You don't seriously believe that you achieve increasing democracy in a society if you suppress churches' influence, do you?

You don't seriously believe that you can increase democracy in a society by giving power structures favorable to psychopaths privileged access to political discourse, do you?

Once the mainstream churches are not overwhelmingly authoritarian right-wing organizations, they should of course have coequal status with other self-defined special-interest groups, like retirees' associations and motorists' associations.

Even then, however, trade unions remain a bad comparison. In a well-run industrial society they are party to core macroeconomic planning functions that churches have neither the qualifications nor the scope to participate in. Trade unions, in a properly run industrial society, are part of a special but difficult to define group of semi-official civil society organizations, along with media houses, banks, professional associations and scholarly organizations. I really don't see what religious groups have to contribute to that simply by virtue of subscribing to a particular creed or doctrine.

But that's all theory - as long as churches are governed by psychopathy-favoring power structures, they don't belong near the levers of power.

In a political climate where human life increasingly only is worthy of protection and dignity if it is useful and productive, what political forces would fill the vacuum left if churches no longer had a voice?

You are presuming facts not in evidence. Namely that churches' use their current political privileges in a way that is net favorable to the protection and dignity of human life.

It would be nice if we lived in that world.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.