State and Church

It was in a political science class at Indiana University where I first read St. Augustine.  Now, I knew who he was before I went to college, but I had never read him.  The book for that course was his City of God (before I graduated I had also read his Confessions) and as I recall the point of our reading it was to outline the notion of a separation of Church (heavenly city) and State (earthly city) in terms of functions and interactions (the point that St. Augustine was making in the opening chapters of the book amounted to a defense of Christianity against pagan charges that it was the abandonment of the traditional Roman gods that had led to the sack of Rome itself) and what that meant both to a Roman world teetering on the brink of collapse and to later Western political thinkers.

I have been thinking about St. Augustine's two cities of late because I have been thinking about State Churches.  It is something that is foreign to those of us living in the United States.  During America's colonial phase (and in the years after the Revolution) when there were "established" churches (think of Puritan Massachusetts or Anglican Virginia), no sooner had there been such an establishment it seems than there were dissenters and competition from other denominations on the scene as well.  While I talk about this in The Mainline, there is a part of me that wonders if, as Americans, we make more out of disestablishment than perhaps we should.  While it truly impacted those denominations that were established, there were other factors at play that both promoted religious liberty and made disestablishment likely, even without say the intervention of Thomas Jefferson.  Maybe the real story, or at least one that we should be focusing in on (and this perhaps fits into the democratization thesis) is that the United States never had an official church to begin with.

There are good reasons to ponder this development, beside the forthcoming Independence Day celebrations.  The young United States was making a break with the past in multiple ways following the Revolution, creating a novus ordo seclorum.  There was to be no king in America but there also was to be no state church.  Both are clear breaks not only with the immediate past, but also with what virtually every state then in existence (or to whom the Founders harkened back to, including St. Augustine's Rome) knew.  To have neither a king nor an official church was revolutionary, and both decisions deserve more discussion than they have gotten.  And it should be noted that both decisions it seems were firmly made in the minds of that Founding generation prior to the writing and ratification (and all the debates it has prompted ever since) of the Constitution.

What has prompted me to think about the issue anew is recent discussion about the fate of Christianity in Europe (for some examples of what I've been reading you can look  here and here and here).  It has long been common knowledge both inside and outside the world of academia that when it comes to religious attendance amongst Christians, the percentages of Europeans in the pews is significantly lower to that of Americans on any given Sunday.  There have also been arguments made that with the influx of Muslim immigrants into Europe (coupled with higher immigrant birthrates) that Europe has a religious demographic issue looming on its horizon (which has caused worry in some circles, comparisons in others, and shoulder shrugs amongst many as well).  I'll not wade into those waters today, but I do wonder what these factors mean for the future of State Churches.

When I spoke in Boston last October, one of the questions that I was asked by a member of the United Church of Christ, was if what was happening in Europe was going to happen here.  I noted in my response that the history State Churches (here and there) was important to how the history of religion has unfolded in both places.  But as I think about it more, I begin to wonder not only what it meant to Americans at the founding to reject the notion of even attempting to have a national church (and if we make more than we should out of the debates over religious liberty at the state level on that national decision -- are we projecting in other words), but also what it would mean for Europeans today in places like Germany or England or Russia if disestablishment were to occur.   What would the public reaction be to "end" of the Church of England (assuming such a thing were to happen)?  What would become of those grand cathedrals (which in some locations are more tourist attraction than houses of worship)?  What of the smaller parishes?  It is one thing to see such a tradition rejected (as in the case of the young United States), another to have it dwindle (as has been happening in much of Europe), and another thing entirely for it to be taken away all together.

Of course, some might say that now is the time for missionary activity in Europe (and American and African Christians are attempting that right now), and that there is always hope for a revival of the faith.  There is also something to be said for that question that was asked of me in Boston, but perhaps not in the way that I first answered it.  Are there parallels (or at least comparisons) that might be drawn between the State Churches of Europe and the Mainline decline of the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism?  And that is a question that may be worth some investigation by scholars.  In the meantime, perhaps we'd also do well to remember that when St. Augustine first postulated his notion of two cities, the Christian Europe of the Roman world was about to come to an end.  That the Church endured and prospered (both with and without the benefit of the State) after the initial shock what we might call "the barbarian disestablishment" is something to remember as well.