ABSTRACT
There is, it seems, no Archimedian point from which the relationships between religion and the state can be observed.While in the early twenty-first century the modern state is the key template for political organization across the globe, its form and function remain matters of ongoing dispute. Responsibility for the management of affairs affecting the physical and material security of citizens is generally accepted but on wider issues – including how it should relate to religious concerns – radicals, liberals, conservatives and reactionaries of various hues continue to engage in seemingly unresolvable controversy. The liberal democratic option of ruling that such concerns are no proper business of the state and should as far as possible be kept off the political agenda has failed to attract general agreement even in the more prosperous parts of the first world (Madeley 2003a). Elsewhere, where material conditions are much less favourable, issues of statereligion relations often appear to occupy centre stage. The existence of different worldviews encapsulated in, or extrapolated from, contrasting religious traditions continue to make for incommensurable and, even, non-compossible standpoints on important issues.
