“Before Marxists attained power in Russia and China, the proposition was widely believed, government likes religion. Wanting honesty and service, it hopes that religion helps to make honest men who serve. But government is ever aware that religion is unpredictable and that prophets are hard to control. To rule men needs compromise. In face of the sacred is always an unbendable will. Government likes religion to bless its acts, crown its dictators, sanction its laws, define its wars as just, be decorous master of national ceremonies. And since on grounds of religion religious men may criticize acts or laws or wars or modes of waging war, government prefers quietness and contemplation to excess of zeal. Though religion is important to government, it does not value excess of religion. It is happy with general morality, reasonable and moderate, but is uncomfortable with too much enthusiasm.” ~ Owen Chadwick in The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century read more