State and Church
Much nineteenth-century political theory was preoccupied with relations between state and Church. This chapter examines some of the leading European theories of Church and state many of which influenced and reflected broader public debates and institutional developments. In response to the French Revolution and to a series of liberal and democratic reforms various attempts were made to renew the Church by emphasizing its role as the spiritual embodiment of the nation. While in some contexts such as France this would provoke a secular reaction and ultimately a separation of Church and state, elsewhere increasing religious pluralization would generate pluralist state forms and corresponding theories of the plural state. The central themes covered include: ultramontanism to liberal Catholicism in France; the Hegelian theory of the state; liberal Anglicanism and the Broad Church movement; and theories of the plural state from the 1890s to the First World War.