ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the vexed question of the relationship between religious education and secular states. A majority religious community may successfully run its educational institutions without support from the state but, given its relative marginalisation in civil society, a minority religious community may, on its own, not be able to sustain its schools and colleges. A secular state is distinguished from theocracies and states with established states by a primary, first-level disconnection. A secular state has free standing ends, either substantially, if not always completely, disconnected from the ends of religion or conceivable without a connection with them. A state can be secular if it disconnects itself from religion at the first two levels but is connected at the third level, in short, when, instead of excluding religion at the third level, it keeps a principled distance from it.
