Talk:Confessional state

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These are both confessional states with state-churches of which the head of state is also the leader.

This is a good start (in my humble opinion), but might I make some recommendations as a scholar who studies European confessional states and their demise. 1) I think we need a section which clarifies, or complexifies, some of the definitional ambiguities dogging the term confessional state. We then might more meaningfully define the confessional state, or varieties thereof. In my opinion I think it is important to distinguish the confessional state from simply a state with an established or politically privileged religion. Modern England and Scotland, with their state churches, bear little resemblance to the European confessional states of the early modern period (16th thru 18th centuries) when most European territorial states not only had religious establishments, buy also enforced policies of religious conformity, penalized (or exiled) religious dissenters, and restricted full rights of citizenship etc to conforming members of the established church. Most scholars are in agreement, I think, when they identify the 16th, 17th and perhaps early 18th centuries as the high water mark of the European confessional state, after which policies of toleration, confessional coexistence and relaxation of civil disabilities on religious minorities began to gain traction. Clark, for example, suggests that the English confessional state ended with the 1830s parliamentary reforms, which extended full rights of citizenship to Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. Other's argue that the English/British confessional state was in serious decline long before then (i.e. after the 1689 act of toleration and the whig ascendency of 18th century, during which the powers of the church of england were seriously curtailed and religious dissenters (at least Protestant ones) extended greater freedoms.

whether the american colonies were confessional states is an interesting questions. Puritan New England, at least before, the Glorious Revolution, exhibited core characteristic of the early modern confessional state. The Anglican Crown colonies of the south and mid-atlantic too (though Anglican authority was never very strong there). Whereas colonies such as Rhode Island and Pennsylvania--officially pluralist with no formal establishment--seem less so (though nearly all the colonies--like Britian itself--were loath to tolerate Roman Catholicism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.65.25 (talk) 20:11, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello!

Reading this article is a complete mess, there's only two citations in the whole article and I came away with no facts aside from a group of loosely related examples of "confessionalism" throughout history. No direct and cited definitions (the first line can apply to both Utah and Saudi Arabia) and nothing that can give the reader that what they're reading is an independent form of law.