Did you mean: church and state (in religion, government, law), Church and state in medieval Europe

Results for church and state

On this page:

Church and State

The relationship between Church and State can be described as the institutional form of the relation between religion and politics. As a problem, ‘Church and State’ has been a particularly Western and Christian concern. This is not only because Western secularization has required a limit to the powers of religious authorities, but it has its origins in a much earlier period, in the development of separate Church and State institutions in Christendom which were natural rivals (with rival claims of authority and law enforcement) to a degree incomprehensible in the realms of other prominent religions. Thus the rivalry between Emperor and Pope was a key feature of the politics of Europe in the Middle Ages and in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth century the rivalry between Guelphs (or Guelfs) and Ghibellines was the greatest contest in Italian politics. It had started as a feud between South German tribes but became a partisan quarrel between the papal faction (Guelfs) and the imperial Ghibellines.

Western society thus has a long history of rivalry between Church and State (see e.g. Augustine; Aquinas; Bodin; and Calvin) which has helped foster secular and anticlerical movements. Many modern states and parties welcome the separation of Church and State, but a suspicion has often attached to Catholic politicians in predominantly Protestant countries, such as John F. Kennedy, that they are, whatever they may say, religiously committed to extending the influence of their Church over the State.

— Lincoln Allison

#SearchBtn{margin-top:14px !important;}

Library

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: church and state

Relationship between religious and secular authority in society. In most ancient civilizations the separation of religious and political orders was not clearly defined. With the advent of Christianity, the idea of two separate orders emerged, based on Jesus's command to "Render unto Caesar what are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17). The close association of religion and politics, however, continued even after the triumph of Christianity as emperors such as Constantine exercised authority over both church and state. In the early Middle Ages secular rulers claimed to rule by the grace of God, and later in the Middle Ages popes and emperors competed for universal dominion. During the Investiture Controversy the church clearly defined separate and distinct religious and secular orders, even though it laid the foundation for the so-called papal monarchy. The Reformation greatly undermined papal authority, and the pendulum swung toward the state, with many monarchs claiming to rule church and state by divine right. The concept of secular government, as evinced in the U.S. and postrevolutionary France, was influenced by Enlightenment thinkers. In western Europe today all states protect freedom of worship and maintain a distinction between civil and religious authority. The legal systems of some modern Islamic countries are based on Shari'ah. In the U.S. the separation of church and state has been tested in the arena of public education by controversies over issues such as school prayer, public funding of parochial schools, and the teaching of creationism.

For more information on church and state, visit Britannica.com.

US History Encyclopedia: Separation of Church and State

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, drafted by James Madison, declares that Congress "shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Madison's friend and mentor Thomas Jefferson was proud of his role in drafting and winning assent to Virginia's religious liberty law (1786). In a letter of 1802, he referred to the need for a "high wall of separation" between church and state. Both men considered religious liberty not just a convenient political response to the actual diversity of denominations in the new Republic but as a natural right.

Jefferson's wall metaphor has often been used but it has never been adequate. Everyone stands on one side or the other of a real wall. Citizens of the states, by contrast, often belong to churches too and defy the metaphor by appearing on both sides. Controversy over how to interpret the First Amendment has therefore absorbed immense quantities of time, words, and ink, especially in the years since 1940, when for the first time its religious clauses were extended from the federal to state level.

In the early days of the Republic, despite the First Amendment, several states continued to have "official" established churches. The courts then interpreted the amendment to mean that while Congress could make no laws about religion, the states were free to do so. The actual diversity of religious groups in the states—promoted especially by the fervently democratic mood of the Second Great Awakening—nonetheless encouraged disestablishment. The last established church, Massachusetts Congregationalism, was separated from the state in 1833.

Even so, the idea that the United States was a Protestant country remained widespread. When Horace Mann laid the foundations for the public school system, again in Massachusetts, he took it for granted that the education would be religious and that students would study the King James Bible, which was common to most Protestant churches. Catholic immigration, accelerating after the Irish famine (1845–1850), made this curriculum controversial. The Catholic archbishop of New York, John Hughes, argued that the faith of young Catholics was jeopardized when they studied in public schools and set about creating a parallel parochial school system. At that point, however, the federal judiciary left it to the states to make their own arrangements and most states were emphatic about their Protestant identity and their love of the King James Bible. Only after passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 did the possibility arise that the Supreme Court could extend the Bill of Rights to the states.

The Court first took an interest in the religion clause of the First Amendment when it adjudicated Reynolds v. United States (1879). George Reynolds, a Mormon who was already married, had followed his church's injunction to take a second wife. Most Americans were bitterly critical of Mormon polygamy, and Reynolds was convicted under the bigamy statutes. On appeal, Reynolds claimed he was exercising his First Amendment right under the free exercise clause—but the Court was unimpressed. It answered that Reynolds was free to believe in polygamy but was not free to act on his belief. If he did so, it pointed out, he would in effect be violating the establishment clause by getting an exemption from the bigamy statutes because of his membership in a particular church.

In the twentieth century, cases testing the proper relationship between church and state became more common. Among the first was an Oregon case that the Supreme Court adjudicated in 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters. The re-formed Ku Klux Klan, powerful in Oregon, where its scapegoat was Catholics rather than African Americans, lobbied the state legislature to pass a law requiring all the state's children to attend public school. The legislation was aimed against Catholic private and parochial schools. Nuns belonging to the Society of Sisters, who ran such schools, sued the state and won their final appeal before the Supreme Court. The justices told Oregon that it was entitled to establish educational standards that all students in the state must fulfill, but that it had no right to forbid children from attending the religious schools their parents had chosen. Justice James Clark McReynolds wrote: "The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

Pierce was not a First Amendment case—it was argued under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1940, however, the Supreme Court for the first time decided that it would review a First Amendment free-exercise case arising in one of the states (Reynolds had arisen in the western federal territories). Its 9–0 adjudication of Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940) was one of the very few occasions on which the Court has reached a unanimous verdict in a First Amendment case. It over-turned the breach-of-peace conviction of a Jehovah's Witness who had distributed anti-Catholic literature and played anti-Catholic gramophone records in a largely Catholic district. Justice Owen Josephus Roberts, writing for the Court, noted that Cantwell may have been provoking but "there is no showing that his deportment was noisy, truculent, overbearing, or offensive." His intention had been to interest passers by in his religious views and the First Amendment protected his right to do so.

