Religion in the Modern World: Freedom, Rationality, and the Need for Limits
Religion in the Modern World: Freedom, Rationality, and the Need for Limits
By Ronen Kolton Yehuda (MKR: Messiah King RKY)
Abstract
Religion has shaped human history, identity, ethics, and community life in deep ways. Yet the modern world cannot be governed well if religion moves beyond belief and becomes a system of coercion, domination, or political control. This article argues that the main problem is not religion itself, but radical and expansionist forms of religion that seek to shape all society according to one sacred truth. Such tendencies can appear in different traditions, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and others, whenever belief becomes dogma, dogma becomes power, and power seeks obedience. The article also examines the danger of militant and apocalyptic ideas, including politicized end-times thinking and militant interpretations of jihad, especially when such ideas influence politics, law, or security thinking. In contrast, a modern society should protect freedom of religion, freedom from coercion, equal citizenship, rational public life, and peaceful coexistence. The goal is not to abolish religion, but to place it within a plural and free civic order where no religion rules all others and no belief system turns the world into a prize to be won. (United Nations)
1. Introduction
Religion remains important to many human beings. It can offer meaning, moral language, ritual, belonging, and continuity with the past. For this reason, a serious modern critique should not begin by denying that religion has a place in human life. It should begin by asking a different question: under what conditions can religion exist without becoming a danger to freedom, reason, and coexistence? Modern human rights law protects freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change one’s religion or belief, and it also protects people against coercion in matters of faith. This legal and moral framework already suggests an important principle: belief may be free, but control over other people’s belief is not. (United Nations)
A modern critique of religious domination must also defend the individual human being, not only the balance between groups or institutions. At the center of a free society stands the person: the individual conscience, the individual mind, and the individual right to choose a way of life without forced conformity. Freedom of religion is therefore not only the right of religions to exist. It is also the right of each person to believe, not believe, doubt, change belief, question authority, and live without coercion in matters of conscience. A society is not truly modern if it protects religious structures but fails to protect the inner freedom and dignity of the individual. (United Nations)
This article is therefore not against religion as such. It is against the moment when religion becomes radical, coercive, expansionist, anti-pluralistic, or politically dominant. The central concern is not prayer, worship, tradition, or private conviction. The concern is the transformation of faith into a system that seeks to govern all people, silence criticism, pressure others into conformity, or organize public life around unquestionable sacred authority. In a modern environment, that transformation is dangerous because civic life must be shared by people of many religions and by people of no religion at all. (OHCHR)
2. Religion, Modernity, and the Meaning of a Modern Environment
A modern environment is not simply a society with advanced technology. It is a society built on equal citizenship, freedom of conscience, lawful limits on power, open criticism, and peaceful coexistence among different convictions. In such a society, the state does not belong to one religion, and public institutions are not supposed to force one sacred worldview on everyone else. International human rights standards protect both the freedom to practice religion and the freedom not to be compelled in matters of religion, while also allowing only narrow limitations necessary to protect public safety, order, health, morals, or the rights and freedoms of others. This is a basic outline of modern pluralism. (United Nations)
From this perspective, modernity does not require the destruction of religion. It requires limits on domination. Religion can remain in private life, family life, communal life, ethics, charity, and culture. What modernity resists is the idea that one religious truth should command the whole civic order. In other words, religion is legitimate; religious control is not. That distinction is morally important because it protects believers, minorities, dissenters, converts, doubters, and non-believers at the same time. (United Nations)
A modern environment also places the freedom of the individual at the center of civic protection. This means that every person must be free not only from direct religious coercion, but also from social and political pressures that seek to control conscience, identity, expression, and personal life choices in the name of sacred authority. The individual must remain free to enter a religion, leave a religion, reinterpret religion, or reject religion altogether. In this sense, modernity protects not only coexistence between communities, but also the moral and intellectual independence of each human being. Without that protection, society may preserve the language of freedom while allowing domination to survive in personal life. (OHCHR)
3. From Belief to Dogma: When Religion Becomes Dangerous
Religion becomes socially dangerous when it moves from conviction to rigid dogma and from dogma to power. A believer may say, “This is true for me.” A dogmatic movement says, “This must rule everyone.” Once religion is linked to coercive authority, disagreement becomes not only an intellectual difference but a threat to social order, divine truth, or national destiny. That is the point at which religion can become hostile to criticism, science, equal citizenship, and peaceful pluralism. (OHCHR)
