Caesar or God: Who Is Dead?
by Donald Devine

Nietzsche declared God dead 100 years ago. Look at Sweden. This is a country that following the Reformation had an official church supported by taxes, where as late as the 19th Century evangelization by other churches was outlawed. Today, it is the country with the lowest belief in God, lowest religious attendance and lowest level of saying prayers in the entire world. By happenstance, recent changes in law allow almost a pure scientific experiment of Nietzsche’s hypothesis. In 2000, Sweden abolished the established church tax and created a “fee” that would only be collected from church members. What does reason say would happen to membership under these conditions?

In 2001, Church of Sweden membership dropped dramatically. Almost all were expected to follow in the next few years. The now secularized population confirmed economic rationality and voted themselves free of the fee. So Nietzsche was proved correct, right? Then something curious happened. Now that there was a choice, a limited market, church officials mounted a publicity drive supporting Christianity and urging church membership. Miraculously, membership stabilized and last year the Church received $1.6 billion from 78 percent of the population in a country where barely three percent attend church services other than weddings and funerals. In another odd recent situation, the largest hotel chain, Scandic, accommodated a complaint from an atheist and removed Bibles from its rooms—but was later successfully pressured to reverse course.

How do such things happen in the most secularized country on earth? Something similar happened in Italy, where less than one-third of the population attends church each week (compared to almost 40% in the U.S.). In 1984, Italy shifted from exclusive support of the Roman Catholic Church to a “religious tax” of 0.8 percent that would allow taxpayers to choose between it, other religions or a secular humanitarian fund run by the government. What happened in this market test? The latest figures show the Catholics get 89 percent and the state humanitarian fund gets a mere pittance.

This is secular Europe. It is interesting that a similar situation existed in early America. Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates 17 percent attended church in 1776, about the same as Europe today. But when the eleven states with established churches ended their monopolies and other denominations entered the religious “market,” 50 percent were attending by the 1900s. Stark concludes that churches run by Caesar with monopoly control have no incentive to work for membership. The taxes provoke resentment. Even those who support the established church can end up alienated. In Sweden, the Ecclesiastical Department minister who ran its state church for years was a well-known atheist. A former Archbishop of Canterbury was called “red” to symbolize his attachment to Marxism. Such church leadership can hardly instill orthodoxy or spur membership.

Somehow Europe’s Christianity survives. The polls even find that most Europeans say they pray several times a day. Even Swedes (and Frenchmen) say they pray “several times a year.” Why at all? Why do they insist on Christian marriage and funerals? When given a choice in polls to choose between being called a Christian, atheist, agnostic or “no religion,” why do 68 percent even of Swedes (the lowest in Europe) choose Christianity? It is well over 90 percent in Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Norway, Finland and Denmark and the U.S. It is hard to avoid the conclusion these peoples are Christian if they say they are and act on it, even if they are less than enthusiastic about showing up at their once state-run churches except on big occasions.

At the same time, Caesar is at an all-time low. Since the rise of nationalism in the 16th Century, people have identified more closely with their monarch and nation-state and have literally died in the hundreds of millions in their wars. With the rise of the modern welfare state, it looked like government could keep expanding benefits to win the loyalty of all. But then the babies stopped. It takes 2.1 children per childbearing aged woman to keep the population going and Europe sank to 1.4 by the early 21st Century (with the U.S. at 2.0) and the money machine stopped. The population aged and drew more benefits and few young workers were there to pay the ever-expanding bills. The very socialist political parties that built the entitlement programs were forced to lead the belt-tightening, making them as unpopular as their conservative opponents.

As the state claimed more and more functions, an increasing number of different ideals and interests conflicted and the government seemed able to satisfy fewer and fewer. As a result, Europe has suffered a two-generation stagnation, refusing economic rationalization from the center and supporting increasing protectionism from below. Even the United States has ignored the massive increased resources that will be demanded to pay federal health and retirement costs in the very near future. In fact, every politician is promising more and more. Its national agencies increasingly seem not to work—they cannot wAin wars, or keep contraband off airplanes, or secure borders, or run elections or secure records or maintain bridges or pretty much anything. Katrina’s conflict between national security rules and local immediate response capability for disasters demonstrated the centralization trade-off for everyone to see and no one trusts the government to do better the next time.

Caesar is in big trouble and it is directly related to the fact he is big. The more national governments do, the more things collide. Unlike the market (including the market of local governments) which has proved it works, national bureaucratic rules kill initiative. And moral rules set by the governments, the secular dream since Rousseau, win no one’s heart—not even in so-called secular Europe. Secularism cannot even provide the impetus to have enough children, surely not the world’s most distasteful obligation. Caesar is incompetent and childless and just about dead. God looks like he will survive.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.