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Religious Freedom and the Unintended Consequences of State Religion
Author(s) -
North Charles M.,
Gwin Carl R.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2004.tb00626.x
Subject(s) - religiosity , population , attendance , state (computer science) , state religion , secular state , church attendance , vitality , freedom of religion , political science , lived religion , sociology , law , demography , theology , human rights , philosophy , politics , algorithm , computer science
We use a cross‐section of 59 countries to examine the impact of state religion and of constitutional protection of religion on the degree of religiosity within a country. Our measure of religiosity is the percentage of the population who attend religious services at least once a week. We find that both establishment of a state religion and constitutional protection of religion have significant (and opposing) effects. The existence of a state religion reduces attendance by 14.6‐16.7% of the total population, whereas each decade of constitutional protection increases attendance by approximately 1.2% of the population. We also find that other measures of religious regulation have significant negative effects on attendance. Ironically, the motive behind establishment of a particular state religion usually is to strengthen that religion, but the effects are ultimately to undermine the vitality of the established religion.