“Legal guarantees of freedom of expression, belief, and worship . . . were, like contemporaneous economic decrees, ways of shrinking certain sources and types of moral policing in favor of increasing state power overall. In much European and colonial law, though with important exceptions, a post-Reformation Christian idea was repurposed so as to make the state itself the guarantor of a wide field of choice.” ReligionChoicesPoliticsFreedomState Power Book:The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life Source: The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life