The following excerpt from Allen D. Hertzke, Why Religious Freedom Matters: Human Rights and Human Flourishing, is published with permission of Notre Dame Press.
One of the central findings of this book concerns the fraught relationship between religion and the state. Like a law of physics, the fusion of religion and government is bad for both governance and religion.
For governance, the political melding of faith with nation, regime, or tribe contributes to corruption, repression, autocracy, and even violence. Across the world, we see movements by religious nationalists to link the dominant faith with national identity. With Islamist movements in the Middle East, Hindu nationalists in India, Christian nationalists in the United States, and Buddhist chauvinists in Asia, we see this trend. The impulse is understandable when once- dominant religious communities see their cultural influence eroded by growing religious pluralism or aggressive secular ideologies. But often, the attempt to reassert cultural prominence by capturing state organs sparks repression against religious minorities and stifles dissent. In turn, would-be autocrats cunningly co-opt majority faith leaders for their own ends, undermining democracy and rule of law.
Consequently, while government persecution against all religions represents an obvious threat to religious communities, as we see in North Korea and China, so does majority favoritism, which contributes to minority discrimination in far more countries.
The broader dynamic at play in the melding of religion and state is captured by the idea of the “paradox of privilege,” a rich concept with profound implications for politics, peaceful societies, economics, and religion itself.
A vast majority of religious violence in the world today is generated not by repressed religious minorities but by religious majorities emboldened and radicalized by the privileges they enjoy from governments. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this phenomenon is the case of Buddhist monks “behaving badly,” participating in violent attacks against religious others. In other words, even Buddhism, a faith deeply associated with peace and compassion, can be drawn into violence when fused with the state.
Majority privilege usually goes hand in hand with discrimination against religious minorities and repression of dissenters, which Jonathan Fox shows is the dominant pattern across the globe. In turn, religious independence and equality in law, for majorities and minorities alike, is the antidote to religious strife and an underpinning of democratic ethos. When the Catholic Church officially renounced state privilege and endorsed religious liberty at Vatican II, it became the engine of the last great wave of democratization on Earth.
So the paradox is clearly political, that when governments grant privileges to dominant religions, thinking that will stabilize society, they make majorities more aggressive and less civil. Privileged religious majorities tend to engage in intimidation or even violence against religious minorities, often with impunity. Majority privilege undermines flourishing civil society, civil liberties, and democratic norms. Moreover, even though governments patronize religions to gain greater legitimacy, recent research shows that state support for religion is associated with lower levels of public confidence in government.
The paradox of privilege also extends to economics. The ulama-state alliance that emerged in Muslim empires and the subsequent enforcement of rigid sharia law stunted economic enterprise in Mideast societies. In a telling example of the paradox, Muslim businessmen in the Ottoman Empire were charged higher interest on loans than Christians and Jews, because their preferential treatment in credit courts made them high-risk borrowers. This redounded over the generations to inhibit the development of modern economic institutions in Muslim majority countries. Moreover, majority privilege reinforces economic straitjackets that prevent uplift for the poor and empowerment for women.
But perhaps the most profound implication is that privilege can undermine the religious essence itself. All great religious traditions contain wellsprings of moral guidance and ethical teachings that can contribute to healthy families, communities, and flourishing societies. A wide array of scholarship in sociology, political science, religious studies, and even theology suggests that state sponsorship can compromise or warp those religious principles. Over time, the fusion of faith with political power traduces the credibility of co-opted religious leaders and saps the vitality of religious commitments. Evidence comes from modern Iran, where repressive and corrupt clerical rule has dramatically weakened allegiance to Shia Islam and increased the nonreligious population. Shockingly, in one survey more Iranian respondents claimed no religion than pledged fealty to Shia Islam.
On the other hand, when majorities renounce privilege and agree to enjoy equal liberty under law—accepting pluralism—they tend to flourish more authentically.
The most systematic and global examination of the paradox of privilege is provided by Nilay Saiya in his landmark work, The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church- State Separation. In this book and subsequent analysis, Saiya marshals global data and case studies to document the impact on Christianity, the world’s largest religion, when it becomes enmeshed with the state. To the degree that Christianity is backed by political power or granted privileges by governments, it becomes fundamentally unchristian and loses its vitality.
As a political scientist, Saiya provides an unusual theological analysis to make this case. Distinct among religious traditions, he argues, Christian doctrine sharply distinguishes the kingdom of God, or what Saiya calls “The Kingdom of the Cross,” from the kingdom of the world—of principalities and powers. The kingdom of the world tends to be tribal, exclusivist, coercive, and violent. On the other hand, the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus entails uncompromising love instead of coercion, universal dignity instead of exclusion, forgiveness instead of retribution, and peace instead of violence. As Saiya argues, deploying the sword of the state to promote the faith inevitably contradicts these essential teachings. Or, as one author underscored the point, “The best way to get people to lay down the cross is to hand them the sword of the state.”
