Sentences with phrase «became voluntary associations»

I noted several of these institutional changes: (1) Churches became voluntary associations in a strict sense, though lines around religious liberty or «free exercise» were (are) difficult to draw in this «separation» of church and state.

Not exact matches

Consumerism and privatization undermine the very institutional basis of democracy — that is, the structure of voluntary association, the civil society, without which democracy becomes, as Tocqueville warned, democratic despotism or the rule of an economic aristocracy.

Can churches, universities, and voluntary associations become places where the identity of the common and public spiritual culture will be comprehended?

By the early 1830s, through the persuasive evangelism of Walter Scott and through union with Barton Stone's Christian movement, what had begun as a voluntary society became a rapidly expanding association of churches.

Meanwhile, the conception of the church under the impact first of «toleration» and then of complete freedom and separation had largely lost the sacramental dimension which traditionally had sanctified her regular observances under Episcopal direction by making them intrinsically meaningful, and had become that of a voluntary association of explicitly convinced Christians for the purpose of mutual edification in the worship of God and the propagandization of the Christian faith as the group defined it.

Increasingly, however, advocates of greater state provision and direction of education became more vocal in their opinion that «popular education could not be left to chance to voluntary associations.»