Separation of Church and Welfare State: Dominant State Conceptions and the Financing of Churches in Postwar Netherlands

Abstract

Three decades ago the Dutch state terminated its last direct financial ties with the churches. “The silver cords,” as one MP called the payments to the churches in 1983, “have been ended with a golden handshake, and I hope the state will never again establish any galling bonds with the church.”1 Article 185 of the constitution, which since 1815 had guaranteed a state contribution to salaries, tuition, and pensions of clergymen and a postage exemption for the churches, was deleted after a compensation deal was struck with the participating churches.2 The abolishment of article 185 is usually cited as one of the most important examples that show a growing disentanglement of church and state in the Netherlands, a process that started in the late eighteenth century and accelerated during the past decades.3 To understand general processes of (dis)entanglement between church and state, scholars have introduced different approaches to compare different types and patterns of entanglements and policies regarding church–state interlocution.4 These approaches typically categorize legal–institutional church–state relations and/or dominant views on these relations along a secular–theocratic axis so that (groups of) countries can be compared synchronically. Additionally, theoretical frameworks have been devised to trace and categorize historical patterns of church–state relations.5