Nations under God

How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy

Anna M. Grzyma?a-Busse, Anna M. Grzyma?a-Busse, Anna M. Grzyma?a-Busse, Anna M. Grzyma?a-Busse, Anna M. Grzyma?a-Busse

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781400866458
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

Why churches in some democratic nations wield enormous political power while churches in other democracies don't In some religious countries, churches have drafted constitutions, restricted abortion, and controlled education. In others, church influence on public policy is far weaker. Why? Nations under God argues that where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gain enormous moral authority—and covert institutional access. These powerful churches then shape policy in backrooms and secret meetings instead of through open democratic channels such as political parties or the ballot box.Through an in-depth historical analysis of six Christian democracies that share similar religious profiles yet differ in their policy outcomes—Ireland and Italy, Poland and Croatia, and the United States and Canada—Anna Grzyma?a-Busse examines how churches influenced education, abortion, divorce, stem cell research, and same-sex marriage. She argues that churches gain the greatest political advantage when they appear to be above politics. Because institutional access is covert, they retain their moral authority and their reputation as defenders of the national interest and the common good. Nations under God shows how powerful church officials in Ireland, Canada, and Poland have directly written legislation, vetoed policies, and vetted high-ranking officials. It demonstrates that religiosity itself is not enough for churches to influence politics—churches in Italy and Croatia, for example, are not as influential as we might think—and that churches allied to political parties, such as in the United States, have less influence than their notoriety suggests.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

THE PUZZLES OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE ON POLITICS

IN LATE 1988, A GROUP of Catholic bishops met privately with communist officials in a Polish parliamentary commission. Their purpose: to discuss a legislative proposal that would outlaw abortion.

Abortion was legal in communist-era Poland, but the regime was beginning to crumble, and the communist government hoped the proposal would divide its resurgent opposition. For the church, eliminating abortion was not a new priority, but an especially timely one—the hierarchy was keenly aware that public attention was elsewhere, focused on possible regime change and the Round Table negotiations between the opposition and the communist regime. And so, over the next few months, bishops and church lawyers drafted a bill that would unconditionally ban abortion in all circumstances and impose jail sentences on both patients and doctors for violation of the law. Parliamentary discussion of the proposed legislation began in May 1989, only a month before the communists were swept from power. Despite widespread public opposition (59% of Poles opposed the restrictions), the church bill remained the unquestioned basis for all subsequent debate in the democratic parliament, and for the final abortion law of January 1993.¹

The procedure was now limited to cases in which the mother’s life was threatened, testing indicated severe and irreversible damage to the fetus, or the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. The law also required a consensus of doctors that one of the conditions had been met, and doctors commonly disagreed upon what constituted a threat to the mother’s life or severe and irreversible damage to the fetus. What’s more, in 1991 the National Association of Physicians forbade its members from performing the procedure, making the required consensus virtually unattainable. As a result of this law, the number of legal abortions performed annually in Poland fell a thousandfold, from over 100,000 in 1988, to only 312 a decade later. The official abortion rate plunged from 18% to 0.07% of all pregnancies. And today, despite legal challenges and unfavorable rulings by the European Court of Human Rights—in Polish cases involving the denial of abortion to a woman facing blindness as a result of pregnancy, and a fourteen-year-old victim of rape—the law remains unchanged. The Roman Catholic Church had effectively banned abortion in democratic Poland.

Churches² embody the sacred and the divine, but their interests and influence extend well beyond the spiritual realm. Many countries are “nations under God,” where churches are powerful political actors, shaping policy and transforming lives in the process. This book explores how and why some churches gained such enormous political power—and why others did not. It argues that churches ironically gain their greatest political advantage when they can appear to be above petty politics—exerting their influence in secret meetings and the back rooms of parliament rather than through public pressure or partisanship. A church’s ability to enter these quiet corridors of power depends on its historical record of defending the nation—and thus gaining moral authority within society and among politicians.

Church influence on policy varies widely from country to country. In some democracies, churches have succeeded in couching political debates in religious terms, vetting government appointments, and influencing legislation in domains ranging from education to abortion to the drafting of constitutions. In Poland, the Roman Catholic Church has achieved most of its policy goals, including the effective ban on abortion. The church is a major political figure. Priests have blessed soccer games—and they helped ensure Poland’s entry into the European Union in 2004.

