The article examines the interrelationship between the idea of freedom and a religious outlook and analyzes widespread convictions that liberalism in its origins is not connected with religious consciousness, and that liberalism treats freedom exclusively as external freedom. On the basis of the evolution of philosophical views of B.N. Chicherin shows that the transformation of his views toward liberalism was essentially connected not only with his religious revival, but with a rethinking of the idea of freedom. Successively realizing the idea of man as the bearer of the idea of the Absolute, Chicherin develops the concept of freedom as a form of being of man in the world. Accordingly, liberalism is interpreted by him as recognition of the inalienability of human freedom in the public sphere.