Economic Value of Religious Freedom

A few years ago, I wrote an article on religious freedom, where I suggested that even atheists should support religious freedom, because it is the root of all of our freedoms.  Ultimately, if there was no belief in God, there would be no justification for the idea of human rights.  Survival of the fittest would be the only real law, and freedom would only exist so far as the fittest permitted.  Unsurprisingly, it goes further than this though.  I just read an article discussing recent research showing that religious freedom also impact economic well being.  The study found that religious freedom is one of only three variables that are reliable predictors of economic growth (measured by GDP).

There are several explanations for this impact of religious freedom on economic growth.  The first is that political and religious tension make the business environment of a country unpredictable.  Entrepreneurs do not want to try to start a new business in a political environment that may eventually damage, destroy, or even seize the business.  Existing businesses may choose to relocate or even shut down, as the risk of losses increase with religious tension and hostilities.  In short, hostilities over religious freedom will drive profitable businesses to leave or close.  The second (which is closely related to the first) is that tension or hostilities over religious freedom will tend to reduce government stability.  Besides the obvious affect on businesses, this also causes fears that reduce tourism.  According to the Deseret News article, this problem has been seen over the last few years in Egypt.  Besides these, it would also be reasonable to assume that hostilities against certain religions will cause immigration out of the country.  Since many of those leaving are obviously those wealthy enough to afford the costs, this will result in a exodus of wealth, leaving the country poor.  I can see more in the underlying causes than just the economic harm caused by lack of religious freedom.

In nearly all of the cases discussed in the article, the lack of religious freedom has caused significant internal unrest.  Freedom of religion has great economic value, but I think it also has significant political value.  Governments discussed in the article that limit religious freedom seem to all be unstable.  Also, we have seen over the last few decades, as the U.S. government has reduced religious freedom, increased political unrest and even some threats of rebellion (mostly in the form of states threatening to secede).  Religious freedom also seems to be a predictor of government stability, not just economic growth.

There are many things we can take away from this.  Probably the most important is that strong religious freedom is the road to economic success.  The second is that religious freedom is important to government stability.  I want to stress this second one a bit, because it appears to be counter intuitive to politicians.  Over the last few decades, politicians have repeatedly tried to limit religious freedom, because they believe it will solidify their political position and power.  This has become especially common during times of economic hardships, because it becomes harder to get votes when the economy has done poorly while a politician is in power.  It turns out that this creates a feedback loop that hinders the ability of the economy to recover, at the same time as reducing political stability.  Maybe this will get the politician needed votes, but if the economy does not recover, eventually it will not be enough, and if the government fails, those politicians will loose all of their power (and, they may get lynched for limiting religious freedom).

My point here is not that we should give unlimited religious freedom.  Some religious practices, for instance human sacrifice, should be prohibited by law.  There are also some places where limiting religious observances may be appropriate.  Schools should not be allowed to encourage or enforce the worship of a specific deity, or any deity for that matter.  On the other side though, forcing people to do things that violate their religions is unethical and unwise, in most situations.  There are cases where this cannot be avoided (for instance, I should not be able to avoid paying taxes by claiming it is against my religion), but there are many where it can.  When considering laws that would limit religious freedom, the value of the law needs to be carefully weighed against the costs of not enacting it.  If a specific minority group feels insulted that not all businesses will serve them, but there are plenty of reasonable alternatives, the economic harm of restricting religious freedom may be far greater than the harm caused by insulting a minority group.  On the other side, if a minority group will be significantly harmed by this, without anywhere to turn for relief, it may be better to restrict religious freedom a bit (as little as reasonably possible) to maintain freedom for the minority.  Minorities should not be allowed to leverage restrictions to religious freedom to harass others, but at the same time, religious freedom should not be a valid excuse to deny anyone a good quality of life.  If there are 5 good quality wedding shops in a town, it would be a travesty of justice to allow a gay couple to deliberately harass the one that is religiously opposed to serving homosexual weddings.  On the other hand, if there is limited housing, food, or clothing availability, religious freedom should not be a valid excuse to refuse to serve a homosexual couple.  If all 5 wedding had religious objections to serving a gay couple (and no others were available nearby), I could see limiting religious freedom to ensure economic fairness.  In fact, this had to be done in the South to stifle the rampant racism (some parts of the KKK did try to claim that requiring them to serve black people was a violation of their religious freedom).  The problem in the South was that a vast majority of businesses refused to serve black people, which was severely limiting the quality of life for black people.  Even if it is a limitation of religious freedom, it was necessary to restrict racial discrimination to ensure the continued freedom of the black population.  (In my opinion, any American has the right to hate someone for race or religion, but they do not have the right to harm or limit the freedom of others based on those beliefs.  Note that I do not hate anyone for race or religion.  I just recognize that freedom of thought, conscience, and religion includes the right to hate people of a certain race or religion, though not necessarily the right to act on those feelings.)

Anyhow, it turns out there is reasonable evidence to the effect that religious freedom is important to economic well being and government stability.  The idea that an atheist world where religion has been exterminated would be an ideal world has more or less been proven false on multiple occasions (the USSR provided one occasion), and now we have even more evidence that religious freedom is an important part of a strong economy.  Now when we consider restricting religious freedom to get the votes of a disgruntled minority group, we should seriously consider the harm it will do to our economy.