, found a home in Rome, welcomed by Pope Alexander VI (who was also Spanish), who gave them rights to live without any pressure of conversion.^note Pope Alexander VI, being a Borgia and otherwise quite corrupt, would face trouble from his successors who invoked his philanthropy to Jews as a rebuke.
• In the Americas, pre-Hispanic pagan cults were outlawed by default in the fiercely Catholic Spanish Empire, although this was only really enforced after a majority of the native population had already converted by themselves, as the Spaniards were so few even after the conquest of the Aztecs that they lacked means to do basically anything without local collaboration. Hernán Cortés did forcefully convert his first native allies, the Totonacs, but upon failing to do so with the next, the much powerful Tlaxcaltecs, he realized that insisting in the topic would earn him no friends in the land (and he needed as many friends as possible in order to topple the Aztecs and keep things pacified), so he put it aside and instead let charismatic missionaries like Toribio de Benavente propagate Catholicism more gradually and peacefully.
  • The native aristocracy was less fearful of rebellions among their own people, and some of them, like the chieftain of Texcoco, Hernando Ixtlilxochitl, pulled a cuius regio, eius religio and forced their cities to convert after they had converted themselves. This practice, as it was Cortés' stunt with the Totonacs, was frowned upon in Spain, as the School of Salamanca was already starting to consider uncool to preach by the sword. Natives would be excluded from the jurisdiction of The Spanish Inquisition, as it was understood that a continent which had just heard about Jesus for the first time could not be expected to become an exemplary Catholic land overnight.
  • Conversion was greatly helped by most native cults requiring Human Sacrifice in plenty, which made the new, non-bloody alternative much more attractive to promote by those tribes who had been extracted sacrifice material by the Aztecs for generations. This meant that the illegality of the pagan cults was not only officially rooted in religious grounds, but also criminal and military grounds, and were often addressed by secular authority. The conquest of the Mayans often saw conquistadors being called in by Christian Mayan tribes themselves in order to help them pacify hostile, sacrifice-happy neighbors.
  • Contrary to popular belief, prohibition of paganism didn't necessarily entail the destruction of their temples and books, which there was some interest to keep (missionaries like Bernardino de Sahagún and Juan de Torquemada devoted their carrers to translate and record native culture), but it was unfortunately carried on against their orders on occasion (such as the infamous Diego de Landa).
• When Protestantism arrived, the reigning Catholic Church saw it as another heresy rather than a separate religion. However, Protestantism attracted the support of kings and lords in Germany, Holland, Sweden, and later England. This would lead to the Reformation and later the Wars of Religion.
  • Protestantism in turn persecuted other minority faiths, among them other Protestant sects. Martin Luther was fiercely antisemitic and wrote many pamphlets that were revived by the Nazis, and he also allied with state authorities against Protestant sects that were more egalitarian than he was (namely Thomas Muntzer) and suppressed them.
  • In England, the Anglican Church sponsored by the King Henry VIII would persecute English Catholics and shut down monasteries. Later Protestant English monarchs and Oliver Cromwell would persecute Irish Catholics and create division by encouraging settlements of Protestant nobility among a largely Catholic peasantry, leading to divisions (initially religious, later national, now ethnic) that persist to the present day. Catholicism was never declared illegal officially, but Catholics in England and Ireland were treated as second-class citizens (albeit better than Jews and other minorities) with restricted civil rights until the 19th Century.
  • The Anglican Church persecuted Protestant dissenters such as Baptists, Quakers, and other sects, many of whom settled in America to escape the Church of England. Because dissenting Protestants were such a big part of American society and politics, they disliked an official organized church authority (at the time, that is), and this led to consensus for the First Amendment, a policy that forbids any official government position or endorsement of religion, that separates Church and State and also upholds religious liberties. Initially, this applied only to the federal government (some states then still had official churches, and prosecuted preachers from minority sects at times for preaching without a licence). By the 1830s, however, these were abolished. Blasphemy laws did not last much longer in the US. Sadly, though, some Native American religions and rituals would be banned later. Even now, there is much dispute over the right extent of religious freedom, with Congress and courts wrangling over it regularly.
  • Scotland dissolved and banned Catholicism in 1560, though bans on mass were often not enforced. Catholic holdouts still existed in the Highlands region, and provided support for Catholic monarchs later in the Jacobite Risings. Priests were subject to arrest.
  • Of note is Queen Mary I's reign, in which she tried to restore Catholicism in England, and enforce it with the burning of Protestants. The sheer amount of victims (over 300 of them in a five year reign, including tradesmen, women, children, and a pregnant woman), coupled with her marrying Philip II of Spain (which brought fears of the above mentioned Inquisition coming to England), turned the people against her and against Catholicism, and when her half-sister Elizabeth took the throne, one of the first things she did was re-establish the Protestant church. The fears of a Catholic England so scarred the people that they overthrew the next Catholic monarch to come, and to this day Catholics are barred from the line of succession to the British throne.
