{"id":22369,"date":"2015-10-14T08:27:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T12:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=22369"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:39:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T12:39:53","slug":"state-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/","title":{"rendered":"State church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Richard Neuhaus once said that the habit of associating Lutheranism with Germany\u2013then blaming Lutheranism for what\u2019s bad in German culture\u2013is misplaced.\u00a0 Germany has always had a mix of many religious traditions:\u00a0 not just Lutheranism but Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, anabaptists, etc., etc.\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to see Lutheranism\u2019s cultural influence, he said, look at the Scandinavian countries, whose only church, pretty much, has been Lutheran.\u00a0 More than Prussian militarism, he said, you could argue that Lutheranism helped inspire the Scandinavian welfare state.\u00a0 (More on that welfare state later!)<\/p>\n

I met a member of the conservative theological faculty at the University of Aarhus who studied at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, IN.\u00a0 He fondly recalled the classes of Dr. David Scaer, who told him, \u201cI love Denmark.\u00a0 Everyone is Lutheran.\u00a0 Even the cows are Lutheran.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAnd yet, the Scandinavian state churches, with their near religious monopoly, have become extremely liberal in their official hierarchy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know about the cows, but the churches are not always confessionally Lutheran any more.\u00a0 And yet, there are confessional Lutherans in the country, not just in Inner Mission, but in the state church.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to run a series of posts telling about some of the paradoxical things I\u2019ve learned about the church situation in Denmark (where I spent most of my time) and the other Scandinavian countries, in the course of which I\u2019ll also pose some questions that you can help me with.Here in the United States, we have a different church from a different theological tradition on every corner.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t that way in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, or Finland.\u00a0 There are lots of churches on lots of corners, but they are virtually all Lutheran.\u00a0 That is, they are congregations of the state churches\u2013or Volkkirche, as they call themselves, \u201cpeople\u2019s churches\u201d:\u00a0 the Church of Denmark, the Church of Norway, etc.\u00a0 On a tour of Oslo, we were shown the Catholic church, one tiny building that served the tiny Catholic population.\u00a0 I was told that there are a few Pentecostal<\/a> and American-style evangelical congregations in Denmark, but I didn\u2019t see any.\u00a0 We saw a Moravian church.\u00a0 There is a \u201cfree Lutheran church\u201d in Denmark\u2013as in the other Scandinavian countries\u2013that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is in fellowship with.\u00a0 (That is where commenter Gabriel here goes, and he invited me to attend his church.\u00a0 I wanted to very much, but the schedule didn\u2019t work out.)\u00a0 That body only has a few congregations, though, and can\u2019t be found in most of the country.\n

For the most part, though, the national church is all there is.\u00a0 Here in the United States, different religious movements create their own institutions.\u00a0 In countries with state churches, different religious movements\u2013Pietism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, revivalism, the various strains of liberalism, etc.\u2013manifest themselves within the established churches.\u00a0 For us English speakers, we are most familiar with how this has played out in the Church of England and in its Anglican tradition.\u00a0 We also see it in Germany, though the different principalities had and still have their own distinct state churches.\u00a0 It is true too in the Scandinavian state churches, though they have still managed to be in at least some sense Lutheran.<\/p>\n

Today 80% of the population of Denmark belongs to the state church.\u00a0 I suppose all church bodies even here would like 80% of the population to belong to it.\u00a0 How nice for everyone to belong to the same church, to have their religion in common, something to unite rather than to divide, and all that.\u00a0 Not that everyone believes the same thing, or even believes in Christianity in the state church, which will be the topic of tomorrow\u2019s post.<\/p>\n

For now I\u2019d like to raise the following question:\u00a0 What is the theological basis for a state church?\u00a0 As an American who takes for granted the separation of church and state and as a Missouri Synod Lutheran, whose religious forebears fled the state church, it\u2019s hard for me to understand.\u00a0 And yet, the golden age of Lutheran orthodoxy in the 17th century took place in state churches.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t the concept violate the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms?\u00a0 I understand the historical reasons for it, but there must be theological reasons for it as well, even if I don\u2019t agree with them.\u00a0 Did Chemnitz, say, have anything to say about this?\u00a0 Surely the Anglicans did. \u00a0 Can anyone help me with this?\u00a0 The American free market-style religious diversity seems to be the exception rather than the norm, and I\u2019m curious what reasons have been put forward for the norm.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tomorrow:\u00a0 Why do so few Europeans go to church?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Neuhaus once said that the habit of associating Lutheranism with Germany\u2013then blaming Lutheranism for what\u2019s bad in German culture\u2013is misplaced.\u00a0 Germany has always had a mix of many religious traditions:\u00a0 not just Lutheranism but Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, anabaptists, etc., etc.\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to see Lutheranism\u2019s cultural influence, he said, look at the Scandinavian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,47],"tags":[492,2458,4074,3043],"class_list":["post-22369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-culture","category-theology","tag-church-of-denmark","tag-ecclesiology","tag-scandinavia","tag-state-churches"],"yoast_head":"\nState church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Richard Neuhaus once said that the habit of associating Lutheranism with Germany--then blaming Lutheranism for what's bad in German culture--is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"State church\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Neuhaus once said that the habit of associating Lutheranism with Germany--then blaming Lutheranism for what's bad in German culture--is\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-10-14T12:27:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-10-14T12:39:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/\",\"name\":\"State church\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-10-14T12:27:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-10-14T12:39:53+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"Richard Neuhaus once said that the habit of associating Lutheranism with Germany--then blaming Lutheranism for what's bad in German culture--is\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/10\/state-church\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"State church\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. 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