Religion and History in Belgium

Belgium was created in 1830 by a revolution in which Catholics and liberals made common cause against Dutch Protestant rule, and the constitution they wrote the following year reflected that alliance. It guaranteed freedom of worship and freedom from compelled participation, prohibited the state from interfering in the appointment of clergy, and simultaneously committed the treasury to paying clergy salaries and pensions. That combination, a church free of state control and funded by the state, was unusual in Europe and became the template for what followed.

The territory itself had been the heartland of the Counter Reformation in the north, ruled from Spain and then Austria, and it retained a dense Catholic infrastructure of parishes, orders, schools and universities; Leuven is among the oldest Catholic universities in the world. The nineteenth century then produced the school war, a prolonged struggle between Catholics and liberals over who would control primary education, which recurred in the 1950s and was settled in 1958 by the School Pact, funding both networks. Catholic schools still educate a large majority of Belgian pupils, in a country where Sunday attendance has fallen into low single figures.