Church and State Separation

CLAIMS CONNECTING or separating religion and politics exist both on the left and right. Therefore, some key historical, philosophical, and political elements are necessary to understand how the left approaches this issue. The long history of this topic has included discussion on theocracy, civil war, tolerance, separation of political powers, anti-clericalism, and civil religion, as well as the right to freedom of religion or freedom from religion.

A theocracy is a political system of religious leaders whose power supposedly comes from a deity, as found in ancient Egypt and the European Middle Ages. But this system imposes a dogma without clarifying the source of its legitimacy, thus creating conflicts among people of different beliefs.

Religious conflicts led to the Thirty Years War in Germany and the persecution ...