Does not following a religion &quot;to the letter&quot; disqualify you from protection of religious freedom?
<p>I could probably come up with a logical argument as to why individual religious beliefs and patterns of behavior should be protected in the same way as those which belong to a "recognized" religion, but I'm wondering what kind of case law exists on the issue. I'll separate this into two questions.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>There are many cases where an individual practices a form of Christianity which is different from a generally agreed upon profile of the religion. For instance, essentially no Christian follows the idea that women are not allowed to speak in Church. It seems common for the layperson to argue that such "hypocrisy" precludes a person from being protected by the first amendment. What does the case law say on this?</p></li>
<li><p>Related to this, if a person happens to have an individual religious belief which again differs from the general profile of what is considered to be Christianity, is that belief still protected?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>It would seem that protection of religion would be on an individual basis. In other words, so long as a person holds a specific religious belief or follows a specific religious pattern of behavior, then regardless of what religion with which the person identifies, the person would be protected in the exact same way as if the person somehow managed to "perfectly" match an expected profile of a given religion.</p>

<p>See <em>Holt v. Hobbs 574 U.S. ____ (2015)</em> and <em>Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 573 U.S. ____ (2014)</em>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Under RLUIPA, the challenging party bears the initial burden
  of proving that his religious exercise is grounded in a sincerely held
  religious belief</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The test is ignorant as to whether the person's belief happens to match an "expected" profile of a particular religion, although if it did, that would go some way to establishing that the belief is a sincerely held religious belief.</p>

<p>In <em>Holt v. Hobbs</em>, Gregory Holt requested that he be allowed to grow a 1/2 inch beard in prison. In oral argument, Justice Scalia noted that</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>the religious requirement is to grow a full beard [...] I mean, you're still violating your religion</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Counsel for Holt responded:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Well, the religious teaching is a full beard. He testified that religiously half an inch is better than nothing. [...] A partial beard is better than none. And that's not just in secular terms. That's also in religious terms.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The court ruled in favour of Holt. That his belief differed from the strictest interpretation of the religious text was not relevant.</p>

constitutional-law