Separation Of Mosque And State

The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state (with or without legally explicit church-state separation) and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state. Although the concept is older, the exact phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from "wall of separation between church and state", a term coined by Thomas Jefferson. The concept was promoted by Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke.

In a society, the degree of political separation between the church and the civil state is determined by the legal structures and prevalent legal views that define the proper relationship between organized religion and the state. The arm's length principle proposes a relationship wherein the two political entities interact as organizations each independent of the authority of the other. The strict application of the secular principle of ''laïcité'' is used in France, while secular societies such as Norway, Denmark, and England maintain a form of constitutional recognition of an official state religion.

The philosophy of the separation of the church from the civil state parallels the philosophies of secularism, disestablishmentarianism, religious liberty, and religious pluralism. By way of these philosophies, the European states assumed some of the social roles of the church and the welfare state, a social shift that produced a culturally secular population and public sphere. In practice, church–state separation varies from total separation, mandated by the country's political constitution, as in India and Singapore, to a state religion, as in the Maldives.

History of the concept and term

Late antiquity

An important contributor to the discussion concerning the proper relationship between Church and state was St. Augustine, who in ''The City of God'', Book XIX, Chapter 17, examined the ideal relationship between the "earthly city" and the "city of God". In this work, Augustine posited that major points of overlap were to be found between the "earthly city" and the "city of God", especially as people need to live together and get along on earth. Thus, Augustine held that it was the work of the "temporal city" to make it possible for a "heavenly city" to be established on earth.

Medieval Europe

For centuries, monarchs ruled by the idea of divine right. Sometimes this began to be used by a monarch to support the notion that the king ruled both his own kingdom and Church within its boundaries, a theory known as caesaropapism. On the other side was the Catholic doctrine that the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ on earth, should have the ultimate authority over the Church, and indirectly over the state, with the forged Donation of Constantine used to justify and assert the political authority of the papacy.Vauchez, Andre (2001). ''Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages''. Routledge. p. 445. . This divine authority was explicitly contested by Kings, in the like of the, 1164, Constitutions of Clarendon, which asserted the supremacy of Royal courts over Clerical, and with Clergy subject to prosecution, as any other subject of the English Crown; or the 1215 Magna Carta that asserted the supremacy of Parliament and juries over the English Crown; both were condemned by the Vatican. Moreover, throughout the Middle Ages, the Pope claimed the right to depose the Catholic kings of Western Europe and tried to exercise it, sometimes successfully, eg. 1066, Harold Godwinson, sometimes not, e.g., in 1305 with Robert the Bruce of Scotland, and later Henry VIII of England and Henry III of Navarre.

In the West the issue of the separation of church and state during the medieval period centered on monarchs who ruled in the secular sphere but encroached on the Church's rule of the spiritual sphere. This unresolved contradiction in ultimate control of the Church led to power struggles and crises of leadership, notably in the Investiture Controversy, which was resolved in the Concordat of Worms in 1122. By this concordat, the Emperor renounced the right to invest ecclesiastics with ring and crosier, the symbols of their spiritual power, and guaranteed election by the canons of cathedral or abbey and free consecration.

Reformation

At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther articulated a doctrine of the two kingdoms. According to James Madison, perhaps one of the most important modern proponents of the separation of church and state, Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms marked the beginning of the modern conception of separation of church and state.

Those of the Radical Reformation (the Anabaptists) took Luther's ideas in new directions, most notably in the writings of Michael Sattler (1490–1527), who agreed with Luther that there were two kingdoms, but differed in arguing that these two kingdoms should be separate, and hence baptized believers should not vote, serve in public office or participate in any other way with the "kingdom of the world". While there was a diversity of views in the early days of the Radical Reformation, in time Sattler's perspective became the normative position for most Anabaptists in the coming centuries. Anabaptists came to teach that religion should never be compelled by state power, approaching the issue of church-state relations primarily from the position of protecting the church from the state.

In 1534, Henry VIII, angered by the Pope Clement VII's refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, decided to break with the Church and set himself as ruler of the Church of England, unifying the feudal Clerical and Crown hierarchies under a single monarchy. With periodic intermission, under Mary, Oliver Cromwell, and James II, the monarchs of Great Britain have retained ecclesiastical authority in the Church of England, since 1534, having the current title, ''Supreme Governor of the Church of England''. The 1654 settlement, under Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth of England, temporarily replaced Bishops and Clerical courts, with a Commission of Triers, and juries of Ejectors, to appoint and punish clergy in the English Commonwealth, later extended to cover Scotland. Penal Laws requiring ministers, and public officials to swear oaths and follow the Established faith, were disenfranchised, fined, imprisoned, or executed, for not conforming.

