Mark Koyama: evaluation

Transcript context

…I can see two possible sets of cases. One is, I see a number of somewhat weaker states that maybe persecute more, or they’re less tolerant, or they’re maybe semi-fascistic. If you look at parts of Eastern Europe today, you might see that trend, maybe in a modest form, but somewhat. Then there’s other cases, maybe like 17th-century Japan, a relatively strong state for Asia, east Asia. And it persecutes Christians a great deal, in part because it is a strong state. So if either weak states or strong states can persecute minorities more, what’s the variable that determines which of those cases you get? Yeah, that’s a great point. I think we need to maybe find the perfect terminology for this. But the “strong state” is not my favorite terminology. It’s why I’m always prefacing this with something like “liberal state,” a state which is, in some sense, committed to liberal values. The Japanese case is interesting. It’s the most thorough suppression, at least of Christianity, that I’m aware of historically. And it’s done precisely because the state has . . . Whether it’s a strong state is a difficult thing to measure. But it has sufficient coercive power, relative to the minority in question. They pay a huge cost, by the way. The main motivation for sealing off the borders of Japan is to stop Christianity seeping through. So this is a state which is willing to pay huge costs to do this. It’s not a strong state in the sense of . . . Tokugawa shogunate actually only controlled part of the country. The independent daimyo have a lot of power. But they’re strong relative to religion, and the rulers seem committed. They see Christianity as such a threat, they’re committed to paying this tremendous cost of isolating the entire country from trade to do so. And then, obviously, 20th-century examples. You have the Soviet Union repressing Christianity very comprehensively, and you have the Nazis as well. So obviously, the power of the state is going to be necessary. You need a strong state to really completely suppress a religion. On the other hand, as a precondition for enforcing liberal values or allowing liberalism to flourish, I’m just not convinced that you have many examples of extremely weak states where this takes place. Because it seems to me that very weak states, like, say, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, are too easily captured by a few nobles or vested interests. So the state, in some sense, becomes privatized, and the best you’ll get is some kind of almost feudal arrangement. Historically, at least, that’s not been a conducive environment for even markets, actually, to flourish, in my view. Or for human freedom, more generally, to flourish. If I take your book with Noel, and whatever it is you’ve added to our understanding of toleration, if you were to boil that marginal contribution down to a sentence, what would that sentence be?…

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