A state church ?

[The Lawspeaker]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Holte_Kirke_2005.jpg

This may be a weird question coming from a humanist but what would you people say of having a real state church in your country (of course combined with freedom of religion) ? And in case your country has one- what do you think about it ? Is the influence positive or negative ?

Some examples of a state church: the Church of Norway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Norway), the Church of Denmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_National_Church) and the Church of England (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_england).

[ikki]

We have one, and its boring... dust dead boring...
Mostly old women waiting to die, and not a single sermon i can remember.

Pointless. Well i left it, paying 1% income tax as a member just for the membership just didnt intrest me one last bit. Even at 10e/year, it would still have been too much.
Seeing a movie for 10e (or is it 11e already?) is preferable spending.... even something as horrible as what comes out from holliwood these days.

[Loki]

I vote for no church at all. These mighty religious institutions should be abolished, and people should be fed with common sense and knowledge instead.

[The Lawspeaker]

I am somewhat in favor of a state church. But, in case of the Netherlands, not of a national state church as we used to know the protestant-catholic divide (which culminated in pillarization).
A state church might give at least a lot of people some "spiritual basis" and an identity. I have seen some pretty interesting ideas in Norway that might work here as well on a provincial level.

One could give children religious education on school (godsdienstlessen) and depending on what province you are in you could make those lessons influenced by protestantism or catholicism. And one could make religious education compulsory for muslim children. Why specifically target those ? Simple- you piss off their parents and that might make them leave the country- with their offspring. At age 14 one could ask the children to have their confirmation (protestant or catholic) and in case the child is itself really religious that could also be his/her chance to officially confirm his religious stance in public. As I said it gives a person his identity and you could use it as a rite of passage.

In case the child is not religious one could celebrate a Jugendweihe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugendweihe) as to show his or hers rite of passage into adolescence.

[Comte Arnau]

Frankly, I'm still surprised there are still state religions in Europe. And that they are in the North and not in the traditionally Catholic countries. (The Vatican being obviously an exception)

[Loyalist]

Yes; ideally, I'd like to see state-enforced Christianity and the removal of all alien religions and disbelievers. At the very least, and perhaps more realistically, I'd favour a Francoist/Falange-style national church.

[Lutiferre]

Frankly, I'm still surprised there are still state religions in Europe. And that they are in the North and not in the traditionally Catholic countries. (The Vatican being obviously an exception)
Why surprised? The state churches we have in the north are slaves of the state, weak institutions intentionally brought into bondage to social-democratic secularist regimes. They fill up the religious sphere of our countries, thus "filling the need" for religion or rather, making a convenient straw man weak model of religion which pulls the population further away from Christianity.

The national parliament makes decisions that overrule the decisions of the bishops and the church itself, for instance, the parliament decided to implement women priests even though the church was against it. You call this a church? It's a puppy of the secular regime. The state churches should be removed instantly.

State churches are only good when theres a true synergy between church and state, not when the state dictates the churchs decisions and doctrines (caesaropapism). I would be open to theocracy, but I think theres too big of a gap between the spiritual concerns of the Church and the temporal concerns of the state for it to have any true relevance.

[The Lawspeaker]

Why surprised? The state churches we have in the north are slaves of the state, weak institutions intentionally brought into bondage to social-democratic secularist regimes. They fill up the religious sphere of our countries, thus "filling the need" for religion or rather, making a convenient straw man weak model of religion which pulls the population further away from Christianity.

The national parliament makes decisions that overrule the decisions of the bishops and the church itself, for instance, the parliament decided to implement women priests even though the church was against it. You call this a church? It's a puppy of the secular regime. The state churches should be removed instantly.

State churches are only good when theres a true synergy between church and state, not when the state dictates the churchs decisions and doctrines (caesaropapism). I would be open to theocracy, but I think theres too big of a gap between the spiritual concerns of the Church and the temporal concerns of the state for it to have any true relevance.
I actually think that a state church should serve as a moral counterbalance. So (of course in moderation) it should really be the other way around. It should be the Church making sure that the social democrats can't wreck too much.

[Ulf]

State and church together would turn me into a terrorist pretty quickly.

Fuck, I'm probably on a watch-list now. :(

[Psychonaut]

This sums up my position pretty well:


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[The Lawspeaker]

This sums up my position pretty well:
Does that count for the individual states as well ?

[Gooding]

A state church? No, indeed. I'm of the opinion that that could lead to one of two extremes: either the state takes total control of the church, leaving it's influence largely cultural and membership therein little more than an expression of patriotism, or the church runs the state, leaving a theocracy and siezing complete control over the lives of its citizens. In this day and age there are far too many religions to choose from to let a single expression of one religious faith to represent an entire nation.

[Aemma]

Gods!! No! NEVER!!!

[Psychonaut]

Does that count for the individual states as well ?

Yes. States cannot supercede the Constitution, which is why Judge Moore was unsuccessful in getting the Ten Commandments installed in his courtroom in Alabama.

[Rainraven]

No.
A key concept of democracy is the separation of powers. This means separating the government from the judiciary and also I believe, the church. The State should not be shown to be religiously affiliated or it will remove peoples political and religious freedoms.

