The new “Law on the Right to Freedom of Conscience and Religion, and on Churches, Religions and Religious Communities” was enacted July 12 with backing from Hungary’s governing center-right Fidesz party.
Under the law, only 14 of 358 registered churches and religious associations will be granted legal recognition, while others will have to reapply for legal registration after two-thirds approval in parliament.
I suppose that if a church can still register as a nonprofit, official recognition hardly matters, but the precedents that immediately sprang to my mind were Russia, China and Eritrea.
Does Hungary really want to be in such [i]august[/i] company?
I suppose the question is, does Hungary want to be part of the European Union, or to sink into conducting itself like the eccentric and oppressive former Soviet republics to the East?
Not encouraging at all.
These items reinforce the wisdom of America’s virtually complete divide between church and government. Most of Europe has some degree of debris from the state church era. Finding a rational middle ground is impossible. Just keep these spheres separate. It protects the Church and it protects the state.
[3] NoVA Scout [blockquote] It protects the Church and it protects the state. [/blockquote] The state doesn’t need protection from the church. Nothing in the First Amendment was intended to protect the state from the church.
carl
Yes, Carl. But it has that beneficial effect. Certainly, however, the primary purpose and benefit of the American system is to protect the Church from entanglement with, influence over and corruption by secular governmental concerns.
I had my first cup of coffee after that last comment, Carl, and realized I was probably being sloppily agreeable. Your point is a good one, but, on more alert reflection, it’s clear to me that the Founders were indeed equally concerned with keeping the government apart from church involvement and interference. The protections work in both directions – the individual is spared government imposition of religious doctrine and a thousand church flowers can bloom free of the shadow (however heavy or enlightened) of an established church. But the discussions of the times and the structure of the Constitution also strike me as reflecting a view that the Founders were wary of state intertwining with religious affairs because they thought that a better form of government than that which they witnessed in Europe, where lines were blurred or non-existent. This goes beyond the First Amendment, e.g., the Constitutional ban on religious tests for office. These guys were Enlightenment types and they had a chance to put their ideas into practice.
The post illustrates the problem even in modern times.
While it’s hard to imagine the state requiring protection from the church in a contemporary context, there was an ongoing debate during the 19th Century along precisely these lines. Its targets included not only an amorphous ‘Catholic’ threat to civil institutions, but lingering Congregationalist establishments in Connecticut and Massachusetts (the latter not done away with until 1833) and, of course, the theocracy that was Mormon Utah.
While Carl is right to say that the First Amendment could not redress any of these state-level problems (if indeed they were problems), it does not follow that many Americans did not view such phenomena as contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment.
While in America, Bonhoffer observed that the separation did not protect the church from secularization as we have come to see.
Only the Church and its members can protect themselves from secularization in a culture such as this, Pb. Closer structural alliance with the Government would serve no purpose.