Cantwell opened the door to Supreme Court adjudication of other First Amendment cases, and they became a regular fixture on its docket from then on. Pierce had established the right of religious schools to exist. Many subsequent cases thrashed out the question of whether the state, while permitting children to go to religious schools, was also allowed to contribute to the cost of their education. Religious parents, whose children went to these schools, had a powerful motive to say yes. In their view, after all, they were sparing the state an expense by not availing themselves of the public schools. Was it not discriminatory to make them pay for the public schools through their taxes, then pay again for their own children in the form of tuition fees? In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court found, by the narrow vote of 5–4, that states could contribute financially to nonreligious elements of these children's education. In this instance, it could refund the cost of their bus travel to and from school.

Everson was important not only for the substance of its decision but also for its declaration of the general considerations that should govern such cases, all spelled out in Justice Hugo Black's majority decision. He wrote that the First Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, showed that no government "can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will, or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion," and that it could not penalize anyone "for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or nonattendance."

Numerous subsequent cases refined the constitutional position on schools and had the collective effect of making schools far less religious places than they had been throughout most of the nation's history. In McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), the Court ruled that religious teachers could not enter public schools during normal school hours even to give voluntary instruction in each of the religions practiced by the students. In three bitterly contested cases (Engel v. Vitale, 1962; Abington v. Schempp, 1963; and Murray v. Curlett, 1963), it went much further by ruling that public-school children could not recite a nondenominational prayer written by the New York Board of Regents, could not read the Bible or recite the Lord's Prayer, and could not have the Ten Commandments posted in their classrooms. This set of findings overturned laws in nearly every state and brought to a sudden end practices that had been hallowed by a century or more of continuous use. Critics, especially on the political right, demanded the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was already controversial for his judicial activism in other areas. A disgruntled Alabama congressman, mindful of the same chief justice's desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), declared: "First he put Negroes in the classroom—now he's taken God out!"

President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic to occupy the White House, was in office at the time of these decisions. He had faced electoral opposition in 1960 from Protestant groups that believed his faith made him unfit for the presidency. Kennedy, determined to prove otherwise, had told a meeting of evangelical Protestant ministers in Houston just before the election that he, like all candidates, enjoyed freedom of conscience, that he believed in church-state separation, and that if ever an issue arose in which his religious conscience prevented him from doing his political duty, he would resign, as any president should. Once he was president, he refused to endorse draft constitutional amendments aimed at reversing the controversial school cases and urged citizens to obey the Court's rulings.

In considering these cases it is important to remember that religious groups were well represented among the litigants on both sides. Militant secularism, atheism, and agnosticism were always the preserve of a tiny minority. The American Civil Liberties Union, usually found on the "strict separation" side, counted many ministers, rabbis, and devout members of congregations among its supporters. In the tradition established by Roger Williams more than three centuries earlier and strongly upheld among most Baptist congregations, they feared that entanglement with the state would contaminate their faith. Defenders of school prayer and Bible reading, no less strongly supplied with outspoken clergymen, countered that such contamination was unlikely as long as the religious exercises were voluntary and nondenominational. The important point, in their view, was to underline the godly character of America in its great Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and "Godless Communism."

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) was among the most important of all the First Amendment school cases, in that it laid down a set of three requirements (the "Lemon test") for judging the constitutionality of laws relating to religious education. The Court has followed the test more or less closely ever since. First, a law must be neutral between religions and between religion and nonreligion. Second, the law's primary intent and impact must be secular; and third, it must not "excessively entangle" the state with religion. The Lemon test could not resolve all controversies, of course, since "excessive entanglement" was itself open to a wide variety of interpretations.

Public opinion polls showed that the majority of Americans disliked the degree of church–state separation the Court specified, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s state governments looked for ways to reintroduce prayer and religious activities into public schools. The Moral Majority and other evangelical lobbies in the 1980s argued that "secular humanism" was itself a religious position, that it had displaced Christianity in public life, especially in schools, and that it there by violated the establishment clause. The Court remained skeptical but it did concede, in Board of Education v. Mergens (1990), that voluntary religious groups should be allowed to meet on public school property in just the same way as any other student sports team, club, or society.

Religious schools flourished, meanwhile, as ever more parents abandoned the secularized public system. They were heartened by the Court's decision in Mueller v. Allen (1983), which upheld the constitutionality of a Minnesota law that gave a $700 state tax exemption to the parents of private school children, whether or not the schools were religious. By the narrowest majority, 5–4, the Court argued that the law, by favoring a broad category of Minnesota's citizens, whatever their beliefs, did not fall afoul of the Lemon test.

Numerous establishment clause cases also arose in nonschool contexts. Depending on the details, the Court sometimes appeared to decide similar cases in opposite ways—further evidence that this was a complex and controverted area of the law. For example, in Braunfeld v. Braun (1961), it investigated the dilemma of a furniture-store owner who was forced to close his store on Sundays in accord with Pennsylvania's Sunday closing law. He was an Orthodox Jew, however, and also closed the store on his Sabbath, Saturday, with the result that he lost two business days every week while his Christian competitors lost only one. Was not the Sunday closing law a violation of the establishment clause, based as it was on the Christian tradition of Sunday as Sabbath? The Court said no; it was a matter of national tradition, rather than religious establishment, and as such was defensible.

