ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the proper relationship between religion and the state. Wearied by centuries of religious wars, Western thinkers argued that the government must be separated from religion and any obligation to enforce the dictates of a religious group. Persecution of minority religions, wars between supporters of rival religious commitments, and general instability of society were both predictable and all too common outcomes. Other religious traditions require women to wear special garments that hide them from the peering gaze of men. Women are regarded as relating to God only secondarily and through inclusion in the male as their "head". All other groups—women, children, slaves—are addressed by God only indirectly and through the mediation of the patriarchal class. In every relationship in which this "feminine" aspect appears in patriarchal theology, the dominant sovereign principle is always male; the female operating only as delegate of the male.
