The Theocratic Leviathan

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Olsthoorn
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
State Identity ◽  
Identity Thesis ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church ◽  
Over Time

Hobbes’s views on church–state relations go well beyond Erastianism. Rather than claiming that the state holds supremacy over the church, Hobbes argued that church and state are identical in Christian commonwealths. This chapter shows that Hobbes advanced two distinct arguments for the church–state identity thesis over time. Both arguments are of considerable interest. The argument found in De Cive explains how the sovereign unifies a multitude of Christians into one personified church—without, intriguingly, any appeal to representation. Leviathan’s argument is premised on the sovereign’s authorized representation of Christian subjects. Authorization explains why, from Leviathan onwards, full sacerdotal powers are ex officio attributed to the sovereign. In Hobbes’s mature theory, every clerical power, including baptism and consecration, derives from the sovereign—now labelled ‘the Supreme Pastor’. Developments in Hobbes’s account of church personation thus explain Leviathan’s theocratic turn.

Old Pastor and Local Bureaucrats: Recasting Church-State Relations in Contemporary China

Modern China ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 564-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jifeng Liu ◽  
Chris White
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
The State ◽  
Local State ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Church Structure ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church ◽  
Local Levels

In examining the relationships between a state-recognized Protestant pastor and local bureaucrats, this article argues that church leaders in contemporary China are strategic in enhancing interactions with the local state as a way to produce greater space for religious activities. In contrast to the idea that the Three-Self church structure simply functions as a state-governing apparatus, this study suggests that closer connection to the state can, at times, result in less official oversight. State approval of Three-Self churches offers legitimacy to registered congregations and their leaders, but equally important is that by endorsing such groups, the state is encouraging dialogue, even negotiations between authorities and the church at local levels.

Edmund Burke, Dissent and Church and State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Home

This chapter examines Edmund Burke’s attitude towards Protestant dissenters, particularly the more radical or rational ones who were prominent in the late eighteenth century, as a way of understanding his changing attitude towards the Church of England and state. The Dissenters who attracted Burke’s attention were those who were interested in extending the terms of toleration both for ministers and for their laity. Initially Burke supported their aspirations, but from about 1780 things began to change. The catalyst for Burke’s emergence as leader of those who feared that revolution abroad might become a distemper at home was Richard Price’s Discourse on Love of Our Country. The chapter analyses how Burke moved from advocating toleration for Dissenters to become a staunch defender of establishment as to have ‘un-Whigged’ himself. It also considers the debate on the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts as well as Burke’s attitude towards Church–state relations.

The Changing Church in Mexico and Its Challenge to the State

1981 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Pomerleau
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Cumulative Process ◽  
Cristero Rebellion ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

Since the nineteenth century, Mexican history has encompassed many social conflicts that range from local rebellions to full-scale revolutions. Church-state relations have been closely related to, and affected by, these conflicts. The struggle between church and state led to the War of the Reform (1858) and to the Cristero Rebellion (1926). Both of these armed conflicts were resolved through an improvised and cumulative process that eventually did as much to obscure the causes of conflict as to remedy them. After independence, the liberals initiated the first phase of conflict, a conflict eventually extended into the twentieth century by various advocates of a strong, secular state. The conflict began as a resistance to the efforts to reform the church and to give the state a neutral orientation and subsequently escalated into a divisive cultural war. Conservative politicians and religious leaders took up the liberal challenge with a doctrine justifying a specific political order at almost any price, thereby involving the church and the state in a mutually destructive and increasingly bitter struggle.

scholarly journals Religious Situation in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s: Retrospection or Discourse of the Present?

2008 ◽  
pp. 99-104
Author(s):  
A.M. Kyrydon
Keyword(s):  
Social Processes ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

The problem with the peculiar paradox of the sound makes some sense. First of all, it is not about identifying the processes in the sphere of church-state relations between two historically distant periods, but about studying the features of consonant processes, analyzing the causes of conflict situations or misunderstandings between the Churches in the 1920s and defining the nature of conflicts in the church environment. The realities of today's social progress of Ukraine require the maximum possible utilization of the constructive potential of the influence of religion on social processes, hence the need to understand the whole spectrum of processes directly ecclesiastical and inter-church environment with extrapolation to the state and society.

