Higher education in England and in America also arose from Judeo-Christian religion and its speech. Here, the focus turns from Protestants to Catholics, because the establishment of higher education in continental Europe and in England was by Roman Catholics. Because universities are largely secular today, it is easy to forget that the oldest universities were founded by a Judeo-Christian faith with a heavy focus on educating Roman Catholic ministers and canon lawyers, and that their curricula and activities were pervasively religious. The same is true of the oldest universities in Europe – the Universities of Bologna, Salamanca, Paris, and others. Only after dozens of European universities had been established by Catholics did the Reformation bring Protestant colleges to England and to America. What was religious about early higher education was its message and perspective – its religious speech in the forms of teaching, reading, questioning, defending – adding a religious message and perspective to Greco-Roman classical studies. Early universities were founded by church officials, designed primarily to train prelates or ministers, taught with specified church-approved texts from a religious perspective, and presided over by bishops’ appointees or other ministers. Colonial American colleges followed the religious path of the early English universities.

The abolition movement in Britain and America was primarily led and supported by people driven by Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. The major role of Quakers before 1800 is generally acknowledged. However, "[m]ost recent assessments neglect, avoid, or dismiss the Evangelicals," one scholar noted, and their much greater role after Quaker efforts faded after 1800. By contrast, the prior generation of historians typically concluded that the "evangelical roots of radical abolition are well documented"; "the abolition movement grew out of evangelical Protestantism"; and "[t]here is no question of the importance of Evangelicalism in American anti-slavery." Quakers and Evangelicals publicized the horrors of slavery, and condemned slavery theologically as sin, while building on the revolutionary generation’s widespread discomfort with slavery, and achieving steps toward gradual emancipation in the northern states. Evangelicals after 1800 broadened the movement, appealing to many of those claiming conversion in the Second Great Awakening, and supported immediate abolition. Though not every leader or supporter was primarily motivated by religious beliefs, a large number were, and Judeo-Christian faith was crucial in the abolition movement. Those activities of the abolition movement consisted largely of Judeo-Christian religious speech: sermons and oratory, tracts and circulars, antislavery newspapers and other publications, and petitions.

The modern civil rights movement in America was directed and sustained by ministers and churches fervently proclaiming Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. Its leaders were mostly black ministers, who preached religious sermons inside and outside churches, insisting on promised rights. Its organizations were primarily black churches, along with an association of ministers; and the demonstrators were mostly their congregations. Though the movement’s base of support grew to include many who acted on other impulses, and its approach adopted tactics from Gandhi and others, the civil rights movement remained primarily a product of Judeo-Christian faith and its religious speech. Its religious speech was evident in the leadership by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was "first and foremost ’a clergyman, a Baptist preacher,’ a Christian," and he led by the religious speech of sermons, addresses, books, interviews, and demonstrations. That can be seen in each of King’s major campaigns in the modern civil rights movement. Other leaders also advocated Judeo-Christian principles and nonviolence, through speeches and pamphlets, marches, and church rallies. The triumph of the modern civil rights movement came mostly from the religious speech of the larger religious wing of ministers and congregations, not of the much smaller secular wing.

Freedom of speech was conceptualized in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and grew into common acceptance, primarily through Puritan belief in parrhesia in the Bible and through Puritans’ religion-based discourse asserting freedom of speech in books and sermons and speeches. This is, of course, contrary to the other authors, ancient and modern, who have discussed freedom of speech from a secular perspective based on parrhesia as it appeared in classical literature and other sources. However, those other authors generally underestimated the important role of freedom of speech in Puritan writing and thought and its influence on later English and American assertions of freedom of speech. The Puritan advocates of freedom of speech in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England were quite aware of the classical uses of parrhesia – most had received a classical education, a significant portion at Oxford or Cambridge – but they deliberately chose instead to rely on the biblical basis for parrhesia. Their frequent assertions of freedom of speech call into question the contention that "[f]ree speech as we understand the term ... remained nearly unknown to legal or constitutional history and to libertarian thought on either side of the Atlantic before 1776," as Leonard Levy claimed.

A number of other freedoms, besides freedoms of speech and press, also developed out of the conflicts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England – most notably freedoms for the criminally accused, many of whom were prosecuted for the crime of their religious faith. As Puritans and others were charged with the crimes of preaching and printing dissident religious beliefs, they raised objections to each element of criminal prosecutions: searches, arrests, imprisonments, trials, and punishments. The most vocal objectors were the Levellers, radical "Puritans of the Left," who supplemented their objections with proposed freedoms or rights against unjust elements of prosecutions. Their objections and proposals were mostly in the fervent language of religious speech – religious appeals laden with biblical references – whether in statements at trial, transcripts of proceedings, or pamphlets. The best known Leveller leader, John Lilburne, in his three major criminal trials and in related pamphlets, identified and claimed all thirteen freedoms of the criminally accused that, 150 years later, were collected together in the Fourth through Eighth Amendments of America’s Bill of Rights. Lilburne also sought to legitimate and secure those rights as part of the rights of "free-born Englishmen" or of "the birthright of Englishmen."* Other Levellers advocated those rights.

The calls for freedom of press in the mid-seventeenth century, like the earlier calls for freedom of speech, also came mostly from devoutly religious people: Puritans and Nonconformists and their religious-based demands. That religious basis was mostly a desire to disseminate religious preaching and knowledge, and an imperative to do that not only by preaching and other speech but by publishing religious books and pamphlets, in addition to a religious basis in freedom of conscience. John Milton, the trailblazer in seeking "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience," tried to extend parrhesia from speech to publications, and built his case in Areopagitica and in other pamphlets on freedom of conscience, on Bible passages, and on similar religious messages. Though Areopagitica is generally described in scholarly literature as unnoticed and overlooked until the end of the seventeenth century, it in fact was relatively widely known, as nearly fifty quotations or allusions show before that century’s end. Besides Milton, other Puritans were the dominant advocates for freedom of press before the end of the seventeenth century, including three who wrote a generation before Milton (an anonymous minister, Leonard Busher, and William Ames), and Levellers and others.

Judeo-Christian faith and religious speech are increasingly excluded from the public square and from equal treatment compared to other belief systems. Challenges directed at religious faith and speech include arguments that speech relying on them should be excluded from the public square, that religious speech should not be protected by government, that religious speech should not be treated the same as other speech, and that instead it may be subjected to special restrictions. Similar challenges are increasingly aimed at freedom of speech generally. Yet Judeo-Christian faith and associated speech have given many valuable legacies to the world. The most acknowledged ones are much of freedom of religious exercise and other human rights, great art and architecture, great music and literature, hospitals and charities, and education and science. However, it is not widely acknowledged that Judeo-Christian faith and religious speech growing out of it were major forces behind at least six other expansions of human rights or freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedoms of accused criminals, higher education, abolition of slavery, and the modern civil rights movement. These legacies came from various segments of Judeo-Christian faith: Puritans and Levellers, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, and Liberal Protestants and African-American Churches.