Courtesy of Google's amazing N-gram project, here's the relative frequency of "religious freedom" and "religious liberty" in American printing materials in the course of our national history. In case you can't read the small print, "religious liberty" is way more popular than "religious freedom" before 1900, especially in the very early years of the republic, at the time the Constitution was written. During the first decades of the 20th century, the margin began shrinking sharply, such that during World War II, "religious freedom" became more popular than "religious liberty"--and has remained so ever since. Quiz for the weekend: What, if anything, is the significance of this?
eblum | Jun 8, 2012 | 10:39pm
Dear Professor Silk,
What a neat little use of ngrams. I was playing with google ngrams and trying to weed out British publications with the ‘American English’ selection, but it still showed lots and lots of publications from the UK. Have you found a way to weed those out for your chart (not that the British would have been discussing these topics as intently as Americans would be)?
Best, Ed Blum
JesuisSean | Jun 9, 2012 | 8:27pm
Religious freedom does present the chance to split the truth into a many pieces.
Focus toward truth, does not.
If a website, say http://www.outersecrets.com/real/biblecode2a.htm presents proof of the existence of God and Jesus Christ, then it is doomed, for it is religious beliefs that are given flexibility these days, NOT the truth itself.
Mark Silk | Jun 11, 2012 | 8:52am
My old dean, Ron Spencer, sent along the following: “I have no comprehensive explanation of why ‘religious freedom’ has been preferred over ‘religious liberty’ during the past half-century and more. But its resurgence during WW II may (must?) have had something to do with FDR’s ‘Four Freedoms’ and Norman Rockwell’s visual representation of them.” At the beginning of our national history, I’d say that “liberty” had more popular resonance; as in the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and Boston’s Liberty Tree. America is the “sweet land of Liberty” in “America,” albeit the first stanza concludes with “Let freedom ring.” As for Ed’s question, I don’t know any way to week out British publications in the “American English” section—other than proceeding one by one.
Sean | Jul 17, 2012 | 5:12pm
Interesting tidbit. I am lost as to why religious freedom has overtaken liberty, but Mark brings some very coherent reasoning to the question. I personal like “freedom” better, but switch it up with the occasional “liberty” to spice it up every once in a while.