Alternatively, the Enlightenment is the process of symbolic construction of a
new type of political building in which sacred and secular powers are no longer
merged, a merger reportedly never doing much “good” to virtually any society in history and existence, from Pareto’s “Roman Theocracy” to Weber’s “Calvinistic state churches” in Europe and their Puritan version in the “theocracy of New England” to its presumed evangelical heir the Southern “Bible Belt” and to Iran’s “Islamic Republic” and Taliban-ruled regions. Instead, the Enlightenment formally separates sacred and secular powers and realms through what Jefferson called the “wall of eternal separation of church and state”, and substantively differentiates religion and politics in general. The latter process is an aspect of social differentiation and rationalization, notably continuing and even reinforcing secularization in modern democratic societies, including in part “godly” America contrary to conservative or rational choice antisecularization detractors.
Counterfactually, if the Enlightenment did not develop or succeed in its operation and legacy, medieval theocracy cum “godly” politics and society would have likely, with expedient Vatican- and Puritan-style adjustments, remained a prevalent type of political system in modern Western and other societies, including America under colonial and postrevolutionary Puritanism and its recurrent revival via “reborn” fundamentalism through the twenty-first century. Conversely, in this scenario a free, open, inclusive, or liberal-democratic secular sociopolitical system would have hardly ever been established and even conceived in these societies in the absence or failure of the Enlightenment as the foremost project of political liberty and democracy. Simply, there was no such thing as democracy, especially its liberal-secular, inclusive, and pluralist version, in the medieval order and the pre-Enlightenment overall, excepting in part ancient Greece and Rome. In turn, this democratic form is eliminated or perverted in the counter-Enlightenment like medieval-rooted authoritarian conservatism and its own metastasis totalitarian fascism, including Nazism, just as its religious subtype, theocratic fundamentalism such as revived Islamic radicalism and American “Christian” “born again” evangelicalism.