What is the status of social/government secularization in your country?

10 comments

1. Denmark is perhaps, the opposite of a secular country.

   In education, Christianity (Evangelical Lutheranism) is given preferential treatment in the religious subject in primary school; the state church/national church and the national educational system cooperates to incorporate confirmation preparation with school hours.

   Legally speaking, Evangelical Lutheranism is enshrined in the constitution, as the “People’s Church,” and is given treatment as such, given preferential treatment over other religious communities, and supported both by a church-tax (which is only for members of the congregation,) and is supported financially by the state, in the wider state budget, with money from taxes paid by everybody.

   In politics, social democratic, liberal, and conservative politicians alike, continually have stressed that “Denmark is Christian country,” as a pretense for making harsh and xenophobic policy, aimed at particularly the Muslim minority.

   I’m a socialist, communist, call me whatever, so ofc. I continually push for furthering secularism.

2. Denmark is legally a Christian country with a state religion and the head of state being the head of faith. But (and I know the other Dane in the comments will disagree vehemently with me on this) society itself is largely secular. Religion is considered a private matter, and, with the exception of the sadly unavoidable xenophobic minority, no one will care if or what you believe.

   While I believe church and state should be entirely separate and that we shouldn’t have state religion, most people don’t care much one way or the other, because we don’t feel its presence in our daily life

3. 90% of primary schools in Ireland are state funded but Catholic Church controlled, our Parliament starts every sitting with a prayer and a lot of hospitals and healthcare services are church owned and or controlled via Catholic charitable organisations. Our constitution also has religious references.

4. On paper, Hungary was fully secular until the early 2010s, when Fidesz politician József Szájer (who was caught running from a gay orgy in Brussels with a bag full of cocaine during the COVID lockdown) wrote a new constitution that gives a prominient role to Christianity and Christian Values in Hungary, while Hungary is the 3rd least religious former East Bloc nation after the Czech Republic and Estonia, and religiousity keeps declining with every census taken.

   The constitution also started limiting religious freedom by redefining what religious organizations can be considered churches in the country. For example, the Hungarian Witch Alliance, a Neo-pagan church combining Celtic and Hungarian folk practices around witchcraft has been around since the 1980s, and became a church legally when communism fell in 1990. Now it again became just a “religious organization” with the new constitution. Also, attending either a Religion or Ethics class became mandatory in primary and middle schools in the early 2010s.

   Even back in the 90s and 2000s, when there was no mention of religion in the constitution the State generally gave large amounts of money to the most prominient Churches in the country (Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran), and this continues to this day.

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   What I would like is more secularization: Complete freedom of religion like in America, no mention of religion in the constitution, completely stopping the state support of Churches, and completely removing religion from State-owned schools.

5. It has a special relation with the Catholic church, for historical and societal reasons, but mainly in relation to the Vatican, holy orders, and a tax that taxpayers can freely say it must go to the church (it’s not automated, you have to go out of your easy way to check it) mostly for charities.

   As the presence of other religions is growing some relation with their authorities is also expanding.

   It mostly keeps out of the church affairs, and keeps the church out of legal affairs.

   However, presence in the country is still prevalent, and Catholic organizations have a big influence in the Conservative party, which pushes for certain laws. But that’s not the church, just the people.

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   In the local level it’s quite different. Not so much in other areas of the country, but in Galicia the territorial organization is based on **church** and **Saint** affiliation. A portion of a valley is consecrated to a Saint, to which several villages are dependent on (come together). This is probably a *translatio* of some old allegiances or heroes from Celtic time, as each Saint precisely corresponds to a prehistoric Iron-Age Celtic hill-fort.

   The church is involved in fairs and celebrations (there are several each day the whole summer around the territory; some 50,000 villages almost each with its own).

   It also organizes charities and activities, all away from public obligation but may be in relation to it. E.g. your kids can attend religious classes in their own school, providing them/you want it, and the church in that place can afford to have someone teach, as the government is not responsible.

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   Some religious days are officially observed as vacation. But that’s out of pragmatism, as people would go regardless, and they are based on older pagan festivities anyways.

6. It’s weird.

   On one hand:

   * The Government officially collects the membership fees of several big churches,
   * many official holidays are religious.
   * Many public services are outsourced to church-owned institutions

   On the other hand:

   * Many Churches are actually more liberal than certain big “religious” parties
   * freedom of religion is pretty well protected in the constitution.
   * Religion in of itself is often more of a lifestyle decision than an actually deep spirituality.

   It’s like the country tried to secularize but got stuck halfway because it did not want to upset too many people.

   Which is a quite German thing to be honest: pay lip-service to those that push for change but implement it in such a way that nothing really has to change.

7. We just elected a government that pledged to secularise the country. But they also just backstabbed the people that want it by blocking abortion from being in the coalition agreement, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Then again, the secularisation *is* in the agreement. But it’s probably not going to be anything major.

8. As far as our constitution goes, Italy is a secular country (article 19).

   > *All shall be entitled to profess their religious beliefs freely in any form, individual or in association, to promote them, and to celebrate their rites in public or in private, provided that they are not offensive to public morality.*

   In practice, not so much, at least institutionally (schools, politics, society). The Catholic Church still holds strong, even if people aren’t going to church that much anymore. We’re more like “traditionally Catholic” rather than actual practicing Catholics. And this is coming from an atheist.

   In Italy there are both public schools and “scuole paritarie” (lit. “parified schools”, funded by the Catholic Church) which are private institutions. There are also Catholic universities and kindergartens, but they’re not state-funded so they’re pretty costly.

   After the 1929’s *Patti Lateranensi* that the Vatican signed with Mussolini, religious education was implemented as a compulsory subject in public Italian schools. Usually it’s 1 hour a week, where you’re supposed to study all existing religions, watch related movies, read articles, debate topics such as abortion, divorce, the LGBT+ community etc. however eventually as the school year progresses it may start to look exactly like Bible school in some cases (not mine, thankfully).

   Non-religious or non-Catholic families can sign an opt-out form at the beginning of each school year, and in that hour the students will follow another allocated teacher to do other activities or do homework on their own.

   I’m not exactly fond of this system (because I never liked seeing my Pakistani friends in elementary school leave the classroom for “religion period”), and I don’t like the way the pope still has a say in everything for some reason.

   We definitely need more secularism.

9. Czech Republic is fully secular, but (there’s always a “but”) the general world view is quite conservative, and thus the church has far bigger punch that it should have judging by the population religiosity.

10. The Church of Sweden got separated from the state in year 2000. The tax authorities still collect their membership fees though and the head of state (King or Queen) still has to be Protestants for some unknown reason?