Talk:National church

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Hi. Leonard - I'm not reverting the article in bad faith, but I really think that this article doesn't adequately explain what a national church is, and what the difference is between this and an established state religion. I am therefore uncertain as to the legitimacy of placing the Romanian Orthodox Church here. This is because of the following three claims which add ambiguity:

• The head of state is often considered the ceremonial head of the national church while at the same time not endorsing itself as the state religion.
  • This is simply not true for many states mentioned here. In Romania at least, the Orthodox Church does not consider President Traian Băsescu in any way the head of its church, and neither does Băsescu consider himself the leader. In fact, I could confidently say that for the majority of churches mentioned here it is not the case. Only official state, established churches have this. In countries with separation between church and state, the head of state has no religious function.

• The first modern instance of a national church was the establishment of the Church of England
  • Again, this alludes to "establishment". The Church of England is the official church of England. This is not the case for the other churches mentioned here. Why does the article then mention this?

• Your claim in the edit summary that "this article is not about STATE OFFICIAL church, but about churches that claim territorial canonicity over any nationality."
  • Now I'm getting it more, but do you have any evidence that the Romanian Orthodox Church, for example, claims territorial canonicity over the Romanian nation? Just because it's the Church of 88% of Romanians, and most members are Romanian, doesn't mean that it's the "Romanian national church". In a secular country, it shouldn't. Also, just because it has the name "Romanian" in it doesn't mean that it (the church) claims all Romanians must be Orthodox. The Romanian Catholic Church also has that title in it, as does the Romanian Baptist Church, etc. A lot of these churches are independent (as in, run from within Romania), and hence could also be classed as national churches. It's true that most members of the ROrC are Romanian, but does that alone make it a "national" church? Just because most members of Romanian Jehovah's Witnesses are Romanian make it a national church? Personally, I think this article fundamentally is quite POV by mixing religion and nationality (by the word "nation") in states where religion and nationality are quite separate.

Please clarify (and forgive me if I'm not getting the point of your argument until now) Ronline 13:00, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Romanian case: since 1862, with the elaboration of a liturgy in Romanian language by the newly-create authocephalous orthodox metropolitate, the ROC claims the spiritual oversight over the romanian nation. In 1925 the patriarcate was created and was closely linked to the state, after the Communist era, the ROC lost many of its privileges, but gained some support from the Ceaucescu regime. After the redemocratization in the 1990's, there is equallity of religions before the law, but the ROC still reflects its influence on romanian society and claims to be the orthodox national church for romania.

Do you have any sources for this claim? The other thing is that, even if it were that way, the way in which the article is written adds ambiguity and makes the categorization very arbitrary, bordering a bit on original research. I think it's quite a strange thing to make a page of churches which consider themselves as national churches, especially since a lot of churches do, even if they are minor and are not followed by many adherents. The three points above also haven't been addressed fully. Thanks, Ronline 08:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Ronline The article is about national churches (cultual & historically relevant denominations claiming spiritual oversight over a given nationality) and under this context the Romanian Orthodox Church fits as the national church of Romania, since has been present in Romania from a long time and makes an cultural imprint on the Romanian identity. This is NOT about ESTABLISHED or STATE churches, notice most of countries of this list are secular (would be a heresy to say that the Episcopal Church or the Orthodox Church is the State church of USA).--Leonardo Alves 23:36, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I understand what the article is about. But, the Romanian Orthodox Church itself stopped claiming it was the national church of Romania in 2004. See this article in Romanian, which starts with "The Romanian Orthodox Church is willing to drop its own [sintagma] as "the National Church" of Romania..." Romania, officially, has no national church, and unofficially, the ROC doesn't claim any pastoral jurisdiction over the entire Romanian nation anymore. This statement also makes things confusing - "Sometimes the head of state is considered the ceremonial head of the national church, while at the same time not endorsing itself as the state religion." Overall, I feel the whole notion of this article is a bit POV, because it suggests that somehow nationality and religion are intrinsically linked - i.e. certain nations have certain "national religions" which I don't think applies anymore. It sort of borders on saying that "if you're Romanian, then you must be Romanian Orthodox" or "Orthodoxism is a part of the Romanian national identity", all of which are POV statements. The fact that the ROC is influential is another issue - many other NGOs (and religions, for that matter) are also influential, but they don't receive this status of national church :) Therefore, if we're talking solely about which institutions see themselves as national churches, it's different, but I think the list would be considerably reduced. Ronline 04:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

This article is a bit hard to follow generally, and I'm not quite sure whether it makes any sense to claim that non-established churches have any sort of national status, but there are two things that seem utterly ridiculous:

• Firstly, several churches (the Gallican Church in France and the Celtic Church in Ireland at first glance, but there may be others) don't even exist any longer, having been absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church;
• Secondly, many of the churches listed as national, notably the various members of the Union of Utrecht and the unions of moderate Protestant denominations in Commonwealth countries, embrace only a small proportion of believers in their respective countries - most especially the Polish National Catholic Church, which does not even exist in Poland herself.

I think that this whole article, while presenting an interesting topic that is deserving of further study, suffers severe problems and needs an all-over rethink. I'm certainly not qualified to carry out such a task myself, so - any ideas?

Also the Church of Scotland has a legal status as "the National Church". It is established in law (as is the Church of England) but that establishment in law is specific protections against state interference. The Church of Scotland is therefore both 'established' and 'free'.

[edit] Independent?

I'd never heard the term 'independent church' applied to a state/national church. In my mind, their are mainline churches (of which state/national churches generally form a part of), then there are other denominations (baptists, etc.) then there are independents (those not affiliated with any specific denomination).

I find it odd that 'independent church' points to this page, when for me, the two are opposites. Natebailey 11:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)