Faith therefore was not a matter of individual choice of beliefs, values, morality, and rituals. Rather, the subjects bowed to the superior power of the sovereign as his faithful followers.

Adherents of other religions either fled to more congenial kingdoms or else risked being robbed of all property and perhaps even killed. In time, however, Church and state reached amicable separation and learnt to live in peaceful coexistence.

Looking around at the Western world today, it seems as though people, led by their political, intellectual, and cultural elites, are intent on reversing the gains of the Industrial Revolution, discarding the fruits of the Enlightenment and erasing long-established empirical knowledge with regard to basic biology.

It seems the state in some countries might be enforcing its own new religion of belief systems and values articulated by a small elite that self-identifies as progressive social justice warriors. In this cause they have recruited private-sector companies to function as the 21st century equivalent of feudal dukes and overlords to enforce the core beliefs and rituals of the state-decreed religion, sometimes with cult-like attributes.

In 2015 the University of California advised faculty and students to avoid causing offence by saying "There is only one race, the human race," because it denies "the significance of a person of color's racial/ethnic experience and history." More recently we had the example of a shock-inducing diversity workshop at Western University in Ontario, Canada with a slide giving as an example of microaggression the assertion that "the most qualified person should get the job."