Politicians, whom are you going to address to your message? Only to the majorities? To the opinion leaders? To the lobbies? And whom are you going to listen to?
Manuel Suárez during his talk at Reformismo 21, a think tank of the People's Party (PP) in Spain. / PD
This conference was given at Reformismo 21 (a think-tank of the Spanish conservative party People's Party) by Xesús Manuel Suárez, secretary general of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance. It took place on 27 March 2025 at the headquarters of PP in Madrid. It was attended by various members of parliament and members of the PP leadership.
I appreciate the opportunity you give me to share reflections and proposals with you. The Spanish Evangelical Alliance will soon be 150 years old and our birth came about after the imprisonment of Manuel Matamoros and other Protestants for their faith, and the consequent international solidarity movement promoted by the World Evangelical Alliance in favour of their freedom. Since then, freedom of conscience has been one of our core issues.
On reviewing your website, I found that your predecessor, the Concordia y Libertad Foundation, “wanted to contribute its vision, based on the values of freedom, democracy, tolerance and Christian humanism”.
These elements resonate in the Evangelical Alliance because it is clear to us that Christianity has been the source of freedom and democracy in the Western world.
In my presentation I will go into a part of the history of political thought that has been fundamental in the birth of the Western democratic system, but is perhaps not very well known in Spain.
I will not talk about Locke, Hume, the French Revolution or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, because you have not invited me to talk about what you already know, but I will bring before you that part of the history of political thought that is little known in Spain, but has been the definitive basis for the establishment of the Western democratic system.
As you will see, a relevant part of it was developed more than a century before the French Revolution.
It seems to me that a lack of familiarity with this part of political history explains some of the difficulties in Spain's current democratic health.
For this reason, I will combine the description of the history of freedom of conscience with applications to current Spanish politics. And at the end I will dare to make some concrete proposals for you as Reformismo XXI and representatives of the Popular Party.
I have reviewed a long list of documents and books, but I would especially like to thank the contributions of Evert van de Poll, José Moreno, Roger Trigg and Os Guinnes; the latter led the elaboration of the “Global Charter of Freedom of Conscience”, a proposal for application to today's world, which I will not have time for commenting on today, but I highly recommend to read this relevant document. [1]
The Charter of Human Rights of the European Union in Art. 10 defines Freedom of Religion and Belief as “freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.” [2]
It takes up the content of Art. 18 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But freedom of conscience implies something more: it implies the freedom to live in all activities in accordance with one's deepest personal convictions.
In this sense, freedom of conscience may sometimes involve a confrontation with existing legislation. In democracy, it is resolved by the right to conscientious objection; thus, the European Charter recognises this right in paragraph 2 of the same Article 10, but with a proviso, which is to adapt “in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of this right.”
In this way, a right that may involve confrontation with the public authorities is regulated by the public authorities themselves.
And in Spain some voices are already beginning to suggest that freedom of conscience is not a fundamental and untouchable freedom and that it can be somehow restricted, or, at least, the right to conscientious objection. [3]
We are witnessing a progressive reduction of the relevance of freedom of conscience and the right to conscientious objection in Spanish politics, but also in the collective mentality.
Note that the Spanish Constitution of 1978 devotes only a brief section (art. 16) to religious freedom and it refers to questions of freedom of worship, public demonstrations and the non-confessional nature of the state.
Even more surprising is that conscientious objection is only addressed in the context of the –then compulsory– military service (art. 30). This reveals that, historically, in the collective Spanish mentality, freedom of conscience has not been as fundamental as other freedoms and rights.
My contribution today is that in Northern Europe and the USA, democracy began with freedom of conscience, a perspective that may be useful to know in order to bring more democratic depth to Spanish political life today.
It is said that democracy was born in Greece, but that democracy was not for everyone. The criterion that all human beings are born with equal rights is the specific contribution of Christianity: The Bible defines human beings as created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1.27) and already from the beginning it indicates that this applies to all people.
Consequently, Paul points out that among believers “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Col 3.11). Without this fundamental criterion that all people are equal and have inalienable rights, democratic freedoms cannot be established.
