The Religious Perspective:

From a religious perspective, there is no problem since the church has always maintained the there should be no influence from the government. The churches are answerable only to the will of the Supreme Being or deity that they worship and will never fall under the influence of man or his institutions. The problem however is that the church often under estimates its influence on the government and on the general public. While it may insist that it does strictly maintain the barrier between church and state, such is not always the case in reality as the church has, from time to time, been known to take sides on political issues that in one way or another tend to influence the conduct of politics be it on a local level or a national level. The problem from the standpoint of the church therefore lies in being able to delineate between what can be considered as acceptable interference or entanglement.

A case of entanglement between church and state that would be considered extreme by the standards set by the American doctrines would be the case of Turkey where the Preamble of the Constitution states that “There shall be no interference whatsoever of the sacred religious feelings in State affairs and politics”. The problem is that while it does state such the State pays imams' wages, and provides religious education in public schools. This is a situation quite similar to the theocracy, as mentioned in the previous section, wherein the courts or officials of the religion direct policies of the civil government.