scholarly journals About Christian Ethics at School

2005 ◽  
pp. 226-229
Author(s):  
Ye. Sverstyuk

The constitutional provision for the separation of the Church and the State has been in existence for over 200 years. They are now referring to it, no longer remembering how it came about. The fact is that the French Revolution of 1789 was anti-feudal and anticlerical. It separated the affairs of the state from the ecclesiastical so that bishops and cardinals would govern the Church, not the state. The 1917 revolution in Russia also tore the triumvirate of "statehood, orthodoxy, nationality." The state and the Church should have existed separately. The Bolsheviks rejected the old state and the Church, but in their legislation in 1919 the Decree recorded the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church. Because they disregarded law, morality and religion and absolutized the state, the state, and especially its punitive organs, trampled on morality, ethics, religion, clergy and their defenders ...

Author(s):  
Michael Lauener

Abstract Protection of the church and state stability through the absence of religious 'shallowness': views on religion-policy of Jeremias Gotthelf and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel out of a spirit of reconciliation. The article re-examines a thesis of Paul Baumgartner published in 1945: "Jeremias Gotthelf's, 'Zeitgeist and Bernergeist', A Study on Introduction and Interpretation", that if the Swiss writer and keen Hegel-opponent Jeremias Gotthelf had read any book of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, some of this would have received his recognition. Both Gotthelf and Hegel see the Reformation to be the cause of the emergence of a strong state. For Gotthelf, this marks the beginning of a process of strengthening the state at the expense of the church. Hegel, on the other hand, considers the modern state to be the reality of freedom, produced by the Christian 'religion of freedom' (Rph, §270 Z., p. 430). In contrast to Gotthelf, for whom only Christ can reconcile the state and religion, Hegel praises the French Revolution as "reconciliation of the divine with the world". For Gotthelf, the French Revolution was only a poor imitation of the process of spiritual and political liberation initiated by the Reformation, through which Christ reduced people to their original liberty. Nevertheless, both Gotthelf and Hegel want to protect the state and the church from falling apart, they reject organizational unity of state – religion – church in the sense of a theocracy, and demand the protection of church communities.


Author(s):  
A.A. Kutuzova ◽  

The relations between the church and the state during the revolutionary events in France in the late 18th century were discussed based on the works of Jakov Mikhailovich Zakher (1893–1963), an outstanding Soviet historian. J.M. Zakher’s works cast light on a number of questions: the general position of the church; the frame of people’s mind in the pre-revolutionary period; the emergence and development of the antireligious struggle; the roles played by J. Foucher and A. Schomet, two most prominent public figures of the deсhristianization movement who triggered the most dramatic changes in the spiritual framework of the French society; etc. It was concluded that, despite a whole complex of studies have been performed on the French Revolution, the works of J.M. Zakher provide an important systematic coverage of the state-church relations in France during the 18th century. His legacy clearly preserves the “École russe” traditions, such as thoroughness, scrupulousness and attention to details, as well as the desire to create a vivid and comprehensive picture of the past.


2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-321
Author(s):  
Lode Wils

