Thomas Moore and his Utopia... is it different from the one he wrote about?

     Thomas More proposed very radical ideas in his book Utopia, and one very interesting idea is that of the freedom of religion. Citizens were not required to become a part of any religion; they were not required to pay tithes to the local church. Commitment to any religion was not required at all. This is interesting coming from the work of More though; he was an extremely devout Christian like we talked about in class. (I will never forget the grotesqueness of the horse hair that he piously wore under everything.) That being said, most devout Christians believe that everyone should also be a Christian and that everyone should be as committed as they were. Christians today still reach out to places all over the world. However, More decided to let people choose whether or not they wanted to be a Christian in his Utopian society. This is ultimately because the freedom of choice also allows people to see who are truly devout in their faith and those that are not. If it is required to go to church, anyone can pretend to know more about their faith because they hear about it every weekend. But if it is not required, people can no longer pretend as well as they used to. The freedom of religion allows for God to be the judge of someone's heart, not man. This is ultimately what I believe More longs for in the end.