Historically speaking, Americans have never agreed on what religious freedom means or how it should be applied. Religious groups of all kinds—whether the bulk of their adherents were recent immigrants, racial minorities, Native Americans, or the descendants of colonial white settlers—have invoked this freedom in many different ways to advance a multitude of goals. At times it has been a valuable tool for persecuted groups, providing a means of self-defense in the courts of law and in the courts of public opinion. But all too often the ideal of religious freedom has worked in favor of the majority white Christian population. Cultural assumptions about what counts as religion were set by that majority in the first place, making it far more difficult for traditions that do not fit Christian norms to gain public sympathy or legal traction for their claims. Religious traditions that are primarily associated with racial minorities have faced the added challenges of racial discrimination.
The loudest demands for religious freedom have generally privileged the majority. Campaigns for Bible reading in the public schools or for blue laws that enforce a day of rest on Sundays, for example, were successfully advanced by some (as well as opposed by others) in the name of religious freedom. In the 19th century, pro-slavery voices invoked religious freedom to defend the “peculiar institution,” attacking abolitionism as a threat to the moral foundations and the religious convictions of the (white) South. Up until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, white southerners and their northern allies defended the legal regimes of segregation in much the same way.
The winds of religious freedom began to shift in the decades after World War II, when the civil rights and civil liberties movements gave new traction to minority voices of all kinds. Religious minorities advanced newly ambitious First Amendment claims starting in the 1940s and 1950s, when a series of prominent cases expanded the range of the free exercise clause, first making it applicable to the states, rather than just the federal government, and then recognizing new protections for individuals and minorities over and against communal and majority norms. (Note the contrast with the current debate, where religious freedom appears to protect the rights of a Christian majority and to work against civil rights for individuals and minorities.)
This trend arguably peaked with Sherbert v. Verner (1963) and Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), cases involving the Seventh-day Adventists and the Amish, respectively: two predominantly white sectarian Protestant groups with generally picturesque public images. Ruling in their favor, the Supreme Court created a new standard requiring that religious practices be accommodated as much as possible even when that meant granting exceptions to otherwise applicable laws.
In this period, movements for civil rights and minority empowerment made appeals to religious liberty. Prisoners from a variety of racial minority and immigrant religious traditions—including Muslims, Native Americans, and Sikhs—argued successfully for the right to their own distinctive dietary, dress, and devotional practices in prison. The feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s also employed religious freedom as a pro-choice slogan. Each woman had the right to decide the morality of contraception and abortion according to her own conscience, they argued, and any legal restrictions on this freedom represented an unconstitutional establishment of religion.