Religious organization

A religious community or religious organization is an organization that aims to common practice of a religion.

Christianity

The first Christian church was built in Jerusalem shortly after Jesus' resurrection. In the 1st century AD, more communities arose, first in Israel by Jesus' followers, then over the borders of Israel also. Special mention is the church in Antioch (then Syria, today Turkey). Already in the course of the 1st century churches in Rome, Ephesus and other places in Asia Minor, Phrygia, Bithynia and occupied by the Black Sea, including in rural areas and outside the Roman Empire in eastern Syria.

Some Christian religious communities are called church. Churches, which belong to large parts of the population of a country, called People's Church; in addition there are free churches. The largest Christian denomination is the Roman Catholic Church. She was the state church in many countries / states or had a similar status. The fastest growing church in the last 100 years, the Pentecostal movement.

Other religions

The self and other designations for non-Christian religious communities greater varies according to religion.

This also applies to smaller religious communities. Some groups such as the United Church of the flying spaghetti monster Austria and the Atheist Religious Society in Austria raises the fundamental and highly controversial question of whether they are a community of faith.

Sect / new religious movement

Some religious communities are - whether Christian or not - traditionally referred to as a cult. The use of the term is often perceived by the members of these communities as discriminatory. The absence is criticized by proper demarcation criteria. More recently, therefore, as an alternative designation the term new religious movement established, and this is out of focus used for currents that see themselves as an alternative to the religions.

Financing

Religious communities can be financed by different models. In addition to voluntary contributions or taxes of the members, there is the model of the church tax (eg in Germany and Austria ) and the model of the mandate tax ( eg Spain ) - see church financing.

Tension between state and religious communities

Axel Freiherr von Campenhausen, a retired German professor and canon lawyer, in 2008 published a seminal essay.

He wrote in it, among other things:

" The relationship between the state and religious communities is at all times and in all countries always a legal problem. The state is Lord of the secular legal system and sees itself as the guardian of peace. It takes its residents as citizens to complete. On the same people to religious messages, which also relate to the actions of people in the world depend. State and religious communities are therefore always in a relationship of confrontation, demarcation and voltage. The relationship between state and church ( or churches ) in the sense of an orderly confrontation of secular polity and legally independent religious associations is a feature of the Western Christian world, since Christianity has produced just this distinction. "

This tension is in canon law (or constitutional law on religion ) regulated. This is the part of state constitutional law, which regulates the relations of the State to the churches and other religious communities. (see also Church and State )