The Protestant Empire

[Mark Graber]

I rather suspicious of efforts to lump all Protestants together and lump all non-Protestants together.  Lots of different categorizations may make sense for different reasons.

One might make a different point.  As a number of scholars have noted on this list and elsewhere, the American notion of freedom of religion has Protestant origins.  It is not the case, however, that freedom of religion is a Protestant idea.  There are also Jewish and Catholic conceptions of freedom of religion (as well, I suspect, as Islamic, Shinto, etc. conceptions).  And there are less toleration strands in all religions.  One might note, however, that a country with a Protestant rooted freedom of religion, might look different than a country with a notion of freedom of religion rooted in a different religion.  Gary Jacobsohn has an absolutely superb essay on this theme in a piece in STUDIES IN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT.

Mark A. Graber
mgraber at gvpt.umd.edu