Johnson and Koyama make a bold argument about the connection between state formation and religious freedom. In my previous response I argued that I didn't understand why states that had freed themselves with pacts from the Church had any interest in actually promoting religious freedom. But more importantly, I wondered how this argument applied elsewhere in the world. Their response was that China, for example, developed a different historical relationship between state and society, with a secular state dominant and no religious or other type of liberty.
OK, but let me now question the association between religious liberty and liberty more generally. Is it true that there is a necessary connection between religious liberty and liberty more broadly? Europe developed both; China developed neither. What about the "off diagonals"? Johnson and Koyama's account might seem to imply that these are empty, but I don't think that is right. Could you have a situation where there is religious liberty, but not liberty? I think the answer is yes, and the obvious case for me is pre-colonial Africa.
There was little general liberty in historical Africa. Robert Rattray, the first head of the first Anthropological Department of Asante, and part of the British colony of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, transcribed an Asante proverb in 1929, "When a chicken separates itself from the rest, a hawk will get it."
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