Evert van de Poll reminds us that in the 2nd century Tertullian was the first to use the term “religious freedom” to indicate that no one can be forced to maintain a certain religious faith. [4]
But in later centuries in Europe, the religious power entrusted the political power to ensure that the entire population was Christian, and so it was the competence of the political power to persecute heretics.
We may so understand that the first measure to establish freedom of conscience would be to withdraw from the political power the competence to intervene in religious matters, as we shall see immediately.
The most compelling proclamation for freedom of conscience at the end of the Middle Age was made by Luther at the Diet of Worms: “My conscience is bound to the Word of God”; he thus raised the rights of the individual against the State and the Church.
He ended his discourse saying “Here I stand. May God help me. Amen.” In this “Here I stand” he was graphically describing the individual standing alone before power; this is the core of freedom of conscience.
Protestantism was a revolution that paved the way for the recognition of freedom of conscience: It eliminated the mediating role of the Church between God and men and claimed that salvation is a matter between each individual and God.
This is fundamental to our topic: If salvation depends on the incorporation of each person into a church, then the individual's responsibility and capacity for self-determination is mediated by the institution, which exercises a permanent tutelage over people.
If, on the other hand, each individual is exclusively responsible for his relationship to God and the Church has no mediating or legitimising role in the salvation of the person, then the perspective on life, including politics, changes radically.
In the first case, political relations, and especially political liberties, will have their centre and their legitimacy in the collective, and great value will be placed on the orthodoxy established by the institutions in power.
In the second case, the centre will be the individual, who is absolutely responsible, and there is no room for tutelage; personal freedom of conscience will be in this worldview the centre and the origin of all other democratic liberties.
We can thus find equally legitimate democracies, but in some the emphasis is on the majority and the institutionality, and in others on the individual and on civil society.
And this difference in perspective, what significance has for current political life in Spain? There is a transversal tendency –which transcends the left/right axis– to tutelage the population, to understand that the population needs to be told what is orthodox and what is not, what is convenient and what is not; but tutelage is incompatible with freedom of conscience! In this line, the political class becomes a priestly class mediating in power relations.
My proposal is that we must open our vision to the second worldview that I am sharing with you and that, as politicians, you should understand that you do not act as a mediating “priestly class” that paternally decides for others, but that you act by delegation; it is for this reason that I encourage you to give more audience and protagonism to persons and to civil society, as you are doing here today by listening to a daring dissident like me.
I have no doubt that spiritual principles or, if you prefer, codes of values are what shape political postulates. In Spain that code of values still retains fragments of the DNA of the dogmatism of Trent, that a majority cannot be wrong and that the heretic has no rights.
The union of the throne with the altar has not been liquidated, it is still in force; what happens is that the altar, the dogmas and the orthodoxy are now different, but the political power continues to transmit and impose the dogmas of the new orthodoxy whenever it can.
From my perspective, the problem with all the laws derived from the Gender Ideology in Spain is not mainly a moral problem, but a deficit of laicity, yes, of laicity: dogma is once again being imposed, and the preambles of some recent laws establish without any scientific support some dogmas that require definitively blind faith, such as that of fluid sex.
The surprising thing for those of us who are “heretics” is that we suffered from this with the rightist wave of national Catholicism and now we are suffering from the very same with the leftist wave of dogmatic laicism.
In Northern European countries and the US, the emphasis of democracy is on protecting the rights of the individual and the civilian population against the state, and democracy is understood in terms of restricting and controlling political power; this gives more room for persons' freedom of conscience.
Indeed, let me jump ahead for a moment in my historical journey to the American Bill of Rights, which lists the first ten amendments to the American Constitution; it explains at the preamble that the states, in “adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.” [5]
Notice the different way of looking at the Constitution: it is not a closed dogma that directs the life of the country without discussion, but an instrument on which restrictions must be imposed to ensure that it is not used for government’s abuse of power.
Patrick Henry, famous for his phrase “Give me liberty or give me death”, put it this way: “The Constitution is not an instrument of the government to control the people, it is an instrument of the people to control the government”. How would you apply this criterion to the current political reality in Spain? There is plenty of reflections you may make, surely.
