" "church tax": a surcharge of between 8 and 9% of the income tax."

Churches don't pay taxes in the USA. They are a billion dollar, tax exempt industry. If they want to influence politics, they shouldn't be tax exempt.

Also, which church? Who's god?

ALL countries in which the dominant religions are fundamentalistic have governments which are ruled by that dominant religious dogma. And, we still have countries struggling to establish and main democracies, like the USA, in which substantial fundamentalic or evangelical sects are engaged in a battle to maintain that democracy against the forces of dogmatic religious demagoguery trying to create theocracies.

Government based on religion seems to have the propensity to be more draconian in it's laws. I'm sure there might be some exceptions though.

Because our country was borne from religious persecution? And looking at a lot of places that have state-sponsored religion, it looks like a Very Bad Idea. Your benign examples do not in any way illustrate how truly awful it can be......

It is the age old question of "Would you rather have them inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in?" In the UK the church has very little hold or influence on govt. It does have a few guaranteed crossbench MPs in the lords (our senate). They do sometimes argue for things like a reduction of the term when legal abortions can be carried out. This is in response to improving medical technology. More often they will call out the govt on things like reducing welfare payments.
Religious education is compulsory in UK schools but from what I hear its a broad spectrum of different religions. Not one defining one now.

i truly could not care less about religions, churches, or their representatives

My 15 years in Germany told me otherwise (maybe it was because I lived in a University Town which was a bit more enlightened). Germany and much of Europe also do not discriminate if you are not a member of so and so religion. The tax is also on one's property and Germans have told me there are a lot of non-believers because of this.

The main problem is that when there is a particular religion there is often a lot of violence. Some of the worst violence is in Moslem countries that constantly fight other sects of the religion.

All this is about is who gets the resources. It is the age old tribal competition for available resources and when things get tight the radicals get violent. Because of the extreme influence and taking of wealth from the 1 percenters and the extra large use of resources this country is not near as rich as others (mainly liberals) make it to be. Our population growth, from all sources, only exacerbates the problem. Future generations will pay the price.

Yes we fled from monarchy and religious states existed which controlled people so we decided that neither was for us

Your point? Are you implying people stop complaining about the encroachment of religion within our government, or that we should adopt a national religion. Good points in your discussion, but you failed to state your desired outcome, as it seems you are trying to make a specific point.

The separation of church and state was a great idea that has been under attack by the evangelicals since it was written. They've continued to chip away at it, eroding it by degrees for decades. "In God We Trust" has no business being on our money, swearing on the bible has no business being in our courts, proclaiming one's faith is practically mandatory if one seeks public office, Xian values should not be proposed, advocated, nor made the foundation of our legislation and/or laws and yet, we have ALL of this in a country that was supposedly founded on the idea that church and state should be kept separate.

Clearly something went wrong somewhere.

It is also to be noted that in many European countries the state religion often has the weakest hold on people. The reason for both is because, the best way to kill religion, if that is your intention, is to give it state approval. Religion like everything else in the cultural market place has to find a niche product to sell, and it's best is as an alternative to the state, ( perhaps I would say its only real use.). Make it part of the state and not only does it loose that role, and that of giving voice to those down trodden by the state, but it also becomes tainted in peoples minds with every crime and abuse the state commits, as well as its own crimes. Double trouble.

Yes, the Queen is the head of the Church of England. But her powers over Parliament are vestigial. If she exercised any of them to veto the government's wishes, all hell would break loose. She has no control over the political process in this country and her involvement is entirely ceremonial. I suspect her position with the Church of England is much the same.

It's rare that you even hear a British politician mention religion. I'm not saying it doesn't happen (especially when objections arise to LGBT rights/education and equal marriage) but generally speaking, they're doing themselves no favours when they go down the God-bothering route, and they know it. Invoking the word of God is a great way to not get taken seriously in this country. Meanwhile, there's a politician in Florida claiming that God actually spoke to him and told him to back extreme anti-abortion legislation. (Yes, we have sensible abortion laws, too.)

There's absolutely no question in this country over whether someone's religious views allow them to discriminate against someone else. They don't. Meanwhile, the US is hell bent on introducing 'religious freedom' bills precisely to legitimise that kind of discrimination. That's when they're not too busy trying to make trans women use the men's toilets. (We do have a small but vocal bunch doing similar,but not gaining much traction. Guess where a large chunk of their funding comes from.)

So I think the US has bigger issues with the influence of church over state than the UK does. Much bigger ones.

I suggest that where America is very young compared to Europe it hasn’t had the depth of experience within its collective psyche to discern between ‘not Christian’ and the myriad of different forms that Christianity has taken in Europe. Church and state are not as co-dependant as they are in other parts of the world such as Christo-centric (S America) and Islamic-centric (ME and N Africa) states

My observation is that the American religious fixation is not with religion but evangelical Christianity.

I think the "for some reason" is the reason it ended up in our Constitution to begin with.

There is no hypersensitivity.
Thomas Jefferson knew that religion had NO place in government, as well as some of the other Founders.
No religion should have any influence on public policy. Anywhere. Ever.