[Æmeric]

The state churches seem to be some of the most affected by progressivism. The Lutheran state churches in Scandinavia, the Church of England. The reason people are so much mor religious in America is that there is competition among the various protestant sects. The old mainstream churches are dying but evangelical churches are doing just fine.:angelic:
I vote for no church at all. These mighty religious institutions should be abolished, and people should be fed with common sense and knowledge instead.
So the churches should be abolished & the people fed with common sense & knowledge? Should they be forced fed? Sounds like communist Russia.:rolleyes2:

Does that count for the individual states as well ?


Yes. States cannot supercede the Constitution, which is why Judge Moore was unsuccessful in getting the Ten Commandments installed in his courtroom in Alabama.

Actually it originally only applied to the Federal government. Some states did have established churches (tax supported) after the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. New Hampshire disestablished churches in 1817 - prior to that the individual townships in that state could support one of the following 5: Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Episcapalian, Baptist or Quaker. Connecticut disestablished the Congeagationalist Church in 1818 & Massachusetts disestablished the Congregationist Church in 1833. This was by their own actions not because of the 1st amendment which was a restriction on the Federal government. However..... the Constitution is a living document (:rolleyes2:) & the Supreme Court justices of the 20th & 21st centuries have extended it to cover the states.



The 60th Anniversary of the Everson Decision and America's Church-State Proposition

Sixty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, which for the first time incorporated the Establishment Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment and made it binding on state and local governments. The case marks the beginning of the Court's modern era with respect to church-state relations. In Everson, the Justices said that the restraints on federal power represented by the Establishment Clause were the same as the ideas that emerged from the disestablishment struggles in the several states, with special attention to the Virginia experience. The disestablishment effort in the states, which took place from 1776 to 1833, involved nine of the original 13 states, as well as Vermont and Maine. Despite what is commonly believed, the push for disestablishment was not at all influenced by the First Amendment. The reason is simple enough: it was widely understood that the Bill of Rights was not binding on the states, and thus the amendment was of no use against those states that were maintaining an establishment by law. Disestablishment — most importantly the cutting off of tax assessments for the Anglican Church in the South and the Congregational Church in the New England states — was the first step in the implementation of a larger idea that was then called (and spelled) voluntaryism. Voluntaryism is where religion is supported voluntarily by those in the private sector — which is to say, not by the government. While the principle of voluntaryism was increasingly being embraced in the new nation, once disestablishment was completed there remained a gap between the actual practice of voluntaryism and the larger principle when it came to government support of God language and other religious symbols and observances agreeable to the dominant Protestants. That is where matters stood, more or less, until the Everson Court in 1947 uncovered a near dormant Establishment Clause, and put it to the task of social clearing in the interest of a government that is to be neutral with respect to religion. With the decision in Everson, for the first time in the nation's history the daily, retail-level interactions between church and state were now a matter of federal constitutional law and thereby subject to federal judicial review. We had, so to speak, the nationalization of American socio-religious culture. It was not long before teacher-led prayer in public schools, as well as daily devotions from the King James Bible to begin the classroom day, all agreeable to nondenominational Protestantism, fell under the Court's review. The changes downstream of Everson were painful for many white Protestants who held the mantle of cultural authority. Even now as the logic of voluntaryism continues to be worked out with respect to public displays of the Ten Commandments or the insertion of under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, the American civil polity is divided along interesting lines with religious people coming down on one side or the other of these cases depending on their allegiance to the voluntary way. Because voluntaryism takes power away from government so that its officials and its laws simply have no cognizance (James Madison's phrase) with respect to certain specifically religious matters, the modern Establishment Clause is about securing religious freedom. However, it is the sort of freedom that is consequential to limiting the power delegated to the government. And, while it is said that voluntaryism means that government is neutral as to religion, this is correct if properly understood. In an absolute sense, there is no such thing as a neutral state. Nor is that required. Just as the very text of the First Amendment is pro-freedom of speech and pro-freedom of the press, in like manner the two religion clauses are, each in their own way, pro-religious freedom. The Everson decision took up the Establishment Clause, very much a late bloomer, and in giving the clause meaning drawn from the period of disestablishment in the states the Court set for the federal judiciary an ambitious course these last 60 years, one whose dispute over direction gives no evidence of abating soon.

Source (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=984926)

[Loki]

Yes; ideally, I'd like to see state-enforced Christianity and the removal of all alien religions and disbelievers.

Wow ... this is extreme. Remove all disbelievers? :p

[Poltergeist]

Wow ... this is extreme. Remove all disbelievers? :p

Didn't you propose something similar, but on the reverse? :p

[The Lawspeaker]

Yes. States cannot supercede the Constitution, which is why Judge Moore was unsuccessful in getting the Ten Commandments installed in his courtroom in Alabama.
That's pretty dangerous. That means that control over the individual states have been invested in the central government.

[Gooding]

That's pretty dangerous. That means that control over the individual states have been invested in the central government.

An entire nation tried to stop that trend as it was just beginning in the 1860s..:(

[Psychonaut]

That's pretty dangerous. That means that control over the individual states have been invested in the central government.

The intent behind the Bill of Rights was to present rights that could be added to but not taken away from by the states. So, it takes power away from them to limit our freedom, which I see as a good thing. More recent Federal legislation does the exact opposite, but that's a different story altogether.