ABSTRACT
FoR some time in the United States a principled 'separation of state and church' has existed. This separation is carried through so strictly that there is not even an official census of denominations~ for it would be considered against the law for the state even to ask the citizen for his denomination. We shall not here discuss the practical importance of this principle of the relation between religious organizations and the state. • We are interested, rather, in the fact that scarcely two and a half decades ago the number of ''persons without church affiliation' .in the U.S.A. was estimated to be only about 6 per cent; 2 and this despite the absence of all those highly effective premiums which most of the European states then placed upon affiliation with certain privileged churches and despite the immense immigration to the U.S.A.