Two years later the Court appeared to reverse itself but denied that it had done so. In Sherbert v. Verner (1963), it examined the plight of a woman who belonged to the Seventh Day Adventists, a Christian group that (as with Judaism) takes Saturday as Sabbath. She was out of work, refused for religious reasons to take a job that compelled her to work on Saturdays, and found, when she applied for unemployment compensation, that she was denied it because she had declined to accept "suitable" job offers. This time the Supreme Court found in her favor, arguing that the state would only have been entitled to withhold her unemployment pay if it had had a "compelling" interest in doing so.

A related pair of cases, several years later, added a few more twists and turns to the labyrinth. The first was Yoder v. Wisconsin (1972). The state had passed a law requiring all children to attend schools until they reached the age of sixteen. Amish people in the state wanted to withdraw their children after eighth grade (age fourteen). They feared that the education their children received after that point was likely to draw them away from the Amish community, with its simple, unmechanized farming practices. Their claim for exemption from the state law, in other words, was based on the right to protect their religious free exercise. The Court found in their favor, even though, in doing so, it appeared to grant this one group special treatment because of its religion, which some commentators saw as a violation of the establishment clause.

In the second case, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), an Oregon citizen was fired from his job at a drug-rehabilitation clinic after eating peyote, the hallucinogenic fungus used by the Native American church of which he was a member. The drug was illegal in Oregon and the state government had not exempted religious users. When he was denied unemployment pay, Smith sued the state for violating his free-exercise rights. The logic of the Sherbert and Yoder decisions suggested that he would be upheld, but the Court used the Reynolds and Braunfeld precedents instead, declaring that Smith was entitled to hold his religious beliefs but that they did not excuse him from obeying generally applicable state laws.

Scholars and justices alike were uneasily aware by 2000 that whatever decision the Court made in a church–state case, it would have a line of precedents at hand to decide one way or the other. Take for example the case of the Christmas crèche owned by the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and placed in the city's public square every December, which the Court might easily have condemned as a violation of the establishment clause. The ACLU and an alliance of ministers sued for its removal in 1980 and won. The city's indignant mayor, Dennis Lynch, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and finally achieved a reversal of the decision. The Court ruled in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984)—at 5–4 another close decision—that the crèche was permissible because it was accompanied by a Santa, various elves, and a brace of plastic reindeer, whose collective effect was to make the display acceptably "traditional" rather than unacceptably "religious."

The sixty-year constitutional struggle over the First Amendment from 1940 to 2000 was largely symbolic; no one seriously believed that any one church was going to be established by law or that any of the citizens' religions were going to be proscribed. No one suffered serious harm from the Court's verdicts. While these cases were argued with so much anguish, few commentators, ironically, paused to observe the fate of twentieth-century Europe's still common established churches. Their lesson was that in the twentieth century establishment was synonymous with religious weakness and indifference, rather than with the tyranny and intolerance it was alleged to imply. While America's disestablished churches drew in nearly half the nation's population every week, the established Church of England, nemesis of the revolutionary generation, could scarcely attract 3 percent of the British people. American experience showed that disestablishment and religious vitality went hand in hand.

Bibliography

Alley, Robert S, ed. The Supreme Court on Church and State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Eastland, Terry, ed. Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court: The Cases that Define the Debate over Church and State. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1993.

Frankel, Marvin. Faith and Freedom: Religious Liberty in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.

Hunter, James D. Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace: The Religious Liberty Clauses and the American Public Philosophy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990.

Kramnick, Isaac, and R. Laurence Moore. The Godless Constitution: The Case against Religious Correctness. New York: Norton, 1996.

Levy, Leonard. The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment. 2d rev. ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Menendez, Albert. The December Wars: Religious Symbols and Ceremonies in the Public Square. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993.

Noonan, John T., Jr. The Believer and the Powers that Are: Cases, History, and Other Data Bearing on the Relation of Religion and Government. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

Reichley, James. Religion in American Public Life. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985.

—Patrick N. Allitt

Columbia Encyclopedia: church and state,

the relationship between the religion or religions of a nation and the civil government of that nation, especially the relationship between the Christian church and various civil governments. There have been several phases in the relationship between the Christian church and the state. The uncompromising refusal of the early Christians to accord divine honors to the Roman emperor was the chief cause of the imperial persecutions of the church. After Constantine I gave it official status, the church at first remained fairly autonomous, but during the 4th cent. the emperor began to figure increasingly in religious affairs.

In the Byzantine Empire

In the East in the 6th cent., Justinian was ruler of church and state equally, and thereafter the Orthodox Eastern Church in the Byzantine Empire was in confirmed subservience to the state. This domination of state over church is called Erastianism, after the theologian Erastus. When the empire began to disintegrate, the power of the state over the church declined; and under the Ottoman sultans the situation was reversed to the extent that the patriarchs of Constantinople were given political power over the laity of their churches.

In Russia and the USSR

In Russia the Orthodox Church was quite dominated by the state. In the former Soviet Union, especially in its early period, the Communist party fostered much antireligious propaganda, and a large percentage of the churches were closed. The Constitution of 1936, however, guaranteed freedom of religious worship, and the Russian Orthodox Church was subsequently revived. In 1944 two state-controlled councils were established to supervise religion; one regulated the affairs of the Russian Church, the other those of the other Christian denominations and of the Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist groups. Similar systems of state control also existed in many other Communist countries.

