Joris van Eijnatten, professor at the University of Utrecht (Holland), affirmed at the University of Navarra that for promote tolerance it is necessary to allow people to have the freedom to profess a religion and not be forced to relegate it to the private sphere. "Religion must be present in the public sphere because it enriches the debates that take place there," he said.

 The expert made these statements on the framework of the congress 'Religious Toleration in the Age of Enlightenment (1650-1800): Historical Perspectives on Current Debates', organized by the project 'Religion and Civil Society' of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS). The degree scroll of his lecture was 'Religion, Toleration and Enlightenment: the Dutch Case'.

For Joris van Eijnatten, in the 18th century, "religious tolerance existed simply to avoid conflicts between people". "The status has changed completely, because we now live in constitutional states where there are laws regulating these issues," he clarified.

Professor Eijnatten insisted that "we must reinvent and rethink tolerance because times are changing" and that "we must live it, not only theorize about it". In this sense, he assured that "living in the modern world means living tolerance".

Regarding the influence of the Enlightenment, Joris van Eijnatten pointed out that one of the dominant currents of research asserts that it was a time of "extolling" universal rights, which were imposed on society.

For him, this is controversial, since at that historical stage freedom was somehow "imposed" on people, which, among other things, meant that they had to "free themselves" from religion and confine it to the private sphere. 

Religious tolerance to prevent conflicts

"Muslim immigrants in European countries," explained Joris van Eijnatten, "saw this as a problem because they were not used to this discussion introduced by the Enlightenment.

Joris van Eijnatten was one of the experts from universities in Bulgaria, Chile, the USA, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands and the UK who participated in congress. They presented topics related to religious peace, religious violence, the training of tolerant mentality or Islam, among others.

The activity revolved around two main lines. The first is to trace the many Enlightenment legacies present in dominant discourses on religion and freedom. The second is to reconsider existing narratives about the place of the Enlightenment in the history of tolerance. This approach aims to goal examine more critically the assumptions underlying recent debates about religious freedom and to contribute to a more rigorous and honest dialogue about this topic.