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This article argues that Woodrow Wilson's efforts to enshrine religious freedom protection in the Covenant of the League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference brought about the first modern international legal regime of religious freedom. He sought to include a legal guarantee of religious freedom in three different contexts: in the League Covenant as a rule of universal application and, following his failure to do so, in the mandate system and in the minorities protection treaties. This account relates Wilson to issues of religious freedom protection with focus on the Paris Peace Conference. Recognizing Wilson's as yet unacknowledged personal involvement in this field, the account challenges conventional notions that the religious freedom protection regime inaugurated by the Covenant largely focused on collective religious rights from the outset. In fact, Wilson sought to apply this guarantee in all its possible guises as expediency and practicality would allow. Wilson, however, sought not to protect religious freedom for its own sake but as a complement to his League, that is, to preserve world peace.

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