Separation of church and state

The separation of church and state is a concept and philosophy in modern thought and practice, whereby the structures of the state or national government are proposed as needing to be separate from those of religious institutions. The concept has long been a topic of political debate throughout history. The term "church" is taken from the various Christian churches predominant in Western civilization, but the phrase as a whole refers to religion and religious institutions in general and its/their relationship to government. In countries where other religions are dominant, the words mosque, temple, or synagogue are often substituted. In the United States, separation of church and state is governed by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by legal precedents, some quite controversial, interpreting that clause. Many other democratic governments around the world have similar clauses in their respective constitutions. The actual term, "separation of church and state", does not appear in the constitution, but rather comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. Ulysses S. Grant also called for Americans to "Keep the church and state forever separate." The view that religious and state institutions should be separate is a wide spectrum, ranging between, but not including, the extremes which secularize or destroy the church, and theocracy which absorbs the state into the function of the church. A government that does not make direct appeal to a specific institution of religion for the justification of its powers is a secular government. Some secularists assert that the state should be kept entirely separate from religion, and that the institutions of religion should be entirely free from state interference. Some secular governments establish quasi-religious justifications for their powers, constructed for ceremonial and rhetorical purposes, but designed for the general welfare and the benefit of the state, without necessarily favoring any specific religious group, or conforming to any doctrine other than its own - an arrangement called civil religion. Other secularists assert that the state ought to encourage religion (such as by providing exemptions from taxation, or providing funds for education and charities, including those that are "faith based"), but ought not establish one religion as the state religion, require religious observance, or legislate dogma. Churches that exercise their authority completely apart from government endorsement, whose foundations are not in the state, are conventionally called "Free" churches. The long-debated middle, between secular and religious government, is when the state directly supports a specific religious institution, founding the state's religion, or established church, on the powers of the government. Turkey, for example, despite being an officially secular country (the Preamble of the Constitution states that “There shall be no interference whatsoever of the sacred religious feelings in State affairs and politics”), pays imams' wages, provides religious education in public schools (article 24 of the Constitution) and has a Department of Religious Affairs (article 136 of the Constitution) that organizes the Muslim religion. A case in which the state is founded upon the religious institution, or especially where the courts of the religion officially direct policies of the civil government, is not secular but religious. A government which is an establishment of religion, where religious law is applied to state policy with the direct authority of the religious institution, is a theocracy. The separation of church and state is related to freedom of religion, but the two concepts are different and one should not infer hastily that countries with a state church do not necessarily have freedom of religion, nor should one infer that a country without a state church necessarily enjoys freedom of religion. While there are many states that permit freedom of religious belief, none allow completely unrestricted freedom of religious practice. Usually state law takes precedence over the free exercise of religious belief, which means that laws against actions such as bigamy, sex with children, human sacrifice, or any crime can be enforced even if such practices are part of a group's religious beliefs.

History

Ancient

:Main article: Separation of church and state (ancient) In ancient times, before the advent of Christianity, there was no separation between "church" and state. Religion was generally considered as one of many functions of the community. In monarchies, the ruler was usually also the highest religious leader and sometimes considered divine. Under republican government, religious officials were appointed just like political ones. In other cases a religious authority also held the highest civil authority, as in the autonomous Judaean theocracy under foreign supremacy. Roman emperors were considered divine and also occupied the highest religious office. This was challenged by Christians who acknowledged the Emperor's political authority but refused to participate in the state's religion or to recognize the emperor's divinity. Because of this, Christians were considered enemies of the state and adherence to Christianity was punishable by death (e.g., Justin Martyr under Marcus Aurelius). At various times, this resulted in violent persecutions until Constantine I (emperor) converted to Christianity in 313.
Medieval
:Main article: Separation of church and state (medieval) In the West, the separation of church and state during the medieval period saw monarchs who ruled by divine right and papal authorities who claimed to wield God's earthly authority. This unresolved contradiction in ultimate control of the state led to power struggles and crises of leadership that resulted in a number of important events in the development of the west. In the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, the Emperor had supreme power over the church and controlled its highest representative, the Patriarch of Constantinople. Eastern Orthodoxy was the state religion. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, now Istanbul, both Emperor and Patriarch were killed. The position of head of the Orthodox Church was given to Gennadius II Scholarius by the conquering Islamic Ottoman ruler, Sultan Mehmed II.

Modern

:Main article: Separation of church and state (modern) In a number of countries in the modern world, many countries have varying degrees of separation of church and state. Some states are more strict than others in disallowing church influence on the state. In some countries (Iran for example), however, the two institutions are heavily interconnected.
Secularism and theocracy
Secularism in government is a policy of avoiding or reducing entanglement between civil and religious institutions, ranging from reducing ties to a state church to promoting the secularization of public discourse. There are automatic entanglements between the institutions, inasmuch as the religious institution, and its adherents, are members of civil society. Secularism requires the primacy of civil laws within its jurisdictions; but some policies provide for protections of religious expression, in order not to unnecessarily conflict with the claims of religion over the public lives of its adherents. Most forms of secularism propose policies guided by an interest in the free exercise of religion, and freedom also for lack of religion, for the sake of assuring equal protection under the same laws. But to the extent that religion cannot be a strictly private matter, some policies defined as "free excercise of religion" are, in terms of a religion which mandates a public duty for its adherents, restrictive of their religion in certain respects. Some political philosophies, such as Marxism generally hold the belief that any religious influence in a state or society is a negative thing. In nations that have officially embraced such beliefs, such as the former Eastern European Communist Bloc countries, the religious institution was made subject to the secular state, in the public interest. Freedom to worship was subject to licensure and other restrictions, and the doctrine of the church was monitored to assure conformity to secular law, and inoffensiveness to the official public philosophy. In the Western democracies, it is generally agreed that such a policy is not conducive to freedom of religion. The French version of secularism is called laïcité. This model of a secularist state protects the religious institutions from some types of interference by the state, but public religious expression is also limited. The intention is to protect the public power from the influences of the religious institution, as these might be mediated through the decisions of its adherents, especially in public office (see anti-clericism). Religious perspectives which contain no idea of public responsibility, or which hold religious opinion to be irrelevant to politics, will be less impinged upon by this type of secularization of public discourse. Though the goal of a secularist state is to be religiously neutral, when the expression of religious opinion is excluded from the public sphere it is repressive of some aspects of religion. Ostensibly, it is equally repressive toward all religions in order to be equally protective of all from interference by others. Many Western democratic nations place a high importance on the separation of the institutions of church and state. Some nations, such as the United States of America, Australia and Canada, even have specific clauses in their constitutions which are widely interpreted as forbidding the government from favoring one religion over another. Other democracies, such as the United Kingdom, have a constitutionally established state religion, but are inclusive of citizens of other faiths. In countries like these, the head of government or head of state or other high-ranking official figures may be legally required to be a member of a given faith. Powers to appoint high-ranking members of the state churches are also often still vested in the worldly governments. These powers may be slightly anachronistic or superficial, however, and disguise the true level of religious freedom the nation possesses. The opposite end of the spectrum from secularization is a theocracy, in which the state is founded upon the institution of religion, and the rule of law is based on the dictates of a religious court. Examples include ancient Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Vatican and Iran. In such countries state affairs are managed by religious authority, or at least by its consent. In theocracies, the degree to which those who are not members of the official religion are to be protected is decided by professors of the official religion, and ordinarily the civil rights, or restrictions of rights of the unfavored group, are defined in terms of the official religion.
Enactment
Separation of church and state occurs in different ways:
- legal separation
- voluntary separation, such as by churches teaching that religious ceremony should be confined to either the church or the home. Some countries of the world have a stable separation between church and state, while other countries are in a state of political unrest over the separation. The 1905 French law on the separation of church and state started considerable controversy and even riots. Separation of church and state is a notion related to, but separate from, freedom of religion. There are many countries with an official religion, such as the United Kingdom or Sweden, where freedom of religion is guaranteed. Conversely, it is possible for a country not to have an official religion, or a set of official religions, yet to discriminate against atheists or members of religions outside of the mainstream. For instance, while the United States does not officially advance any particular religion, proponents of atheism were persecuted in many US jurisdictions in the 19th century. There are different interpretations of the notion of separation of church and state:
- one sees this separation from a legal and financial point of view: the State should not establish nor fund religious activities, and may even be prohibited from funding non-religious activities affiliated to religious organizations;
- another sees this separation in keeping motivations of public policies out of the religious beliefs, preventing interference from state authorities into religious affairs. In this way every person may worship whoever and however they desire.
