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Church and state refers to the institutional interaction between religious organizations and the formal governance within a country. As a topic of discussion, church and state differs from religion and politics. The latter deals with how individual or group beliefs, values, and norms influence power relations and policy outcomes within a polity. Church and state focuses on how official rules and secular-authority structures impact the operation of churches, and, conversely, how the institutional interests of church officials affect the operation of secular government.

Defining Church And State

A church is the institutional embodiment of a religious denomination, and as such, delineates the leadership roles and rules for governing behavior within the faith. A church should be considered analytically distinct from a religion, although each religion typically gives rise to a corresponding church. The term church typically has Christian connotations, refer ring primarily to the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. Most Western scholarship on church and state has focused on the Christian world, primarily Europe and the United States. Scholars studying non-Christian faith traditions sometimes prefer to use terms such as mosque and state (for Islam) or temple and state (for Eastern religions or Judaism).

State as defined in church-state studies, refers to the institutional and authoritative arrangements of a governing body within a nation. Following nineteenth-century German sociologist Max Weber’s definition, a state typically maintains a monopoly over the use of coercion, which gives the state the ability to create and enforce rules and regulations within society. This power has significant consequences for religious organizations, and forms the basis for church-state relations. A state can craft rules that permit a limited number of official churches, making all other churches illegal. The state can also use its coercive powers to collect taxes to finance a church or demand a say in the appointment of church leaders or making of church policy. Alternatively, the state can impose various regulatory barriers to make it difficult for any church to operate within a country. Determining which churches, if any, receive special status and subsidization from the state is perhaps the central issue in church-state relations.

Church-State Relationship In Era Of “Christendom”

The granting of official status, collection of religious taxes, and prohibitions on no sanctioned churches have been the historical norm in European Christianity since the Edict of Milan in 312 CE. This edict provided Christianity with state financial support equal to that of traditional Roman pagan temples. As financial support for pagan religions dried up, Christianity effectively became the official state church of the Roman Empire. Upon the collapse of the Roman Empire and throughout the duration of the medieval era, the Christian Church (in both its Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches) relied, in part, upon financial support from various kings and nobles. In exchange for this much-needed support, the church would either sell leadership positions (bishoprics) to the nobility or allow kings to choose the leaders for these positions. Such control sometimes gave secular leaders veto power over official church proclamations, such as papal bulls. The Catholic Church also found ways to finance itself through a variety of other mechanisms when state authority was too weak to provide financial assistance.

One of the major disadvantages of state control over the church was that the church became corrupted for purposes of political power and secular financial gain, with some individuals gaining access to key church leadership positions without ever having read the Bible. Such corruption frequently gave rise to schismatic movements (e.g., Lollards, Hussites) that often required state force to crush.

The most successful and decisive schismatic movement in Christian history was Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s. Initially, nobles simply chose between Catholicism and Lutheranism and imposed that particular religion on their citizenry. Thus, Lutheranism developed into a state church like its Catholic counterpart. The principal question relating to church-state relations in the sixteenth century became which religion a monarch would endorse and impose on their population.

The larger historical significance of Luther’s Reformation (and the subsequent English Reformation in 1533) for church state relations was that it gave legitimacy to a myriad of new denominations (e.g., Calvinists, Anabaptists) and created a burgeoning of religious pluralism in Europe. Religious pluralism initially gave rise to domestic and international conflict, such as the French Religious Wars (1562–1598) and the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). However, religious pluralism eventually pushed many European states to tolerate minority churches even while they formally endorsed a single religious establishment. France’s Edict of Nantes (1589) and England’s Acts of Toleration (1689) represented the initial movement toward religious liberty, although the former was repealed in 1685.

Religious Liberty And Toleration

Religious liberty is a form of church-state relation wherein multiple denominations are allowed to exist under government authority. A government may still maintain a state church, but other churches are granted some minimal level of freedom to own property and proselytize. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution took the concept of religious toleration to its logical conclusion by prohibiting the establishment of any official state religion at the federal level. While intense debate still surrounds what constitutes official government promotion of religion in the United States, the First Amendment created a model of church and state that eventually became the standard of religious freedom in the Christian world.

Despite an increasing trend toward religious freedom and toleration in the Western world, a number of states in Europe continue to maintain established churches either through official endorsement or via governmental subsidization. For example, Sweden recently ended the “state church” status of the Reformed Church but the state continues to heavily subsidize the daily operations of the church. The German government collects tithes (taxes) directly for the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church. While Britain has reduced the amount of its financial subsidies to the Church of England, the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the church, is still appointed by the monarch with input from Parliament. Low levels of church attendance in Europe have made relations between church and state a relatively moot policy issue. Despite the low salience of church-state policy in the public discourse, European governments continue to protect their state churches by making it legally difficult for various missionary movements (typically from the United States) to create a presence in the region. This is often done by prohibiting the construction of church buildings or making it difficult to gain tax-exempt status.

The Problem Of Islam And Non-Western Religions

An increasingly controversial phenomenon in European church-state relations concerns the g rowing presence of Islam. Given that Islam is a decentralized religion with no formal hierarchy, European governments have had difficulty accommodating Muslims in traditional church-state alliances, as there is no single voice to speak for Islam. Muslims have found it difficult to receive funding equivalent to that of other state-funded religions for their religious schools or programs in several countries. They have also faced difficulty in gaining recognition for their spiritual customs. The prohibition on headscarves in public schools in France represents a primary example of this. The U.S. model of a “wall of separation” between church and state—effectively meaning that the government does not endorse or publicly finance any specific church—has proved to be less difficult for Muslims, as they are treated similarly to Christian denominations in matters of public policy.

The concept of church and state is more ambiguous in non-Western contexts. Islam and many Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, do not share the hierarchical structure of Christianity, thus relations between church (mosque or temple) and state are more complex. For example, a diffusion of leadership within Islam makes it more difficult for the state to easily interact with the Muslim clergy, as there is not one unique point of contact (such as a pope or bishop). In many Islamic countries, the state will decree Islam to be the official religion and prohibit proselytization by non-Muslims. In some instances (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia), the state will officially subsidize the Muslim clergy, mosques, or other important Islamic institutions even though many Muslim clergy and organizations exist without official state endorsement or subsidization. A similar situation exists in societies dominated by Eastern religions; while some governments may endorse various historical faith traditions, the decentralized nature of these religions makes it difficult for governments to strictly regulate every practitioner of that faith. The lack of formal religious hierarchies within these faith traditions has meant less scholarship on church and state as compared to religion and politics.

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