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Thursday October 25, 2007

Leaders of the Latin Protestant federations analyze the relationships with the state

Manuel López, MADRID, España, October 23, 2006

Through the initiative of the Spanish Federation of Evangelical Religious Organizations (FEREDE), the gathering took Taxi Heathrow Airport place last week on the campus of the Charles III University in Colmenarejo, as part of the commemoration celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Evangelical Defense Commission.

Attending were Mariano Blázquez, Executive Secretary of FEREDE; Jean-Arnold de Clermond, President of the Protestant Federation of France; Giani Long, President of the Federation of Evangelical Churches of Italy (FCEI); Renato Maiocchi, Secretary Emeritus of FCEI; José María Contreras, Director of the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation, along with a small group of Spanish Protestant leaders, both men and women, pastors and lay persons.

The purpose of the dialogue was to reflect on the economic relations between the government administrations and Protestant religious confessions in Italy, France and Spain, from legal, historical, theological and socio-religious perspectives.

With the common denominator of the predominance of a sociological Catholicism, the three Latin countries in reference have developed different models for relations between the government administrations and minority religious confessions. 

Since 1905, the state in France is a lay state, and all religious confessions, including the Roman Catholic, have to adhere to the same statutes that establish the principle of religion as being a person’s private matter. Because of that the state does not finance the worship of any single religious confession, even though it is responsible for the financial support of military chaplains and the religious care offered in prisons. As nobody can ignore, the French experience is a model in Europe of what a lay state can best be.

In Italy, a country with a state – the Vatican - within a state, there is access to public funds, both for social action and cultural programs, as well as for the financing of the worship and clergy of those religious bodies that have previously subscribed to agreements for cooperation with the state. Within the Protestant sphere, the three most important historic denominations have different positions: the Lutherans accept all the provisions for  subsidizing; the Waldensians only those that do not entail discrimination against other religious or social groups; while the Baptists, by a difference of one vote, reject any kind of state subsidization. 

In Spain, the 1978 Constitution, which is in the process of being modified, makes a distinction between the Catholic Church, which it simple refers to by its name, and “the other religious confessions.” The recently formed government Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation seeks to lessen the discrimination that Protestants, Jews and Muslims have been subject to, through an annual three million Euro budget for the financing of cultural, formation and social integration action. 

The progressive involvement of denominational groups, churches and Evangelical organizations, as well as that of Protestant spheres within the civil society, in programs of a cultural, formative and social integration nature, is being increasingly welcomed among the Spanish people. Alongside the consistency of the programs, the following of the strictest Protestant ethic in the administering of public funds is the solid basis of the Evangelical cultural and social help programs.