In the West

Early Years to the Reformation

In the West different factors affected church and state relations than in the East. After A.D. 400 there was no central power in the West, but there was a central ecclesiastical power, the see of Rome, which had claimed primacy from the earliest times. The barbarian invasions and the ensuing anarchy resulted in a tremendous growth in the power of the papacy.

With the appearance of strong political powers in Europe, particularly the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of France, a struggle began between the papacy and the temporal rulers. The principal contention was over investiture, but underlying it was violent disagreement as to the proper distribution of power; theories ranged from the belief that emperor or king, as ruler by divine right, should control church as well as state (a theory known also as caesaropapism) to the belief that the pope, as vicar of God on earth, should have the right of supervision over the state. The centuries-long struggle was highlighted by such bitter clashes as those between Pope Gregory VII and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, between Pope Innocent III and Emperor Frederick II and King Philip II of France, and between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France. The conflict of Guelphs and Ghibellines began as part of the imperial-papal struggle.

The nearest the papacy ever came to Erastianism was in the period during which the popes resided at Avignon, where they were virtually at the beck and call of the French kings. After the return of the papacy to Rome the popes generally maintained independence of temporal powers but on occasion were either influenced or coerced by king or emperor.

The contest in England was perhaps no less bitter than on the Continent, but it was more sporadic. Lanfranc and Anselm contended against King William II, St. Thomas à Becket against Henry II.

The Reformation introduced a great number of complicated factors into the relations of church and state. Different solutions have been found, ranging from the establishment of one particular church (as in England and the Scandinavian countries) to the total separation of church and state (as in the United States). The patterns of relation between church and state remain a living issue in today's society.

In the British Isles

The most extreme form of Erastianism is seen in the Church of England (see England, Church of), of which the monarch is supreme head. This situation derives from the strongly political character of the Protestant Reformation in England. It is notable that in the early history of religious dissent, the Puritans (see Puritanism) did not wish to end the Established Church; their aim was rather to capture and control it. The church was not disestablished after the English civil war; Anglicanism, or Episcopalianism, was merely replaced by a Presbyterian establishment (although the latter was a dead letter from the beginning).

After the Restoration (1660) of the monarchy, measures were taken against the Puritans that for the first time actually excluded them from the Church of England as nonconformists. They and the Roman Catholics were the victims of religious and civil disabilities (gradually reduced) into the 19th cent. Although the state has taken less and less interest in supervising the Church of England, the connection is still very real; e.g., revisions of the Book of Common Prayer must be approved by Parliament, and appointments to all bishoprics are made by the monarch, acting on the advice of the prime minister.

John Calvin tended to a view directly opposed to that of the reforming English monarchs; in Geneva he set up a virtual theocracy with the state subordinate to the church. The Presbyterian churches (which are of Calvinist origin) have, therefore, maintained a stand for freedom of the church, and the Church of Scotland (see Scotland, Church of), which is Presbyterian, is much less under state control than is the Church of England.

In the United States

The Presbyterians in the British North American colonies participated in the struggle against the institution of an established church, particularly in Virginia, but more important was the broad principle of religious toleration forwarded by Roger Williams and others. This principle, befitting the growing heterogeneity of the colonies, ultimately triumphed against both the virtual theocracy of the New England Puritans and the conservative established church of the Southern colonists. The American idea of separation of church and state—complete noninterference on both sides—expressed notably in Jefferson's Virginia statute for religious freedom and in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, emerged. In the United States today there is relatively little friction between church and state. The practical line of demarcation, however, continues to create problems, and theocratic tendencies periodically give rise to powerful lobbying efforts. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 (in City of Boerne v. Flores) struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, holding that in requiring a “compelling interest” for a state to in any way burden religious practice, it gave religion more protection than the Constitution required; what was notable was that the act had passed the House of Representatives unanimously. Education has been a fertile field of controversy; debates have arisen over such questions as religious education in tax-supported schools and public aid to parochial schools. By the end of 1999 federal courts were grappling with the effects of the politically fashionable school vouchers, and one had held that when a voucher system resulted in almost all recipients attending religious schools instead of public schools the system violated the Constitution.

On the Continent

In Europe, the concept of separation of church and state is different from that in the United States, particularly in predominantly Roman Catholic countries. The wars of the Reformation produced, in the Peace of Augsburg (1555), a formula of cuius regio, eius religio [whose the region, his the religion], by which the ruling prince determined the religion of his territory. The compromise, curiously contrary to the idea of a universal Christian church, even more curiously corresponded to the principle practiced in Asia (e.g., the Buddhism of Asoka). It more or less prevailed in Europe after the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia (1648). Religion thus in a certain sense became a national affair, particularly in Protestant countries.

The internationalism of the Roman Catholic Church, however, prevented nationalization in Catholic countries, despite such movements as Gallicanism in France. The church, when recognized as the state church, exercised considerable influence on the government of the state. More important, perhaps, was the fact that the church and its religious orders owned much property and exerted considerable economic influence. The concordat was used as a means of regulating the relation of church and state and delimiting the spheres of respective influence. Of the modern concordats perhaps the most famous was Napoleon I's Concordat of 1801.

The opponents of clerical influence in the state, the anticlericals, in the 19th cent. agitated for the removal of clerical influence. To them the separation of church and state meant the ending of the establishment of the church and complete noninterference of the church in affairs of state but not noninterference of the state in such matters as church property and religious education. The clerical parties, on the other hand, fought to maintain establishment and property and (to some extent) the enforcement of ecclesiastical law by the civil arm.

