by David Rosser Owen
“The West” that separates Church and State is basically France and French-style secularism.
The USA doesn’t really separate church and state as such, but instead, decided against having an established church so as not to weaken the resolve of the 13 Colonies, in their wish to leave being British, and gain independence.
Why? So that the Established Anglican states (e.g. New York, Maryland, Virginia) would not end up fighting Puritan fundamentalists (e.g. Massachusetts, Connecticut) when they should be watching their collective backs.
in other words, Americans did not establish a religion because (a) it would have divided the states, and (b) they perceived the state religion of britain as ‘diluted’, which we would today translate as “insufficiently cleansed of catholicism and Popery.”
The UK’s secularism (separating Church and State) means here that there are no Churchmen holding senior offices of the secular state as churchmen – the last bishop as Lord Chancellor was in the 1600s.
But it doesn’t mean that the Common Law doesn’t derive from Natural Law (i.e. Divinely inspired Law, as the books by people like Hooker, Feilding, or Hearnshaw state).