- another sees this separation in keeping religious beliefs out of the motivations of public policies, preventing interference from religious authorities into state affairs, and disapproving of political leaders expressing religious preferences in the course of their duties. For instance, France is legally prohibited from funding religious activities (except for Alsace-Moselle and military chaplains), but funds some private religious schools for their non-religious activities as long as they apply the national curriculum and do not discriminate on grounds of religion; yet religious motivations are usually kept out of the political process.
Countries with separation
Different countries have different approaches to the separation of church and state.
Australia
Since the founding of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, religious freedom has been guaranteed and state religion has been outlawed. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution says: :The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth. [http://www.australianpolitics.com/constitution/text/116.shtml] Some Australian judges (see Murphy ([http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/disp.pl/au/cases/cth/HCA/1981/2.html?query=title%28black+%20near+%20commonwealth%29])) have gone as far to say that the government cannot support religious schools, even if done in a non-discriminatory way. The High Court of Australia, however, has consistently allowed funding of religious schools. The issue of separation between religion and state is generally less contentious than in the United States. The Australian Parliament still holds prayers at the start of each sitting day and has since federation. Attendance at the prayer services is optional but many Members of Parliament do attend.
Canada
Like most countries, Canada takes its own view on the proper relationship between church and state. There is no established church, however religious groups can qualify for tax-exemption. The amount of funding religious schools receive varies from province to province. In many provinces religious schools are government funded in the same way other independent schools are. In most parts of Canada there is a Catholic education system alongside the secular 'public' education system. They are run on Catholic principles and include religious activities and instruction as a matter of course. They are not exclusively attended by practicing Catholics; in fact many non-Catholics (and non-Christians) prefer these schools for either the quality of education or the opportunity to be educated in an environment where morality and spirituality are not excluded. Again like most countries, the specific form of separation unique to the US does not apply here. There is no restriction on government funding of 'faith-based' activities. Religious activity in schools is not excluded constitutionally (though in public schools it is usually not undertaken). The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is entrenched in the Constitution, states in the preamble that Canada "is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law." [http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/annex_e.html#I]. Freedom of religion as also guaranteed. The Supreme Court of Canada, in the case of Her Majesty The Queen in Right of Canada v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985] (1 S.C.R. 295) ruled that a 1906 statute that required most places to be closed on Sunday did not have a legitimate purpose in a "free and democratic society", and was an unconstitutional attempt to establish a religious-based closing law (see Blue law.)
France
France Since 1905, France has had a law requiring separation of church and state, prohibiting the state from recognizing or funding any religion. According to the French constitution, freedom of religion was already a constitutional right. The 1905 law on secularity was highly controversial at the time. France adheres to the notion of laïcité, that is, noninterference of the government into the religious sphere and noninterference of religion into government, and a strict neutrality of government in religious affairs. References to religious beliefs by politicians to justify public policies are considered a political faux pas, since it is widely believed that religious beliefs should be kept out of the public sphere. Public tax money supports some church-affiliated schools, but they must agree to follow the same curriculum as the public schools and are prohibited from forcing students to attend religion courses or to discriminate against students on the basis of religion. Churches, synagogues, temples and cathedrals built before 1905, at the taxpayers' expense, are now the property of the state and the communes; however they may be gratuitously used for religious activities provided this religious use stays continuous in time. Some argue that this is a form of unfair subsidy for the established religions in comparison to Islam. The Alsace-Moselle area, which was administered by Germany at the time the 1905 law was passed and was returned to France only after World War I, is still under the pre-1905 regime established of the Concordat, which provides for the public subsidy of the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Reformed church and the Jewish Religion as well as public education in those religions. An original trait of this area is that priests are paid by the state; the bishops are named by the President on the proposal of the Pope. Controversy erupts periodically on the appropriateness of these and other extraordinary legal dispositions of Alsace-Moselle, as well as on the exclusion of other religions in Alsace-Moselle from this arrangement. See also: laïcité
Germany
After the wars that followed the Reformation, the principle cuius regio, eius religio divided the Holy Roman Empire in statelets with a homogeneous faith. This principle, already complicated by changes in state boundaries in the early 18th century, ended with the fall of all German monarchies in the 1918 revolution. Today, Church and state are separate, but there is cooperation in many fields, most importantly in the social sector. Churches and religious communities, if they are large, stable and loyal to the constitution, can get special status from the state as a "corporation under public law" which allows the churches to levy taxes called Kirchensteuer (literally church tax) on their members. This revenue is collected by the state in return for a collection fee. As required by the constitution, religious instruction (for members of the respective religions) is a ordinary subject in public schools (in most states). It is organized by the state, but also under the supervision of the respective religious community. Teachers are educated at public universities. Parents, or students 14 years old and above, can decide not to take those religion classes, but most federal states require classes in "ethics" or "philosophy" as replacements. A small but significant number of religious schools, which receive the majority of their funding (but never all of it) from the state, exist in most parts of the country; however nobody can be compelled to attend them. There was considerable public controversy when the Federal Constitutional Court declared a Bavarian law requiring a crucifix in every classroom to be unconstitutional in 1997; Bavaria replaced it with a law still demanding the same, unless parents file a formal protest with the state. As immigration has significantly increased the numbers of Muslim inhabitants, there is ongoing discussion about introducing a Islamic religious instruction for Muslim pupils, but such plans have yet been hampered by difficulties in organising a curriculum for the whole Islamic spectrum. The Federal Administrative Court recently ruled that the Berlin Islamic Federation was a qualified religious community under Berlin law (which differs considerably from most of the rest of the country); hence, the Berlin State Government decided to begin Islamic religious instruction in public schools in areas with significant Islamic populations. There is an ongoing controversy over the status of the Church of Scientology, as the German states deny this group tax exemption normally granted to religious communities and rather classify it as a business enterprise subject to taxation. This issue is intermingled with allegations that Scientology is a totalitarian cult. These classifications however does not prohibit the group's activities in Germany. [http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18367.htm]
Japan
Article 20 of the constitution of Japan, drafted in 1946 and currently in use, mandates a separation of religious organizations from the state, as well as ensuring religious freedom: "No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious act, celebration, rite or practice. The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity." However, like the CDU of Germany, Japan is not without a political party that has religious affiliation, namely the New Komeito Party has affiliation with Buddhism. Less than one percent of Japanese population are Christian. Historically, during World War II, before the current constitution was drafted and when the Japanese Empire was an undemocratic nation, Shintoism was strongly backed by the government, which placed emperor Hirohito, a shinto god, at the head of state.
Mexico
A precedent of limiting the rights of the church – especially the Roman Catholic Church– was set by President Valentín Gómez Farías in 1833. Later, President Benito Juárez enacted a set of laws that came to be known as the Leyes de Reforma between 1859 and 1863 in the backdrop of the Guerra de Reforma. These laws mandated, among other things, the separation of church and state, allowed for civil marriages and a civil registry, and confiscated the church's property. Tensions also existed between the Roman Catholic Church and the post-Revolution Mexican government. Severe restrictions on the rights of the Church and members of the clergy were written into the country's 1917 constitution that led to the eruption of the Cristero War in 1926. In 1992 the government reestablished diplomatic relations with the Holy See and lifted almost all restrictions on the Catholic Church. This later action included granting all religious groups legal status, conceding them limited property rights, and lifting restrictions on the number of priests in the country. However, the law continues to mandate a strict separation of church and state. The constitution still bars members of the clergy from holding public office, advocating partisan political views, supporting political candidates, or opposing the laws or institutions of the state. The constitution provides that education should avoid privileges of religion, and that one religion or its members may not be given preference in education over another. Religious instruction is prohibited in public schools; however, religious associations are free to maintain private schools, which receive no public funds. According to the Religious Associations and Public Worship Law, religious groups may not own or administer broadcast radio or television stations; however, the Catholic Church owns and operates a national cable television channel. Government permission is required to transmit religious programming on commercial broadcast radio or television, and permission is granted routinely. Source: [http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35546.htm International Religious Freedom Report 2004]. United States Department of State. Last accessed: October 8, 2005.