The Impact of Federalism on Mexican Church-State Relations, 1824-1835: The Case of the State of Mexico

1984 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-529
Author(s):  
Charles W. Macune
Keyword(s):  
Decisive Role ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

A number of first-rate scholarly studies in recent years have considerably enhanced our understanding of the troubled, sometimes tumultuous, relationship between the state and the Mexican Church in the century stretching from the reign of Charles III (1759-1788) to the era of Benito Juárez (1855-1876). Nancy Farriss, for example, has detailed the Bourbon drive to exert royal authority over the conduct and activities of the powerful and influential clergy and the latter's claim to exemption from that authority. Farriss, Karl Schmitt, and James Breedlove have demonstrated the connection between the state ecclesiastical reforms and the clergy's decisive role in the Mexican independence movement culminating in 1821. Ann Staples has ably ventured an overview of Church-state relations in the crucial but long-neglected early independence period of the first federal republic, 1824-1835. Michael Costeloe, Asunción Lavrin, Jan Bazant, Brian Hamnet, and Robert Knowlton have examined some of the Church's key economic activities and the impact of state reforms upon each. State policy toward the Church in the northern Mexican borderlands has received the attention of C. Alan Hutchinson, Manuel P. Servín, David J. Weber, John L. Kessell, Lawrence and Lucia Kinnaird, and others. Together with earlier works, these studies have documented a drama which began with the absolutistinspired reforms by the Crown, which regarded ecclesiastical privilege and power as incompatible with its own interests, and ended violently with the political and economic power of the Church and its clergy severely reduced and subordinated to the secular state.

«Not Competition and Enmity, but a Harmonious Union». Church and Statein the Works of Pre-revolutionary Canonists of the Moscow Theological Academy

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-257
Author(s):  
Никита Кузнецов
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The West ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
October 17 ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

Данная статья посвящена обзору и анализу взглядов дореволюционных канонистов Московской духовной академии на церковно-государственные отношения, преимущественно профессоров Николая Семёновича Суворова и Николая Александровича Заозерского. Были проанализированы их библейские, святоотеческие и исторические аргументы по данной теме. Представлены их взгляды на следующие системы церковно-государственных отношений: симфония, иерократия, слияние Церкви с государством, государственная церковность, отделение Церкви от государства. Автор статьи дает оценку мнениям вышеуказанных канонистов и комментирует их. В работах Суворова и Заозерского также отражена их реакция на провозглашение свободы совести Манифестом 17 октября 1905 г., что рассматривается автором статьи. Преимущественное внимание к западной постановке проблемы взаимодействия Церкви и государства и её решению сказалось на их положительном отношении к сложившемуся синодальному строю в Российской империи при общем христианском понимании специфики вопроса. This article reviews and analyzes the views of pre-revolutionary canonists of the Moscow Theological Academy on church-state relations, mainly professors Nikolai Semenovich Suvorov and Nikolai Alexandrovich Zaozersky. Their biblical, patristic and historical arguments on the subject were analyzed. Particular attention to this issue was due to the general upgrade of Russian theological and canonical science and the exacerbation of this issue in the West. The second half of the XIX- beginning of the XX centuries was marked by the processes of separation of the Church and State. Their views on the following systems of church-state relations are presented: symphony, hierocracy, the merger of Church and State, state churchness, separation of Church and State. The author gives each system its own assessment and comment on the opinions of the above canonists. Their work also reflects the reaction to the beginnings of freedom of conscience, which were proclaimed by the Manifesto on October 17, 1905. Most of their attention to the western formulation and the solution of cooperation between the Church and the state affected their positive attitude to the existing synodal system in the Russian Empire with a general Christian understanding of the specifics of this issue.

Russian Orthodox concordat? Church and state under Medvedev

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 667-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Papkova
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Style ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

The literature on church-state relations in post-Soviet Russia has been slowly but steadily expanding over the past two decades. The period since 2008, however, remains underdeveloped, as existing analysis has focused on specific issues rather than attempting an overview of the larger trends since the above-mentioned changes in the leadership of both institutions. Seeking to address this gap, this article explores the implications of the nearly coincidental changeovers in leadership in the Moscow Patriarchate and the secular state for church-state relations in Russia, both near and long-term. The first part of the article sets up the context for understanding the new church-state dynamic, by discussing in some detail the state of the relationship under Patriarch Aleksii II. The conclusions are that, under Aleksii tenure, the church could be considered a relatively weak institution, as it was unable for the most part to strengthen its position in Russia through legislative means. The second part focuses on the process whereby the new patriarch came to be elected in 2009, intending thereby to shed some light on Kirill I's leadership style and political agenda. The third part discusses concrete changes in the church-state relationship that have occurred on the federal level since 2008. The final section proposes some conclusions regarding the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church as a political actor in the contemporary Russian Federation, suggesting that despite the recent gains in the church's political fortunes, the ROC's position in society and particularly vis-à-vis the government remains vulnerable in key respects.

