Religion, the state and the resolution of conflict

Overview

Main models of the relationship between religion and the state, barmen Declaration and religious conviction changing public morality.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What New Testament texts are used to argue for obedience to the state?

   Model answer

   Paul tells the Roman Christians that the governing authorities have been instituted by God, that rulers are God's servants for good and that taxes should be paid. Jesus' saying about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's is also cited, though it leaves open precisely which things belong to which.

2. 2

   What biblical material is used to argue for resistance to the state?

   Model answer

   Revelation portrays the empire as a beast demanding worship, and Acts records the apostles saying that they must obey God rather than men. The two strands together suggest that obedience is owed to a state doing its proper work, and refused when it claims what belongs to God.

3. 3

   Outline the main models of the relationship between religion and the state.

   Model answer

   A theocracy makes religious law the law of the state, an established church gives one body a formal public status while others are tolerated, a secular state guarantees religious freedom while keeping religion out of public institutions, and a hostile state may suppress religion altogether. Most western societies now sit somewhere between the second and third of these.

4. 4

   How does establishment work in the United Kingdom, and how does the position differ across it?

   Model answer

   The Church of England is established, with the monarch as supreme governor and a number of bishops sitting in the House of Lords, and the Church of Scotland has a distinctive national status while governing itself. The Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 and the Church in Wales in 1920, so there is no established church in Northern Ireland or in Wales.

5. 5

   How has the relationship between churches and the state changed in Ireland?

   Model answer

   The special position accorded to the Roman Catholic Church in the constitution of the Republic was removed by referendum in 1972, and referendums on divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion have since moved the civil law away from the church's teaching. In Northern Ireland the churches retain a substantial role in education, although the integrated sector has grown steadily since the founding of Lagan College in 1981.

6. 6

   What is the Barmen Declaration, and why is it important?

   Model answer

   The Barmen Declaration of 1934 was issued by the Confessing Church in Germany against those Christians who accommodated the church to National Socialism. It declared that the church owes obedience to Jesus Christ alone and cannot recognise any other event, power or figure as a source of its proclamation, and it remains the standard example of a church refusing to let the state define it.

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