State Church
State churches are organizational bodies within a Christian denomination which are given official status or operated by a state.
State churches are not necessarily national churches in the ethnic sense of the term, but the two concepts may overlap in the case of a nation state where the state boundary largely corresponds to the distribution of a single ethnic group to which a certain denomination is attached as an aspect of ethnic identity. State churches, by contrast, may also be minority denominations which are given political recognition by the state.
Read more about State Church: Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Tuvalu, United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words state and/or church:
“Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)
“If Jesus, or his likeness, should now visit the earth, what church of the many which now go by his name would he enter? Or, if tempted by curiosity, he should incline to look into all, which do you think would not shut the door in his face?... It seems to me ... that as one who loved peace, taught industry, equality, union, and love, one towards another, Jesus were he alive at this day, would recommend you to come out of your churches of faith, and to gather into schools of knowledge.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)