The Reformation and the Church and the State

There is no concept whatsoever in the sixteenth century of a state that has no religious affiliation, or a government that is just there to protect people's individual liberties. The church didn't have anything to say to the state, which then led to the enlightenment and secularism and everything else. So it's not the perspective of the lutheran confessions that the church is this purely secular sphere. There should be no forced conversions, because conversion is a matter of the heart, and that is not something that the state has a proper regulation over at all. And for the sixteenth Century reformers, there is no such thing as religious neutrality.