Christianity is given no precedence, let alone predominance, over other religions. Germany has developed a system of separation of church and state which is moderate and pro-religious. But the demands to eliminate radically all religious elements from constitutional law, to prohibit all forms of institutional links between church and state, and to organize the churches as associations governed by private law, were rejected both in 1919 and 1949. These include faculties of theology, religious education in schools, the organization of religious communities as public law corporations, church taxes, compensation for the secularization of real estate, protection of monuments, church holidays, and care of souls in prisons and the military. The German constitutional concept of separation has not been developed as a means of conflict , but rather as an instrument of cooperation between church and state.
Separation brings about emancipation.
It frees the churches from state dominance. It frees the state from denominational tutelage. It frees the individual person from the bonds of confessionalism and of church establishment. Indeed, separation of church and state can be seen as the religious part of the overall and more general program of separation of state and society, of state and economics, of state and culture, as it was designed in theory by the political liberalism in the nineteenth century. The concept of separation protects the churches from being incorporated into the organizational structure of the state.