French & English

An established religion is a religion under the especial protection of the Government, and which is held to be national, at least in this sense, that it represents the nation before the throne of God.

There are, however, very different degrees of nationality in the religions themselves. Thus, to establish our first comparison between France and England, there is no religion whatever in France which is so national as the Anglican Church.

The clergy of the Church of England are in all things subject to the Queen, or to speak more accurately to Parliament. The bishops have exactly that degree of authority in their dioceses which Parliament allows them, and no more. Even in matters of doctrine and ritual the clergy are subject to the secular power. They are so entirely national that outside of the nation they have no earthly protector to appeal to. They might be despoiled of their possessions and privileges without calling forth so much as a remonstrance from any foreign potentate, and without arousing the slightest sympathy outside of the Anglo-Saxon race. They have a beautiful liturgy, but it is in English, and appreciated only by English readers. On the continent the Church of England wins hardly any proselytes, and can scarcely be said to exist except for British embassies and tourists.

No institution can be more intensely national than the Church of England. She is national by the very qualities that have made her unsuccessful abroad. She is national because she answers so exactly to the character and disposition of Englishmen, and particularly of Englishwomen. It is as fitting that she should be the established Church, so long as any established religion is held to be necessary, as it is that the national customs in food and dress should be the national customs.

In France we find no Church whatever that has this decided and peculiar character of nationality. France is said to be Catholic in the sense that the majority of the people profess the Roman Catholic religion, and it certainly does appear that this faith answers more nearly to the wants of French people than any other. Still, the French clergy is not national, it is international, it is nearer to the Roman Catholic priesthoods of Spain and Austria than it is to the French laity. Its head is not a Frenchman living in France but an Italian living in Italy, and its liturgy is in a foreign tongue. It accepts all Papal decisions, and it does not accept the decisions of the French Government. It looks with reverence to the Vatican, and without reverence to the Palais Bourbon and Elysée. Even in the use of words it follows a foreign authority. The French Government has recognised the kingdom of Italy, and has an ambassador at the court of Rome. The pope has not recognised the King of Italy, but calls him the King of Piedmont. Less French than ultramontane, the clergy speak of the Italian Government as “le gouvernement Piedmontais.”

Another most essential difference between Great Britain and France with regard to State establishments of religion is that, although the British Government may have one establishment in one of the countries under its control and another in another country, it does not establish more than a single form of religion in the same place. Thus Anglicanism may be established in England and Presbyterianism in Scotland, whilst some politicians would have consented to the establishment of Roman Catholicism in Ireland; but no British statesman whatever would think of establishing the three religions together in all parts of the United Kingdom.

In France we find co-establishment, which is quite unknown in England. In France there are four State religions all established together, their ministers being paid by the State.

The change from a monarchical to a republican form of government has an influence on national religion in this way. In a monarchy the faith of the royal family is in a certain sense national even though there may be other faiths amongst the people, for when the sovereign prays for the nation he is, in a peculiar sense, its religious representative. This idea of the king representing the nation before the throne of God has come down to us from the most remote antiquity, and is as natural and inevitable as the leadership of the father of a family in domestic worship. It follows from this that the religion of the king is in a special sense the national religion, even though others may be protected by the State, and, so long as the English monarchy shall endure, the religion professed by the monarch can never be a matter of indifference.

In France the monarchy is at an end, and a republic has taken its place with a chief magistrate, who is a mere temporary official, who is not obliged to profess any religion whatever, and who has nothing august or sacred in his position like a Sovereign crowned and consecrated at Westminster or Rheims. To whom then are we to look as the religious representative of the nation? To the Archbishop of Paris? He is but the chief priest of one established religion out of four. To the minister of public worship? He has no religious function and is only an administrator. To the presidents of the Senate or the Chamber? They never, on the most important occasions, say any public prayers.

France, then, is a country where four religions are established in the sense of being protected and paid by the State, but not one of them is peculiarly the French religion as Anglicanism is the English religion.

The truth is that co-establishment is clear evidence of indifference on the part of the legislator. In this respect it is almost as significant as the separation of Church and State, and is indeed accepted as an alternative to that radical measure. Both are suggested by the desire for equality, which may be attained either by disestablishing the dominant creed, or by establishing the creeds of minorities, and this could be done in France more easily than in England, because the minor sects were few. By paying the ministers of two Protestant sects, and also the Jewish rabbis, the French legislator was able to satisfy nearly all his countrymen who do not belong to the Church of Rome. The priests of other religions would be paid, on the same principle, if their services were called for. In the lyceum at Marseilles a Pope of the Greek Church is paid as a chaplain along with the Catholic aumônier.

This solution of the difficulty has been found to answer in practice in our time, though it is not likely to be permanent. All thinking Frenchmen are aware that it contains a contradiction which is this. The State pays Catholic priests for affirming the real presence, and then pays Protestant ministers for denying it. The State pays Catholic and Protestant for declaring that Christ was God, and then pays Jews for saying that he was not God.

To this a French statesman would probably reply that from the lay point of view this is the wisest policy. He would say, “It is lucky that we have got the Protestants and the Jews as a perceptible counter-weight to the Catholics, and one can only regret that they are not more numerous. We do not want a single overwhelmingly powerful priesthood. The ideal state of things would be half a dozen sects of nearly equal strength, either paid alike or without endowment.” In a word, the French policy in religious matters approaches very nearly to a neutral policy.

Is there anything resembling this neutrality in Great Britain? The answer is that the English have not exactly the same thing, but they have another thing that is not wholly unlike it. English statesmen, as we have already seen, will not establish contradictory religions within the limits of England itself, but they do not object to patronise and encourage the most opposite faiths in different parts of the Empire. In this sense the English Government comes near to a certain kind of neutrality, and it is on the whole a very tolerant Government, even towards small religious minorities that it does not directly patronise. The Unitarians, for example, though not paid by the State, are never molested now.

When statesmen reach this degree of impartiality, it becomes a question whether the same impartiality might not be equally well expressed by simply protecting every one in the exercise of his own religion, without payment or direct patronage of any kind. In Russia a State Church is evidently a natural institution. The religion of the Czar must be the true religion for the peasant, who is not to suppose that the Czar can be wrong in so important a matter; but with the non-religious character of the French Government and the tolerant character of the English, the idea gains ground that the duty of the State to all creeds is simply protection, and no more. This opens the question of disestablishment, which will be briefly examined in the following chapter.