THE NON-DISCRIMINATORY STATE
Toward a Model of Church-State Relationship and Freedom of Religion in Nigeria
Keywords:
NON-DISCRIMINATORY, Freedom, Nigeria, Church-State Relationship, Caesaropapism, Hierocracy, Separation Praxis, Secular StateAbstract
The Church embodies and expresses the religious aspects of human life. Religion, which the Church makes concrete, relates a human being with the supernatural. As a lived reality, religion is both private and public. The State, on its part, articulates and underscores the socio-political spheres of human needs and preoccupations. Since both are concerned with the wellbeing of those same human beings in society, the Church and the State, therefore, must enter into a co-operative relationship. What this comes to is that there must be a proper relationship between the religious sphere which the Church represents, and the socio-political arena embodied by the State. Hence, there is the need to determine the appropriate link that should exist between the State and the Church. That is the task of this essay: to propose the thesis that it is not in remaining neutral (or what is conventionally called being secular vis-à-vis religious matters) that the State plays its appropriate role. It is rather in treating appropriately the various segments of religion in its territory, that is to say, that the State should not be neutral as if unconcerned, but non-discriminatory.
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