Are governments supporting or controlling religion?

How do we know governments are controlling or supporting religion? Same laws and actions can be used for controlling religion as for supporting religion. For example, a government can give money to religious schools to impose curriculum of its choice (controlling religion) or to promote the majority religion (supporting religion). Similarly, a government can take control of religious endowments to make them more efficient and to use their funds for repair/maintenance of religious sites (supporting religion) or to dry the main source of funding for independent clerics, thus allow its (paid) clerics to dominate the religious discourse (controlling religion). Jonathan Fox, one of the leading scholars working on the state-religion relationships, argues that it is difficult to be definite about it as it is almost impossible to be certain of a government leader's motivations for a particular (in)action (See his talk on Political secularism, religion and the state).

In some cases, however, the primary motivator is not ambiguous. Because of their Marxist-Leninist ideology, anti-religious rhetoric of the leadership and repression of all religions in public sphere, one can safely assume that the Communist governments try to control religion. Consider the Soviet Union, for example. Lenin wrote against religion and called it a spiritual booze as well as opium (like Marx), probably because, in the early 20th century Russia, booze was much more popular than opium. (See Socialism and Religion: Lenin)

Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practice charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze,   in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

Moreover, there were anti-religious campaigns in the Soviet Union. These campaigns included damaging churches, murdering of priests and other acts of violence and suppression; these actions cannot be construed as supporting religion in any way  (See Russian orthodox church). 

By 1918 the government had nationalized all church property, including buildings. In the first five years of the Soviet Union (1922-26), twenty-eight Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were executed, and many others were persecuted. Most seminaries were closed, and publication of most religious material was prohibited. The next quarter-century saw surges and declines in arrests, enforcement of laws against religious assembly and activities, and harassment of clergy. Antireligious campaigns were directed at all faiths; beginning in the 1920s, Buddhist and Shamanist places of worship in Buryatia, in the Baikal region, were destroyed, and their lamas and priests were arrested (a practice that continued until the 1970s). The League of the Militant Godless, established in 1925, directed a nationwide campaign against the Orthodox Church and all other organized religions. The extreme position of that organization eventually led even the Soviet government to disavow direct connection with its practices. In 1940 an estimated 30,000 religious communities of all denominations survived in all the Soviet Union, but only about 500 Russian Orthodox parishes were open at that time, compared with the estimated 54,000 that had existed before World War I.

Similarly, in case of many assertive or aggressive secular states with a strong anti-clericalism bent, like France and Turkey in the early 20th century, it is clear that the motivation is that of control, not the promotion of religion. Following is an excerpt of Ataturk's speech from the early days of the Turkish Republic:

Gentlemen and Great Nation! Know it well that the Turkish Republic cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes, disciples and lunatics. The correct road is the road of civilization.

And a paragraph about the de-Christianization campaign of early days of revolutionary France (See Religion, Society and Politics in France since 1789, page 1):

During the course of the year II much of France was subjected to a campaign of dechristianization, the aim of which was the eradication of Catholic religious practice, and Catholicism itself. The campaign, which was at its most intense in the winter and spring of 1793-94, but which began as early as the summer of 1793 in some regions, and continued after the fall of Robespierre in August 1794 in a few areas, comprised a number of different activities. These ranged from the removal of plate, statues and other fittings from the places of worship, the destruction of crosses, bells, shrines and other ‘external signs of worship’, the closure of churches, the enforced abdication and occasionally, the marriage of constitutional priests, the substitution of a Revolutionary calendar for the Gregorian one, the alteration of personal and place names which had any ecclesiastical connotations to more suitably Revolutionary ones, through to the promotion of new cults, notably those of Reason and one Supreme Being.

Perhaps one clue to solve this puzzle is the attitude and behavior of governing elite. If they show respect to religious symbols and try to demonstrate that they are not against religion, then they are supporting religion. The operative word here is 'demonstrate.' The elite in almost all countries will claim that they are not against religion; they are only against a particular 'subversive' version of it. However, if their behavior shows they are against religion, then most probably they are controlling religion, not supporting it.