And it is absolutely congruent with this perspective that the first amendment to the American Constitution establishes freedom of conscience by making clear church/state separation –laicity– and from there it establishes freedom of speech, press freedom and freedom of assembly, one after the other all of them supported on the basis of freedom of conscience [6]
Indeed, once freedom of conscience is established, the direct implication is freedom of expression, which in turn is reflected in press freedom. And the ability to convey one's own ideas and to share them with others without threat gives rise to freedom of assembly. All these freedoms stem from the centrality of the individual and his/her freedom of conscience.
The link between freedom of conscience and freedom of expression can already be found in the first European country to proclaim freedom of conscience, Transylvania, in 1568, on the initiative of the Protestant Ferenc David; the Edict of Torda read as follows:
“His Royal Highness, as in former Diets, so in this now present, confirms that ministers of the Gospel may everywhere preach and explain it, each according to his own understanding; and the community may accept or reject the teaching as it thinks good. No force may be used to compel acceptance against conviction. Congregations are allowed to have each the preacher they wish. Preachers shall not be molested, not any one persecuted, on account of religion; no one is permitted to remove from office, or to imprison, any one because of his teaching. Faith being the gift of God, which comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. [7]
The Edict of Torda has its foundation in the last sentence, a sentence taken from the Bible, from Rom 10.17. Freedom of conscience in Transylvania was not established from the cornering of faith to privacy, but from a consistent reading of the Bible.
Those who call today for this cornering of faith out of the public square are ignoring the history of the construction of freedoms. It was the reading of the Bible that led to the renunciation of civil power to defend a religion, to move towards laicity, towards freedom of conscience and, from there, to freedom of expression (“ministers of the Gospel may everywhere preach and explain it, each according to his own understanding”).
As Roger Trigg reminds us, when the Council of Europe claims that “states should require religious leaders to take an unequivocal stand in favour of the priority of human rights [...] over any religious principle”, it blatantly ignores that the seminal document of the Western democratic system, the US Declaration of Independence, begins by stating that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” [8]; the reference to God is clear from the very beginning.
The Spanish left should remember that Keir Hardie, the founder of the first socialist party, the Labour Party, said: “The task of the Labour movement today is to apply the principles of Christ's teaching to industrial and economic problems.” [9]
A close friend said of him: “I shall always consider him the most religious man I have ever known” [10]. At the funeral of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, his grandson described him as follows: "He was the same at home as he was in the White House. His principles were based on the Bible”. [11]
The full development of freedom of conscience was achieved with the emergence of the Puritan and Baptist movements in the early 17th century. Three key figures were instrumental in this, as Evert van de Poll shows us:
Thomas Helwys (1550-1616) claimed that “men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. religion is a thing between God and men. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure. This is made evident to our lord the king by Scriptures. [12]
For Helwys, religious freedom was a right of every human being, against which no parliament had the right to legislate and no king had the right to impose his power.
This has a direct application to our current political situation: a political group in Spain is calling for the restriction of the right to conscientious objection and steps are already being taken in this direction, for example with the registration of objecting doctors. In the mentality of our society, the majority has the right to impose its criteria in all areas, as long as it obtains 51% parliamentary support.
In the mentality of the forerunners of Western democracy that we are quoting, there are rights of the individual that have to be recognised in all places and political contingencies, which no parliamentary majority has the legitimacy to restrict, because without these rights there is no democracy.
Richard Overton (1640-1644) was the first to speak of “human rights”: “No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I have them over no man's”. He was a representative of the levellers (the largely Puritan, deeply religious movement that overthrew the absolute monarchy of Charles I of England). The Glorious Revolution they led was defined by themselves as “a struggle for religious liberty.” [13]
The levellers opposed the establishment of an official religion and the support of churches through taxation –which meant laicity of the state– and demanded religious freedom, social equality and equality before the law, universal suffrage (starting with “the poorest man in England”) and the right of every citizen to interact with parliament.
They demanded press freedom, as well as universal and free education and care for the needy and denounced the imprisonment of the poor for their debts or restrictions by monopolies on free international trade. And we are talking about the 17th century, more than one century before French Revolution.