Philippines
By passing through the numerous phases of colonial occupation, the relationship of the church and state in the Philippines has repeatedly changed from the collaboration of the Roman Catholic Church with the government during the Spanish era to the generally accepted separation today. Recent events For current reports on the status of the church and state in the Philippines, check the [http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2002/13907.htm International Religious Freedom Report 2002] by the U.S. Department of State. : See also: Separation of church and state in the Philippines
Sweden
The Lutheran church and state were partially separated in 1999. The Church of Sweden still maintains special status. It is now possible to register new religious organizations, but they lack the same special status and the ability to perform legally binding services such as marriage and burials. There are ongoing efforts to remove the special status from the former state church. Marriage can now be performed by anyone who has received a certificate.
Turkey
Turkey considers itself as a country with a strong separation of church and state since Kemal Atatürk's westernization movement in March 3, 1924 by removing the caliphate system from Islam. However in practice this means a subordination of religion to the state rather than what Westerners would call separation. Sunni Islam, the majority religion, is largely organized by the Turkish government through the "Department of Religious Affairs", and is state-funded; independent Sunni communities are illegal. Minority religions, like Alevi Islam or Armenian or Greek Orthodoxy, are guaranteed by the constitution as individual faiths and are mostly tolerated, but this guarantee does not give any rights to religious communities. However the Treaty of Lausanne gives certain religious rights to Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, but not, for example, to Syrian-Orthodox or Roman Catholics.
United States of America
Main article: Separation of church and state in the United States Separation of church and state in the United States In the 1600s and 1700s, many Europeans immigrated to what would later become the United States. For some this was driven by the desire to worship freely in their own fashion. These included a large number of nonconformists such as the Puritans and the Pilgrims as well as English Catholics. However, with some exceptions, such as Roger Williams of Rhode Island or the Roman Catholic Lord Baltimore in Maryland, most of these groups did not believe in religious toleration and in some cases came to America with the explicit aim of setting up a theocratic state. Such history and beliefs were integrated into the U.S. Constitution with the passing of the Bill of Rights containing the First Amendment. The clause of the First Amendment that adopted the founders' principles of separation of church and state and freedom of religion is known as the Establishment Clause. It states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." The interpretation of this clause is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States. After the Civil War, the Republican Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to ensure that the principles of the Bill of Rights applied to actions by state governments, namely the South. The Supreme Court, however, decided to apply these rights selectively through a series of decisions over a number of years in a process called "incorporation". The modern view adopted by the Supreme Court in the latter half of the nineteenth century is that no government — federal, state or local — can perform any action or make any policy which blatantly favors one faith or church over the others, or which favors belief in a God or Supreme being over non-belief. Notably, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, an "originalist" who favors the Constitutional founders' interpretation and application of the Constitution, disagrees with the modern view. An example of a modern protection of this belief is the ACLU. The court-enforced separation does not extend to all elements of civil religion. By law, the country's currency carries the motto "In God We Trust". Congress begins its sessions with a prayer, and since 1954 the Pledge of Allegiance contains the phrase, "one nation, under God". Court rulings have upheld these apparently religious references, viewing them as non-substantive "ceremonial deism" or utilizing other legal theories. Recent lawsuits have unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the status quo. Some expressions of religion on public property, such as certain displays of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms or Nativity scenes on public land have been recently ruled to be unconstitutional. The government is also permitted to restrict religious activities so long as these restrictions do not target religion specifically. For instance, a religious group can not perform human sacrifice under the veil of separation of church and state because the government views it as murder and murder is illegal. Religion plays a strong role in national politics, especially in controversial moral issues like abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality. Direct church-state issues also arise, currently including the question of whether or not school vouchers should be used to help parents pay for education at religious schools, and the status of the faith-based initiatives of the current President, George W. Bush. The most prominent religious participants in national politics are Evangelical Christians, largely allied with the Republican Party and in the so-called Bible Belt of the Southern and Midwestern United States, but other Protestants (including predominantly liberal sects), Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, non-believers, and other faiths are also quite active. Some religious groups wish to increase the ability of government to make various religious expressions; they often emphasize the largely Christian demographics and history of the country. It is common practice for national politicians with strongly religious constituencies to cite religious texts or beliefs in support of certain policies. In other areas voters may be more disapproving of expressions of religious faith by political candidates and government officials. Although there are no legal religious requirements for officeholders, voters frequently prefer to vote for politicians they can identify with, who reflect their views and garner their trust. Thus voters generally entrust their vote to a candidate reflecting the majority faith in their district. Nearly every President has had a Christian religious affiliation. (See List of U.S. Presidential religious affiliations.) At least 90% of the 105th Congress from 1998 were known to be Christian, with Catholics, Baptists, and Methodists alone comprising over half of it [http://www.adherents.com/adh_congress.html]. Local demographics, and thus the religious affiliations of local politicians, are more varied.
Other countries
The status of the separation of church and state in almost any country around the world, as seen by the US government, can be viewed by clicking on the appropriate geographical region in the left panel of the [http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/ Web page] maintained by the United States Department of State.
Countries with state churches

Finland
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church have a status protected by law. Both churches have the right to levy an income tax on their members and corporations run by their members, and the tax is collected by the state. The administration of the state churches is regulated by their respective church laws, which are drafted by the churches and enacted by the parliament. State universities provide training for the clergy of the state churches. The general direction has been to restrict and remove the privileges of the state churches, and as of 2004, in most other official business (such as officiating marriages) any registered religious community has a status comparable to that of the state churches.
Norway
In Norway, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Norway has been part of the state administration since 1537. Only since 1843 have other religious communities been allowed to operate in Norway. Today, the Church of Norway still is fully financed by the Norwegian state, and bishops are appointed by the government. The conservative government tend to appoint conservative clerics, whereas social-democratic governments tend to appoint bishops that are liberal on issues like homosexuality, women issues and family issues. Half the government, and certainly the church minister have to be a member of the church. The king is the formal head of the church, meaning the royal family has no religious freedom. Ministers are appointed by the local bishop, in co-operation with the local church council. The ministers' salaries are paid for by the local municipality, that is also responsible for building and maintaining churches. Until 1999, everyone was born into the Church of Norway, meaning that everyone not a member of another religious community would be considered a member of the Church of Norway. However, now there is a membership list. Other religious communities receive a per capita compensation from the state to make up for the financial privileges of the Church of Norway. There are no restrictions on the work of any religious community, and other religions are free to prozelytize.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, there are two state-approved churches. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian while the Church of England is Anglican. The former is a national church guaranteed by law to be separate from the state, while the latter is a state-established church and any major changes to doctrine, liturgy or structure must have parliamentary approval. Neither Wales nor Northern Ireland currently have established churches: the Church in Wales was disestablished in 1920; the Church of Ireland in 1871. The king or queen must promise to uphold the rights of the Presbyterian church in Scotland and the Anglican church in England. He or she is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, holding the title of Defender of the Faith, but an ordinary member of the Church of Scotland. Neither church receives direct funding from taxation. State schools must provide religious instruction and regular religious ceremonies, though parents may withdraw their children from either; the choice of religion left up to the school governors, but in the absence of an explicit choice it is by default "broadly Christian"; the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church operate many state-funded schools and there are a small number of Jewish and Muslim ones. Senior Church of England bishops have a right to sit in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Greece
Greece is the only European Union (EU) country to ban proselytism in its constitution, and the only EU country to have been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for a lack of religious freedom. The position of the Church of Greece and its relations with the State are set forth in Article 3, par. 1 of the present Constitution (1975/1986/2001). According to this article: (a) The Greek-Orthodox dogma is the prevailing religion, (b) The Church of Greece is inseparably united in doctrine with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and with all other Orthodox Churches, and (c) The Church is self-administered and autocephalous. The Government, under the direction of the Ministry of Education and Religion, provides some financial support by, for example, paying for the salaries and religious training of clergy, and financing the maintenance of Orthodox Church buildings. This special relation between the Greek State and the Orthodox Church has come about for historical reasons and long-established tradition, many Greeks attributing the preservation of Greek national identity during the 400 years of Ottoman occupation to the Orthodox Church. A separation of Church and State would require an amendment of the Constitution. See [http://atheism.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php%3Farticle%5Fid=321 GREECE: Religious freedom, the Achilles' Heel]
Denmark
[Various other countries can be listed here ....]
