A German friend recently suggested to me that having an official religion is actually a good way to make a country more secular.
He pointed to the UK (Anglican) vs. US and Germany (Lutheran) vs. Austria as examples, but also admitted that there are some good counter-examples like Iran (Shia) vs. Turkey.
The idea is that having an official faith accelerates the process of the faith becoming meaningless to the people, prevents the religious from playing the “oppressed Christian/whatever minority” card that’s so popular in America today, and gives the government better tools to resist extremist religions.
I don’t think there’s any causal link. What constitutes an official religion is bit hazy, anyway. Some very Catholic countries are officially secular, such as Italy and many South American countries.
Yes, but that’s the whole point of the thesis: Officially secular countries are in practice more religious (and vice-versa). Pointing out that Italy and many South American countries (and Spain, and Portugal, by the way) are officially secular, but practically very religious, is an argument for the idea, not against it.
In fact, looking over the list of Latin American countries (ignoring Cuba), the ones with the most religious freedom, largest religious minorities, and lowest rates of regular church attendance are Costa Rica, Peru, and Brazil, all three of which are among the minority that have officially established Catholicism.
My point is that they are not really secular - many of them do in fact officially recognise the Catholic Church in some way. So you can’t just look at a list of supposedly secular countries.
I don’t think it is the ‘official’ status that makes the difference but rather the incumbency of large churches in combination with a liberal society. For instance in Germany:
Incumbency: Most people are either members of the regional Protestant/Lutheran or the Catholic Church by way of family tradition: you baptize your kids into your church by default, and most people don’t see a sufficient reason to resign from your church (for example my church tax is only a bit more than 2 % of my income - even if I had no emotional connection with Lutheranism anymore I’d probably stay a church member out of mere apathy, as that’s just on the order of a year’s salary raise). Mostly we Germans lazily think of ‘both churches’ the way Americans think of ‘both parties’.
Liberal society: Outside of very rural and traditional communities your going to church and/or professing any belief is considered your private affair; I’d gain no social points by professing or denying my faith (but would be considered a tedious bore if I did so at length).
Result: the two main churches are rich (due to incumbency from way back when membership were enforced, continued by family tradition) and can rely on a solid if somewhat dwindling membership base, being tithed from payroll. Which means they don’t have to hustle - they deplore declining participation but don’t really aggressively try to attract new members. Smaller (evangelical) churches that do proselytize are not significant numerically, and they repel most people by being so intense. Which makes for a secular society.
I’ll grant that Spain’s constitution and laws are somewhat wishy-washy on this. But in what way do Italy or Portugal officially recognize the Catholic Church that you feel contradicts the disestablishment built into their constitutions? I’ll agree that Italian and Portuguese society and culture are heavily Catholic–but again, that’s the whole point of contention.
You could argue that, at least in the case of Portugal, causation goes the opposite way–the First Republic explicitly formally enshrined disestablishment because Portugal was so inherently Catholic that there was no need for the government to get in the way. But that’s not the same as arguing that Portugal is really officially Catholic even though they claim not to be.
To make this more clear cut, I’m happy to leave out Spain, Andorra (which officially disestablishes Catholicism but also officially accepts Our Lady of Meritxell as the country’s patron saint), Finland (which officially establishes two religions), and other corner cases.
Good point. And this is even somewhat testable. The Lutheran Church of Sweden was disestablished in 2000. If my friend is right, this should lead to Sweden becoming more religious in the future; if you’re right, Sweden should continue to become less religious. Time will tell, and of course one example isn’t enough to derive a universal law, but the evidence so far seems to point your way.
I’ve heard that theory before, except the logic was that an established religion often tends to makes itself so obnoxious that it loses its attraction to the people. European secularism in this view is the result of centuries of unpleasant or worse behavior by religions that had no competition and no restraint by the government to impel themselves to put on a pleasant facade. There wasn’t any need to try to win people over when they could just use the force of law to impose their beliefs. They could just run wild, and did.
I’d say it depends on who is holding the leash, the Church of Sweden was kept on a tight leash for some 300 years, and in the end we had a church that most people defaulted to and whose policies reflected the secular society, because if nothing else the parliament could, and did, legislate when they wanted the church to do something.
But I have the feeling that societal health and security is a far more important factor when it comes to how secular a society is. Not much need for prayers when you have a secure job, food on the table, and don’t need to fear having to sell your house because you get sick.
I think I’d argue to your friend that the more religious a country is, the more it requires an official policy of secularism. Strong religious feelings in a country will lead to the majority stepping on the minority’s toes if not checked by a secular government, while if a country doesn’t have a strong religious background, there’s no need for a policy of separation of church and state and so it may never have developed one. Thereby we have the U.S. (strong religious feeling, strong laws disestablishing churches) and Turkey (even more so).
