Perhaps–or it is a form of idolatry.

Scripture and Tradition both attest to the fact that the legitimate, temporal authority of the state comes from God. The Church has its own legitimate, spiritual authority that comes from God. The best situation we can hope for in this life is for both Church and state to properly exercise their own legitimate authority and not usurp that of the other. That happening won’t bring about any kind of utopia — there can be no such thing in this life. That happening would bring about basic justice, not deliverance from all injustice or from the toil and troubles of life.

Currently the modern atheistic, secularized state has usurped not only the authority of the Church but that of God Himself, claiming for itself authority over innocent human life that belongs only to God. It has done this by pretending to authorize and legitimize taking the lives of innocent human beings via abortion and euthanasia in violation of God’s command “Thou shalt not kill.”

The Church has yet to resist rendering unto Caesar authority over innocent human life that belongs only to God to the extent the early Church resisted rendering unto Caesar worship that belonged only to God. The contemporary Church’s silent compliance with Caesar’s usurpation of God’s authority over innocent human life is the modern equivalent of burning incense to Caesar. This is indeed idolatry.

The modern state emerged by vacating Christianity from the public realm into the private and dominating public life. Religion went from a public expression of Christian practice to privately held beliefs with little public relevance. In order to legitimize this, the state was construed as a sort of sovereign quasi-deity on earth, which becomes evident after a few minutes of reading Thomas Hobbes or Jean Bodin.

In this respect, it is best to recall Carl Schmitt’s famous claim that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts,” or Walter Benjamin’s parable of the Puppet and the Dwarf, where a hidden dwarf, representing theology, manipulates a puppet playing chess, which is history. These both suggest that theology resides behind the curtain, if only transposed and hidden, animating current Western ideas on sovereignty, universalism, the religion/secular distinction, political evangelism, etc. This is what Karl Marx realized when he compared the modern state to a type of Christ: whereas the latter mediates before God on our behalf, rendering us all equal, the former makes us equal in its own sight by providing equal political rights to all its citizens. The state then is an attempt to create paradise of a sort on earth. It is also one that does so at the expense of the presence and activity of the Church by crowding it out, by demanding the use of our bodies in wars of political evangelism and domination, and by refusing to acknowledge God as the basis for human society rather than as a rhetorical justification for a secular paradise of man, for man, and by man. In all these ways and more, the state functions as a competing kingdom to the eternal one.

None of this is, of course, original or provocative amongst scholars. This is an argument that theologically conservative Catholics have made. Below is a link to an essay by one such theologian, William T. Cavanaugh, who writes almost exclusively about political theology.

http://www.jesusradicals.com/wp-content/uploads/wars-of-religion-and-the-rise-of-the-state.pdf

The text of H.Res. 397 can be read here:
http://fota.cdnetworks.net/pdfs/2009-05-13-hres397.pdf

I submit it here for review, not because I want to convince anyone that we were founded as a Christian nation, although one might understandably conclude that after reading the numerous citations it contains that seem to indicate that, but only to point out that the contemporary understanding of many of the meaning of “separation of church and state” doesn’t even remotely reflect the thought of our Founding Fathers or the facts of history.

John Quincy Adams’ Jubilee of the Constitution speech makes this clear, the text of which can be found here:
http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/misc/1839-jub.htm

It is obvious that Adams’ understanding was that our government was founded upon natural law, or the “laws of nature and nature’s God.” This was not his unique idea, but was the view of the Founding Fathers. They were vehement in their disagreements on how to best form a government based upon theism and natural law, but in agreement on that principle. For a detailed and scholarly explanation of this, see Heir to the Fathers – John Quincy Adams and the Spirit of Constitutional Government, by Gary V. Wood.

Not in the wildest dreams of the Founding Fathers did they imagine a phrase like “separation of church and state,” which many believe actually appears in the constitution somewhere when it doesn’t at all, would be used as though it did to undermine the fundamental principle of the government they founded. Such a government indeed

“had never before been adopted by a great nation in practice”
– J. Q. Adams, Jubilee of the Constitution

And sadly,

“There are yet, even at this day, many speculative objections to this theory. Even in our own country, there are still philosophers who deny the principles asserted in the Declaration, as self-evident truths – who deny the natural equality and inalienable rights of man.”
– J. Q. Adams, Jubilee of the Constitution

There is no foundation for “the natural equality and inalienable rights of man” outside of “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” The mistaken manner in which “separation of church and state” is today being interpreted is destroying the greatest and noblest political/governmental experiment in the history of the world.