Countries in flux

Russia
From the foundation of the Kievan Rus dynasty until the institution of bolshevism, Russia maintained very close ties between the officially recognized religion, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the government. These bonds became tightest under tsar Peter I ("Peter the Great"); in 1721, the office of Patriarch of Moscow was eliminated and replaced with a "Holy Governing Synod", presided over by an Imperial appointee and regulated by Imperial law. From that point until 1917 the Russian Orthodox Church was explicitly a department of the Russian government. After the October Revolution and bolshevik coup, the government of the Soviet Union was quite active in religious affairs, even though it was theoretically atheist and purely secular. Between 1917 and 1922, Soviet authorities executed 28 Orthodox Bishops and over 1,000 priests. A government-sponsored "renovation" known as the Living Church was instigated in May of 1922 as a replacement for the Russian Orthodox Church. It was eliminated in 1943 during the Second World War, but state intervention in religious affairs did not end, and religion was highly regulated and controlled until the end of the Soviet Union. On October 9 and November 10 of 1990, the Russian Parliament passed two freedom of conscience laws that formally disestablished the Russian Orthodox Church as the state church of Russia (this step had never actually been explicitly taken in the Soviet Union). In 1997, however, the Russian Parliament passed a law restricting the activities of religious organizations within Russia. Complete freedom is given to any religious organization officially recognized by the Soviet government before 1985: the Orthodox Church, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. The basis for consideration as an official religion of the Russian Federation is supposed to be a 50-year presence in the state. According to this criterion, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and the Baptist faith should all enjoy official status as Russian religions. However, this is not the case. Non-official religions are strictly limited in that they are not permitted to operate schools or import non-Russian citizens to act as missionaries or clergy. Likewise, they must annually re-register with local officials. This act has been sharply criticized as antithetical to the concept of freedom of religion, especially in countries with religious organizations that expend a great deal of money and effort in proselytizing. The Russian government also engages in practices that have been accused of being discriminatory against citizens who profess faiths other than Orthodox Christianity. In the Russian armed forces — for which there continues to be universal conscription — no form of religious worship other than Orthodox Christian is permitted. Thus, conscripted Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists (despite their ostensible religious freedom granted in the 1997 law) are prohibited from engaging in prayer, even if they do so in solitude.
Advocacy

Religious arguments for separation
Many religious believers, including Jews, Christians and Muslims, support the separation of church and state in the belief that it protects their religion from the coercive power of government. That is to say, the state might harm the church. For example, the state may force on the church a system of ethical principles that compromises the freedom of the church to frame its own teachings. As the state is supported by taxation, the taxes support ideas or practices that offend religious convictions and conscience (for instance, State Shinto in Japan). Many Baptists support separation also, and hold the assertion that separation of church and state does not mean separation of God and state. In particular, many radical Anabaptist movements, sensitised by the persecution they suffered under both Protestant and Catholic authorities, held that the state should not interfere in religious affairs and vice-versa. The earliest well-known formal plea for separation of church and state, called Religious Peace: or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience, was written to King James of England by a London citizen named Leonard Busher, whom Dr. William Whitsitt identified as an Anabaptist. In 1868, the renowned Baptist pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon perhaps best summed up the Baptist stand on church-state separation thusly (from The Inquisition, 1868 The Sword and The Trowel):
Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.
Ulysses S. Grant's statement might be interpreted as arguing not only against institutional entanglements, but separation of religion from public life. "Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate." Thomas Jefferson reflected this same religious basis for belief in the separation of church and state: "Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either . . . ." [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=330&page=1#12] Many Christians interpret Biblical passages such as Christ's admonition to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God what is God's" as a warning that the State has a strong tendency toward corruption, and therefore religious involvement in government is more likely to corrupt the religion than to benefit the state. Since the 5th century, the Coptic Church has advocated separation of church and state. Most Unitarian Universalists advocate separation of church and state. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long held to the doctrine of separation of church and state. Mormon writings have affirmed "[n]o domination of the state by the church; No church interference with the functions of the state; No state interference with the functions of the church, or with the free exercise of religion; The absolute freedom of the individual from the domination of ecclesiastical authority in political affairs; The equality of all churches before the law.". Historically, the Catholic Church enforced the view, within its domains and jurisdictions, that all Christians must recognize the authority of the pope and submit themselves to the discipline of the Church's doctrines. Combined with political power, the view of papal supremacy or, the denial of it by Protestant princes, led to persecution, wars, and forced emigration during the Protestant Reformation. Similarly, in England, Scotland and Ireland, Protestants and Catholics who refused to acknowledge the authority of the bishops of the state church, were denied by the state the freedom to worship as their conscience dictated, resulting in wars and bloody persecution, leading many to emigrate to the Americas, and elsewhere. Once there, many of the early settlers sought to establish their colonies on principles of religious liberty combined with ideals of public godliness. However, some like Roger Williams found reason to object to those principles as framed by the leaders of Boston, Massachusetts, because the laws of the colony included matters, as he saw it, of concern exclusively to the church - issues of the "first table" of the Law of Moses, as he distinguished them - which punished false worship, idolatry, blasphemy, and Sabbath-breaking. Rogers saw this as an establishment of religion, and an infringement on the liberty of the soul. American Catholics, some suffering discrimination from mainstream, majority Protestants, eventually came to see the separation of church and state as a positive development (in contrast to the long standing Church tradition). The work of Jesuit priest and theologian John Courtney Murray in the 1960's was significant as he developed a theological justification of the separation view based upon St. Thomas Aquinas's observation that there existed a necessary distinction between morality and civil law; that the latter is limited in its capacity in cultivating moral character through criminal prohibitions. As Murray said:"it is not the function of civil law to prescribe everything that is morally right and to forbid everything that is morally wrong." Murray Memo to Cardinal Cushing (1965), Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston.
Secular arguments for separation
Some non-religious people desire the legal separation of church and state to keep what they regard as superstition out of government. For example, many atheists, agnostics and freethinkers believe it inappropriate for government to be controlled by a religion. The church might harm the state. For example, religious conviction might cause the state to become involved in a disastrous war, or to remain pacifist when force is necessary for the preservation of the state. It may also influence public policies in a manner detrimental to those who do not follow all the church's teachings. Many people claim that the founding fathers wanted them completely separate, pointing to such statements like those made by Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant above. The United States Supreme Court held in Lemon v. Kurtzman that state action must have a secular purpose, which neither advances nor inhibits religion: "The Establishment Clause forbids the enactment of any law 'respecting an establishment of religion.' The Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether legislation comports with the Establishment Clause. First, the legislature must have adopted the law with a secular purpose. Second, the statute's principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute must not result in an excessive entanglement of government with religion. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-613

Religion
)]] Religion (see etymology below) —sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system—is commonly defined as belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine; and the moral codes, practices, values, institutions and rituals associated with such belief. In its broadest sense some have defined it as the sum total of answers given to explain humankind's relationship with the universe. In the course of the development of religion, it has taken many forms in various cultures and individuals. Occasionally, the word "religion" is used to designate what should be more properly described as "organized religion" – that is, an organization of people supporting the exercise of some religion, often taking the form of a legal entity (see religion-supporting organization). There are many different religions in the world today.
Etymology
religion-supporting organization] The origins of the word "religion" have been debated for centuries. Some explanations for the origin of the word are:
- re-reading--from Latin re (again) + legio (read), referring to the repetition of scripture.