• The French Revolution resulted in the first instance of secular persecution of Christianity.
  • On account of the Catholic Church being the largest landowner in France at a time of economic and political crisis, many French politicians, writers and thinkers instituted comprehensive policies to seize and distribute the land to peasants, middle-class aspirants, and liberal nobles. They also instituted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, demanding that French priests swear loyalty to the French government and abjure their vows to the Pope. A few priests took the Constitutional Oath, like the famous anti-racist and abolitionist Henri Gregoire, but many of France's devout opposed this change and most priests refused to take the vows, playing a major role in unleashing the counter-revolution as the Revolutionary hardliners became enraged at their continued and active defiance, guillotining many of those that refused.
  • It must be noted that the Revolutionaries gave equal rights to all minority religions (Protestants, Jews) and supported the Constitutional Clergy and mainly targeted pre-Revolutionary Catholics. During the Terror, they released a policy of Dechristianization, which led to vandalism (albeit considerably exaggerated) of many churches and cemeteries. The cemeteries had graffiti proclaiming "Death is an eternal sleep", priests and nuns were guillotined, and monasteries were vandalized. The Notre Dame Cathedral saw its altar attacked and replaced with a "Statue of Liberty" (the Roman Goddess Liberty^note Which led to its presence in Revolutionary iconography finally resulting in Lady Liberty). Some Revolutionaries such as Robespierre opposed Dechristianization and ended it, while Henri Gregoire, the Constitutional clergyman, advocated defending Church property and opposed vandalism.
  • The Revolutionary government created its own state-sponsored secular religions to replace Catholicism. First was the explicit atheistic and anthropocentric Cult of Reason, which worshipped Reason, in 1793. Just one year later, at the height of his power, Maximilien Robespierre replaced it with the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being, which itself only lasted for two months (7 May—28 July 1794) when Robespierre fell from power and was beheaded. After that both faded from view, and were officially banned by Napoléon Bonaparte when he officially reestablished Catholicism in 8 April 1802.
• Karl Marx famously remarked that religion is "the opium of the masses".^note In context of the text and the time, this was not necessarily negative — Marx saw opium as a painkiller as it was seen in that time, and basically relieving suffering. Marx in other articles criticized revolutionaries for advocating that religion is the main source of social problems and hinders progress rather than economic inequality. For instance, he pointed out that America was an advanced nation and religious. He felt that religion would decline if socialists relieved the problems that make people turn to religion. Communist revolutionaries invoked this remark and officially promoted atheism among their cadres, education systems, and general propaganda, while also persecuting religion and believers to varying degrees.
  • In Russia, as in France, the ruling Orthodox Church was a powerful presence in administration and society and owned much property. Vladimir Lenin suppressed the Orthodox Church, promoted atheism in society and education, and forbade religious education in schools. Josef Stalin increased the persecution of all religions (even minorities) and the Orthodox Church at first before reviving it during World War II under government control to help the war effort.
  • Other left-wing groups took anti-Catholic activities more seriously. Mexico saw the Cristero War during The Roaring '20s where priests were banned and driven underground and religious iconography was often seen as a mark of treachery. Communist Albania went so far as to ban religious practice entirely. Mao Zedong suppressed traditional worship and practices and persecuted Tibetan Buddhism, though later successors driven by the fascination of tourists to Tibet have promoted lamaseries and moderated their stance while making images, texts and addresses of the Dalai Lama taboo. On a lesser note, during the Spanish Civil War left-wing fighters attacked and killed clergy, burning churches or converting them for secular uses, with much the same grievances as above.
• Nazi Germany was notoriously antisemitic and scientific racialist. It outlawed Judaism as a religion and even persecuted ethnic and cultural Jews, or Jews who had converted to Christianity (for either sincere and/or social careerist reasons).
  • Hitler and the Nazis were not entirely friends of Christianity either. Hitler was publicly a Christian, but the Nazi policy of state control by party meant that they clamped down on religious instructions and interfered in doctrines of the Church. Some Catholics and Protestants supported the Nazis, but those who didn't could face jail time and execution or deportation to concentration camps. Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted as a group over their refusal to swear loyalty oaths or serve in the military (both forbidden by Witness beliefs), with some being executed and many imprisoned in concentration camps. "YHVH" was even ordered erased wherever it was displayed in churches, as this was the "Jewish" name of God. In one instance, local Nazi officials ordered even crosses removed from churches, but this was a step too far as you might expect. After protests, the edict was withdrawn. The Nazis also had plans to turn Jesus into an Aryan figure if they couldn't simply abolish Christianity and replace it with their own religion. For the moment, the Nazis backed a so-called "Positive Christianity" and "German Christian" movement which aligned with their ideology. Their supporters managed to take control of the Lutheran Church in Germany. The Confessing Church, made up of dissident Protestants that refused to join, was driven underground, with members subjected to the treatment stated above. Hitler initially signed a concordat with the Catholic Church on coming to power, but frequently broke its terms, and by the late 1930s Catholics were actively being persecuted (even if they were not openly dissident). The Catholic bishops protest at the Aktion T4 program (exterminating disabled and mentally ill patients), which managed to stop it temporarily, especially angered Hitler, and he swore to "settle with them" after the war ended. Hitler's private beliefs are still not entirely clear, though he did denounce Christianity and of course Judaism. Even in private, though, he also denounced atheism, saying it was inhuman and claimed to believe in God (though perhaps of a deist or pantheist variety).
