This chapter examines the evolution of church-state relations in Christian-majority countries of the Western and post-communist blocs from 1990 to 2023 using the Religion and State round 4 (RAS4) dataset. It focuses on four interrelated dimensions of church-state relations: government religious support (GRS), governmental religious regulation of the majority religion (GRR), governmental religious discrimination (GRD) and societal religious discrimination (SRD), and shows the gap between normatively professed democratic values and practice. We find a clear increase across all four dimensions of church-state relations, a trend that varies significantly if controlled by majority religion. Orthodox-majority countries display the highest level of GRS, GRR, and GRD, thus showing the importance of historical legacies and distinctive political and theological understanding of church-state relations. Catholic and Protestant-majority countries exhibit lower levels overall, indicating the importance of transnational religious structures in Catholicism, and the historically embedded separationist tradition in Protestantism. We found the highest level of GRD in Orthodox-majority countries, but also a clear increase in SRD across all three majority religions.

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Return of the King. The Evolution of Church-State Relations in Christian-Majority Western and Post-Communist countries, 1990 to 2023

  • Marko Veković,
  • Jonathan Fox,
  • Ariel Zellman

摘要

This chapter examines the evolution of church-state relations in Christian-majority countries of the Western and post-communist blocs from 1990 to 2023 using the Religion and State round 4 (RAS4) dataset. It focuses on four interrelated dimensions of church-state relations: government religious support (GRS), governmental religious regulation of the majority religion (GRR), governmental religious discrimination (GRD) and societal religious discrimination (SRD), and shows the gap between normatively professed democratic values and practice. We find a clear increase across all four dimensions of church-state relations, a trend that varies significantly if controlled by majority religion. Orthodox-majority countries display the highest level of GRS, GRR, and GRD, thus showing the importance of historical legacies and distinctive political and theological understanding of church-state relations. Catholic and Protestant-majority countries exhibit lower levels overall, indicating the importance of transnational religious structures in Catholicism, and the historically embedded separationist tradition in Protestantism. We found the highest level of GRD in Orthodox-majority countries, but also a clear increase in SRD across all three majority religions.