As a player I wish there was some sort of middle ground to pursue, because religion should be one of the prime movers of conflict in the game. But no King who enjoys a firm level of control is going to willingly hand over control to any religion, so Galiard can't do much about it, and the other faiths are too fragmented (at least at the moment).
Most of the realms on the FEI have been secular dictatorships of one form or another and they'd be pretty foolish to give that up.
And this is precisely why a smart King should be very, very religious. If you are in charge of a Church, then you can have influence wherever it does...Which might be well beyond the boundaries of your realm.
Only works with a good religion, though, otherwise you get the empty-state-religion issue.
