State Church
A state church is a Christian religious community that has been designated the official religion in a state based on applicable law (usually with constitutional status). This regulation affects either the entire national territory or only a part of the country. A state church is often derived from a monarchy and is closely linked to the person of the monarch, who usually has a special role within the state church. Even earlier monarchies, which today have a republican constitution, sometimes still have a state church (e.g. the Church of Greece ). The terms state, regional and national church are often incorrectly used synonymously. The public-law recognition of a religious community does not justify its elevation to the state church.
As a state church, a church can be limited to the territory of one state or part of a state (e.g. Church of England , [formerly] Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zurich ) or it can be an official church in several states (e.g. formerly the Catholic Church in Spain , Italy and Belgium ).
Historically, nationality and church membership were in many cases identical, and some state churches saw mission as dispensable in principle.
State churches usually have certain state privileges ( taxes , reputation of the clergy), but are also bound by certain state rules. The extent of the state's privileges and rights of objection can vary greatly depending on the country and time. B. in the German regional churches and in Caesaropapism .
State religion does not have the same meaning as state church, because while the former includes independent religious communities (e.g. Catholic Church), the latter describes a church affiliated to the state.
Individual countries
Armenia
The first country to officially introduce Christianity as a state church was Armenia (King Trdat III ) in 301 . Nowadays state and church are separated from each other, even if there is selective cooperation in different areas (e.g. military chaplaincy ).
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the second country that made Christianity the official state religion, through King Ezana in 331 or 344/5. This makes Ethiopia one of the oldest Christian states in the world alongside Armenia and the first Christian state in Africa and the Orient. The long tradition of Christianity in Ethiopia is also worth mentioning. The state church there is the Coptic Church of Ethiopia, also called the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church , it was part of the smaller Coptic Church of Egypt for a long time ; Nevertheless, the two churches are still very closely connected today, so the Coptic Pope or Patriarch of Egypt is also the honorary head of the Ethiopian church. Since the fall of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Christianity is no longer the state religion of the country, but the church still plays a major role in the life of Ethiopians today.
Germany
During the Reformation , with the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (whoever owns the land, who determines the denomination ), the territorial lord also became the supreme lord of the church. The Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555 finally sealed that the sovereign princes in the now Protestant areas received quasi bishop rights, i.e. the right to ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the right to appoint the clergy. Theologically, however, the Reformed and Lutheran churches were not defined by the prince. Martin Luther opposed this form of secular church rule (see: Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms ). The participation of the princes led to effects that are still visible today. The emergence of the Protestant uniate church in 1817 or the classic black robe as the official costume of Protestant pastors (from 1811 ) can be traced back to the direct influence of Prussian princes. With the Weimar Republic after the end of the First World War and the abdication of the princes at the state and imperial level, the Protestant regional churches and Catholic German dioceses received their state independence.
The ideological neutrality of the Federal Republic of Germany today is paraphrased from the interaction of various constitutional norms that represent the relationship between state and religion and church or worldview. This includes in particular the religious freedom of Article 4, Paragraph 1, 2 of the Basic Law , the prohibition of the state church in Article 140 of the Basic Law in conjunction with Article 137, Paragraph 1 of the Weimar Imperial Constitution, or the prohibitions on discrimination and preferential treatment of citizens on the grounds of religious beliefs Reasons according to Art. 3 Para. 3 GG as well as the independence of civil rights and the admission to public office from religious and ideological creed ( Art. 33 Para. 3 GG). Regardless of this, the relationship between state and church in Germany is not strictly secular, as in France, for example, but rather based on cooperation in many areas. Examples thereof that can religious instruction , which in accordance with Art. 7 para. 3 GG ordinary subject and is issued in accordance with the principles of the religious communities, the possibility of bringing Church control using the Government financial institutions, art. 140 GG in conjunction with Article 137 VI WRV, as well as the right according to Art. 140 GG in connection with Art. 137 V WRV to obtain the status of a public corporation . See also the article Landeskirche .
Dominican Republic
In the Dominican Republic , the Catholic Church is the state religion according to a concordat with the Vatican.
France
When Clovis I converted to Catholicism, he established a Catholic empire in Franconia - his subjects also became Catholic . In France , Catholicism remained the state religion until the French Revolution . The law separating church and state introduced laicism in France in 1905, which is still enshrined in the French constitution today.
Exceptions, however, are the areas of the Alsace region and the Moselle department in Lorraine , which were part of the German Reich until 1919 , where the secular laws do not apply and the relationship between the state and the churches (and the Jewish religious community) is similar to that in Germany (e.g. the Members of the Protestant ( Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine ) and Catholic Church ( dioceses of Metz and Strasbourg ) church taxes collected). The state pays the pastors' salaries.
Georgia
Since 1991 the Georgian Orthodox Apostle Church in Georgia , which is one of the Orthodox churches , has been a state church again.