  • The Nazis outlawed atheist and freethought groups as well as Freemasonry in Germany in 1933. In one instance, the headquarters of the German Freethinkers League wound up being used by the churches of Berlin as a bureau to convert people and give religious advice. In a lesser example, the SS loyalty oath denounced atheists, while banning them from joining. Freemasons were also deported and executed in concentration camps alongside Jews and Romani. In practice though regarding the SS, those terms had socialist connotations in Nazi Germany. Any non-socialist who was not Catholic or Protestant (and Muslim in certain cases), including some who might have been atheists simply identified as "God believer", (Gottgläubig) who in fact made up a disproportionately large percentage of the SS (25% by 1938) compared to the German population at large, where all but 1-6% belonged to Protestant or Catholic Churches officially. German SS units were not even assigned chaplains in contrast to regular German Army practices. Open atheism was associated with Bolshevism and communism generally, the ideology that was the Nazis' chief enemy. All open atheists were therefore persecuted by association with this.
• In the Independent State of Croatia (which was just an Axis puppet regime despite the name), Eastern Orthodoxy was outlawed alongside Judaism because it was the Serbs' favored religion, while the State only recognized Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam as "brother religions that kept the blood of Croats true". As such, Serbs faced persecution from both Catholic and Muslim fascists via ethnic cleansing, deportation and forced conversions.
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned Christianity in 1587, ordering all Christian missionaries to leave Japan.
  • He saw the religion as a threat to his dream of unifying Japan, and politically, this was done to reduce the influence of the Christian daimyo of Kyushu. A decade later in 1597, Hideyoshi had twenty-six Christians, known today as the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan, crucified as an example to native Japanese seeking to convert to the religion. The banning of Christianity went even further after the Shimabara Rebellion, and (even after Christianity was again made legal in 1871 with the reopening of the country) there are still some "hidden Christians" (kakure Kirishitan) who descend from the survivors of the persecution.
  • This is in contrast to his predecessor Oda Nobunaga, who kept the Christians around (mainly because he wanted their guns) but had all but declared war on certain Buddhist sects (who, unlike the Christians, were a political threat to him). This ended up being his undoing.
  • Later historians note that the Japanese policy was a result of the advice given to them by Protestant Dutch traders. The Dutch pointed out that the Catholic Church had promoted colonialist oppression in South America among native peoples and destroyed the Mayan and Aztec ruling class (partially true). The Japanese shogunate, fearful of Christian expansion and persecution, felt they had to take a preemptive strike and force Christians to apostasize. Notably, while Catholic Christianity was banned from Japan during its period of isolation, Dutch traders and Protestant merchantmen were welcome at the port of Nagasaki (originally a Catholic majority port and seat), so long as they toed the fumie^note A small wooden icon of Jesus which the authorities used to force Catholics to apostasize. The Protestants, being less ritualistic, did not see the fumie as a Christian icon and did not feel they were abjuring their faith. and stayed within limits. This continued until the end of isolation.
  • Hideyoshi also had problems with certain Buddhists. The Ikko-Ikki (militant Buddhist) monks were mortal enemies (and a major thorn in the side) of his ally Nobunaga (who went so far as to destroy their Nagashima fortress, killing everyone inside and burning Ishiyama Hongan-ji to the ground but sparing many of the defenders' lives) and therefore certainly a major stumbling block on the road to a unified Japan. Ironic that Hideyoshi and Tokugawa would clamp down on Christianity when Nobunaga's own brother Nagamasu was Catholic. In another irony, the Ikko-Ikki then joined with Hideyoshi in 1580.
• Missouri Executive Order 44 of 1838 stated that all Mormons in Missouri "must be exterminated or driven from the state," essentially outlawing Mormonism within. Several massacres of Mormons took place, with the rest fleeing. It wasn't officially rescinded until 1976. The federal government later also came into conflict with the LDS Church, mostly over polygamy, from open combat in the Utah War to later legal prosecutions. It culminated with the church itself being dissolved and its property seized. At last, prompted by this, Mormon doctrine was revised to forbid polygamy (although unofficially the practice continued for some time, and splinter sects rejected the change entirely).