This danger is not limited to one faith. It can appear anywhere religion becomes totalizing. Radical forms of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or other traditions can all become harmful when they seek obedience over freedom, identity over equality, and sacred certainty over rational public judgment. The problem is therefore general: not religion alone, but every form of religion that refuses limits and aims at domination. Pew’s cross-national work on religious nationalism shows that linking national belonging to one historically dominant religion remains a real pattern in many countries, though it varies greatly across societies. (Pew Research Center)
4. Religious Expansion, Competition, and the Desire to Shape the Whole World
One major danger is the competitive logic of expansion. Some religions, or some movements within religions, do not only seek to preserve themselves. They also seek to spread, enlarge, and shape the wider world in their own image. This may happen through missionary pressure, political theology, legal demands, or cultural campaigns. Influence by free persuasion is one thing; the dream that all humanity should become religiously identical is another. The modern world should not be treated as a prize for one faith to capture from another. (United Nations)
This issue matters because large religious traditions have often developed universal claims. Universal claims are not automatically violent, but they become dangerous when combined with state power, nationalism, fear, or the desire to defeat rival belief systems. Then the public question changes. Instead of asking how people with different convictions can live together, societies begin asking which religion should finally win. That mindset encourages rivalry, exclusion, and pressure on minorities and non-believers. It is especially harmful in a world that is already religiously diverse and politically interdependent. (Pew Research Center)
5. Prophecy, Apocalyptic Thinking, and the Self-Fulfilling Danger
Prophecy becomes especially dangerous when it is treated not as symbolic or spiritual language, but as a practical script for history. Some prophecies do not merely describe what believers expect. They can also shape behavior. If people become convinced that war, collapse, holy confrontation, or final victory must come, they may begin to support choices that make such outcomes more likely. In that sense, prophecy can become self-fulfilling: not because history was fixed, but because human action was guided toward destructive expectations. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
A modern society should resist this logic. Its basic question should not be, “How do we help prophecy happen?” but rather, “What protects life, dignity, peace, and freedom here and now?” Ancient catastrophic visions should not overrule present human responsibility. People are capable of building new and better futures, and modern public life should be guided by responsibility rather than fatalism. Freedom is valuable, but freedom used to spread anti-pluralistic fanaticism can become a force of social regression. (United Nations)
6. Apocalyptic and Militant Religious Ideas as Political Dangers
Some religious ideas become especially dangerous when they give sacred meaning to conflict, domination, final struggle, or collective victory. This pattern is not limited to one religion. It can appear in different traditions whenever believers begin to see public conflict as spiritually necessary, historically destined, or divinely justified. In such cases, religion no longer functions only as personal faith or community tradition. It begins to shape attitudes toward power, enemies, law, and history in ways that can threaten freedom and peaceful coexistence. (United Nations)
One prominent example appears in some politicized Christian end-times beliefs. In Christian scripture, Armageddon refers to the final battle at the end of history, and Britannica describes it as the place where earthly rulers under demonic leadership wage war against the forces of God. This does not mean that all Christians support war or wish to bring about catastrophe. However, when apocalyptic language is interpreted in an activist political way, conflict can begin to appear spiritually meaningful rather than morally tragic. That kind of thinking can weaken rational resistance to destructive politics and make crisis seem like part of a sacred historical mission. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Another example appears in militant interpretations of jihad. Britannica notes that jihad in Islam fundamentally means struggle or effort and often refers to the effort to promote what is right and prevent what is wrong. For that reason, it should not be reduced automatically to warfare. At the same time, the concept has also been used in militant and political ways, including armed struggle. The social danger emerges when such interpretations turn religion into a justification for coercion, domination, or violence, especially when sacred duty is used to legitimize conflict in public life. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
These examples should be understood as part of a wider pattern, not as an accusation against only Christianity or Islam. Similar dangers can arise in other religions whenever sacred narratives are used to glorify struggle, frame opponents as enemies of God, or present social domination as a holy task. The broader issue is therefore the political use of sacred conflict, not one specific tradition alone. A modern society should be alert to any religious framework that turns public conflict into destiny, violence into duty, or supremacy into moral obligation. (Pew Research Center)
For this reason, the real question is not which religion is being discussed, but what kind of public effects a belief system produces. If a religious idea encourages human dignity, peaceful coexistence, and voluntary belief, it can remain within a free society. But if it encourages domination, coercion, or the sanctification of conflict, it becomes a danger regardless of its religious source. A modern civic order should judge such ideas by their consequences for freedom of conscience, equal citizenship, public peace, and rational coexistence. (United Nations)