One of the most bitter of these contests took place in France, where ultimately the anticlericals triumphed, notably in the Lois des associations (1905), which in effect placed the church under subjection to the state. In Germany the relations of church and state reached a crucial point in the Kulturkampf of Otto von Bismarck. Adolf Hitler, although he signed a concordat, undertook to reduce both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches to instruments of the National Socialist government. In Italy the Lateran Treaty, agreed to by Pius XI in 1929, ended the so-called Roman Question and secured recognition of the pope as a sovereign apart from the Italian government.

In Latin America

In the Roman Catholic countries of Latin America the contests between church and state were often bitter, particularly in Mexico, where the church wielded an enormous influence. This struggle led under Plutarco E. Calles to the practical abolition of the church in Mexico and the harrying of priests in the 1920s. Adjustments since that time have tended to an approximation of the complete noninterference rule prevalent in the United States.

Bibliography

See A. H. Dalton, Church and State in France 1300–1907 (1907, repr. 1972); study by A. P. Stokes and L. Pfeffer (3 vol., 1950; rev. ed., 1 vol., 1964); E. C. Helmreich, A Free Church in a Free State? The Catholic Church: Italy, Germany, France 1864–1914 (1964); T. G. Sanders, Protestant Concepts of Church and State (1964); J. F. Wilson, ed., Church and State in American History (1965); J. L. Mecham, Church and State in Latin America (rev. ed. 1966); L. Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom (rev. ed. 1967); H. H. Stroup, Church and State in Confrontation (1967); B. D. Hill, ed., Church and State in the Middle Ages (1970); W. Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (3d. ed. 1970); W. M. Ramsay, The Wall of Separation: A Primer on Church and State (1989).

Politics: separation of church and state

The principle that government must maintain an attitude of neutrality toward religion. Many view separation of church and state as required by the First Amendment. The First Amendment not only allows citizens the freedom to practice any religion of their choice, but also prevents the government from officially recognizing or favoring any religion.

The relationship between church and state has been extremely controversial since the first settlers arrived in America to escape religious persecution in Europe, and many cases involving the issue have reached the Supreme Court.

Interpretation of the principle has been ambiguous: for instance, the Supreme Court has recently upheld laws prohibiting prayer in the schools but has permitted the construction of Nativity scenes on government property. (See also established church and freedom of religion.)

Wikipedia: separation of church and state

See also: Separation of church and state in the United States.

Constantine's Conversion, depicting the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great to Christianity, by Peter Paul Rubens.

Separation of church and state is a political and legal doctrine which states that government and religious institutions are to be kept separate and independent of one another. The term most often refers to the combination of two principles: secularity of government and freedom of religious exercise.^[1]

The phrase separation of church and state is generally traced to a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists, in which he referred to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as creating a "wall of separation" between church and state. The phrase was mentioned in an eloquent letter written by President John Tyler on July 10, 1843. The phrase was then quoted by the United States Supreme Court first in 1878, and then in a series of cases starting in 1947. This led to popular and political discussion of the concept, including criticism that it overstates the limits created under the Constitution. However, it originated much earlier, and was implicit in the flight of Roger Williams from religious oppression in Massachusetts to found what became Rhode Island on the principle of state neutrality in matters of faith.

Although the term is primarily discussed in the context of United States constitutional interpretation, the concept parallels various other international social and political ideas, including secularism, disestablishment, religious liberty, religious pluralism and laïcité.

Overview

In the United States, the "Separation of Church and State" is generally discussed as political and legal principle derived from the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ." The concept of separation is commonly credited to the combination of the two clauses: the establishment clause, generally interpreted as preventing the government from establishing a national religion, providing tax money in support of religion, or otherwise favoring any single religion or religion generally, and the free exercise clause, ensuring that private religious practices not be restricted by the government. The effect of prohibiting direct connections between religious and governmental institutions while protecting private religious freedom and autonomy has been termed the "separation of church and state."

There are automatic entanglements between the institutions, inasmuch as religious institutions and their adherents, are a part of civil society.^[2] Moreover, private religious practices can sometimes come into conflict with broad legislation not intending to target any particular religious minority. Each of these complicate the idea of true separation.

Beliefs on the proper relationship between religion and government cover a wide spectrum, from secular government to state atheism to varying degrees of theocracy. Along the line, a number of distinctions and issues are raised. Perhaps the most primary is the division between the two distinct ideas of government secularization and church independence.^[3]

History of the term

Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States.

The phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." ^[4]

Another early user of the term was James Madison, the principal drafter of the United States Bill of Rights, who often wrote of "total separation of the church from the state." ^[5] "Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States," Madison wrote, and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States." ^[6] This attitude is further reflected in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, originally authored by Thomas Jefferson, but championed by Madison, and guaranteeing that no one may be compelled to finance any religion or denomination.

... no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. ^[7]

The United States Supreme Court has referenced the separation of church and state metaphor more than 25 times, first in 1878. In the Reynolds case the Court defended marriage as between a man and a woman and denied the free exercise claims of Mormons in the Utah territory. The Court used the metaphor again in 1947 when it was used by Justice Hugo Black in Everson. The term was used and defended heavily by the Court until the early 1970s. Since that time, the Court has distanced itself from the metaphor, often suggesting the metaphor conveys hostility to religion in contrast to Jefferson's original meaning "...in behalf of the rights of [religious] conscience." In Wallace v. Jaffree, Justice Rehnquist presented the view that the establishment clause was intended to protect local establishments of religion from federal interference-- a view which diminished the strong separation views of the Court. Justice Scalia has criticized the metaphor as a bulldozer removing religion from American public life.^[8]

History of the concept

See Separation of church and state in the United States

As applied in the United States, the idea of separating the church and state is often credited to the writings of the British philosopher John Locke, which deeply influenced the drafting of the United States Constitution.^[9] According to his principle of the social contract, Locke argued that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he argued must therefore remain inviolable by any government authority. These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with his social contract, became influential in the American colonies.^[10]

Under the United States Constitution, the treatment of religion by the government is broken into two clauses: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. While both are discussed in the context of the separation of church and state, it is more often discussed in regard to whether certain state actions would amount to an impermissible government establishment of religion.