One of the results of the persecution in England was that some people fled Great Britain to be able to worship as they wished. After the American Colonies revolted against George III of the United Kingdom, the Constitution of United States was amended to ban the establishment of religion by Congress.

John Locke and the Enlightenment

The concept of separating church and state is often credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704).Feldman, Noah (2005). ''Divided by God''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 29 ("It took John Locke to translate the demand for liberty of conscience into a systematic argument for distinguishing the realm of government from the realm of religion.") Roger Williams was first in his 1636 writing of "Soul Liberty" where he coined the term "liberty of conscience". Locke would expand on this. According to his principle of the social contract, Locke argued that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he argued must therefore remain protected from any government authority. These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with his social contract, became particularly influential in the American colonies and the drafting of the United States Constitution.

In his ''A Letter Concerning Toleration'', in which Locke also defended religious toleration among different Christian sects, Locke argued that ecclesiastical authority had to be distinct from the authority of the state, or "the magistrate". Locke reasoned that, because a church was a voluntary community of members, its authority could not extend to matters of state. He writes:

At the same period of the 17th century, Pierre Bayle and some fideists were forerunners of the separation of Church and State, maintaining that faith was independent of reason. During the 18th century, the ideas of Locke and Bayle, in particular the separation of Church and State, became more common, promoted by the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. Montesquieu already wrote in 1721 about religious tolerance and a degree of separation between religion and government. Voltaire defended some level of separation but ultimately subordinated the Church to the needs of the State while Denis Diderot, for instance, was a partisan of a strict separation of Church and State, saying "''the distance between the throne and the altar can never be too great''".

Jefferson and the Bill of Rights

In English, the exact term is an offshoot of the phrase, "wall of separation between church and state", as written in Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Jefferson was describing to the Baptists that the United States Bill of Rights prevents the establishment of a national church, and in so doing they did not have to fear government interference in their right to expressions of religious conscience. The Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791 as ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, was one of the earliest political expressions of religious freedom. Others were the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, also authored by Jefferson and adopted by Virginia in 1786; and the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1789.

The metaphor "a wall of separation between Church and State" used by Jefferson in the above quoted letter became a part of the First Amendment jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was first used by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in ''Reynolds v. United States'' (1878). American historian George Bancroft was consulted by Waite in the ''Reynolds'' case regarding the views on establishment by the framers of the U.S. constitution. Bancroft advised Waite to consult Jefferson. Waite then discovered the above quoted letter in a library after skimming through the index to Jefferson's collected works according to historian Don Drakeman.

In various countries

Countries have varying degrees of separation between government and religious institutions. Since the 1780s a number of countries have set up explicit barriers between church and state. The degree of actual separation between government and religion or religious institutions varies widely. In some countries the two institutions remain heavily interconnected. There are new conflicts in the post-Communist world.

The many variations on separation can be seen in some countries with high degrees of religious freedom and tolerance combined with strongly secular political cultures which have still maintained state churches or financial ties with certain religious organizations into the 21st century. In England, there is a constitutionally established state religion but other faiths are tolerated. The British monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and 26 bishops (Lords Spiritual) sit in the upper house of government, the House of Lords.

In other kingdoms the head of government or head of state or other high-ranking official figures may be legally required to be a member of a given faith. Powers to appoint high-ranking members of the state churches are also often still vested in the worldly governments. These powers may be slightly anachronistic or superficial, however, and disguise the true level of religious freedom the nation possesses. In the case of Andorra there are two heads of state, neither of them native Andorrans. One is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Seu de Urgell, a town located in northern Spain. He has the title of Episcopalian Coprince (the other Coprince being the French Head of State). Coprinces enjoy political power in terms of law ratification and constitutional court designation, among others.

Australia

The Constitution of Australia prevents the Commonwealth from establishing any religion or requiring a religious test for any office:

The language is derived from the United States' constitution, but has been altered. Following the usual practice of the High Court, it has been interpreted far more narrowly than the equivalent US sections and no law has ever been struck down for contravening the section. Today, the Commonwealth Government provides broad-based funding to religious schools. The Commonwealth used to fund religious chaplains, but the High Court in ''Williams v Commonwealth'' found the funding agreement invalid under Section 61. However, the High Court found that Section 116 had no relevance, as the chaplains themselves did not hold office under the Commonwealth. All Australian parliaments are opened with a Christian prayer, and the preamble to the Australian Constitution refers to "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God".

Although the Australian monarch is Charles III, also British monarch and Governor of the Church of England, his Australian title is unrelated to his religious office and he has no role in the Anglican Church of Australia. The prohibition against religious tests has allowed former Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth to be appointed Governor-General of Australia

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