Once again we see how freedom of conscience, based on biblical criteria, gave rise to the other freedoms and the elements of equality and progress which are the characteristics of a democratic society.
Thinking in the present times, it is interesting to note that John Milton, known for his work “Paradise Lost”, was a Puritan who participated with Overton in the Glorious Revolution.
He was also a staunch defender of freedom of conscience. One episode marked him in this conviction: as a young man, he visited Galileo in prison and described him as “a prisoner of the Inquisition for thinking about astronomy in a different way from the Dominicans and Franciscans.” [14]
Today we are once again witnessing the clash of faith –now the new laicist faith– with science: to give a very recent example, the Trans Law was written ignoring the medical scientific societies and some medical research on homosexuality has difficulties of censorship to be published. We are initiating the way back to the time of Galileo.
Roger Williams (1603-1683) founded the colony of Rhode Island and established a government in which freedom of conscience was established. The title of one of his books is clear: “The bloudy tenent of persecution for cause of conscience.” [15]
Like those before him, his position arose precisely from a consistent reading of the Bible: “It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of His Son, our Lord Jesus, freedom of conscience should be guaranteed to all men of all nations and countries, even to the most heathen, Jewish, Turkish or anti-Christian” [16], he says.
And he adds: “According to the truth of the Holy Scriptures, the conscience of men can in no way be violated, pressured or constrained”. “If God does not impose His will on anyone, if He does not accept that anyone should believe in Him by imposition, neither should we impose our faith on anyone”.
And he affirms: “Those who persecute with the sword those who peacefully think and preach differently, they are the ones who break the peace of the cities.” [17]
How do we translate this to our politics today? Today it is not with the physical sword, but certainly harassment is being generated, with accusations of ‘hate crime’, against those who think differently, and those disidents are required to keep their thoughts to themselves; in contrast, Williams claims that they can “think and preach differently”. This is the difference between proper laicity and inquisitorial laicism.
The consequence was to separate the civil from the religious in Rhode Island: “A religious uniformity imposed wholly on a nation or civil state, confuses the civil and the religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility.” [18]
And he created the figure of the wall of separation between church and civil government, as two areas with separate sovereignties, which Calvinism would identify with the separate sovereignty of the spheres.
This meant recognising equal rights for all, regardless of their faith. "I have always stood for freedom and equality, both in lands and in government.” [19]
His understanding of human beings led him to recognise the equal rights of the Indians, whom he paid for their lands. It is really clear his poem "Boast not, proud Englishman, of birth or blood. Your Indian brother is, by birth, as good as you." [20]
Williams, in his defence of freedom of conscience, said to the English Parliament: “Let none of your Lordships [...] limit the one God of Israel by their apprehensions, discussions or conclusions, rejecting or omitting the humble and faithful suggestions of any other.” [21]
Here we find the legitimisation of the individual against the group, which naturally translates into freedom of conscience. How do we apply this today to political reality? Do we give space to all perspectives or do we limit the right to be heard to those who go with the majority? What place do we give to dissent?
Rhode Island thus became a democracy in which power corresponded to the people assembled as a whole, to produce just laws and delegate in their representatives to execute those laws. [22]
We identify again the line of cause-effect beginning with the equality of all people, continued with freedom of conscience, laicity of the State and democratic exercise of power; all of them based upon the Bible worldview.
What has the Bible that has generated freedom and democracy in this Western European and American environment? Permit me to say that Spanish culture has yet to read the Bible: for centuries it has been banned and now it is ignored.
I have no doubt that, if we were to recover its reading, we would advance in democratic depth. I propose two texts that reveal the value that God gives to the individual person, texts that have marked the worldview and code of values of the societies we are talking about:
Lc 18.35-41: “As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’
He called out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’
Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’
Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’”
A crowd follows Jesus in a demonstration; there is a beggar, a blind man in the gutter; nobody notices him, but Jesus hears him, sees him and stops a whole crowd to talk to him.
A single man, the poorest and most limited, the most insignificant, is recognised by Jesus, who identifies his dignity and leaves aside a whole demonstration with the apostles at its head to meet him, talk to him, ask him questions.