Nevertheless, issues of free exercise are also implicated by the extent to which laws are permitted to impinge upon private religious practice. In the United States, state laws can prohibit practices such as bigamy, sex with children, human and occasionally animal sacrifice, use of drugs, or other criminal acts, even if citizens claim the practices are part of their religious belief system. However, the federal courts give close scrutiny to any state or local laws that impinge upon the bona fide exercise of religious practices. The courts ensure that genuine and important religious rights are not impeded, and that questionable practices are limited only to the extent necessary. The courts usually demand that any laws restricting religious practices must demonstrate a fundamental or "compelling" state interest such as protecting citizens from bodily harm.

International views

Ancient

In most ancient cultures, the political ruler was also the highest religious leader and sometimes considered divine. Under republican government, religious officials were appointed just like political ones. Ancient Israel was different inasmuch as the King and the priesthood were separate and limited to their respective spheres of authority and responsibility, though interferences did happen as well. Later, under foreign supremacy, the high priest also held the highest civil authority in an autonomous theocracy. Biblically, Hezekiah destroyed a copper serpent, calling it Nehushtan, or a lump of brass. From this it was argued that the rulers in Church and State have authority to prohibit, in the public worship of God, the use of things that have been abused to Idolatry.^[11]

Roman emperors were considered divine and also occupied the highest religious office. This was challenged by Christians and Jews who acknowledged the Emperor's political authority but refused to participate in the state's religion or to recognize the emperor's divinity. While the Jews were excepted from this demand, Christians were considered enemies of the state and adherence to Christianity was punishable by death (e.g., Justin Martyr under Marcus Aurelius). At various times this resulted in violent persecutions until the Edict of Milan in 313. The Roman Empire formally became Christian by edict of Theodosius I in 380.

Medieval

See also: Church and state in medieval Europe

In the West, the issue of the separation of church and state during the medieval period centered on monarchs who ruled in the secular sphere but encroached on the Church's rule of the spiritual sphere. This unresolved contradiction in ultimate control of the Church led to power struggles and crises of leadership, notably in the Investiture Controversy, that resulted in a number of important events in the development of the west.

In the Eastern Roman Empire the Emperor had supreme power over the church and controlled its highest representative: the Patriarch of Constantinople. Eastern Orthodoxy was the state religion. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453, the Emperor was killed. The position of head of the Orthodox Church was given to Gennadius II Scholarius by the conquering Caliph and the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Mehmed II, who continued to practice the right of the Roman Emperor to appoint the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Modern

See also: Secularism, Pseudo-secularism, and Secular humanism

Countries in the modern world have varying degrees of separation between government and religious institutions. While the United States is recognized as the first country to completely disestablish its government from any religion in its Constitution ratified in 1791, ^[12] a number of other countries have since followed. Nevertheless, the degree of actual separation between government and religion or religious institutions varies widely. In some countries the two institutions remain heavily interconnected. There are new conflicts in the post-Communist world.^[clarify]^[13]

The many variations on separation can be seen in some countries with high degrees of religious freedom and tolerance combined with strongly secular political cultures which have still maintained state churches or financial ties with certain religious organizations into the 21st century. In England, there is a constitutionally established state religion but are inclusive of other faiths as well.^[14] In Norway, the King is also the leader of the state church, and the 12th article of the Constitution of Norway requires more than half of the members of the Norwegian Council of State to be members of the state church. Yet, the second article guarantees freedom of religion, while also stating that Evangelical Lutheranism is the official state religion.^[15] In countries like these, the head of government or head of state or other high-ranking official figures may be legally required to be a member of a given faith. Powers to appoint high-ranking members of the state churches are also often still vested in the worldly governments. These powers may be slightly anachronistic or superficial, however, and disguise the true level of religious freedom the nation possesses. In the case of Andorra there are two heads of state. One is the Bishop of Seu d'Urgell, a town located in Catalunya. He has the title of Episcopalian Coprince. Coprinces enjoy political power in terms of law ratification and constitutional court designation, among others.

Two common examples of the most active type of separation are France and Turkey. The French version of separation is called laïcité. This model of a secularist state protects the religious institutions from some types of state interference, but with public religious expression also to some extent limited. This aims to protect the public power from the influences of religious institutions, especially in public office. Religious views which contain no idea of public responsibility, or which consider religious opinion irrelevant to politics, are less impinged upon by this type of secularization of public discourse. Turkey, whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim, is also considered to have practiced the laïcité school of secularism since 1923. While France comes from a Roman Catholic tradition and Turkey from an Islamic one, secularism in Turkey and secularism in France present many similarities.

Nevertheless, even France and Turkey present certain entanglements involving funding to certain religious institutions of the kind which has not been permitted in the United States. In Turkey for example, despite it being an officially secular country, the Preamble of the Constitution states that "There shall be no interference whatsoever of the sacred religious feelings in State affairs and politics."^[16] In order to control the way religion is perceived by adherents, the State pays imams' wages, and provides religious education in public schools. The State has a Department of Religious Affairs, directly under the Prime Minister bureaucratically, responsible for organizing the Muslim religion - including what will and will not be mentioned in sermons given at mosques, especially on Fridays. Such an interpretation of secularism, where religion is under strict control of the State is very different from that of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and is a good example of how secularism can be applied in a variety of ways in different regions of the world.