- treating carefully--from Latin relegere (Cicero's interpretation)
- re-connection to the divine--from Latin re (again) + ligare (to connect, as in English ligament). This interpretation is favoured by modern scholars such as Tom Harpur, but probably originated with St. Augustine.
- to bind or return to bondage--an alternate interpretation of the "reconnection" etymology, possibly also originating with Augustine but emphasising a sense of servitude to God. However, the bondage interpretation, while popular with critics of religion, is often considered imprecise and possibly offensive in many modern religious contexts.
- concerning a gathering--from Latin ablative res (with regard to) + legere (to gather). More emphatically, religion concerns an organization. What is clear about the word "religion" is that the religious connotations (in the sense of gods, morality, afterlife, etc.) were not a part of the term's Latin precursors.
Religion and science
According to the religious, knowledge can be gained from a religious leader, a sacred text, or personal revelation. It is not limited in scope and can try to answer any question. Some religious people maintain that knowledge obtained in this way is absolute and infallible (religious cosmology). Religious knowledge tends to vary from religion to religion, from sect to sect, and from individual to individual. In contrast, the scientific method gains knowledge by interaction with the world, and can only answer cosmological questions about the physical universe. It tries to give theories of the world which best fit the observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is tentative, and subject to later improvement or revision in the face of better evidence. It should be noted that science can not only describe the world physically, but can also state facts that aren't physical, e.g. facts of economics, linguistics or much of psychology. Many early scientists held strong religious beliefs (see Scientists of Faith) and strove to reconcile science and religion. Isaac Newton, for example, believed that gravity caused the planets to revolve about the sun, but credited God with the design. In the concluding General Scholium to the Principia Mathematica he wrote "This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Nevertheless, conflict arose between religious organisations and individuals who propogated scientific theories which they deemed unaccaptable. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, has reserved to itself the right to decide which scientific discoveries are acceptable and which are unacceptable. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for unacceptable scientific theories, while Galileo was tried and forced to recant the theory that the earth goes around the sun. The modern Roman Catholic Church accepts most current scientific theories, but still reserves the right to make the final judgment. Here are a few of the areas in which some scientists and the organized Church have come into conflict from time to time.
- Does the earth move around the sun or does the sun move around the earth?
- Is the earth a few thousand years old or more than a billion years old?
- Was there a flood that covered all the earth?
- Did the various species evolve or were they individually created by God? (see Evolution)
- Did the universe have a beginning or is it infinite?
- Is the speed of light constant and is Einstein's Theory of Relativity correct?
- Does radioactive decay occur at a predictable rate? (see Age of the Earth)
Philosophy and metaphysics
In between the doctrines of religion and science, stands the philosophical perspective of metaphysical cosmology. This ancient field of study seeks to draw logical conclusions about the nature of the universe, humanity, and god. One important philosophical tool that attempts to resolve the conflict between religion and science is Occam's razor, which was originally developed by William of Occam to support religion but is now often used in the philosophy of science to support science. Occam's razor cuts both ways. One should also take note of the related philosophic field of epistemology which questions the very nature of how we come to understand and accept that a belief is true or false, such as belief in Darwinian evolution as compared to Christian young earth creationism and vice versa. young earth creationism]
Esotericism and mysticism
:young earth creationism] Mysticism, in contrast with philosophy and metaphysics, denies that logic is the most important method of gaining enlightenment. Rather physical disciplines such as yoga, starvation, self-strangulation, or whirling (in the case of the Sufi dervishes) or the use of drugs such as LSD, lead to higher states of consciousness that logic can never hope to grasp. Mysticism ("to conceal") is the pursuit of communion with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or God through direct, personal experience (intuition or insight) rather than rational thought. Mystics believe in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible through personal experience. They believe that such experience is a genuine and important source of knowledge. Esotericism claims to be more sophisticated than religion, to rely on intellectual understanding rather than faith, and to improve on philosophy in its emphasis on techniques of psycho-spiritual transformation (esoteric cosmology). Esotericism refers to "hidden" knowledge available only to the advanced, privileged, or initiated, as opposed to exoteric knowledge, which is public. It applies especially to spiritual practices. The mystery religions of ancient Greece and the modern religion of Scientology are examples of Esotericism. Esotericism
Spirituality
Members of an organized religion may not see any significant difference between religion and spirituality. Or they may see a distinction between the mundane, earthly aspects of their religion and its spiritual dimension. Some individuals draw a strong distinction between religion and spirituality. They may see spirituality as a belief in ideas of religious significance (such as God, the Soul, or Heaven), but not feel bound to the bureaucratic structure and creeds of a particular organized religion. They choose the term spirituality rather than religion to describe their form of belief, perhaps reflecting a disillusionment with organized religion (see Religion in modernity), and a movement towards a more "modern" — more tolerant, and more intuitive — form of religion. These individuals may reject organized religion because of historical acts by religious organizations, such as Islamic terrorism or the Spanish Inquisition. Mahatma Gandhi who was born a Hindu wrote the following about religion in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth :"Thus if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the greatest religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being such. Hindu defects were pressingly visible to me. If untouchability could be a part of Hinduism, it could but be a rotten part or an excrescence. I could not understand the raison d'etre of a multitude of sects and castes. What was the meaning of saying that the Vedas were the inspired Word of God? If they were inspired, why not also the Bible and the Koran? As Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, so were Muslim friends. Abdullah Sheth had kept on inducing me to study Islam, and of course he had always something to say regarding its beauty." He then went on to say: :"As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side." He also said the following about Hinduism: :"Hinduism as I know it entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being ... When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita, and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full of tragedies and if they have not left any visible and indelible effect on me, I owe it to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita." Later in his life when he was asked whether he was a Hindu, he replied: :"Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew."
Myth
Hindu, Israel]] The word "myth" has two main meanings, according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: # a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon # a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, are categorized under the heading of mythology. Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are similarly called myths in the anthropology of religion. Mythology can be a term used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. But by defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real than one's own religious stories and beliefs. The term "myth" in sociology, however, has a non-pejorative meaning. There "myth" is defined as stories that are important for the group and not necessarily untrue. Examples include the death and resurrection of Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin, as well as being ostensibly a historical event.
Approaches to the study of individual religions

Methods of studying religion subjectively (in relation to one's own beliefs)
These include efforts to determine the meaning and application of "sacred" texts and beliefs in the context of the student's personal worldview. This generally takes one of three forms:
- one's own — efforts by believers to ascertain the meaning of their own sacred text or other traditions, and to conform their thoughts and actions to the principles enunciated in those traditions. For most believers, this involves a lifetime process of study, analysis, and practice. Some faiths, such as Hasidic Judaism, emphasize adherence to a set of rules and rituals. Other faiths, such as Christianity, emphasize the internalization and application of a set of abstract principles, such as Love, Justice, or Faith. Some believers interpret their scriptures literally, and apply the text exactly as it is written. Other believers try to interpret scripture and other tradition through its context, to derive abstract principles which they may apply more directly to their lives and contexts. Jesus
- another's compared to one's own — efforts by believers of one belief system attempt to describe a different belief system in terms of their own beliefs. One example of this method is in David Strauss's 1835 The Life of Jesus. Strauss's theological approach strikes from the Biblical text the descriptions of angels and miracles which, due to his presupposition that supernatural events do not occur, he does not believe could have occurred. He then concludes that the stories must have been inserted by a "supernaturalist" merely trying to make an important story more convincing. In this course of his argument, Strauss argues that the supernaturalist who inserted the angels into the story of the birth of Christ borrowed the heathen doctrine of angels from the Babylonians who had held the Jews in captivity. That is, the New Testament's fabulous role for angels "is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind." Due to his presumption that supernatural events do not occur, he dismisses the possibility that both cultures came to believe in angels independently, as a result of their own experiences and context.
