Religious Freedom and the Unintended Consequences of State Religion

TLDR

State religion is intended to strengthen a faith but often undermines its vitality. The study examines how state religion and constitutional protection of religion affect national religiosity. The authors analyze a cross‑section of 59 countries, measuring religiosity as the percentage of the population attending religious services at least once a week. State religion lowers weekly attendance by about 15%, whereas each decade of constitutional protection raises it by roughly 1.2%, and other religious regulations also reduce attendance.

Abstract

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.