The US State Department issued its annual religious freedom report late last week (HT).

And earlier this month, Paul Marshall of the Hudson Institute discussed the ing book, Religious Freedom in the World 2007. He had this to say about economic and religious freedom:

If you take the worst 30 countries in terms of economic freedom, every one scored low with religious freedom. The top 30 countries all scored high. Why is that? We see two connections. First, wealth could help religious freedom. But we also believe that religious freedom helps general health, well-being, and wealth broadly understood. To the degree that people are not free to organize and manage their lives, you cut down on the possibility of independent economic activity. People are simply used to not doing things unless they’re told to do them.

China remains one of the most interesting case studies in terms of how necessary the correlation is between religious and economic (and political) freedom.