- another's as defined by itself — efforts by believers of one belief system to understand the heart and meaning of another faith on its own terms. This very challenging approach to understanding religion presumes that each religion is a self-consistent system whereby a set of beliefs and actions depend upon each other for coherence, and can only be understood in relation to each other. This method requires the student to investigate the philosophical, emotional, religious, and social presuppositions that adherents of another religion develop and apply in their religious life, before applying their own biases, and evaluating the other faith. For instance, an individual who personally does not believe in miracles may attempt to understand why adherents of another religion believe in miracles, and then attempt to understand how the individual's belief in miracles affects their daily life. While the individual may still himself not believe in miracles, he may begin to develop an understanding of why people of other faiths choose to believe in them.
Methods of studying religion objectively (in a scientific and religiously neutral fashion)
There are a variety of methods employed to study religion which seek to be religiously neutral. One's interpretation of these methods depends on one's approach to the relationship between religion and science, as discussed above.
- Epistemological and ontological approaches to religion deal with the very nature of how one comes to accept any belief or assumption as true on its own terms and questions such matters of the nature of reality and existence of the universe and humanity. Such an approach may begin from philosophic first principles of epistemology and philosophic logic such as the law of non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle and others. This is perhaps one of the strongest approaches as one's assumptions here will underline one's assumptions and subsequent approaches to analysis of all of the history, people, sciences (or pseudosciences), humanities and social sciences, texts, ideologies, literatures, emotions and experiences associated with religions.
- Historical, archeological, and literary approaches to religion include attempts to discover the sacred writings at the "dawn of humanity." For example, Max Müller in 1879 launched a project to translate the earliest sacred texts of Hinduism into English in the Sacred Books of the East. Müller's intent was to translate for the first time the "bright" as well as the "dark sides" of non-Christian religions into English. [http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe01/sbe01002.htm]
- Anthropological approaches include attempts to lay out the principles of native tribes that have had little contact with modern technology as in John Lubbock's The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man. [http://darwin.lib.cam.ac.uk/perl/nav?pclass=calent&pkey=7286] :The term "religion" is problematic for anthropologists, and their approaches to the subject are quite varied. Some take the view that religion, particularly in less technically complex cultures, is a form of proto-science--a primitive attempt to explain and predict phenomena in the natural world, similar to modern science but less advanced. :However, most modern anthropologists reject this view as antiquated, ethnically and intellectually chauvinistic, and unsupported by cross-cultural evidence. Science has very specific methods and aims, while the term "religion" encompasses a huge spectrum of practices, goals, and social functions. In addition to explaining the world (natural or otherwise), religions may also provide mechanisms for maintaining social and psychological well-being, and the foundations of moral/ethical, economic, and political reasoning. :While many early anthropologists attempted to catalogue and universalize these functions and their origins, modern researchers have tended to back away from such speculation, preferring a more holistic approach: The object of study is the meaning of religious traditions and practices for the practitioners themselves--religion in context--rather than formalized theories about religion in general.
- Sociological approaches include attempts to explain the development of the ideas of morality and law, as in for example, Auguste Comte's Cours de philosophie positive hypothesizing in 1842 that people go through stages of evolution 1) obeying supernatural beings, then 2) manipulating abstract unseen forces, and finally 3) exploring more or less scientifically the social laws and practical governmental structures that work in practice. Within a sociological approach, religion is but the earliest primitive stage of discovering what is morally right and wrong in a civilized society. It is the duty of intelligent men and women everywhere to take responsibility for shaping the society without appealing to a non-existent Divinity to discover empirically what moral concepts actually work in practice, and in the process, the shapers of society must take into account that there is no Divine authority to adjudicate between what are only the opinions of men and women. Comte wrote, in translation, "It can not be necessary to prove to anybody who reads this work that Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos; in other words, that all social mechanism rests upon Opinions. The great political and moral crisis that societies are now undergoing is shown by a rigid analysis to arise out of intellectual anarchy." The intellectual anarchy includes the warring oppositions among the world's religions. [http://www.forum-global.de/soc/bibliot/comte/comtepositivephilosophy.htm]
- Psychological approaches. The Psychology of religion involves the gathering and classification of data (usually wide ranging) and the building of the explanations of the psychological processes underlying the religious experiences and beliefs. It includes a wide variety of researches (psychoanalytical and others) : Sigmund Freud (Oedipus Complex, Illusion), Carl Jung (Universal archetypes), Erich Fromm (Desire, Need for stable frame), William James (Personal religious experience, Pragmatism), Alfred Adler (Feeling of inferiority, Perfection), Ludwig Feuerbach (Imagination, Wishes, Fear of Death), Gordon Alport (Mature religion and Immature religion), Erik Erikson (Influence on personality development), Rudolf Otto (Non-rational experience), James Leuba (Mystical experiences and drugs).
- Philosophical approaches include attempts to derive rational classifications of the views of the world that religions preach as in Immanuel Kant's 1788 Critique of Practical Reason. Within a philosophical approach, the reason for a religious belief should be more important than the emotional attachment to the belief. [http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/etext04/ikcpr10.txt] And in attempting to provide a reasonable basis for morality, Kant proposed the categorical imperative: "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." [http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/etext04/ikfpm10.txt]
- Neuroscientific approaches seek to explore the apparent similarities among religious views dominant in diverse cultures that have had little or no contact, why religion is found in almost every human group, and why humans accept counterintuitive statements in the name of religion. In neuroscience, work by scientists such as Ramachandran and his colleagues from the University of California, San Diego [http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Eguae.html] suggests evidence of brain circuitry in the temporal lobe associated with intense religious experiences. See also neurotheology, the scientific study of the biological basis of spiritual experience.
- Sociological approaches include the work of Rodney Stark who has looked at the social forces that have caused religions to grow and the features of religions that have been most successful. For example, Stark, who claims to be an agnostic, hypothesizes that, before Christianity became established as the state religion of Constantinople, Christianity grew rapidly because it provided a practical framework within which non-family members would provide help to other people in the community in a barter system of mutual assistance. Similarly, evolutionary psychology approaches consider the survival advantages that religion might have given to a community of hunter-gatherers, such as unifying them within a coherent social group. : Critics assert that this approach is inadequate insofar as it asserts that people subscribe to religions merely because of practical advantages.
- Cognitive psychological approaches take a completely different approach to explaining religion. Foremost among them is Pascal Boyer, whose book, Religion Explained, lays out the basics of his theory, and attempts to refute several previous and more direct explanations for the phenomenon of religion. Religion is taken in its widest sense (from holy mountains over ancestral spirits to monotheistic deities). An explanation is offered for human religious behaviour without making a presumption, to the positive or the negative, about the actual subject matter of the religious beliefs. Essentially, the reasoning goes that religion is a side effect to the normal functioning of certain subconscious intuitive mental faculties which normally apply to physics (enabling prediction of the arc a football will take only seconds after its release, for example), and social networks (to keep track of other people's identity, history, loyalty, etc.), and a variety of others. For instance, the same mechanism that serves to link, without explaining, an event (e.g. rustling of tall grass) with a cause (the possible presence of a predator) will help to form or sustain a belief that two random events are linked, or that an unexplained event is linked to supernatural causes. The reasoning would imply that there is no direct causal link between the subject matter of a belief (e.g. whether the ancestors watch over us) and the fact that there is such a belief. :Critics assert that cognitive psychological approaches are unfalsifiable and hence are unscientific speculation. For a discussion of the struggle to attain objectivity in the scientific study of religion, see Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey (ISBN 1581344589), who argues that some studies performed pursuant to these methods make claims beyond the realm of observable and verifiable phenomena, and are therefore neither scientific nor religiously neutral.
Development of religion
subconscious and Islam]] Islam, India.]] There are several models for understanding how religions develop.
- Models which view religion as untrue include:
- The "Dogma Selection Model," which holds that religions, although untrue in themselves, encode instructions or habits useful for survival, that these ideas "mutate" periodically as they are passed on, and they spread or die out in accord with their effectiveness at improving chances for survival.
- The "Opium of the Masses Model," in which "Religion in any shape or form is regarded as pernicious and deliberate falsehood, spread and encouraged by rulers and clerics in their own interests, since it is easier to control over the ignorant." -- Bertrand Russell Wisdom of the West (ISBN 0517690411)
- The "Theory of Religion Model," in which religion is viewed as arising from some psychological or moral pathology in religious leaders and believers.
