Co-establishment in France.
In France we find co-establishment, which is quite unknown in England. In France there are four State religions all established together, their ministers being paid by the State.
Change from Monarchical to Republican form of Government.
A King a Religious Representative.
The change from a monarchical to a republican form of government has an influence on national religion in this way. In a monarchy the faith of the royal family is in a certain sense national even though there may be other faiths amongst the people, for when the sovereign prays for the nation he is, in a peculiar sense, its religious representative. This idea of the king representing the nation before the throne of God has come down to us from the most remote antiquity, and is as natural and inevitable as the leadership of the father of a family in domestic worship. It follows from this that the religion of the king is in a special sense the national religion, even though others may be protected by the State, and, so long as the English monarchy shall endure, the religion professed by the monarch can never be a matter of indifference.
Absence of a National Representative of Religion in the French Republic.
In France the monarchy is at an end, and a republic has taken its place with a chief magistrate, who is a mere temporary official, who is not obliged to profess any religion whatever, and who has nothing august or sacred in his position like a Sovereign crowned and consecrated at Westminster or Rheims. To whom then are we to look as the religious representative of the nation? To the Archbishop of Paris? He is but the chief priest of one established religion out of four. To the minister of public worship? He has no religious function and is only an administrator. To the presidents of the Senate or the Chamber? They never, on the most important occasions, say any public prayers.
France, then, is a country where four religions are established in the sense of being protected and paid by the State, but not one of them is peculiarly the French religion as Anglicanism is the English religion.
Religious Indifference of Legislators.
Effects of the Desire for Equality.