• In the Tanakh (Old Testament to Christian readers), worship of anything other than the one and only God was illegal and punishable by death according to many laws and decrees by the prophets and is listed as the First Commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."). But for much of Israel's history, many rulers not only allowed worship of other things, but actively facilitated it (after all, if they didn't, what were all those prophets complaining about?). They were okay with magi (Persian Zoroastrian priests) even in periods where they otherwise had officially banned all other forms of worship too, since Cyrus The Great was viewed as God's servant foretold by Isaiah after he freed the Israelites enslaved by the Babylonians, allowing them to return home. Today, Israel officially allows any religion to be practiced, but accounts from neo-pagans claim they would be cut to pieces if they ever publicly admitted to worshiping someone like Anat or Thor.
• In around the 5th century CE, the Sassanid Persian Empire was intolerant of any religion other than Zoroastrianism, enforcing a ban on them and attempting to force its Christian Armenian subjects to convert. The ensuing rebellion, led by Vartan Mamikonian, ended in a Pyrrhic Victory for the Persians and eventually led to Persia becoming more lenient due to their needing Armenia's cooperation in dealing with the invading Huns. Modern Armenians credit Vartan's revolt with saving Armenia's religious identity.
• Zoroastrianism and paganism itself were banned in the Armenian Kingdom in the 4th century, until the kingdom got taken over and partitioned by Persia and Rome. Conversion to Christianity still didn't happen overnight, but the temples to the various Armenian gods were destroyed soon after the king converted. This was the common path conversion to Christianity took in many kingdoms.
• While Singapore is a secular society and tolerates other religions, the Jehovah's Witnesses are banned within the city state (mainly because Singapore has a mandatory military draft, and Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to serve in any military or swear loyalty to any person or thing other than God). Similarly, the Unification Church is banned in Singapore because the government sees the church as a cult.
• Many countries with a Muslim majority forbid conversion to another religion from Islam, or blasphemy. Prosecution of atheists, Christians, and minority religious adherents for alleged violations of these laws occurs in many parts of the Muslim world, along with extra-legal attacks. Some of these countries also persecute people who follow the "wrong" kind of Islam. The most extreme is Saudi Arabia, which forbids anything but Wahhabist Sunni Islam in the kingdom. Christians are persecuted in the country, with churches, missionaries, and Bibles all illegal. Atheism is also forbidden and declared a form of terrorism.
• Islam is illegal in Slovakia.
• Contrary to popular belief, religion in general isn't outlawed in current-day China. However, it is against the law for a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to follow a religion, presumably meaning you can't have a government job if you're religious. Moreover, some sects (like the Falun Gong, independent Christians, Uighur Muslims, and Tibetan Buddhists loyal to the Dalai Lama) are banned/persecuted. Religion generally was suppressed in the early period under Mao, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
  • What does take place in China is that all religions are required to submit themselves to state supervision through State Administration for Religious Affairs first and foremost. This has created problems for certain religious groups (especially Catholics and Mormons) who have linkages to an international hierarchy. During 1950s, the Catholic Church in China split over this: a lot of bishops broke from the Vatican and organized themselves as "Patriotic" Catholic Church of China. Others refused and either went underground or were imprisoned. The Vatican has taken an ambivalent stance on this: while several of the bishops who were too eager to break from Rome were excommunicated, the "Patriotic" Catholic Church was never declared schismatic (although many Catholic organizations, especially those opposed to the People's Republic, regard it as such). Most (but not all—especially some of the most influential ones in China) bishops in China have informally established ties with Vatican since 1980s and both the Chinese state and Vatican have achieved a certain modus vivendi, which has been somewhat formalized since 2018 (there is still no formal relationship between the Vatican and the PRC government and Chinese Catholic Church is still subject to the state supervision first and foremost, but the Vatican gets a more formal influence whereas the previous arrangement was strictly informal and only quasi-legal.). What is illegal is to renounce the role of the state to supervise religion and several religious leaders are still imprisoned on this account, including Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, the Vatican-appointed bishop of Shanghai (with the understanding at the time of appointment that he would be, basically, appointed to the same position later by the Chinese state as well) who has been under house arrest since 2012 after publicly renouncing ties to the Patriotic Catholic Church.
• The Baha'i faith is severely persecuted in Iran.
• While there was never an act that fully outlawed indigenous faiths in the United States and Canada, there were many attempts to curtail local practices. For instance, Canada banned the potlatch ceremony, common among several Pacific Northwest tribes, from 1885 to 1951 on the grounds that it was a barrier towards getting the tribes to adopt Christian European practices. The Sun Dance was likewise banned from 1895 to 1951. In the States, certain aspects of tribal ceremonies, ranging from access to sacred land to use of agents such as peyote, were effectively hampered by various ordnances until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed in 1978.

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