- Models which view religion as progressively true include:
- The "Bahá'í Prophecy Model," which holds that God has sent a series of prophets to Earth, each of which brought teachings appropriate for his culture and context, but all originating from the same God, and therefore teachings the same essential message.
- The "Great Awakening Model," which holds that religion proceeds along a Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, in cycles of approximately 80 years as a result of the interaction between four archetypal generations, by which old religious beliefs (the thesis) face new challenges for which they are unprepared (the antithesis) and adapt to create new and more sophisticated beliefs (the synthesis).
- The "A Study of History Model," which holds that prophets are given to extraordinary spiritual insight during periods of social decay and act as "surveyors of the course of secular civilization who report breaks in the road and breakdowns in the traffic, and plot a new spiritual course which will avoid those pitfalls."
- Models which view a particular religion as absolutely true include:
- The "Jewish Model", which holds that God relates to humanity through covenants; that he established a covenant with all humanity at the time of Noah called the Noahide Laws, and that he established a covenant with Israel through the Ten Commandments.
- The "Ayyavazhi Model", which states that, "All religions had their own truth on their own point and the one and same God himself incarnates in different parts and by destroying the evil forces, saved the people and thereby formed different scriptures. But as Kaliyan in Kali Yukam brought cruel boons, and proceed to the world, for the first the Ekam, 'the ultimate oneness' (the supreme God) came to the world as Vaikundar and so all the previous religious texts had lost their substance." By this it states that at present Vaikundar the only worshippable God and Akilattirattu Ammanai (scripture of Ayyavazhi) alone is living and all others were dead.
- The "Exclusivist Models," which hold that one particular is the "One True Religion," and all others are false, so that the development of the True Religion is tied inexorably to one prophet or holy book. All other religions are seen as either distortions of the original truth or original fabrications resulting from either human ignorance or imagination, or a more devious influence, such as false prophets or Satan himself.
Religion today
In the late 19th century and throughout most of the 20th century, the demographics of religion has changed a great deal. Some historically Christian countries, particularly those in Europe, have experienced a significant decline in Christian religion, shown by declining recruitment for priesthoods and monasteries, fast-diminishing attendance at churches, synagogues, etc. Explanations for this effect include disillusionment with ideology following the ravages of World War II, the materialistic philosophical influence of science, Marxism and Humanism, and a reaction against the exclusivist claims and religious wars waged by many religious groups. This decline is apparently in parallel with increased prosperity and social well-being. It appears increasingly common for people to engage in far-ranging explorations, with many finding spiritual satisfaction outside of organized churches. This is a demographic group whose numbers are growing and whose future impact cannot be predicted. In the United States, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, studies show that Christianity is strong and growing stronger, and many believe those areas to have become the new "heart" of Christianity. Islam is currently the fastest growing religion, and is nearly universal in many states stretching from West Africa to Indonesia, and has grown in world influence in the West. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism remain nearly universal in the Far East, and have greatly influenced spirituality, particularly in the United States. Explanations for the growth of religion in these areas include disillusionment with the perceived failures of secular western ideologies to provide an ethical and moral framework. Believers point to perceived terrors such as Nazism, Communism, Colonialism, Secular Humanism, and Materialism, and the havoc wreaked by such movements around the world. Particularly vehement in this regard are Islamic fundamentalists, who view Western secularism as a serious threat to morality itself. They point to perceived decadence, high rates of divorce, crime, depression, and suicide as evidence of Western social decline, which they believe is caused by the abandonment of Faith by the West.
Modern reasons for adherence to religion
Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following:
- "Experience or emotion": For many, the practice of a religion causes an emotional high that gives pleasure to them. Such emotional highs can come from the singing of traditional hymns to the trance-like states found in the practices of the Whirling Dervishes and Yoga, among others. People continue to associate with those practices that give pleasure and, in so far as it is connected with religion, join in religious organizations that provide those practices. Also, some people simply feel that their faith is true, and may not be able to explain their feelings.
- "Supernatural connection": Most religions postulate a reality which includes both the natural and the supernatural. Most adherents of religion consider this to be of critical importance, since it permits belief in unseen and otherwise potentially unknowable aspects of life, including hope of eternal life.
- "Rational analysis": For some, adherence is based on intellectual evaluation that has led them to the conclusion that the teachings of that religion most closely describe reality. Among Christians this basis for belief is often given by those influenced by C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, as well as some who teach young earth Creationism.
- "Moderation": Many religions have approaches that produce practices that place limitations on the behaviour of their adherents. This is seen by many as a positive influence, potentially protecting adherents from the destructive or even fatal excesses to which they might otherwise be susceptible. Many people from many faiths contend that their faith brings them fulfillment, peace, and joy, apart from worldly interests.
- "Authority": Most religions are authoritarian in nature, and thus provide their adherents with spiritual and moral role models, who they believe can bring highly positive influences both to adherents and society in general.
- "Moral framework": Most religions see early childhood education in religion and spirituality as essential moral and spiritual formation, whereby individuals are given a proper grounding in ethics, instilling and internalizing moral discipline.
- "Majesty and tradition": People can form positive views of religion based on the visible manifestations of religion, e.g., ceremonies which appear majestic and reassuringly constant, and ornate cloth.
- "Community and culture": Organized religions promote a sense of community. The combination of moral and cultural common ground often results in a variety of social and support networks. Some ostensibly "religious" individuals may even have a substantially secular viewpoint, but retain adherence to religious customs and viewpoints for cultural reasons, such as continuation of traditions and family unity. Judaism, for example, has a particularly strong tradition of "secular" adherents.
- "Fulfillment": Most traditional religions require sacrifice of their followers, but, in turn, the followers may gain much from their membership therein. Thus, they come away from experiences with these religions with the feeling that their needs have been filled. In fact, studies have shown that religious adherents tend to be happier and less prone to stress than non-religious people.
- "Spiritual and psychological benefits": Each religion asserts that it is a means by which its adherents may come into closer contact with God, Truth, and Spiritual Power. They all promise to free adherents from spiritual bondage, and bring them into spiritual freedom. It naturally follows that a religion which frees its adherents from deception, sin, and spiritual death will have significant mental health benefits. Abraham Maslow's research after World War II showed that Holocaust survivors tended to be those who held strong religious beliefs (not necessarily temple attendance, etc), suggesting it helped people cope in extreme circumstances. Humanistic psychology went on to investigate how religious or spiritual identity may have correlations with longer lifespan and better health. The study found that humans may particularly need religious ideas to serve various emotional needs such as the need to feel loved, the need to belong to homogeneous groups, the need for understandable explanations and the need for a guarantee of ultimate justice. Other factors may involve sense of purpose, sense of identity, sense of contact with the divine. See also Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl, detailing his experience with the importance of religion in surviving the Holocaust. Critics assert that the very fact that religion was the primary selector for research subjects may have introduced a bias, and that the fact that all subjects were holocaust survivors may also have had an effect. According to [http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p001078.html], "more longitudinal research with better multidimensional measures will help further clarify the roles of these [religious] factors and whether they are beneficial or harmful".
- "Practical benefits": Religions may sometimes provide breadth and scale for visionary inspirations in compassion, practical charity, and moral restraint. Christianity is noted for the founding of many major universities, the creation of early hospitals, the provision of food and medical supplies to the needy, and the creation of orphanages and schools, amongst other charitable acts. Many other religions (and non-religious organisations and individuals, eg: humanistic Oxfam) have also performed equivalent or similar work.
Modern reasons for rejecting religion
Typical reasons for rejection of religion include the following:
- "Logical Contradiction": Many major world religions make the claim that they are the one true religion, and that all other religions are wrong (see Exclusivism). Logically, either one exclusive religion is right and all the others wrong, or else all exclusive religions are wrong. Since the vast majority of people believe in a religion they were taught before they were old enough to make a rational choice, it is more rational to reject all exclusive religions rather than to accept one for no better reason than an arbitrary birth.
