THE UNITED STATES AND THE BRITISH DOMINIONS Save in Great Britain, there is no established Church through out the English-speaking communities, though the relations of the Churches to the State are everywhere friendly. Bryce's description of the situation in the United States holds good throughout the British Dominions : The legal position of a Christian church is in the United States simply that of a voluntary association, or group of associations, corporate or unincorporate, under the ordinary law. There is no such thing as a special ecclesiastical law ; all questions, not only of property but of church discipline and jurisdiction, are, if brought before the courts of the land, dealt with as questions of contract ; and the court, where it is obliged to examine a question of theology, as for instance whether a clergyman has advanced opinions inconsistent with any creed or formula to which he has bound himself—for it will prefer, if possible, to leave such matters to the proper ecclesiastical authority—will treat the point as one of pure legal interpretation, neither assuming to itself theological knowledge, nor suffering con siderations of policy to intervene.
Religious bodies are in so far the objects of special favour that their property is in most States exempt from taxation ; and this is reconciled to theory by the argument that they are serviceable as moral agencies, and diminish the expense incurred in respect of police administration.
It would perhaps be true to say that there is an informal establishment of Christianity though not of the Churches. It is assumed that society is Christian. Religious acts inaugurate the sessions of the representative assemblies, and no public function would be considered complete without them. Undoubtedly this informal establishment by public opinion and social habit is menaced by the increasing secularisation of society, but it is still strongly entrenched in the public sentiment of all English speaking communities. Establishment in the true sense is limited to England and Scotland, and only in England does it possess any importance, or present any legal and constitutional problems.
(H. H. H.) For special relationships between Church and State in the European countries (anti-clericalism, Kulturkampf), see especially FRANCE: History; GERMANY: History, etc.