Soren Kierkegaard

cation, slander, gluttony, et cetera: Official Christianity and its worship of
God is infinitely more loathsome to him.”
Kierkegaard consistently demanded that church and state be separated,
with the state providing economic compensation to pastors who resign their
positions. At the same time, however, he emphasized that it was important
that everyone continue to pay his or her church taxes. Indeed, it would be
even better if people paid double the amount due, thereby demonstrating
their contempt, because “at all costs” one ought to avoid having “differ-
ences concerning money” with those one holds in contempt. Kierkegaard’s
alternative to a state church was as inconvenient as it was radical: “The state
must make all preaching of Christianity into private practice.” And as time
went on, Kierkegaard’s methods took on the appearance of a full-blown
slander campaign: “And therefore, from a Christian point of view, ‘the
pastor’ must be stopped....Andjust as people used to shout ‘Hep!’ [abbre-
viation of Latin,Hierosaluma est perdita: ‘Jerusalem is lost’] at a Jew, so, until
there are no more pastors to be seen, people should shout at a pastor, ‘Stop,
thief! Stop him, he is stealing what belongs to the glorious ones!’ ”
Neither before nor since has the Danish clergy been subjected to such
systematic persecution. Accusations veritably rained down on this “guild of
clerical swindlers,” also called “the company of pastors,” this band of little,
mediocre men, who had been so fortunate as to get their parasitical snouts
way down into the country’s treasury, and who would do anything simply
to hang on to their positions, even if, “for example, the state came up with
the idea of instituting the religion that the moon is made of green cheese.”
Kierkegaard employed countless allusions, little stories, anecdotes, gossip,
tasteless innuendos, and whatever else worked, in order to make the pecuni-
ary position of the pastors into a central theme ofThe Moment, where he
put the matter quite directly: “The question of the continued existence of
the established ecclesiastical order is—a question of money.” Kierkegaard
emphasized the commercialization of Christianity, giving his articles titles
such as “The Clergy as a Merchant Class” or “The Enormous Guild of
Professional Pastors.” Not infrequently the clergy was simply called the
“One Thousand Public Officials Who Must Live Off Christianity” (that is,
they live off “the cloying, syrupy sweetness that is the stock-in-trade of
witnesses to the lie”). The pastor’s role, Kierkegaard insisted, is thusto protect
society against Christianity, and just as a statistician, when he is presented
with “the size of the population of a large city,” is able to state “the corres-
ponding number of prostitutes consumed by such a city,” it is also possible
to calculate how many “perjurers (pastors)” the state needs in order to
“protect itself against Christianity.” This is a secret pact, and it produces
benefits for both partners, the state and the pastors. And indeed, as a sort of