scholarly journals Stanislav Orikhovsky's Views on Church-State Relations

2006 ◽  
pp. 116-128
Author(s):  
R. Mnozhynska
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
The State ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Before talking about the vision of Orikhov's essence of the relationship between the church and the state, one must first determine what the church is about - Catholic or Orthodox. After all, the thinker lived in Poland when there were still strong, even parity positions of both denominations. He himself was brought up in a family where his father was Catholic and his mother was Orthodox. This was reflected in his mentality: he repeatedly publicly stated the benefits of certain tenets of the Orthodox faith. But most of all he settled on the problem of relations between the Catholic Church and the state.

Church-State Relations in Slovakia in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century (Legal Aspect)

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-153
Author(s):  
Александр Галушка
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Population Census ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

В статье рассматриваются особенности взаимоотношений государства и религиозных организаций в словакии с 1939 г. по настоящее время. Целью исследования стал всесторонний анализ государственных инициатив, регламентирующих церковногосударственные отношения. кроме отношений государства и православной Церкви, в исследовательскую оптику автора попадает широкая палитра религиозной жизни страны в означенный период. наблюдения автора подкрепляются анализом малодоступных отечественным исследователям словацких источников: государственных законов, статистических данных и результатов переписи населения. в работе показано, что диалог государства и церкви в значительной мере определялся политической ситуацией в стране (независимая словакия под контролем нацистской германии, словакия в составе социалистической чехословакии, независимое государство после Бархатной революции 1989 г.), и прежде всего на уровне законодательства. Этим объясняется предпринятая автором периодизация церковно-государственных отношений в словакии. подобная периодизация, в свою очередь, определила и структуру работы. The article discusses the features of relations between the state and religious organizations in Slovakia in the second half of the twentieth century. The focus is on state initiatives (laws, agreements) regulating the nature of church-state relations. Changes in the political situation in the country (independent Slovakia under the control of Nazi Germany, Slovakia as part of socialist Czechoslovakia, an independent state after the Velvet Revolution of 1989) signifi determined the dialogue between the state and the church - and, above all, at the level of legislation. This explains the periodization of church-state relations in Slovakia undertaken by the author. Such a periodization in turn determined the structure of work. So, talking about the life of religious organizations during the Second World War, the author dwells on the unrealized possibility of concluding a Concordat of Slovakia with the Holy See. In the next period, the Czechoslovak, it was shown how the state tried to use the church to its advantage, either by restricting freedoms or by allowing certain indulgences. In today’s Slovakia, church-state relations are built on the dialogue between two equal partners, and their character is determined, on the one hand, by domestic laws, and on the other, by international treaties (agreements) and domestic treaties and agreements with registered churches and religious organizations. Not limited to only the relations of the state and the Orthodox Church, the author’s research optics recreates wide panorama of religious life in the country. A special place in the work is given to the relationship of the Slovak government with the Vatican, since historically the Roman Catholic Church has occupied and continues to occupy a leading position in the life of the state. The author’s observations are supported by a wide quotation of Slovak sources inaccessible to domestic researchers: state laws, statistical data and population census results.

Reformed and Dissenting Protestants

2020 ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Opinion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Evangelical Movement ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Industrial Revolutions ◽  
Over Time

The meaning and observance of Christmas has always been contested and perhaps those most associated with opposition are to be found amongst Reformed and Dissenting Protestants. In the aftermath of the Reformation, Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, and their heirs in both the Old and New Worlds most vociferously opposed and effectively proscribed the religious and secular observance of Christmas. Yet taking a longer perspective demonstrates that they too wavered between protest and participation and had to adapt their principles to changing circumstances. Was Christmas a holy day, a holiday, or neither? How could church leaders and theologians transform popular opinion and practice? Complexity of attitudes and often-pragmatic accommodation were inescapable as marking the passage of time and involved a range of complex issues. Their attitudes were further complicated by Church–State relations and denominational differences in which the celebration of Christmas became a sign of difference. Most of the groups belonging to these traditions dissented from Episcopalian state churches and objected to liturgies that followed the Christian Year; even in Scotland, where Presbyterians became the state church, the religious non-observance of Christmas became a symbol of Scottish identity in contrast to their larger English neighbour. Opposition to Christmas was also tempered over time by the involvement of Reformed and Dissenting Protestants in the broader evangelical movement as well as the commercial and industrial revolutions of the period. Groups belonging to this tradition were both the cause and the victim of the secularization and commercialization of the season.

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