Berkley Center

Reviewing Brian Grim and Roger Finke's book of the same name, Religious Freedom Project Director Thomas Farr agrees with the researchers' thesis that "the price of denying religious freedom is unacceptably high." In their book, Grim and Finke parse worldwide data on religious freedom or lack thereof, concluding that an open, competitionary "religious economies" model of church-state relations is best for promoting tolerance. Farr concurs, drawing an explicit link between "privatization" of religion and incidence of religious persecution.