- "Logical Irrelevancy": Many people use logic to render religion pointless, regardless of their belief in the existence of God. God, by definition, cannot fail—ergo—God is successful. Therefore we can say and do anything we want without ever being a failure, because we are a reflection of a perfect universe created by God.
- "Guilt and Fear": Many atheists, agnostics, and others see religion as a promoter of fear and conformity, causing people to adhere to it to shake the guilt and fear of either being looked down upon by others, or some form of punishment as outlined in the religious doctrines. In this way, religion can be seen as promotional of people pushing guilt onto others, or becoming fanatical (doing things they otherwise wouldn't if they were 'free' of religion), in order to shed their own guilt and fear ultimately generated by the religion itself. The "others" in this case being non-adherents to said religion. According to people who share this view, this can take forms such as: people looking down on others based on their non-adherence, to people preaching that others need something the religion can provide, all the way to global war.
- "Irrational and unbelievable creeds": Some religions postulate a reality which may be seen as stretching credulity and logic, and even some believers may have difficulty accepting particular religious assertions about nature, the supernatural and the afterlife. Some people believe the body of evidence available to humans to be insufficient to justify certain religious beliefs. They may thus disagree with religious interpretations of ethics and human purpose, and theistic views of creation. This reason has perhaps been aggravated by the protestations of some fundamentalist Christians.
- "Restrictiveness": Many religions have (or have had in the past) an approach that produces, or produced, practices that are considered by some people to be too restrictive, e.g., regulation of dress, and proscriptions on diet and activities on certain days of the week. Some feel that religion is the antithesis of prosperity, fun, enjoyment and pleasure. This causes them to reject it entirely, or to see it as only to be turned to in times of trouble.
- "Self-promotion": Some individuals place themselves in positions of power and privilege through promotion of specific religious views, e.g., the Bhagwan/Osho interlude, Reverend Moon of the Unification Church (sometimes called Moonie movement), and other controversial new religious movements pejoratively called cults. Such self-promotion has tended to reduce public confidence in many things that are called "religion." Similarly, highly publicized cases of abuse by the clergy of several religions have tended to reduce public confidence in the underlying message.
- "Promotion of ignorance": Many atheists, agnostics, and others see early childhood education in religion and spirituality as a form of brainwashing or social conditioning, essentially concurring with the Marxian view that "religion is the opiate of the masses", with addiction to it fostered when people are too young to choose.
- "Dulling of the mind against reality": Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx developed atheist views that reality is sometimes painful, there is no God to assist people in dealing with it, and people must learn to deal with problems themselves in order to survive. Per this view, religion in modern times, while it may decrease pain in the short run by providing hope and optimism, in the long run hinders the ability of people to deal with their problems by providing false hope. Hence in 1844, in Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right', Marx said of religion, "It is the opiate [most likely in the traditional sense of an opium-like drug] of the masses." [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm]
- "Unsuitable moral systems in mainstream religions": Some argue that simplistic absolutism taught by some religions impairs a child's moral capacity to deal with a world of complex and varied temptations in which, in reality, is different than they have been brought up to think by religion.
- "Unappealing forms of practice": People can form a negative view, based upon the manifestations of religion, e.g., ceremonies which appear boring, pointless and repetitive, arcane clothing, and exclusiveness in membership requirements.
- "Detrimental effect on government": Many atheists, agnostics, and others believe that religion, because it insists that people believe certain claims "on faith" without sufficient evidence, hinders the rational/logical thought processes necessary for effective government. For example, a leader who believes that God will intervene to save humans from environmental disasters may be less likely to attempt to reduce the risk of such disasters through human action. Also, in many countries, religious organizations have tremendous political power, and in some countries can even control government almost completely. Disillusionment with forms of theocratic government, such as practiced in Iran, can lead people to question the legitimacy of any religious beliefs used to justify non-secular government.
- "Detrimental effect on personal responsibility": Many atheists, agnostics, and others believe that many religions, because they state that God will intervene to help individuals who are in trouble, cause people to be less responsible for themselves. For example, a person who believes that God will intervene to save him if he gets into financial difficulties may conclude that it is unnecessary to be financially responsible himself. (Some believers, however, would consider this a misrepresentation of religion: they would say that God only helps people who take initiative themselves first.) This attitude can be taken to extremes: there are instances of believers refusing life-saving medical treatment (or even denying it to their children) because they believe that God will cure them. Many atheists, agnostics, and others also find the assertion that 'circumstances are overpowering because they are the will of God' to be a negation of personal responsibility.
- "Tensions between proselytizing and secularizing": Increasingly secular beliefs have been steadily on the rise in many nations. An increasing acceptance of a secular worldview, combined with efforts to prevent "religious" beliefs from influencing society and government policy, may have led to a corresponding decline in religious belief, especially of more traditional forms.
- "Cause of division and hatred": Some religions state that certain groups (particularly those that do not belong to the religion in question) are "inferior" or "sinful" and deserve contempt, persecution, and even death. For example, some Muslims believe that women are inferior to men. Some Christians share this belief. At the time of the American Civil War, many Southerners used passages from the Bible to justify slavery. The Christian religion has been used as a reason to persecute and to deny the rights of homosexuals, on the basis that God disapproves of homosexuality, and by implication homosexuals [http://www.godhatesfags.com 1]. Many people believe that those who do not share their religion will be punished for their unbelief in an afterlife. There are countless examples of people of one religion or sect using religion as an excuse to murder people with different religious beliefs. To mention just a few, there was the slaughter of the Huguenots by French Catholics in the Sixteenth Century; Hindus and Muslims killing each other when Pakistan separated from India in 1947; the persecution and killing of Shiite Muslims by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and the murder of Protestants by Catholics and vice versa in Ireland, (both of these examples in the late Twentieth Century); and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that continues today. According to some critics of religion, these beliefs can encourage completely unnecessary conflicts and in some cases even wars. Many atheists believe that, because of this, religion is incompatible with world peace, freedom, civil rights, equality, and good government.
Approaches to relating to the beliefs of others
Adherents of particular religions deal with the differing doctrines and practices espoused by other religions in a variety ways. All strains of thought appear in different segments of all major world religions.
Exclusivism
People with exclusivist beliefs sometimes typically explain other religions as either in error, or as corruptions or counterfeits of the true faith. Examples include:
- Christian scripture states that Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." John 14:6.
- Islamic scripture states: "O you who believe, do not take certain Jews and Christians as allies; these are allies of one another. Those among you who ally themselves with these belong with them. Surely Allah does not guide the unjust people." Qur'an 5:51. and "O you who believe, do not befriend those among the recipients of previous scripture who mock and ridicule your religion, nor shall you befriend the disbelievers. You shall reverence GOD, if you are really believers." Qur'an 5:57
- Hebrew scripture states that God said to Israel through Moses: "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
- Ayyavazhi scripture states: "The day at which Narayana incarnated as Vaikundar the Kali started declining; the book of perfection, Vedas and all previous scriptures lost their Substances as the Sathasivam came as Vaikundar." Akilam 12:147-150
- The Buddhist scriptures of the Dhammapada states: "The best of paths is the Eightfold Path. The best of truths are the Four Noble Truths. Non-attachment (viraga or Nirvana) is the best of states. The best of bipeds is the Seeing One. This is the only Way; there is none other for the purity of vision. Do follow this path; it is the bewilderment of Mara". Dhammapada verse 273 & 274 Exclusivist views are more completely explored in chosen people.
Inclusivism
People with inclusivist beliefs recognize some truth in all faith systems, highlighting agreements and minimizing differences, but see their own faith as in some way ultimate. Examples include:
- From Hinduism:
- A well-known Rig Vedic hymn stemming from Hinduism claims that "Truth is One, though the sages know it variously."
- Krishna, incarnation or avatar of Vishnu, the supreme God in Hinduism, said in the Gita: In whatever way men identify with Me, in the same way do I carry out their desires; men pursue My path, O Arjuna, in all ways. ([http://vedabase.net/bg/4/11 Gita: 4:11]); Gita]
- Krishna said: "Whatever deity or form a devotee worships, I make his faith steady. However, their wishes are onl