The idea of separating church and state – now entrenched in many modern liberal democracies – is in some ways strange. After all, governments must keep themselves informed and inform their citizens. That’s why they turn to the science of meteorology to predict weather patterns, to economics to understand patterns of growth and decline, and to the medical sciences to improve public health. So why wouldn’t governments also keep close alliances with religious institutions to know what’s going on with God?

Separating church and state appears strange from other perspectives as well. In the historical sweep of large-scale human societies, it’s a relative newcomer, often associated with the United States’ founding father Thomas Jefferson.…