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How Not Establishing Religion Helped Churches Thrive

How Not Establishing Religion Helped Churches Thrive

Last updated on: August 27, 2026 at 7:22 am by Gene Veith

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How Not Establishing Religion Helped Churches Thrive 2026-08-27T07:22:45-04:00 Gene Veith

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Why is the United States more religious than most European countries, or, for that matter, Canada, whose inhabitants seem so close to Americans in proximity, language, and culture?

Thomas Adam, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas, credits the fact that the United States–unlike most European countries and their colonies–did not have an established church.

That’s not a new thesis. I have heard it claimed that the lack of a state church combined with religious liberty allowed for all kinds of religious groups to proliferate and compete with each other, thus creating a religious marketplace healthy for religion as a whole. That application of free market economics to America’s religious profile is surely not wrong.

But Adam argues for a more specific connection, an economic reason that not only helped the cause of religion but also had other beneficial consequences for American society. He tells about his research in The Conversation with an article entitled The financial dilemma that wound up helping US churches thrive.

Though religion has been declining lately in the United States, Adam points out, nearly two-thirds of Americans still believe that religion is “somewhat” or “very” important. In Western and Northern Europe, about that same proportion, two-thirds, say that religion is not important to them.

Even among those who identify as Christians have a different level of devotion. Two-thirds of American Christians pray every day, according to Adam, while among European Christians only 18% do.

With state churches, though offerings might be collected for the poor, the government is the primary source of income for the church, funding them with tax money or automatically-collected tithes. This is still the case, even in highly-secularized European nations today, with the UK’s Anglican church and the Scandinavian Lutheran state churches. (Today, Germany still has a “church-tax” that can go to Catholic, Lutheran, Union, or other state-registered religions, such as Judaism. The tax is an add-on of 8% to a person’s income tax bill. Muslims, Buddhists, Orthodox, free Lutherans, and other religious groups have chosen to not participate in the system. Germans can opt out of the church tax by renouncing their religion, but, despite the country’s secularism, around half of eligible taxpayers still pay it.)

In contrast, the United States Constitution forbade the establishment of any kind of national church, though some states continued to subsidize their preferred churches (Anglican in the South and Congregationalist in New England) as late as 1833, when Massachusetts finally stopped giving money to Puritan congregations.

In the absence of the assured revenue stream from the government, American churches had to support themselves with money raised from the congregations. This had the effect of increasing their members’ commitment to their churches. Adam explains:

After Christian churches were stripped of state funding, churches had to find new revenue sources. Ministers’ and teachers’ salaries had to be paid, church buildings constructed and maintained, and colleges and other religious institutions supported. The funding for all that had to come from voluntary contributions from members – meaning that ministers were turned into fundraisers, and believers into donors.

Donors weren’t just giving money to be charitable. They were getting services and community in return, which helped keep them emotionally and socially invested – and helped religion thrive. Members essentially became stakeholders of their denominations.

Furthermore, the habit of giving to one’s church created a culture of giving that extended to other institutions. Adam, whose main research interest is in the history of philanthropy, points out that American churches also founded innumerable schools and colleges. Adam focuses on how those were also funded primarily by individual donations. We could add the various ministries churches pursued–caring for the needy, tending to the sick, helping in times of disasters, etc., etc.–all of which, to this day, are supported by philanthropy, not just from the wealthy but also from small donors. Often, these donors at whatever level are motivated by their Christian faith.

This habit of private philanthropy soon carried over to supporting needs outside the church, as such. Art museums, civic orchestras, medical research, overseas needs, and a plethora of other charities rely on the generosity of donors large and small.

This has become a facet of American culture that we take for granted today, but this is by no means a universal trait. Adam doesn’t get into this, but according to the Philanthropy Roundtable Statistics on U.S. Generosity, which give the numbers, “Americans are about twice as generous in their private giving as our kissing cousins the Canadians, and 3-15 times as charitable as the residents of other developed nations.”

That Americans give 1.44% of their Gross Domestic Product in annual private philanthropy, while Germans only give only 0.17%, is explained away by the Europeans, who say their generous welfare states take care of all of these needs, so individuals don’t have to.

But this is the mindset of the state church. If the government gives the money to churches, members don’t need to be all that involved in the work of those churches. If the government gives the money for charities, citizens don’t need to be generous. The government having all of the spiritual and moral responsibility takes away from individuals’ spiritual and moral responsibility, to their spiritual and moral detriment.

Photo: One of the Offering Plates by Bill Nicholls, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14459966

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