But in other countries, religious representatives have been roundly ignored—or even castigated, by politicians and commentators alike, for even voicing their concerns. When in 2010 the Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet expressed his opposition to abortion (a stance the Roman Catholic Church has consistently advocated for decades) the public reaction in Canada was furious, with physicians declaring themselves “blue with rage” and one columnist wishing the Cardinal a “long and painful death.”³ Ouellet’s public comments—condemning the legality of abortion and indicating disapproval of government funding to clinics performing the procedure—were rejected as a wildly inappropriate attempt to influence state affairs.

Surprisingly, stark differences in the extent of religious influence persist across countries that are otherwise similar in patterns of religious belonging, belief, and attendance. For example, Ireland and Italy are both “Catholic societies,” with close to 90% of the population identifying as Catholic. Yet the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland influenced the public debate and the eventual laws concerning abortion, divorce, and education far more (and for far longer) than it did in Italy, where the church has been markedly less influential, at times struggling against a tide of political opposition and popular indifference. Similarly, while the Roman Catholic Church in newly democratic Poland heavily influenced policy, the church in—equally Catholic—newly democratic Croatia failed to limit abortion (much less abolish it), forestall civil unions for gays, restrict stem cell research, or constrain divorce. If anything, religiosity in Croatia increased over the 1990s, with rates of “firm believers” doubling from around 40% in 1989 to nearly 80% in 2004;⁴ yet religious influence on policy actually decreased, with many politicians openly opposing the enacting of church preferences.

We also see disparities in church influence in more diverse religious settings. Both the United States and Canada have relatively high rates of belief and attendance, especially when compared to other developed democracies (96% of Americans and 90% of Canadians believe in God, and 49% and 36%, respectively, attend church more than once a month). Both are over two-thirds Christian, with a large Roman Catholic minority. Yet the degree to which religion has influenced policy differs dramatically. In the United States, religion has become a central political cleavage,⁵ and conservative Catholic and Protestant religious groups made considerable inroads toward their policy goals, especially in curtailing access to abortion, contraception and sex education, and stem cell research.⁶ In Canada, in contrast, public policy debates are rarely framed in religious terms, even when the policies in question have moral overtones and stand in clear opposition to religious doctrines. Despite the efforts of the Catholic Church and conservative Christian groups, abortion, for example, was not restricted and did not become a dominant political issue, at either the elite or popular levels. Table 1.1 summarizes some of these differences in influence.

Just as curiously, churches’ influence upon democratic politics often occurs despite broad opposition from the public. As Table 1.2 shows, in all the countries mentioned above, over two-thirds of survey respondents reject church influence on voting, and over half reject influence on politics more broadly. Figure 1.1 shows that this opposition is widely shared: majorities in all the polled countries, observant and not, oppose religious influence on politics. Across a larger set of democracies surveyed, an average of 72% of survey respondents oppose church influence on politics, 78% oppose church influence on voting, and 72% oppose church influence on government.⁷ They do so even where the church is highly influential among individuals:⁸ in Ireland, where 93% of the population declares itself to be Catholic and over half attends Mass once a month or more, over 79% of poll respondents do not want the church to influence government, and 82% do not want the church to influence votes.

TABLE 1.1.
Church Influence on Policy Outcomes

	Ireland	Italy	Poland	Croatia	USA	Canada
Abortion?^1	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Divorce?	No^2	No	No	No	No	No
Religion in schools?^3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Stem cell research?	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Same-sex marriage?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Church Influence on Policy Debates

	Ireland	Italy	Poland	Croatia	USA	Canada
Abortion?	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Divorce?	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Religion in schools?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Stem cell research	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Same-sex marriage?	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Summary Score	8	5	7	4	7	1

Note: Influence on policy outcomes is coded as a yes if changes to policy were compatible with church teachings and justified by the legislator as having a Christian character or compatible with church teachings. Influence on debates is coded as a yes if churches were protagonists in the national debate, first to frame the issue in religious terms, and national legislators then adopted the language.

¹ Abortion is defined as “unrestricted” if abortion is available freely up to twelve weeks of pregnancy.

² Divorce was unconstitutional in Ireland, a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Weapons of the Meek: How Churches Influence Policy
• Chapter 3. Catholic Monopolies: Ireland and Italy
• Chapter 4. Post-Communist Divergence: Poland and Croatia
• Chapter 5. Religious Pluralism and Church Influence: United States and Canada
• Conclusion: Where Churches Matter
• Appendix: Further Tests of the Argument
• References
• Index