In het tweede deel van zijn bijdrage 1830: van de Belgische protonatie naar de natiestaat, over de gebeurtenissen van 1830-1831 als slotfase van een passage van de Belgische protonatie doorheen de grote politiek-maatschappelijke en culturele mutaties na de Franse Revolutie, ontwikkelt Lode Wils de stelling dat de periode 1829-1830 de "terminale crisis" vormde van het Koninkrijk der Verenigde Nederlanden. Terwijl koning Willem I definitief had laten verstaan dat hij de ministeriële verantwoordelijkheid definitief afwees en elke kritiek op het regime beschouwde als kritiek op de dynastie, groeide in het Zuiden de synergie in het verzet tussen klerikalen, liberalen en radicale anti-autoritaire groepen. In de vervreemding tussen het Noorden en het Zuiden en de uiteindelijke revolutionaire nationaal-liberale oppositie vanuit het Zuiden, speelde de taalproblematiek een minder belangrijke rol dan het klerikale element en de liberale aversie tegen het vorstelijk absolutisme van Willem I en de aangevoelde uitsluiting van de Belgen uit het openbaar ambt en vooral uit de leiding van de staat.________1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation stateIn the second part of his contribution 1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation state, dealing with the events from 1830-1831 as the concluding phase of a transition of the Belgian pre-nation through the major socio-political and cultural mutations after the French Revolution, Lode Wils develops the thesis that the period of 1829-1830 constituted the "terminal crisis" of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. Whilst King William I had clearly given to understand that he definitively rejected ministerial responsibility and that he considered any criticism of the regime as a criticism of the dynasty, the synergy of resistance increased between the clericalists, liberals and radical anti-authoritarian groups in the South. In the alienation between the North and the South and the ultimate revolutionary national-liberal opposition from the South the language issue played a less important role than the clericalist element and the liberal aversion against the royal absolutism of William I and the sense of exclusion of the Belgians from public office and particularly from the government of the state.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 553-584
Author(s):  
Michał Chaberek

This paper elaborates upon the Catholic Church’s teaching on religious freedom in the period from The French Revolution to The Second Vatican Council. Based on quotations from the original documents, the author presents the evolution of the Church’s position that switched from the initial rejection to the final acceptance of the religious freedom over past two centuries. The fact of this dramatic change begs the question about the continuity of tradition and credibility of the contemporary position of the Church. Based on the document by the International Theological Commission, “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,” as well as the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, the author demonstrates that – in contrast to some contemporary interpretations – the hermeneutics of continuity is possible regarding Church’s teaching on religious freedom.


1933 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Lyttle

Apart from the democratized Catholicism of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 12, 1790) the French Revolution occasioned four phenomena of novel significance: (a) The so-called “Cult of Reason” established in effect though not in name by decree of the Convention in November, 1793; (b) The nationalist Decadal fêtes, provided for that same autumn, when the church calendar was replaced by the republican; (c) the “Cult of the Supreme Being” originating in legislation of May 1794 and culminating in the Fête of the Supreme Being on June 8 following; (d) the Cult of Theophilanthropism whose prayerbook, called a Manuel at first, was composed in the summer of 1796, printed in the fall, adapted to the needs of public worship as well as domestic in December, and actually used in the former way for the first time on January 15, 1797. Following the precedent of the Abbé Grégoire, whose great History of the Sects of the Revolution appeared in 1814, these four phenomena have been classed together, with the obvious implication that all were tarred with the same stick, the ingredients of the tar consisting of infidel fatuity and political chicanery. Such indeed was the general impression that had already been conveyed by the hostile comments of conservative critics outside France. Consequently it became almost a tradition for decades to consider the four phenomena together as brilliant illustrations of the Deistic philosophy of religion, with the overt or implicit suggestion that they stand as incontrovertible proof of the infatuation of radical doctrinaires and of their folly in supposing that the religious impulse could be suffocated, or that its forms of expression nonchalantly improvised, or its nature changed from that of faith, mystery and revelation to that of reason and morality. Only recently have the researches of Aulard, Mathiez and others served to set before us accurate pictures of the actual ceremonies of these novel cults, as well as careful analyses of the sources and motives of their inception. These researches and revaluations justify a review of the traditional conceptions. Omitting the nationalistic Decadal fêtes as purely secular, our study will be devoted to the Cults of Reason, of the Supreme Being and of Theophilanthropism.


1985 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Allen

Most historians of the French Revolution accept the now familiar contention that village curés and vicaires sided with the Third Estate in 1789, presumably out of class solidarity born of common origins and personal contact with the sad lot of ordinary people. Historians also agree that most of these “patriot” curiés (as those who supported reforms and the Third Estate in 1789 called themselves) later deserted the Revolution once it became clear that what the Third had in mind included sweeping restraints on the once vaunted power and property of the church and on the spiritual autonomy and authority of the French clergy.


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