There was a time, not long ago, when religious freedom rarely featured in media coverage in Western countries, unless it was about the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union or in what used to be called the Far East. Not so now, and hardly a day passes without reports of controversy over the exercise of religious freedom rights, and accounts of religious persecution not just of Christians but of members of all the major faiths. Some of these are implausible, as when Covid-related restrictions on attendance at religious services are said to be an infringement on the right to practise religion, or when it is claimed that to compel a confectioner to make a cake for a gay wedding amounts to persecution.