Church-state separation is historically unique to the West and drove its freedom.

Evidence

Separation of spiritual and temporal authority. Throughout Western history first the Church and then many churches existed apart from the state. God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu civilization were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner. The separation and recurring clashes between church and state that typify Western civilization have existed in no other civilization. This division of authority contributed immeasurably to the development of freedom in the West. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 188

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to theories of why liberal democracy emerged in the West (e.g., Rodney Stark, Tocqueville on church-state tension), and to the reader’s broader interest in institutional origins of freedom. — connects to: The religion-secular boundary is a construct serving Western state power — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 685