A historical example of such a society was the medieval structure of guilds...

A historical example of such a society was the medieval structure of guilds, chartered cities, villages, monasteries, and universities in Europe of the 16th century. For the British sociologist James Beckford, the religious pluralism characteristic of “Western democratic” societies to date has been a pluralism based on the right to religious freedom.[^6] This right, at the collective level, means that religious diversity is not simply de facto but also de jure .

In this sense the various policies of tolerance in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which to a varying extent enabled minority faiths not to disappear, were not yet a product of religious pluralism, Beckford argues.

In other words, religious pluralism is inseparable from the political modernity which was established in Europe and the United States near the turn of the eighteenth century.[^7] For Beckford and other scholars, religious pluralism is understood as a political principle. Strong pluralism needs to be based on the right of individuals to religious freedom. Some scholars distinguished between several forms of religious pluralism.

In the diachronic perspective, a distinction is drawn between an emancipatory pluralism pertaining strictly to the individual’s right to religious liberty (and entailing, in particular, a de-ethnicization of religion), and a pluralism of identities marked by the demand from different religions for full and equal recognition of their individuality.

The real diversity of national models of emancipatory pluralism is also explained by the antithesis between individualistic pluralism and communitarian pluralism.

“Individualistic pluralism” is founded on the freedom (independence) of individuals, whereas “communitarian pluralism” is a reaction to the assertion of modernity (rise of secularization and establishment of societies based on the individual).[^8] Since this reaction is forced to take cognizance of the new situation with regard to religious pluralism, it (re)creates, within society as a whole, a faith-based community that is closed and hostile to modernity.

Ole Riis, a Danish sociologist, has observed that the concept of religious pluralism may be used “in a descriptive and evaluative sense.”[^9] But, for Beckford, religious pluralism signifies a social and political system which grants every religion equal respect and facilities for individuals to practice their own religions without hindrance.