Indeed, he does not impose anything on him, he does not exercise tutelage over him saying “I know what you need: to regain your sight”, no, he respects him, interacts with him and asks him “What do you want me to do for you?” It is the blind man who freely decides what he wants Jesus to do with him. Tremendous!
Anyone who gets to know the character of Jesus as manifested in this episode will be transformed in the understanding of the relevance and dignity of every human being: no one is insignificant! Personal rights start here, freedom of conscience starts here, democracy, which equalises the rights of all, starts here.
We see this concept again in Luke 15:3-7: “Then Jesus told them this parable: ‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
The experience of some of us is really this: I found myself aimless in life and one day I discovered that Jesus was looking for me, He found me personally, He put me on His shoulders and brought me home.
In this parable we discover that for Jesus one is worth more than ninety-nine. The Protestants of Northern Europe and especially America, when drafting their political documents, could not forget the parable of the lost sheep: the value of the individual transcends the majorities; there are rights of the individual person that belong to him/her by nature, they are not a concession of the majority. Democracy in this worldview does not begin in the majority, but in the individual person.
May you permit me to finish with a few direct questions for you. Politicians play an exemplary and didactic role: not only can you govern the country, but you also collaborate in shaping the collective mentality, in shaping the type of citizens of this society.
What type of citizen do you want for this country? A citizen who renounces to freedom of conscience, to his/her own criteria, submissive to the majority, to power, who votes by image without reading the programme? A political illiterate? A hooligan who supports you in everything and rejects those in front of you without listening to them?
Or do you dare to promote the formation of a citizen who pays more attention to analytical reading than to images, who develops his/her own criteria, who assumes his/her civic responsibility, who is capable of supporting you in what convinces him/her and criticising you in what he/she does not agree with?
And whom are you going to address to your message? Only to the majorities? To the opinion leaders? To the lobbies? To the powers that be? And whom are you going to listen to?
I invite you to open your ears and your hearts to those who have no voice, to those who do not hold the strings of power. I invite you to have the courage, the decision and the heart to stop for a moment the majority and listen, as Jesus did, to the poor, the blind, the beggar, left behind out of the road.
Finally, I invite you, the day you return to power, to renounce imposing your criteria without restriction with the parliamentary roller, to avoid the temptation to manipulate consciences, even if only subtly, to give voice and space to dissent, to decide for freedom and to start with the deepest freedom of conscience. Thank you.
1 The Global Charter of Conscience. 2012.
2 https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/10-freedom-thought-conscience-and-religion
3 https://www.democrata.es/actualidad/sumar-presenta-una-reforma-de-constitucion-para-blindar-el-derecho-al-aborto/
4 van de Poll, E. Christian Faith and the Making of Europe. VTR Publications, Nürnberg, 2021, p. 176
5 Bill of Rights. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
6 https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
7 Rowley, M. and van der Tol, M. A Global Sourcebook in Protestant Political Thought, vol. I. Routledge, University of Oxford, 2024, p. 334
8 Trigg, R. How Christianity has shaped human rights for the better?. Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford.
9 Ten Labour Members of Parliament and Other Bodies’, Labour and Religion. Delhi: Pranava Books, 2018, p.55.
10 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Keir_Hardie
11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB2e6KgXkoo, minute 2.00.40 to 2.12.05
12 van de Poll, E., op. cit, p. 181
13 Moreno Berrocal, J. Roger Williams. La Libertad de conciencia, la separación Iglesia-Estado, y el poder democrático, Ed. Andamio, Barcelona, 2023, p. 116
14 Moreno Berrocal, J, op. cit., p. 176
15 Williams, R. The bloody tenent of persecution, for cause of conscience, discussed, in a conference between Truth and Peace https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65739/65739-h/65739-h.htm
16 Williams, R. op. cit, p. 2.
17 Moreno Berrocal, J, op. cit., p. 200
18 Williams, R. op. cit., p. 2
19 Moreno Berrocal, J, op. cit., p. 157
20 Moreno Berrocal, J, op. cit., p. 183
21 Moreno Berrocal, J, op. cit., p. 124
22 Moreno Berrocal, J, op. cit., p 173
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