The historical experience of Belarus also shows that religious freedom elevates our nation, whereas religious un-freedom leads to the darkest and most tragic consequences.
The advent of Christianity in Belarus was not accompanied by violence. Christian churches following Eastern and Western rites co-existed peacefully on Belarusian soil from the tenth century onwards. A policy of religious freedom became the basis of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - the state in which Belarusian national identity was forged.
In the fifteenth century there was an attempt to make Catholicism the state religion by barring non-Catholics from senior state positions. In 1436 an Inquisition was introduced against the considerable number of Christians in the Grand Duchy who had accepted the Reformation ideas of Jan Hus. These actions caused conflict and the departure of some Belarusian Orthodox nobles for the state of Muscovy.
The sixteenth century has been called Belarus' Golden Age, not just thanks to progress in the cultural and economic spheres, but also due to religious freedom. Attempts to stop the Protestant faith from spreading ended in fiasco. In 1563 the nobility, headed by the Grand Duchy's leading Protestant, Mikalai Radzivil the Black, succeeded in obtaining a decree under which, "not only subjects of the Roman Church should be elected to all positions and the government, but to the same degree men of noble class, of the Christian faith, each according to his merits." Not long afterwards the overwhelming majority of seats in the Grand Duchy's Senate were occupied by Protestant Christians.
The country became renowned across Europe as "a place of shelter for heretics" where anyone could freely profess their faith, even those who denied mainstream Christian doctrines. Faced with the possibility of being thrown into jail or burnt at the stake for dissent from the prevailing faith in their homelands, French, Italians, Czechs and others began to move to the Grand Duchy. In 1557, for example, Duchess Catherine Willoughby of Suffolk and her husband Richard Bertie came to seek asylum in the Grand Duchy due to their Protestant beliefs, by invitation of Mikalai Radzivil the Black.
In January 1573 the Belarusian and Polish nobilities ratified the declaration of the Confederation of Warsaw, which read: "And since there is no small variation in the Christian faith in our republic, warning that no form of hostility should arise between people for this reason, which we see is clearly taking place in other states, we pledge to ourselves, for ourselves and our descendants for all time to preserve peace between us and not, on account of differences in faith, to shed blood in the churches or to deprive anyone of property or social standing, or to subject anyone to arrest or banishment, or to assist any authorities or government in such actions."
The 1588 Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania reiterated the principle of religious freedom. For Europe, enflamed by religious wars, the Confederation of Warsaw became a model of how to resolve issues of freedom of conscience. Writing in his diary at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Belarusian Calvinist nobleman Fyodor Yevlashovsky recalled that: "In Vilnius I sat at the table of [Catholic canon] Fr Bartholomew Nedvitsky, together with his Italian servants. When they found out that I was an evangelical Christian, they were astounded at how it was that a canon priest dared invite me to dinner. And when I told them that no hatred arises between us because of that, and we get along as good friends, the Italians praised this, saying that God lives here, and began to lament the laws in their own land - or rather lawlessness. At that time difference in faith was not a reason for any kind of difference in friendship, and so that age seems to me a golden one, because now untruth exists between people of the same faith, to say nothing about those of different faiths, and you can forget about charity or sincerity."