Mexico was guided toward separation of church and state by Benito Juarez who, in 1859, attempted to eliminate the role of the Roman Catholic church in the nation by appropriating its land and prerogatives.^[17]^[18] In 1859 the Ley Lerdo was issued&mdash-separating church and state, abolishing monastic orders, and nationalizing church property.^[17]^[18]^[19] To this day all churches are owned by the Government of Mexico.^{[citation needed]}

Japan under the military occupation government of General Douglas Macarthur, made separation of religion and state a major priority.

The opposite end of the spectrum from separation is a theocracy, in which the state is founded upon the institution of religion, and the rule of law is based on the dictates of a religious court. Examples include Saudi Arabia, the Vatican and Iran. In such countries state affairs are managed by religious authority, or at least by its consent. In theocracies, the degree to which those who are not members of the official religion are to be protected is decided by professors of the official religion, and ordinarily the civil rights, or restrictions of rights of the unfavored group, are defined in terms of the official religion. (See also State religion)

The belief that authority derives from a God and diffuses downward through a monarch was promoted by the French philosopher Jean Bodin. His ideas were naturally welcomed by the Bourbon and Stuart monarchs who advocated the alleged "divine right of kings." The duty of the common people was simply to obey God and the king. This concept of Jean Bodin was totally contradicted by the founders of the American republic who saw authority as being inherent in the people; who may then assign powers to their government, revocably. Thus, the authority of the US Constitution rests in "We the People," not in any God. The godless character of the US constitution places it in striking contrast with others such as those of Canada, Iran, Israel, and - most notably - Ireland.

The discussion over the separation of church and state is often connected with the general divide between the concepts of secularism and theocracy. While the term "secularism" was first coined by the British writer George Holyoake in 1846^[20] (more than half a century after the ratification of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and nearly as long after Jefferson's reference to the "Wall of Separation"), it has since come to denote the general concept of separating religion from other aspects of social life, and particularly from the governmental sphere. As such, outside of the United States (where Jefferson's metaphor of the "Wall of Separation" has less importance), and to some extent in the United States as well, the discussion of secularism versus theocracy has come to provide the broader rubrik for discussing the relationship between religion and government.

Enactment

Separation of church and state can occur in different ways. At a basic level, it can occur either on a social level (through individual action, societal expectations, etc., creating such a separation), or through legal separation (official government action or court order aiming to prevent encroachment from one realm into the other). In either circumstance, there are many further interpretations of separation, with numerous arguments in the gray areas between proponents of separation and proponents of mutual inclusion played out in courts and legislatures the world over.

A list of the various types of separation discussed and implemented in various parts of the world could include the following:

Legal and Financial Separation I: the state should not officially establish a religion.

Legal and Financial Separation II: the state should not officially fund religious activities.

Legal and Financial Separation III:the state should not fund religious activities.

Legal and Financial Separation IV: the state should not fund non-religious activities sponsored by religious organizations.

Separation of State Authority I: the state should not prescribe, proscribe, or amend religious beliefs.

Separation of State Authority II: the state should not attempt to endorse or criticize any religious belief or practice.

Separation of State Authority III: the state should not interfere in religious hierarchies, nor interfere in issues strictly related to membership.

Separation of State Authority IV: No state action should have the primary effect of engaging in religious practice. Any such appearance of a state religious practice must be unintentional and coincidental.

Separation of State Authority V: No state action should have the primary effect of restricting religious practice. Any such appearance of interference in religious practice must be unintentional and coincidental.

Separation of State Authority VI: the state should not express any religious beliefs, or in any publication, speech, or other implement of state power such as currency, sworn testimony, oath of fealty to the state, or endorsements of national pride. The state should not imply any derivation of authority from any religious authority, nor should it express temporal supremacy in relation to religious belief or practice.

Separation of State Authority VII: political leaders should not express religious preferences in the course of their duties

Separation of Religious Authority I: no church should prescribe, proscribe, or amend civil or common law.

Separation of Religious Authority II: the church should not interfere in civil political processes or relations between the state and other nations.

Separation of Religious Authority III: no church should actively endorse any political figure, and should confine itself to moral, ethical, and religious teaching.

Separation of Religious Authority IV: no church should actively endorse any civil institution by providing religious services or religious expressions at that institution, nor favor one civil institution over another.

For instance, France is legally prohibited from funding religious activities (except for Alsace-Moselle, French Guiana and military chaplains), but funds some private religious schools for their non-religious activities as long as they apply the national curriculum and do not discriminate on grounds of religion.

Advocacy

Jewish views

A Bundist demonstration, 1917

Main article: Secular Judaism

Even in religious Judaism there is much room for a range of political or moral views; this is only more so for secular Jews. However, even Jewish secular culture is often strongly influenced by moral beliefs deriving from Jewish scripture and tradition. In recent centuries, Jews in Europe and the Americas have traditionally tended towards the political left, and played key roles in the birth of the labor movement as well as socialism. While Diaspora Jews have also been represented in the conservative side of the political spectrum, even politically conservative Jews have tended to support pluralism more consistently than many other elements of the political right. Some scholars^[21] attribute this to the fact that Jews are not expected to proselytize, and as a result do not expect a single world-state, which differs from the beliefs of many religions, such as the Roman Catholic and Islamic traditions; rather, since in Jewish theology the religions of most nations are respected, there was never any perceived reason to convert others. This lack of a universalizing religion is combined with the fact that most Jews live as minorities in their countries, and that no central Jewish religious authority has existed for over 2,000 years. (See also the list of Jews in politics, which illustrates the diversity of Jewish political thought and of the roles Jews have played in politics.)

