Comments on: Hopeful Europe-Bashing For Everyone!

by: jon kennedy

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:47:11 +0000

I agree generally with Daniel’s points, but I’ve seen other arguments that the quick decline of Catholic piety in Ireland after joining the EU (which may be more coincidence than cause/effect) is as much a reaction to clergy abuse there as anything else.

by: Alexei

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:36:11 +0000

This comes straight out of a neoconservative catechism, indeed. As most neocon arguments, this one is both shallow and factually wrong. I have to agree with Daniel that Americans did not go through the horrors of 20th century wars (nor, earlier, those of Reformation wars, including the Thirty Years’ War), which horrors begged questions about God’s goodness and mercy. For the survivors, Candide’s travails no longer seemed a grotesque exaggeration. The closest America came to such suffering was in the Civil War, when cities were burned down and civilians raped and murdered. In the eyes of Europeans, and certainly Russians, most Americans are still a bit naive and oddly optimistic about human nature, in seeming contradiction to the gloomy Calvinist anthropology many of them are supposed to espouse. (Seeming, not essential: this optimism only applies to the good guys (a secularized version of the saved) — those with a soul, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton — while the bad guys are beyond redemption and should be destroyed.)

smmclaug, no doubt “traditionally” was misused, unless in Obama’s world, all history before the Mayflower is irrelevant. But I must add that even in Russia, the church did not exist as an arm of the state in the 17th century. It came close under Ivan IV, and Peter I put it under state control in the early 18th century, but in the 17th century, relationships between the church and the state fluctuated from coalition (under tsar Mikhail and his father, the Patriarch) to rivalry (under Alexei I and the Patriarch Nikon).

by: smmclaug

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:05:24 +0000

Hmm. It seems to me that the problem here is with Obama’s use of the word “traditionally.” In point of fact, prior to the Thirty Years’ War it was not at all traditional for European churches to exist as “arms of the state” anywhere except Russia. The problem Magnus describes is one which would only obtain under conditions where the state has gathered absolutely all public authority to itself–which, in other contexts, liberals like Obama will defend as a necessary precondition for any true separation of church and state.

by: Grumpy Old Man

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:09:22 +0000

Kierkegaard had some choice things to say about the state church in 19th C Denmark.

Entrepreneurship in religion, such as we have here, has some strange decay products. I drove by the garish and ostentatious TBN HQ yesterday. Simon Magus lives.

by: Magnus

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:41:21 +0000

GOM: Charles visits Mount Athos every year, and Orthodoxy was the faith of his father. I imagine he wouldn’t be able to inherit the throne if he converted though.

I agree to some extent with chrisbr; in my home country of Norway, the conservative elements of the church has been on the losing side of every theological battle since the 1950s, almost always due to the power of the government to appoint liberal bishops. The State Lutheran Church of Norway now functions as little more than a pressure group for all kinds of left-wing issues - for more (ironically non-Christian) immigration, for withdrawing Norwegian forces from Afghanistan, for increasing foreign aid, etc. This is very likely to have turned off a lot of people from being active church-members. I think this is more an effect of secularization rather than a cause, however. As Daniel has pointed out, secularization has been a universal phenomenon in Western Europe, regardless of differing policies in each state.

by: Grumpy Old Man

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:48:39 +0000

There are persistent (and very likely false) rumors that Charles is considering converting to Orthodoxy, apparently the faith of some of his ancestors.

by: chrisgbr

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:25:01 +0000

Here’s an attempt at defending the neo-con position…

The fundamental problem with European national churches (even once disestablished) is that they are expected to cater for everyone**. This essentially meant adopting the lowest common denominator theology — which, over time, meant the least offensive practices, and ultimately those which were thinnest in their substance and weakest in their appeal.

At the same time, it has been difficult to set up rival, competing, Christian denominations, since the national church had that ground covered. Note also that in Europe to grow as a faith (to build a church, perform outreach on TV, get funds, etc…), you need government permission and assent in a way that you don’t in the US.

If you’re at the heart of an ethnic community with an existent community of adherents to pressure politicians, it is fairly easy to get this approval. If you’re a start-up church for a new denomination, it’s much much harder.

** Prince Charles as future head of the Church of England wants to be “Defender of All Faiths”, not just “Defender of The Faith”. Whether other faiths are happy to be defended by him is far less certain.