The separation of church and state is a philosophic and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the nation state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state (with or without legally explicit church–state separation) and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state.[1]
In a society, the degree of political separation between the church and the civil state are determined by the legal structures and prevalent legal views that define the proper relationship between organized religion and the state. The Arm's length principle proposes a relationship wherein the two, political entities interact as organizations independent of the authority of the other. The strict application of secular principle of laïcité (secularity) is used in France, while secular societies, such as Denmark and the United Kingdom, maintain a form of constitutional recognition of an official state religion.[2]
The philosophy of the separation of the church from the civil state parallels the philosophies of secularism, disestablishmentarianism, religious liberty, and religious pluralism, by way of which the European states assumed some of the social roles of the church, the welfare state, a social shift that produced a culturally secular population and public sphere.[3] In practice, church–state separation varies from total separation, mandated by the country's political constitution, as in India and Singapore, to a state religion, as in the Maldives.
