Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

May 11, 2021

Religious Liberty Encourages Economic Liberty

Property rights are of little use without freedom to believe what one wishes and to practice what one believes.

In an essay on religious toleration in England, Voltaire called attention to the London stock exchange, where “the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt.” The philosophe, who didn’t allow even his contempt for Jews to interfere with his appreciation for British religious liberty, suggests that freedom of conscience is connected to economic prosperity. Taking a more empirical approach, Christos Makridis argues that this connection runs deep:

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