Persuasion
· collected 2026-08-24 · by Teresa M. Bejan
commentary
In an event exclusively for readers of American Purpose and Persuasion, Yascha Mounk will be interviewing Francis Fukuyama about his life and thought at 5pm on Sunday, September 6 at The Abbey Centre, London.
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Mounk → interview → Centre
Paying subscribers of Persuasion and American Purpose can access a code for a free ticket here.
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subscribers → pay → ticket
We’re delighted to feature this article as part of our ongoing series on “Liberal Virtues and Values.”
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We → ’re → Virtues
The series, made possible with the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, will make the case that liberalism has its own distinctive set of virtues and values that are capable not only of responding to the dissatisfaction that drives authoritarianism, but also of restoring faith in liberalism as an ideology worth believing in—and defending—on its own terms.
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that → make → terms
If you haven’t already, please subscribe today to receive future instalments into your inbox!
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you → have → inbox
In early September 2019, the former Prime Minister of Belgium tweeted: “This week, the most important event was … the discovery of an unkown [sic] text by the Father of Liberalism, John Locke, on tolerance.”
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event → tweet → tolerance
That the text in question—a 1667 manuscript memorandum entitled “Reasons for Tolerating Papists Equally with Others”—was not, in fact, a defense of tolerance towards Catholics, but rather a systematic outline of Locke’s reasons against it, didn’t seem to matter.
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text → entitle → it
For the purposes of social media, what the “Father of Liberalism” actually had to say about tolerance, or its limits, was beside the point.
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had → say → point
Of course, understanding who Locke was, or what he actually believed, has always been more difficult than proclaiming what he represents.
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he → understand → what
Despite his qualms about Catholics—and atheists, too, as we shall see—Locke is still commonly celebrated as the inventor of the modern liberal approach to tolerance, understood as a commitment to separating church and state and protecting individual rights.
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Locke → see → rights
For Americans, especially, “Lockean” toleration implies a principle of disestablishment, according to which the state has no business telling citizens what to believe, let alone publicly favoring or disfavoring any particular religion.
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state → imply → religion
Accordingly, “Locke the Liberal” has long been credited in the United States as an unofficial author of the opening clauses of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
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Congress → credit → exercise
And yet, if one looks more closely at Locke’s famous 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration—and the peculiar circumstances in which it was produced—what emerges is an unfamiliar vision of “Lockean” toleration as a project of religious and political establishment, one focused on accommodating some (albeit limited) dissent from public orthodoxy, while also promoting a more reasonable, liberal, and tolerant approach to religion supported by the state.
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emerges → look → state
Recovering this alternative vision matters for more than just historical reasons.
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Recovering → recover → reasons
Specifically, it sheds light on the curious way in which modern democracies have continued to generate liberal “establishments” of their own.
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democracies → shed → own
In universities, the law, journalism, and the arts, we have seen the rise of institutions populated by a class of highly credentialed (if not always well-educated) individuals fluent in the language and ideological assumptions of liberalism—not only with respect to tolerance, but also personal autonomy, diversity, and “reasonable” dissent.
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we → see → tolerance
Contemporary liberals would thus do well to recognize that when populists and demagogues rail against the “liberal elites,” they often have this authentically Lockean form of establishment in mind.
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they → do → mind
Locke Is Not Who You Think He Is
So important is the supposedly “Lockean” principle of disestablishment to modern tolerance that American liberals are often surprised to discover that some form of state-involvement in religion remains the rule in Western Europe, not the exception.
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form → think → Europe
In Belgium and Luxembourg, for example, public funding for recognized religions is raised through general taxation, while established national churches remain a going concern in many Nordic countries, as well as the United Kingdom.
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churches → recognize → Kingdom
An American studying abroad at Oxford or Cambridge will not be alienated by the sacred architecture, copied countless times at home; yet the centrality of Anglican chapels to college life in a public university cannot help but seem strange.
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centrality → study → university
Even worse: Locke’s own Oxford college, Christ Church, doesn’t have a chapel, it has a cathedral, and its “Dean” remains an ecclesiastical appointment.
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Dean → have → cathedral
This fact, among others, ought to remind us that the historical context in which Locke originally wrote his Letter was an emphatically establishmentarian one.
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Locke → remind → Letter
Take the so-called Toleration Act of 1689, which passed shortly before the Letter’s publication.
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which → take → publication
Officially entitled “An Act for Exempting their Majesties Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of certain Laws,” this legislation did exactly what it said on the tin: namely, suspend some (but not all) of the existing English laws criminalizing dissent from the established church… but only for Trinitarian Protestants.
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it → entitle → Protestants
Catholics, Quakers, and so-called “Socinians” or non-Trinitarian Christians were intentionally left out.
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Catholics → call → ?
The continued dominance of the Church of England meant that Locke and other proponents of toleration in the period generally had two policy options in view.
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Locke → mean → view
The first, known as “indulgence,” proposed to repeal or otherwise suspend the laws punishing non-attendance at public worship, as well as banning private religious meetings.
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first → know → meetings
The second, known as “comprehension,” proposed to accommodate diversity within the established church by paring back its doctrinal orthodoxy in order to welcome many (if not most) Protestant dissenters back into the fold.
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second → know → fold
Needless to say, neither form of toleration proposed to disestablish the Church of England.
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form → say → England
Rather, both presupposed the continued existence of an established church.
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both → presuppose → church
Given this, one might wonder whether the rigidly disestablishmentarian vision of tolerance attributed to Locke by modern liberals comes anywhere near to being his own.
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vision → give → liberals
We know, for instance, that despite his well-attested heterodoxy, Locke remained a communicating member of the Church of England throughout his life.
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Locke → know → life
Moreover—and much like his fellow patron saint of modern liberalism, John Rawls—it appears that Locke originally intended to take Holy Orders while at Oxford, although he later sought, and received, an exemption from this academic requirement.
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he → appear → requirement
Take its preface “To the Reader,” which explicitly rejected the establishmentarian policies of indulgence and comprehension as insufficient:
It is neither Declarations of Indulgence, nor Acts of Comprehension, such as have yet been practiced or projected among us, that can do the Work … Absolute Liberty, Just and True Liberty, Equal and Impartial Liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of.
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we → take → need
This passage is often cited as evidence of Locke’s own disestablishmentarian commitments.
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passage → cite → commitments
The only problem is that Locke didn’t write it—nor, indeed, did he compose the English text of 1689 still routinely published under his name.
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he → write → name
Locke had written his original Epistola De Tolerantia in Latin for a European audience while in the Netherlands, where he had taken refuge as a political exile.
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he → write → exile
The celebrated English Letter published four years later was, in fact, an unauthorized and somewhat loose translation of this Latin text, along with an entirely new preface, written by an obscure Yorkshire wine merchant named William Popple.
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Letter → publish → merchant
Although they would later become friends, Popple evidently undertook his translation of Locke’s Epistola without the author’s knowledge or permission—and with his own recent experience of persecution in France in mind.
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Popple → become → mind
By then, Popple was already on record as viewing the establishmentarian policies of indulgence and comprehension as insufficient, in a way that Locke was not.
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Locke → view → way
…and 41 more, not listed.