Greece
The Greek Orthodox Church , to which over 90% of the Greeks belong, is still a state church according to the state constitution of Greece , even if the relationship between church and state is not always without tension. All of their bishops must be approved by the Greek Parliament . The Greek Orthodox Church still plays an important role due to its extensive land holdings.
United Kingdom
The Church of England was the state church of England from its inception . The king is officially the head of the church to this day and appoints archbishops and bishops on the advice of the prime minister . Archbishops and bishops sit in the English House of Lords . The situation is different in Scotland , where in 1926 the status of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was changed from the state church to the "national church".
Islamic Republic of Iran
Since the revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has even been called a single-church state.
Kingdom of Cambodia
The Theravada Buddhism , the the the 14th century Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism in the Kingdom of Cambodia displaced was until 1975 the state religion, and again in the late 1980s. Today it is enshrined in law in the constitution.
Liechtenstein
The Roman Catholic Church is in the Principality of Liechtenstein acc. Art. 37 II of the state constitution, regional church. Other religions enjoy individual and cooperative religious freedom by virtue of the constitution. In June 2011, the Liechtenstein government launched a legislative initiative that provides for a separation of church and state in Liechtenstein.
Monaco
In the Principality of Monaco on the French Mediterranean coast ( Côte d'Azur ) near the Italian border, the Catholic Church is still the state religion defined by law.
Orthodoxy in Slavic countries
The Orthodox Churches see themselves as the Church on the relevant state or people's territory and have historically been closely linked to the government. But even without connection to secular power ( Greek Orthodox Church under Turkish rule, many others under Real Socialism ), the Orthodox Churches still understand the state or people's territory to be identical to the extent of the Church.
Austria
In Austria in the 18th century, Joseph II decreed the state church in the form of Josephinism . Austria currently has no state church.
Roman Empire
Apart from the 4th century , there was always a uniform state religion in the Roman Empire - until the Council of Arles in 314 the imperial cult , after 391 Catholicism as an imperial church .
The emergence of the Catholic state church goes back to decrees of the emperor Theodosius , who declared the Roman-Alexandrian Trinitarian faith to be the official religion of the Roman Empire in 381 in order to end the intra-Christian disputes, and 391 forbade all pagan cults; only Judaism was allowed to continue to exist under certain conditions. According to today's view of many researchers, however, it was only Justinian I who actually enforced Christianity against paganism in the middle of the sixth century in the Roman Empire. The Roman Imperial Church never had the power of the Roman Catholic Church over the state in the Middle Ages, but was always in a precarious balance of power with the state power of the emperor, especially in the East.
The loss of power and the fall of the Western Roman Empire resulted in a rupture in state church thinking. Augustine wrote his epochal work De civitate Dei , which is based on a principle dualism between the earthly state and the state of God.
In the Byzantine East, Caesaropapism developed in the second half of the first millennium . The papacy has opposed the imperial claim to leadership in the West since the 11th century. The Catholicism thus claimed a priority of its spiritual authority above the worldly powers.
Switzerland
In Switzerland , the individual cantons, as independent republican states, decided whether they wanted to join the Reformation or not (in some cases even the individual villages). Today, in most of the cantons of Switzerland, the Reformed , Catholic and Christian Catholic Churches , and in some also Jewish communities, are state-recognized and thus corporations under public law. These bodies, known as regional churches , all have autonomous legislation that is independent of the respective cantonal state organs and are therefore not state churches in the true sense of the word. This is also clear from the fact that all the cantons concerned know more than one regional church, whereas a "state church" cannot have any other state church alongside it by definition.
According to Section 4 of the Danish Constitution, the Evangelical Lutheran Church is a state church. It was the only approved religious community until 1849. The queen or the king must belong to this. The (former) Danish possessions have taken over the state church system.
- Danish folk church
- Faroese People's Church , independent 2007
- Icelandic State Church
In 1999 the Swedish Church in Sweden was restructured from a state to a national church. Norway followed suit in 2012. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is also not a state church.
United States
In the United States of America , the establishment of a state church at the federal level is prohibited by law. This prohibition goes a. back to Roger Williams (1603–1683), who for the first time in history laid down the separation of church and state in the constitution he wrote for the US state of Rhode Island . This principle was later incorporated into the United States Constitution.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Helmut Stubbe da Luz , “Hamburg State Secularization. The separation of the one-church state and the state church (1848 - 1860 - 1923) and their relationship since then "in: Secularization - a world-historical process in Hamburg, edited by I. Lübbers / M. Rössler / J. Stüber, Hamburg 2017, p. 152, ISBN 978-3-631-67547-2
- ↑ Vatican Radio: Liechtenstein: Separation of Church and State ( Memento of November 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Danmarks Riges Grundlov