7. Religion, Politics, and the Security Sphere
The danger grows when radical religious ideas move from sermons and texts into institutions. Once apocalyptic or militant beliefs influence parties, governments, security thinking, law, education, or foreign policy, they stop being only matters of private faith and become structural risks. Pew has found that in the United States, sizeable minorities say the Bible should influence laws and, for some, should take priority over the will of the people when the two conflict. Pew has also documented that religion-linked restrictions and hostilities remain significant in many parts of the world. These findings do not prove that all public religion is dangerous, but they do show that the boundary between belief and power remains politically important. (Pew Research Center)
This is why the issue is global. A religious movement does not need to control the whole world to produce global danger. It is enough that radical belief enters powerful systems and shapes their decisions. Then theological or religiously framed ideas can influence law, education, public morality campaigns, security policy, and the treatment of perceived opponents. A world already marked by national tension cannot afford public systems guided by sacred rivalry or holy-war imagination. (Pew Research Center)
8. The Right Place of Religion in a Free Society
A free society should not abolish religion. It should civilize its public role. Religion can contribute positively through moral reflection, community support, art, charity, rituals of meaning, and voluntary institutions. It may persuade, invite, inspire, and witness. What it may not do, within a modern civic order, is compel, dominate, or deny equal freedom to others. This is consistent not only with human rights law but also with important religious traditions themselves. For example, Catholic teaching in Dignitatis Humanae explicitly affirms immunity from coercion in religious matters. (United Nations)
This point is especially important at the level of the person. Even when religion contributes positively to moral life or community life, it must not erase the freedom of the individual within the family, the school, the congregation, or society at large. A mature free society protects the believer, the dissenter, the convert, the doubter, and the non-believer equally. It does not allow the collective power of religion to cancel the conscience of the person. In that sense, the right place of religion in modern society depends not only on tolerance between groups, but on the firm protection of each individual’s freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. (OHCHR)
The key principle is simple: influence through free will is legitimate; control through fear, force, or structural domination is not. Smaller religions must have a place. Non-religious people must have a place. People who change religion must have a place. A modern world is healthy when it protects this diversity without letting any one worldview become politically absolute. (United Nations)
9. Reform, Self-Limitation, and Coexistence
If religion is to remain compatible with modern civilization, it must accept reform in its social and political attitude. This does not always mean changing every doctrine. It does mean accepting limits in the public sphere. Religions that seek peaceful coexistence should renounce coercion, reject domination, give up dreams of total social victory, and accept the equal civic dignity of people who believe differently or do not believe at all. In a plural society, self-limitation is not weakness. It is maturity. (OHCHR)
This reform is especially important where missionary ambition, militant rhetoric, apocalyptic expectation, or religious nationalism remain strong. A religion that accepts freedom for itself but not for others is not yet modern in its public ethics. A religion that accepts equal freedom for others, even when it disagrees deeply with them, becomes compatible with a shared human future. (Pew Research Center)
10. Conclusion
The central argument of this article is not that religion must disappear. It is that modern society cannot continue to live well under radical, coercive, expansionist, or apocalyptic forms of religion. The danger appears when belief becomes dogma, dogma becomes power, and power seeks to shape all humanity according to one sacred vision. That danger may appear in different traditions and in different forms, including politicized prophecy, militant struggle, missionary domination, religious nationalism, and institutional coercion. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
The defense of modern society is therefore also a defense of the individual person. It is not enough to prevent conflict between religions if the individual remains trapped under coercion, fear, or forced identity. A truly modern order protects the right of each human being to think freely, believe freely, speak freely, and shape a personal path without religious domination. For this reason, the question is not only how religions can coexist with one another, but also how society can protect every individual from systems of belief that seek obedience at the cost of conscience, dignity, and freedom. (United Nations)
The better path is not a war against religion, but a firm modern order in which religion lives within limits: freedom of conscience, equal rights, rational public life, and peaceful coexistence. Humanity does not need to fulfill old narratives of sacred conflict. It can choose a freer and wiser future. The world should not belong to one religion. It should belong equally to all human beings. (United Nations)
Additional Note: Global Religious Demography Is a Snapshot, Not a Contest
The following figures are included only as a broad demographic snapshot of the contemporary world. They are not presented as a contest over which religion is bigger, nor as a call to force religious change in any direction. Their purpose is simply to show that humanity is diverse, that no single belief system includes all people, and that modern society must therefore be built on freedom of conscience, equal dignity, and peaceful coexistence. Snapshot date: global estimates for 2020, published by Pew Research Center in 2025. (Pew Research Center)
