Lausanne World Pulse – The Dilemma of State Church Structures in Europe
By Knud Jørgensen
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How important is religion to people in Europe? In Muslim nations, about ninety percent declare that religion “plays a very important role” in their lives, while the United States figure in 2002 was about sixty percent. The average figure in 2002 for Europeans was twenty-one percent, with national variations (Italy, twenty-seven percent; Germany, twenty-one percent; France, eleven percent). A survey of British respondents in 2004 found only forty-four percent professed a belief in God; thirty-five percent did not believe in God.
The Dramatic Decline of Churchgoers in Europe
European levels of church attendance are deteriorating. Forty percent of Americans visit a place of worship weekly, compared with less than twenty percent in most of Europe. The British attendance figure is fifteen percent, with twelve percent in Germany and less than five percent in Scandinavia—and these figures include attendance at any place of worship, whether church, mosque or synagogue. Between forty and fifty percent in Scandinavia practically never attend a place of worship.
The Evangelical Church in Germany, EKD, which includes most Protestants, has lost over half its membership in the past fifty years. Only one million of its twenty-eight million members demonstrate any regular participation.
What are the reasons for this drastic decline? There are a number of reasons, including the effects of the Enlightenment, secularisation and the consumer society. My thesis in this article is, however, that the Constantinian structures of churches in Europe, and particularly in Protestant northern Europe, have played a significant role. I am well aware that formal state churches are rare today and found only in Norway and Finland (and for all practical purposes in Denmark); however, the state church structures have actually, since Constantine in AD 313-325, played an essential role in most of Christendom.
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