"Democracy is not a spectator sport"

Although it hardly ever concentrates their minds, most contemporary adherents of three of the world's nine major religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - must find the maxim of separation of Church and State hypocritical, especially in this part of the world and in the so-called Holy Land where all the Manifestations of God revealed themselves over the ages.

 It is uncertain where the aphorism originated, but Christendom would find itself in trouble if it pointed to the tumultuous revolution that was the Reformation as its genesis. That is because while Martin Luther succeeded in freeing the rulers of 16th Century Europe from the clutches of the Papacy, made the Bible more of a public document accessible to ordinary parishioners and commoners, and gave the world its first template of a bill of rights, he did not achieve anything even slightly akin to a separation of Church and State.