According to Pew Research Center’s worldwide estimates for 2020, Christians made up 28.8% of the world’s population, or about 2.3 billion people. Muslims made up 25.6%, or about 2.0 billion people. Religiously unaffiliated people made up 24.2%, or about 1.9 billion people. Hindus made up 14.9%, or about 1.2 billion people. Buddhists made up 4.1%, or about 324 million people. Jews made up about 0.2%, or about 14.8 million people. Other religions combined made up 2.2%, or about 172 million people. Altogether, this means that about 75.8% of the world identified with some religion in 2020, while 24.2% did not identify with any religion. (Pew Research Center)
The term “religiously unaffiliated” needs careful explanation. It includes people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, “nothing in particular,” “no religion,” or “none.” This does not mean they all reject every spiritual idea. Some may still hold spiritual beliefs or practice certain customs, but they do not identify with a religion in surveys or censuses. In this sense, “unaffiliated” is a category of non-identification, not a full description of every person’s inner beliefs or cultural habits. (Pew Research Center)
The category “other religions” is also important, because it includes many smaller or less globally visible traditions that should not disappear inside the larger labels. Pew says this group includes Baha’is, Daoists, Jains, Shintoists, Sikhs, Wiccans, Zoroastrians, and many small groups, including some folk or traditional religions. This is the place where many Chinese traditional or folk religious identities, some Indigenous traditions, some animist traditions, some shamanic traditions, and other smaller religious communities are more likely to appear when they are counted as religion. (Poder360)
This distinction matters especially in places such as China. Pew reports that China had nearly 1.3 billion religiously unaffiliated residents in 2020, about two-thirds of the world’s unaffiliated population. But that does not automatically mean all of these people are atheists in a strict philosophical sense. It means that, in the available data, they were counted as people with no religious affiliation. Some may still participate in ancestral customs, local rituals, or traditional practices without identifying with a formal religion in surveys or censuses. (Pew Research Center)
The percentages can also be understood very simply. Out of every 100 people in the world in 2020, about 29 were Christian, 26 were Muslim, 24 were religiously unaffiliated, 15 were Hindu, 4 were Buddhist, about 2 belonged to other religions combined, and far less than 1 was Jewish. This does not erase the many smaller traditions. Rather, it shows that many of them are grouped into the “other religions” category because each one is relatively small on the global scale, even though they remain important in the lives of their followers and in the cultures where they exist. (Pew Research Center)
Taken together, these figures show that the modern world is not religiously uniform. It includes large world religions, a very large unaffiliated population, and many smaller traditional, folk, and Indigenous religious communities. For that reason, these numbers should not be read as a competition over who is bigger. They should be read as a reminder that the real human situation is plural, and that modern civic life must protect freedom, legal equality, and peaceful coexistence across many forms of belief and non-belief. (Pew Research Center):
This snapshot presents religious affiliation only. It does not capture nationality, language, ethnicity, culture, citizenship, or other forms of belonging that also shape human identity. Religion is therefore only one dimension of the global human picture. In many cases, religion may change across a person’s life, while nationality, native language, and cultural background are more stable or more difficult to alter. This makes the human world more complex than any religious classification alone can express. For that reason, demographic data on religion should be read with caution and should never be used to justify reducing humanity to a single religious identity or civilizational model. (un.org) (ohchr.org)
References
Britannica. “Armageddon.” Accessed March 20, 2026. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Britannica. “Jihad.” Updated February 26, 2026. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Britannica. “Jihad summary.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Britannica. “Antichrist.” Updated March 12, 2026. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Britannica. “Last Judgment.” Updated January 31, 2026. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Pew Research Center. “Views of Christian Nationalism, Christianity’s Place in Politics.” March 15, 2024. (Pew Research Center)
Pew Research Center. “Comparing Levels of Religious Nationalism Around the World.” January 28, 2025. (Pew Research Center)
Pew Research Center. “Globally, Government Restrictions on Religion Reached Peak Levels in 2021, While Social Hostilities Went Down.” March 5, 2024. (Pew Research Center)
Pew Research Center. “Government Restrictions on Religion Stayed at Peak Levels Globally in 2022.” December 18, 2024. (Pew Research Center)
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” Article 18. (OHCHR)
OHCHR. “International Standards: Freedom of Religion or Belief.” (OHCHR)
United Nations; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (United Nations / OHCHR). Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 18. (United Nations/ OHCHR)
Vatican. Dignitatis Humanae. Second Vatican Council, December 7, 1965. (Vatican)
Hackett, Conrad, Marcin Stonawski, Yunping Tong, Stephanie Kramer, Anne Fengyan Shi, and Dalia Fahmy. 2025. How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020. Pew Research Center. (Pew Research Center)
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