In 2005, the World Value Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/) asked people in 57 countries to rate from 1 to 10 how important God was in their lives, and then tallied the results. It’s not the exact question we’re looking for, but I think it’s close enough. The average response, I think weighting each country equally, was 7.50. Of those 57 countries, 25 have at least one official state religion, as determined by looking at the Wikipedia, and 32 do not. Of the nations with a state religion, the average response was 7.57. Of those without a state religion, the average response was 7.46. So, in this crude study, we conclude that nations with an official religion think God is a bit more important than those who don’t, but not really by all that much, and probably not enough to be statistically significant, I don’t think. The data are skewed to the West, as you might expect, but there is some representation of African and Asian countries. Also little countries might skew things as well.
Anyway, here are my data, should you be interested:
Countries with official religions
5.5 Andorra
8.4 Argentina
9.6 Brazil
5.7 Bulgaria
8.7 Cyprus
9.2 Ethiopia
6.0 Finland
9.2 Georgia
4.5 Germany
9.4 Iran
9.8 Iraq
7.8 Italy
8.1 Malaysia
8.1 Moldova
9.6 Morocco
4.5 Netherlands
4.2 Norway
9.0 Peru
8.7 Poland
9.2 Romania
6.1 Russia
7.1 Serbia
8.0 Thailand
7.2 Ukraine
5.6 United Kingdom
Countries without official religions
6.1 Australia
9.1 Burkina Faso
7.2 Canada
8.7 Chile
3.6 China
9.7 Colombia
9.9 Egypt
4.7 France
9.8 Ghana
9.7 Guatemala
4.3 Hong Kong
7.5 India
9.6 Indonesia
5.0 Japan
9.9 Jordan
9.2 Mali
9.4 Mexico
5.3 New Zealand
9.5 Rwanda
5.4 Slovenia
9.1 South Africa
5.6 South Korea
5.3 Spain
3.9 Sweden
6.4 Switzerland
6.1 Taiwan
9.7 Trinidad and Tobago
9.4 Turkey
8.2 United States
7.3 Uruguay
4.8 Vietnam
9.2 Zambia
A poll result I think should have been on there is “it depends on the country”, seriously. I think it’s more about differences between societies in difference countries than it is about differences in policy.
For something like what, 1500 years Europe had an “official” religion. Even pre-state Europe most sovereign areas had a single religion, if you didn’t adhere to it you were tortured and killed or persecuted extremely harshly. Those people were as religious as it gets.
Denmark has an official state religion and is very secular, but Iran has an official state religion and isn’t. I don’t think there is any causal relationship, whatever the correlation might be.
I doubt that’s statistically significant. But it’s still a good argument against my friend’s theory.
I’m willing to bet that as soon as I show this to him, he’ll say, “Well, but you have to look at countries that had a state religion in the mid-20th century, not now, because that’s when mainstream secularism took hold–just look at Sweden.” But it shouldn’t be too much work to go through your numbers with Wikipedia and find out whether they work out any differently for, say, countries that had an official religion in 1960. If he makes that argument, I’ll do the research. Thanks for pointing me to the source.
PS, I’m a bit surprised by Andorra and Serbia, but the rest of the numbers are pretty close to what I’d have guessed. And it’s a shame Portugal wasn’t included; every Portuguese agnostic I’ve ever met has been convinced he’s the only one in the country, and I’d like to see how accurate that is…
If you’re saying that the differences between, say, Austrian society and German society are so much more important than the fact that one has an official religion and one doesn’t, the answer is “No major effect.”
Saying “Depends on the country” would mean something like, “an official religion in Austria would have made them more religious, even though in Germany it made them less religious.” Which I don’t think is your position, is it?
Interesting point. You’re basically saying that the causation runs backward to what my friend suggests. And your idea handles the counterexamples better than his–you could argue that Iran needs separation as much as the US and Turkey, but the majority overthrew the government, and they now do step on the minorities’ toes.
But I don’t think that it handles the original motivating examples that well. Most of the northern European countries have a strong religious background, were effectively built on top of the Reformation, and traditionally had a national identity based heavily on religion. But they didn’t go for separation, and in the end they became the most secular countries in the world.
That’s a good point. A state religion can mean either that the state controls the religion, or that the religion controls the state; the end result will be very different depending on which, yet both cases are “state religions”.
No, I think the population in many European countries became rather secular themselves as secularism became a viable and popular public view (that is, in the 19th and 20th centuries). Because the population was not as religious, there was no real need to push for an official policy of disestablishment, because there was already a de facto separation of church and state, or at least a reasonably small entanglement.
The fact that European countries were quite religious when they were founded doesn’t mean that they remained so. As religion declined as a raison d’etre for European nations, the government marginalized their connection to religion enough that they never had to ditch it entirely.