Carozza & Garnett on Church-State Relations

Here is an interview on "Church-State Relations in the U.S. and Europe" that friend-of-MOJ Paolo Carozza and I did for the ZENIT news service.  Paolo says, among other things:

[O]ne of the principal advantages that I see in the American approach to church-state relations is its emphasis on the relationship between religion and freedom -- both the freedom of individuals and the freedom of smaller communities within the overall political society.

Implicit in that is a greater space for those communities, united by religious commitments, to generate culture, to take initiative and to construct a common life. A more equality based and statist approach, which characterizes many of the European systems, risks losing sight of the way that an authentically lived religious life is creative and fruitful in responding to human desires and needs.

I observed:

The church-state headlines in recent years have tended to focus, first, on the tricky line between neutral funding programs and illegal state-sponsored "indoctrination"; and second, on the perceived dangers that attend "religious" expression by government actors or in the public square. So, we've discussed and litigated issues concerning school vouchers, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments and so on.

However, perhaps the most pressing church-state issue in the American context involves not matters like these, but challenges to the independence and freedom of religious communities and associations. Although, in the American tradition, the focus has generally been on the religious rights of individuals, the danger today is to the freedom of the Church.