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A national church is a
Christian church In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a synonym fo ...
associated with a specific
ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
or
nation state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may ...
. The idea was notably discussed during the
19th century The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolish ...
, during the emergence of modern
nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lak ...
, in a draft discussing the question of
church 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 stat ...
around 1828 wrote that :"a National Church might exist, and has existed, without
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global popula ...
, because before the institution of the ''Christian'' Church - as ..the Levitical Church in the Hebrew Constitution, ndthe Druidical in the Celtic, would suffice to prove".
John Wordsworth John Wordsworth (1843–1911) was an English Anglican bishop and classical scholar. He was Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1883 to 1885, and Bishop of Salisbury from 1885 to 1911. Life ...
, Bishop of Salisbury, wrote about the National Church of Sweden in 1911, interpreting the
Church of Sweden The Church of Sweden ( sv, Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.6 million members at year end 2021, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sw ...
and the
Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...
as national churches of the Swedish and the English peoples, respectively. The concept of a national church remains alive in the Protestantism of United Kingdom and Scandinavia in particular. While, in a context of England, the national church remains a common denominator for the Church of England, some of the Lutheran "folk churches" of Scandinavia, characterized as national churches in the ethnic sense as opposed to the idea of a state church, emerged in the second half of the 19th century following the lead of
Grundtvig Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (; 8 September 1783 – 2 September 1872), most often referred to as N. F. S. Grundtvig, was a Danish pastor, author, poet, philosopher, historian, teacher and politician. He was one of the most influential peo ...
. However, in countries in which the state church (also known as the established church) has the following of the majority of citizens, the state church may also be the national church, and may be declared as such by the government, e.g. Church of Denmark,
Church of Greece The Church of Greece ( el, Ἐκκλησία τῆς Ἑλλάδος, Ekklēsía tē̂s Helládos, ), part of the wider Greek Orthodox Church, is one of the autocephalous churches which make up the communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It ...
, and Church of Iceland.


Countries and regions with national churches


Ethnic groups


Criticism

Karl Barth Karl Barth (; ; – ) was a Swiss Calvinist theologian. Barth is best known for his commentary '' The Epistle to the Romans'', his involvement in the Confessing Church, including his authorship (except for a single phrase) of the Barmen Declar ...
denounced as heretical the tendency of "nationalizing" the Christian God, especially in the context of national churches sanctioning warfare against other Christian nations during
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
.Barth, ''Ethnics'', ed. Braun, transl. Bromiley, New York, 1981, p. 305.


See also

*
Christian nationalism Christian nationalism is Christianity-affiliated religious nationalism. Christian nationalists primarily focus on internal politics, such as passing laws that reflect their view of Christianity and its role in political and social life. In coun ...
*
Christian amendment Christian amendment describes any of several attempts to amend a country's constitution in order to officially make it a Christian state. In the United States, the most significant attempt to amend the United States Constitution by inserting ex ...
* Christian right * Christian state *
Phyletism Phyletism or ethnophyletism (from Greek ἔθνος ''ethnos'' "nation" and φυλετισμός ''phyletismos'' "tribalism") is the principle of nationalities applied in the ecclesiastical domain: in other words, the conflation between church and ...
*
State church A state religion (also called religious state or official religion) is a religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state. A state with an official religion (also known as confessional state), while not secular, is not necessarily a t ...


Notes


References

* William Reed Huntington, ''A National Church'', Bedell lectures, Scribner's, 1897. {{DEFAULTSORT:National Church Types of Christian organization Christian terminology
Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chri ...
Anglicanism Catholicism and politics Lutheranism Eastern Orthodox Church Oriental Orthodoxy