But those are not comparable. In the Swedish case we're talking about a largely or totally defanged church: One which had been gradually but systematically stripped of its privileges and authority.

I'd suggest that forcing such a church into a Darwinian struggle for survival on the free market is likely to see it achieve a net gain in influence. Partly because the easiest marketing strategy for a newly privatized church is to polarize society along some formerly dormant fault line. And partly because having to secure cash flow from the customers will trim away employees who are, from a cash flow perspective, dead wood. This creates an incentive structure which encourages a smaller but more ideologically coherent - and more extremist - organizational structure.

The Israeli case is different, because religion was never properly defanged in the first place.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.