A State's Official Religion

An established church is a religious body formally recognized by the state as the official or state religion, typically receiving legal privileges, sometimes public funding, and a formal constitutional role that other religious bodies in the same country do not share. The Church of England remains established, with the reigning monarch as its Supreme Governor and senior bishops sitting by right in the House of Lords, alongside several established or semi established Lutheran national churches in the Nordic countries, though the degree of formal state control has generally loosened over the twentieth and twenty first centuries even where establishment itself continues.

Islamic states commonly designate Islam, or a specific school of Islamic jurisprudence, as the state religion in their constitutions, with varying degrees of practical legal consequence for governance and law. Establishment is not confined to Christianity or Islam: several countries formally recognize a state Buddhism, including Cambodia, Sri Lanka and, more contested and layered with other institutions, Thailand, illustrating that establishment as a legal category recurs across traditions rather than being a peculiarly Christian arrangement.