The nature of the relationship between faith and society has been a matter of debate for centuries. Since the reformers of the 15-16 centuries tried to put the marriage between state and church asunder, subsequent generations have made attempt to tap into that idea and try to articulate it into their particular situations in an attempt to create social harmony. Despite this long time debate, there is no clear consensus to weather these two are mutually exclusive or mutually dependent.
Today we are still at the same place asking the same question: what is the relationship between state and Church or more broadly speaking, faith and politics? For Islam this is not much of a strong debate as it has never had a long history of attempting to separate politics and faith hitherto the usual reference to some countries as "Islamic state". However, there is an upsurge of new movements within Islam, like the "liberal Muslim" or "the progressive Muslims" who seem to embrace and promote the idea of the separation of state and religion. In the meantime, we will consider them a minority group within Islam. The conservative view in Islam has always been to see all things through Islam and thus Islam defines every sphere of society. The concept of separating Islam from the state would be viewed an act of sacrilege,thus the constant fight for a sharia controlled state.
Conversely, the idea of the separation of state and religion has mostly been a Christian idea. From the decisive years of the early church, Christians have had to define their place in a multi religious context. In most cases, it was clear how the state viewed its relationship with religion. To take the Roman concept of "pax Romana" (the Latin meaning of Roman Peace), the roman empire sort to keep peace at all levels of society and did that by giving for some forms of "inclusiveness" and degree of religious tolerance by accommodating and assimilating all religions into some "pool of polytheism" though ebbed by the worship of the emperor as pivotal in the keeping of peace. The church in such context was often targeted, falsely, as the enemy of the state. It was clear that the Church's refusal to any form syncretism was considered antithetical to a peaceful Rome and an act of subversion to the emperor. It is at this point that the church recorded its high number of mat yrs. They were persecuted in all forms.
However, before the collapse of the Roman empire in the hands of the Goths, Christianity had not only enjoyed acceptance under emperor Constantine but had been made the state religion. All though this was not greeted by all the citizens as a great idea, it made the role of the state and church quite blurred. For the church, its primary role, that of worship, evangelism and services of mercy and justice in the society was in some fashion turned political. With the fall of Rome in 410 some were quick to blame the church for its collapse. However, we see for the first time, in the midst of the confusion that followed the fall, an attempt to redefine the church. Augustine´s work: the city if God was the attempt to try to re-claim the identity of the church and by so, clarify its relationship with the state. One could conclude that Augustine's thesis was not a synthesis for the relationship between the church and state but an antithesis between the church and state. He defined the church as a mystic entity, an organic rather than an organisational being. one saddle with a responsibility that has a vertical bearing towards heaven and not much with a horizontal relevance to earthly affairs.
But before we hastily reach any conclusion of assuming that Augustine was the father of the separation of state and religion, we need to examine the shift that occurred in the centre of Christianity from East to West. The effort of Augustine did not practically change the state of affairs but clarified the fundamentals of Christianity. The movement of the strength of the church from east to west was a move from a Greek influenced church to a Latin influenced Church. However, the marriage between the state and church as officiated by Constantine was never dissolved. As David Bosch puts it: the church strive to articulate her role profusely in this "alter and throne" era.
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