Noel D. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. Mark Koyama is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia and a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center. He was a 2017–2018 National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

'A profound new argument about the relationship between political power and religion in the making of the modern world. If you want to know where the liberty you currently enjoy, for now, came from, this is the book to read.' James Robinson, Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict, University of Chicago

• 1. Toleration, persecution, and state capacity; Part I. Conditional Toleration: 2 Religion and the state in the premodern world; 3. Why do states persecute?; 4. Jewish communities, conditional toleration, and rent-seeking; 5. Climatic shocks and persecutions; 6. The shock of the Black Death; Part II. The Origins of Religious Freedom: 7. State building and the reformation; 8. The inquisition and the establishment of religious homogeneity in Spain; 9. From confessionalization to toleration and then to religious liberty; 10. From persecution to emancipation; Part III. Implications of Greater Religious Liberty: 11. The persecution of witchcraft; 12. Religious minorities and economic growth; 13. The emergence of modern states, religious freedom, and modern economic growth; 14. Applying our argument to the rest of the world; 15. Modern states, liberalism, and religious freedom; 16. Conclusions.