On the other hand, Christianity is most authentic when it depends on the voluntary support of its followers, not the state. Obviously, this occurs in religiously free and pluralist societies. But it can even function where the faith confronts political repression, just not where it is privileged.
Remarkably, Saiya demonstrates that state favoritism represents the greatest threat to the growth of Christianity in the world today. Based on a decade of demographic trends (2010–2020), Saiya and his co-author trace patterns of growth or decline of Christianity in a large sample of nations. Employing measurable indicators, such as church attendance, participation in youth programs, and faith- based charities, they show that when Christianity is privileged by the state, it tends to lose its vitality and membership.
In fact, statistical tests demonstrate that as Christian privilege goes up, its percentage of the national population declines over time. Thus, Christian privilege leads to the secularization of societies—a statistical confirmation of sociological theories. On the other hand, in places where Christianity operates on equal terms with other faiths, or even under some conditions of persecution, it tends to grow. In other words, political patronage undermines evangelization, the great commission of spreading the gospel, of making disciples.
A vivid illustration of this pattern concerns the Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world. Even though religious restrictions are low overall for Catholic majority nations, enough variation exists to measure the impact of state privilege. Saiya found that Catholic majority countries where privilege is highest saw Catholic membership decrease as a share of the population over the recent decade, while Catholic majority countries where privilege is lowest saw Catholic membership increase. Projecting into 2050, none of the ten countries expected to see the largest gains in Catholic population have high levels of privilege.
Perhaps the “curse of privilege” is a more accurate depiction of the phenomenon than the paradox of privilege.
This curse of privilege extends to religious communities that receive support from political movements or parties. In the United States, recent studies suggest that the association of evangelical Christianity with the Christian Right and the Republican Party has helped propel the growth in the percentage of Americans who express no religious affiliation. In other words, the politicization of the evangelical church has undermined its growth and spurred secularization.
This finding should offer a cautionary note for the American Catholic Church, the next largest religious community in the nation. While Catholic leaders welcomed GOP support for the pro- life cause and their institutional autonomy, the nativism of the Republican MAGA movement clearly violates Catholic social teaching, as Pope Leo XIV has intimated. In spite of this, prominent Republican Catholics seek an unprecedented privileging of their conservative brand of Catholicism by the state. One aim is to gain public tax support for Catholic parochial schools, an outcome that would propel deeper entanglement of the Catholic Church with government and tempt Church leaders to mute their prophetic voices for potential tax dollars. The “curse of privilege” suggests that church leaders would be wise to resist succumbing to the temptation of state privilege, lest they risk undermining church credibility and vitality, as happened with their evangelical counterparts.
A crucial challenge facing the world is the rise of Christian nationalism, a global ideology that seeks to integrate national identity with Christianity. Saiya shows that this ideology is a distortion—theologians might say heresy—of authentic Christianity and the teachings of Jesus. Because Christian nationalism rests on exclusivity and jettisons the principle of citizen equality, it is fundamentally anti- democratic and tends to fuel strife and even violence.
In the United States, Christian nationalists have emerged as a growing threat to democracy, civil tolerance, and religious equality. Skeptics wonder if the term is merely a construct of scholars hostile to policies Christians might support. After all, what is wrong with Christians engaging in politics to back policies that reflect their values? Nothing, of course! But as voluminous empirical research shows, Christian nationalists depart from this kind of advocacy and embrace autocratic aims. Spearheaded by a growing movement that strives to seize power over all sectors of society, Christian nationalists overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump in his 2024 election and provided the strongest support for his autocratic moves to gain unchecked presidential power. Because of their aggressive posture, some Christian nationalists even criticize the Christian virtue of empathy.
While ostensibly defending religious liberty, this movement represents a threat to that cause, not only domestically but on the global stage, because it undermines America’s enlightened international leadership. Born of its constitutional heritage on religious liberty, the United States has played a leading role in promoting international religious freedom, both by its example and its global leadership.41 Indeed, some eighteen nations have developed or strengthened international religious freedom initiatives, often following the lead of the United States. This legacy may be in peril. The “American First” agenda of the MAGA movement, its assaults on democratic norms and institutions, and nativist cruelty toward refugees threaten to undermine the nation’s credibility, goodwill, and capacity to play its leadership role going forward. If this trend continues, it would represent a tragedy for the cause of global religious freedom.
In contrast to this picture, a formidable scholarship demonstrates that authentic Christianity, fueled by voluntary support, strongly promotes democracy, human rights, civil society, and uplift for the poor around the world. Christian human rights champions have become global “Holy Humanitarians” and “militants for peace and justice.” They can only perform this role if they resist the siren’s song of privileged Christian nationalism.