Roman Catholic views

On December 8, 1864, on the same day as the Pope's encyclical Quanta Cura, the Holy See under Pope Pius IX issued a document titled Syllabus of Errors (Latin: Syllabus Errorum). This document listed 80 specific assertions which it declared to be erroneous. Assertion number 55 in this list, in the section headed "Errors about civil society, considered both in itself and in its relation to the Church", reads: "The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church."^[22]

The Catholic Church's 1983 Code of Canon law, while not laying down general rules about relations between Church and State, considers that a religious and moral education in harmony with the conscience of the pupils' parents is an integral part of education, and obliges Catholics to try to secure its inclusion: "Christ's faithful are to strive to secure that in the civil society the laws which regulate the formation of the young also provide a religious and moral education in the schools that is in accord with the conscience of the parents" (canon 799) ^[23]

American Catholics, some suffering discrimination from mainstream, majority Protestants, eventually came to see the separation of church and state as a positive development (in contrast to the long standing Church tradition). The work of Jesuit priest and theologian John Courtney Murray in the 1960s was significant as he developed a theological justification of the separation view based upon St. Thomas Aquinas' observation that there existed a necessary distinction between morality and civil law; that the latter is limited in its capacity in cultivating moral character through criminal prohibitions. As Murray said, "it is not the function of civil law to prescribe everything that is morally right and to forbid everything that is morally wrong."^[24]

Baptist views

Historically, Baptists have supported separation of church and state. In particular, many radical Anabaptist movements, sensitised by the persecution they suffered under both Protestant and Catholic authorities, held that the state should not interfere in religious affairs and vice-versa. One of the earliest calls for separation came from Thomas Helwys, the founder of the first Baptist Church in England. In his last written work, A Short Declaration on the Mystery of Iniquity, he penned a note inside the cover of a single copy that was intended for King James. Whether the King received it or not is disputed, but Helwys was later arrested and placed in Newgate Prison. The words that got him in trouble were as follows (spelling is updated to modern conventions):

Hear, O king, and despise not the counsel of the poor, and let their complaints come before thee. The king is a mortal man and not God, therefore has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them, and to set spiritual lords over them. If the king has authority to make spiritual lords and laws, then he is an immortal God and not a mortal man. O king, be not seduced by deceivers to sin against God whom you ought to obey, nor against your poor subjects who ought and will obey you in all things with body, life and goods, or else let their lives be taken from the earth. God save the king. Tho. Helwys. Spittalfield near London.^[25]

Another formal plea for separation of church and state in England, called Religious Peace: or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience. was written to King James by a London citizen named Leonard Busher,^[26] a man later identified as an Anabaptist.^[27] In 1868, the renowned Baptist pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon perhaps best summed up the separationist Baptist stand thusly:

Which shall we wonder at most, the endurance of the faithful or the cruelty of their tormentors? Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.^[28]

American Baptists also claim as a forebear Roger Williams, who fled Massachusetts Colony in order to establish a haven for religious liberty at Providence Plantation, now Rhode Island. He had suffered persecution for his religiously nonconformist beliefs, and had witnessed the oppression of Quakers. Consequently, he set up the new colony as a place where all religions could practice freely.

In more recent years, the foremost Baptist witness in the United States for the protection of separation of church and state has been the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. An education and advocacy group in Washington, D.C., the Baptist Joint Committee is affiliated with fourteen Baptist bodies collectively representing over 10 million Baptists in the United States.

Other Christian views

Since the 5th century, the Coptic Church has advocated separation of church and state. Unitarian Universalists also advocate separation of church and state.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long held to the doctrine of separation of church and state originating in part from the long antagonism local and state governments have had towards their faith. Mormon writings have affirmed "[n]o domination of the state by the church; No church interference with the functions of the state; No state interference with the functions of the church, or with the free exercise of religion; The absolute freedom of the individual from the domination of ecclesiastical authority in political affairs; The equality of all churches before the law." ^[29] ^[30]

The Seventh-day Adventist Church also has a long tradition of advocating the separation of church and state, due to Sabbath-keeping persecution early in their history. Adventist writings suggest that when church and state unite in the United States of America, the antichrist will come and lead the union.^{[citation needed]}

However some Christian groups, such as the Christian Voice and the Christian Coalition, oppose church and state separation and have become highly and vocally involved in promoting what they believe to be Christian values in government. The Reformed Presbyterian Church, a Calvinistic denomination, also believes that the state constitutionally covenants to follow God's laws on earth. (This does not, however, involve a structural unification of church and state.)^[31]

Islamic views

Many Muslims consider the Western concept of separation of Church and State to be rebellion against God's law. There is a contemporary debate in Islam whether obedience to Islamic law is ultimately compatible with the Western secular pattern, which separates religion from civic life. However, some majority Muslim nations are secular, such as Turkey, Senegal, Albania and Azerbaijan.

Other religious views

Religious opponents of secular government hold that while the state should not establish a particular state religion or require religious observance, it still must be infused with religious ethics and values in order to operate "properly", and needs to encourage ethical and beneficial religious belief, both inside and outside of government. These persons argue that the teachings of religion are the basis of law and civil society and that a society which discourages the promulgation of those beliefs cannot function. Furthermore, these groups argue that religious groups ought to be involved in politics in order to assure that laws are passed which reflect what they perceive as universal truths.

Other religious persons argue that the State ought to maintain an established church.

Another view is that the state should provide a default religion for the large number of citizens who wish to identify themselves as religious believers without actively choosing between the various alternatives. A slightly more extreme version of this is that the state should determine (or at least have the power to determine) the doctrine and structure of the state religion - this is the position in England, and has links to ideas underlying Erastianism. However, there need not be obligation on individuals to follow the state in religion in such cases.

Secular views

Some people desire the legal separation of church and state in order to keep a religion from enforcing its social or ethical paradigm on the government. For example, many atheists, agnostics and freethinkers believe it inappropriate for government to be controlled by a religion.