Dr Paul Allen

Every year, substantial sums of money are allocated to the two major Christian churches in Germany. Last year, they received more than €600 million ($645 million) in state funding, in addition to the billions in church tax that the clergy receive. Understanding why huge state allowances go to the  Catholic  and  Protestant  Church takes us back more than two centuries to the 20 years of Napoleon's occupation of Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. After defeating what was then the first German Reich, the French ruler ordered a far-reaching separation of church and state, including the closure and expropriation of monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions. A law dating back to 1803, known as the "Reichsdeputationshauptschluss" — often referred to in English as the Imperial Recess of 1803 — compelled the churches to cede money and land to often neighbouring secular principalities. As a form of compensation, they agreed to pay the salarie...

The New Testament gives us some broad principles on how we are supposed to respond to government. For example, Romans 13 elaborates on the origin and institution of government as something that God ordains. The great theologian Augustine said that government is a necessary evil, that it is necessary because of evil. And most theologians in the history of the church have said that human evil is the reason even corrupt government is better than no government at all. The function of government is to restrain evil and to maintain, uphold, and protect the sanctity of life and of property. Given this function, the Christian understands that government is ordained of God, and so Christians, first of all, are called to respect whatever it is that God institutes and ordains. For God's sake we are called to be model citizens.  For God's sake we are called to be model citizens. We are told to bend over backwards to honor the king or be obedient to the civil magistrates. That doesn...