We are living times of changes, and we ask ourselves more often… what will

happen?
And we see the Government on hand and the Church on the other, and suddenly,
for example, we have the heavenly word, or the written word of God, so that
human beings are prepared for every good work.
And many people wonder how it is done so that the governments and the churches
that settled in this world interact. But the Church has pre-established prayers that
must be said in a certain way, and that Kingdom of heaven is asked to come to
earth and govern, and as we all know, a Kingdom is organized with rules, with
protocols, in hierarchies, to be able to extend the domain of a king, God, column
and foundation of the truth, for some.
Meanwhile, being fully secular in Occident is concretized with the complete
separation between Church and State; with which there are two important things:
religious tolerance and the Administration, not belonging to any religious group.
Respect for freedom of conscience and worship is a necessary condition of secular
government. And it must also be a State that does not privilege or favor any
religion. That is, a secular state.
The first secular country in the world was the USA, which also constitutes the oldest
republic in America. The Thirteen Colonies of English North America, full of ideas of the
Enlightenment, declared their independence from the United Kingdom back in 1776,
thirteen years before the French Revolution. After a very special stage of confederative
unity, where its sovereignty was in danger, the United States opted to consolidate its
unity by establishing a federal regime, the first of its kind in the world. This was
achieved in 1788, sanctioning a Magna Carta common to all States of the Union: The
Constitution of the United States.
And it is in the year 1791, that through the First Amendment, USA. formally instituted, de
iure, the principle of secularism, which in practice already had broad validity, at least in
several states.
The First Amendment goes like this: "Congress cannot make any law on the
establishment of religion, nor prohibit the free practice of it ...". That is to say,
guarantee of secular State and guarantee of freedom of cults. These two constitutional
clauses are known as Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause.
This constitutional clause is based on the democratic ideal of the Thomas Jefferson’s Wall
of Separation, inspired, in turn, in the english writings of Roger Williams, a preacher based
in North America. In his famous letter to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut,
dated January 1, 1802, Jefferson would write:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he
owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of
government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that
act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a
wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of
the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the
progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he
has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
But what happened after that, was that not all the people did not have any religion,
and in the more modern, urbanized and cosmopolitan states of the north of the US
there was more secularism than in the southern and western states that were more
rural and lived in small communities.

All this means that today there are divisions and there are groups such as the Bible
Belt and the Mormon Corridor, which attack the theory of evolution, for example, or
oppose abortion.

Three examples of the separation between Church and Government are:

A) In Bolivia, the government has had to decide not to get involved in religious
activities, since until recently, the same government organized religious
activities, and the President himself made religious masses with a bit of
indigenous ritual; which produced great imbalances in terms of justice.

B) In Mexico, the legal union of two people was authorized (regardless of their
sex), and this was done for such simple things as loans, inheritances, lawsuits,
insurance, adoptions, divorces; all legal, not religious matters. But obviously,
the Church is against it.
This is because the Government collects taxes, not offerings, from all its
citizens, regardless of creed, faith or religion. And it is the duty of the State to
use these funds without religious favoritism.

C) The government must be secular, because it must dictate laws and conduct an
order in society, where JUSTICE is made for everyone, as when someone mistreats
another person, or damage the ecosystem, or commits any crime of any kind.
Someone must punish and put order, you cannot wait for God to do it, because
coincidentally in countries where that order is not secular, is where the greatest
human atrocities and of all kinds happen.

And, in contrast, three examples that the Church and the Government are not
separate we could say that:

D) In Spain, signed agreements were made with the Vatican in 1979, and it is
committed to teaching religious education in all public schools of primary and
secondary level (the subject of Religion is a voluntary choice for students, but
of obligatory offer to educational establishments). This continues to the
present. It favors churches with public funds, tax exemptions and educational
privileges. Spain is far from being secular.

E) The Vatican. The State Government of the Vatican City is carried forward by
an absolute and elective monarchy, led by the Pope who lives in the Vatican
City. The Pope, as sovereign of the State, has all the powers, the legislative,
the executive and the judicial. And it has various offices, such as the
Directorate of Health and Hygiene, which is responsible for everything related
 to public health care, hygiene of the territory, and medical activities of all; and
guarantees, for example, specialized visits and clinical analisis; and they even
have the Vatican Pharmacy, which provides the purchase and sale of
medicines and similar products.

F) Iran. Iran is governed by a system dominated by the clergy and by a

supreme leader. This system is also the basis of the Iranian Constitution.
Religion and government are one, and there is no room for anything. When the
son of his secretary who was in charge of State´s Communication said that the
Iranians only hated Israel and not the Israelis, the president, asked him to be
removed from the Government, from his position and from everything. One and
one only rules, only one says what religion has to be professed, only one
drives the minds of a whole Nation.

CONCLUSIONS:
Finally, Jefferson's idea of separating the Church from the Government has a very
coherent logic. Even though he imitated the language of Roger Williams (founder of
the first Baptist church of America), who in 1644 wrote about a "Coverage or wall of
separation between the garden of the church and the desert of the world", his
reasoning was much more progressive, intelligent and authentic.
I always wondered, why the US always confronted Iran, and vice versa. Today, I
realize that both governments are very antagonistic, one is the country of freedoms,
and the other, is the country of absolute control.
It is sad to think that while so many people can choose to have some belief or
simply not have any, many kilometers away, millions of people, especially women
and children, have no choice at all.
The world is one. We are all equal, anatomically speaking, but not all of us
are lucky enough to be able to choose. To be able to do it, very accurately,
the USA was the first country in the world to understand it and propose an
unequivocal solution, and very powerful and accurate, by the way; keep the
Church and the Government separate.