Protecting the free exercise of religion isn’t just about protecting churchgoers or people of faith, it’s about protecting freedom of thought for all Americans.
It isn’t a niche concern -- it’s the canary in the coal mine for the decline of intellectual freedom in America.
L ast week, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a complaint on behalf of three Liberty University students. The suit challenges new policies in Virginia that deny tuition grants to students in programs the state classifies as “religious training or theological education.”
This case — and others like it — should raise a red flag, not just for the devout, but for anyone who values open inquiry. Protecting the free exercise of religion isn’t just about protecting churchgoers or people of faith, it’s about protecting freedom of thought for all Americans.
When a university denies funding to a student group because its leaders are religious, or when a state bars students from receiving aid for choosing a theology major, such actions threaten not only religious liberty, but the freedom of conscience itself. If the state or an academic institution penalizes individuals for living according to their deeply held beliefs, it sets a chilling precedent that reaches far beyond the pews. Today, a faith group suffers. Tomorrow, it could be students who dissent from the ideological norms of the university, scholars who challenge prevailing scientific narratives, or anyone whose convictions are deemed politically inconvenient. In this sense, the threat to religious liberty isn’t a niche concern — it’s the canary in the coal mine for the decline of intellectual freedom in America.
This trend isn’t just theoretical — it’s already happening. Recent cases show that threats to religious liberty are real and growing. On campuses across the country, long-standing student organizations such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Christian Legal Society have lost official recognition for requiring student leaders to share their faith. Even at my home institution of Yale, certain religious or pro-life student groups have fought for recognition for years, without much success. These aren’t isolated incidents — they reflect a broader trend of institutions marginalizing ideological minorities, particularly in academic settings where intellectual diversity is professed but genuine viewpoint pluralism is often resisted.
Even for secular and non-religious students, the protection of their religious peers’ rights serves as a crucial safeguard for academic freedom, free association, and freedom of speech. Religious liberty protects the right of the individual to live according to her conscience — a principle shared by secular humanists, classical liberals, and libertarians alike. And if the progressive instinct is to champion marginalized voices, then religious students — often outnumbered and positioned against the ideological current — deserve a place in that chorus.
What’s needed now is a principled coalition, composed of religious and non-religious students alike, that’s committed to defending freedom of thought for all. In a healthy academic environment, believers and unbelievers should be allowed to speak freely and form communities without fear of institutional punishment. Secular students can defend the rights of their religious peers, not by compromising their own beliefs, but by affirming a shared one: that the university should be a place where ideas compete, not where they are pre-filtered by ideological orthodoxy. Standing up for religious liberty means standing up for the right to seek truth — even truths we might reject. It means safeguarding the pluralism that makes higher education meaningful, not merely performative. And it means recognizing that the group penalized today will be a different group tomorrow. In defending freedom for others, we defend the conditions of freedom for ourselves.
If the academy won’t protect religious liberty, it falls to students — religious or not — to defend the freedom that makes higher learning possible.