Religious discrimination is coming under scrutiny as equality rights champions seek to protect people from bigotry in and out of work.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has vowed to protect a believer’s right to their faith – or lack of faith – and to take more cases to court to prove their point.

The pledge arises from research by the EHRC in to people’s perception of religion and beliefs.

The EHRC is concerned discrimination and diversity laws do not match people’s expectations of the law.

The laws go beyond freedom of speech and cover protecting people while going about their day to day lives as well as while they are at work. They also shield those who do not have a religious belief, like atheists and humanists.

EHRC chair Trevor Phillips said: “Our business is defending the believer. The law we’re here to implement recognises that a religious or belief identity is, for the majority of people in Britain, an essential element of being a fulfilled human being and plays an important part in our society.

“Religion or belief is as much part of our identity as other characteristics such as race, gender, or being a parent. People should not be penalised or treated in a discriminatory way because of it.

“My worry is there are people who may feel they’re being treated unfairly because of their faith and who in fact may be being treated unfairly because of their faith but for some reason feel they can’t get our support in getting justice.

“We’ve already undertaken a number of legal cases about religion or belief discrimination, but want to do more to build a body of case law in this area. We are in the process of meeting with faith and belief groups to get a better sense of what the issues are for their members.”

Meanwhile, The Church of England needs to take affirmative action to increase numbers of priests from ethnic minorities and the number of non-white parishioners, a report ahead of next month’s General Synod in York, has suggested.

The report recommends racial imbalance should be addressed to introduce “positive intentionality” to attract “missing faces and missing voices and actively seeking ways to enable them to be seen and heard”.

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