Persecution and Toleration
The Long Road to Religious Freedom

In this book, Noel D. Johnson and Mark Koyama tackle the question: how does religious liberty develop?

Noel D. Johnson (Author), Mark Koyama (Author)

9781108441162, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 February 2019

368 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.53 kg

'This analysis of the historical process underlying the modern state formation is a fantastic scholarly accomplishment. The implications for the present, in terms of the risks associated to the loss of the core liberal values of modern western states, will not be lost to the careful reader.' Alberto Bisin, New York University

Religious freedom has become an emblematic value in the West. Embedded in constitutions and championed by politicians and thinkers across the political spectrum, it is to many an absolute value, something beyond question. Yet how it emerged, and why, remains widely misunderstood. Tracing the history of religious persecution from the Fall of Rome to the present-day, Noel D. Johnson and Mark Koyama provide a novel explanation of the birth of religious liberty. This book treats the subject in an integrative way by combining economic reasoning with historical evidence from medieval and early modern Europe. The authors elucidate the economic and political incentives that shaped the actions of political leaders during periods of state building and economic growth.

1. Toleration, persecution, and state capacity
Part I. Conditional Toleration: 2 Religion and the state in the premodern world
3. Why do states persecute?
4. Jewish communities, conditional toleration, and rent-seeking
5. Climatic shocks and persecutions
6. The shock of the Black Death
Part II. The Origins of Religious Freedom: 7. State building and the reformation
8. The inquisition and the establishment of religious homogeneity in Spain
9. From confessionalization to toleration and then to religious liberty
10. From persecution to emancipation
Part III. Implications of Greater Religious Liberty: 11. The persecution of witchcraft
12. Religious minorities and economic growth
13. The emergence of modern states, religious freedom, and modern economic growth
14. Applying our argument to the rest of the world
15. Modern states, liberalism, and religious freedom
16. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], Development economics & emerging economies [KCM], Economics [KC], Religious freedom / freedom of worship [JPVH4]