Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them
How the world celebratesThe very first line of Article 29 of Indonesia's constitution is that the state is based upon belief in the One and Only God. Brazil's Article 19 runs the other way, forbidding the Union, the states and the municipalities to establish religions, subsidise them, or maintain relations of dependence or alliance with them. Japan's Article 20 goes further into detail — no religious organisation may take privileges from the state, and public authorities are kept out of religious teaching and observance altogether — with Article 89 barring public money from religious bodies. The American First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. China's Article 36 guarantees freedom of belief but protects "normal religious activities" and states that religious affairs are not subject to foreign domination. India's preamble calls the republic secular, while Article 25 includes the right to *propagate* religion. Taiwan's Article 13 is seven characters long: the people have freedom of religious belief.
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| Place | When is it? | How the date is set |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
| Brazil | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
| China | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
| Indonesia | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
| India | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
| Japan | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
| Taiwan | Date to be confirmed | Year-round |
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How the world celebrates
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How does Brazil mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
Brazil's constitution handles religion by listing what government may not do. Article 19 opens: it is forbidden to the Union, the states, the Federal District and the municipalities — and item I continues: to establish religious cults or churches, to subsidise them, to hinder their functioning, or to maintain with them or their representatives relations of dependence or alliance, save, in the manner of the law, collaboration in the public interest. The item bans four different things side by side: establishing, subsidising, hindering, allying. Note that hindering their functioning is on the list too — this article does not only stop government from favouring religion, it also stops government from suppressing it, governing both directions at once. And the proviso at the end about collaboration in the public interest deliberately leaves a door open: religion and state are not to have no dealings at all, only dealings in the name of the public interest. Compared with Japan's Article 89, which flatly bars public money from religious bodies, Brazil leaves more room for judgement; compared with Indonesia writing divinity into the foundation of the state, it starts from the opposite end.
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How does China mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
The structure of Article 36 of China's constitution rewards reading sentence by sentence, because each one adds a qualification. The first grants the freedom: citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. The second forbids compulsion in both directions: no state organ, public organisation or individual may compel citizens to believe in or not to believe in any religion, nor discriminate against citizens who do or do not believe — protecting non-belief symmetrically with belief, which is not common among these seven constitutions. The third adds the qualifier: the state protects normal religious activities, and no one may make use of religion to disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. The fourth addresses the outside: religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination. The article therefore does four things at once: grants a freedom, bars compulsion both ways, bounds the protected activity, and severs religious organisation from abroad. Where Japan's text restrains the state, the restraints here fall on the state, on organisations, on individuals and on foreign actors alike.
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How does Indonesia mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
Article 29(1) of Indonesia's constitution is a single sentence, and it is the strongest sentence among these seven constitutions: the state is based upon belief in the One and Only God. It is not a clause guaranteeing religious freedom; it is a declaration about what the state itself stands on — divinity in the foundation, rather than in the list of citizens' rights. Freedom comes in clause (2): the state guarantees the freedom of every inhabitant to adhere to their respective religion and to worship according to that religion and belief. Taken together: the state has a premise about belief, and under that premise each person's own belief is protected. This is the exact opposite direction from Brazil's Article 19, which forbids government to establish or subsidise religion, and from Japan's Article 20, which bars state organs from any religious activity at all; and it differs from the American clause too — Indonesia names no particular religion, but writes belief in God into the foundation of the state. The same sentence is also the first of the five founding principles, which gives it a weight in Indonesia far beyond that of a constitutional article.
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How does India mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
India's constitution calls the republic secular in its very preamble — a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic — but the secularism it means is not the American wall. The wording of Article 25(1) is where to look: subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. Note that last verb: propagate. Writing the freedom to spread one's religion into the constitution itself is unique among these seven — elsewhere what is protected is believing or not believing, and taking part or not taking part in rites; India includes carrying the faith to others. At the same time, the string of limits at the head of Article 25 sits inside the same sentence: public order, morality, health and the other provisions of Part III. India's design, in other words, is not to push religion away but to keep it inside the public sphere and mark its boundaries item by item — a different instinct from the Brazilian and Japanese direction of telling the state to stay out.
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How does Japan mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
Japan's constitution belongs to the most explicit end of the separation spectrum. Article 20 stacks three statements: freedom of religion is guaranteed to all; no religious organisation shall receive any privileges from the state, nor exercise any political authority; and no person shall be compelled to take part in any religious act, celebration, rite or practice. Then the closing line: the state and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity. It does not merely guarantee a freedom; it names and forbids acts by the state itself. Article 89 adds a fiscal lock: no public money or other property shall be expended for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association. The provision surrounds the question from five directions at once — freedom, privilege, compulsion, activity and money — which is the opposite design instinct from Taiwan's single sentence, and further still from Indonesia's declaration that the state is founded on belief in God.
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How does Taiwan mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
Article 13 of the constitution of the Republic of China is a single sentence: the people shall have freedom of religious belief. Seven characters — the shortest treatment among these seven constitutions. There is no separation clause, no prohibition on establishing a state religion, no bar on public money going to religious bodies. It sits in Chapter II, on the rights and duties of the people, in a run of freedoms: speech before it (Article 11), residence and movement before that (Article 10), assembly and association after (Article 14), each written just as briefly. The other half is supplied by Article 7: all citizens, irrespective of sex, religion, race, class or party affiliation, shall be equal before the law. Taiwan's constitution therefore handles religion with one article for freedom and one for equality, rather than by prescribing what the state may not do, as Japan and Brazil do. A short article does not mean a simple arrangement — the boundary between religion and government in Taiwan has largely grown out of later statutes and judicial interpretation, not been drawn by the constitution itself.
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How does United States mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
The main body of the United States constitution says almost nothing about religion; the provision that matters is the first of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment opens: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof — one sentence containing two clauses, later named the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, and nearly every American constitutional argument about religion and government plays out in the tension between them. Three things are worth noticing. First, the subject of the sentence is Congress — not the government, not the state; what the text restrains is the legislature. Second, it shares a single sentence with speech, press, assembly and petition: religion is not an article of its own but the first item in a run of expressive freedoms. Third, the word "separation" does not appear; that phrasing comes from a later interpretive tradition, not from the text. Compared with the itemised prohibitions of Japan's Article 20, the American version is shorter and more abstract — and therefore leaves the drawing of the line to the courts.
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