Isn't this all just going a bit overboard? IMHO, this whole separation of church and state thing is a red herring.
Too much separation is why you end up in situations like we had on EC, where you have realms who's leaders/dukes were members/elders of religions who considered the religions of the realms federated ally, a theocracy, as evil. Hello? You're federated with Evil and you're cool with that? Seems to me that's because religions and state are separated just a wee bit too much.
Rather than have separation of church and state, I think the problem we have is that most religions are not political enough. Personally I think that's a major reason why most religions fail at getting player involvement. They don't get involved in the stuff that matters to the players: Politics and War. Religions just want to preach to the peasants, and be content monks who moan about "Why can't we all just get along?". Boring. Thats something that no one will get involved in.
Compare this:
"Hey, want to be a priest of Keplerism?"
"What do you do?"
"Well, all of our priests have assigned preaching circuits. They travel the regions preaching to the peasants to keep our follower percentage at >90%. Then if the region morale goes too low, we calm the population to bring it back up. But then that loses us followers so we have to preach some more. Then we go the next region and do it all again."
"Yeah.... No."
To this:
"Hey, want to be a priest of Keplerism?"
"What do you do?"
"Our goal is to dominate the entire continent, spreading our faith to the farthest shores by the book or by the sword. We hunt down unbelievers and persecute them. We subjugate and destroy the false faiths, cast down their idols, and burn their temples."
"Cool! Where do I sign up?"
Forget that separation of church and state stuff. I want more religions involved in more stuff. I want official state religions. I want realms to use their militarily power to export their faith to other realms. I want religions to be telling realms what to do.
The failing of religion has nothing to do with separation. You can have your religion and your realm as separate as you want. But if your religion doesn't get involved in politics it will remain on the fringe without a lot of influence, gold, or noble support. That doesn't mean you have to be a tool of the state. The key is to work out how to make the state *your* tool. Find a way to do that, and you will have one heck of a fun religion.
