In the past decades, much light has been placed on the freedom of religions and beliefs in cultural, political, legal, and theological spheres, with the creation of observatories, and governmental and intergovernmental bodies to follow up on the situation of religious freedom in the world and the development of both the international discourse and the religious discourse in that direction. Polls such as those undertaken by the Pew forum show a decrease in restrictions and hostilities towards religions worldwide, yet recent events demonstrate that the question of religious freedom needs to be given more attention. The exacerbation of sectarian conflicts and religiously motivated wars in the Middle-East, are resulting in mass persecution of religious groups and even in the oppression of diverging or critical voices within the same group.

In the west, challenges to deal with religious and cultural diversity in the public sphere are constantly growing and becoming more complex.
In fact, freedom of religion and belief needs to be tackled in relation to a reformulation of the social contract and reconstruction of citizenship on an inclusive basis.
Besides the incidence of the concept on the political and legislative dimensions, religious freedom has incidences on cultural, philosophical, and religious dimensions as well, since it calls for definitions of what a religion is, for a definition of the relationship between religious freedom and freedom of thought and expression, and challenges religious thought in questions related to diversity and to the relation between religion and State.