Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity: Canada Between Europe and America

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939–1970: A People
Transformed, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian
Entrepreneurship and Politics, and Remembering Saskatchewan:

Relations between religious organizations and government agencies have
been the subject of much controversy. A constitutional union between
church and state, as for example in the Holy Roman Empire, was fraught
with many bitter disputes between emperors and popes. But a strict
constitutional separation, as for example in post-revolutionary France
and America, also left much room for controversy regarding respective
responsibilities of religious and political leaders. Those
relationships, moreover, changed dramatically in modern times with the
rise of liberal democratic ideas, industrialization, urbanization, new
technological innovations, and increased confidence in the idea of
continuous human progress.

Traditional interpretations of modern church–state relations have
emphasized the reduced role of the churches and the increased
involvement of government agencies in many charitable, educational,
health-care, and other social programs. Reduced church attendance and
more individualistic “smorgasbord” or “pick-and-mix” practices
of many believers, as well as the increased religious diversity in
Canada due to non-Christian immigration, have been studied extensively
by historians, social scientists, and philosophers. But the 15 essays in
this volume question some of the traditional interpretations. Many base
their findings on a major survey on God and Society in North America,
conducted by the Angus Reid organization in 1996.

Several authors point out that while church attendance and membership
in the mainline churches has declined, the number of respondents who
claim strong religious beliefs remains surprisingly high. Increased
secularization does not explain that phenomenon. And many of those
holding strong religious beliefs without equally strong commitments to
institutional churches have become politically active, either as
advocates of government-sponsored social gospel programs or as
supporters of various Christian right-wing organizations. At the same
time, the allegedly increased influence of the state in matters where
the churches once dominated is being seriously eroded by the rapidly
growing power of transnational corporations and other forces of
globalization. That raises serious doubts about explanations that rely
on secularization as the master narrative of church–state relations.

Historically church–state relations in Canada have been less clearly
defined than in the United States or most European countries. Thus,
while the articles in Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity focus on
the Canadian experience, they include interesting comparisons with the
situation in the United States and Europe. The curious and uneven nature
of what one author calls “the career of God in the Canadian
constitution,” coupled with the fact that Canadian evangelicals appear
to hold very similar religious beliefs to their American coreligionists
but behave politically in a more tolerant and less aggressive manner,
makes for interesting and thought-provoking reading. In this book,
traditional institutional approaches focusing on the separation or
distinct responsibilities of church and state in Canada, the United
States, and Europe are challenged in favor of more fluid
interpretations.