Spooks, shinobi,
I am British but live permanently here in California and have done so for many years.
Britain has an official religion and there is no concept of separation of Church and state as there is here in the USA. But this isn't an issue since the really overtly religious people in the UK are usually seen as crackpots and are effectively ignored, and the Church simply stays out of politics. I think if it did start dabbling seriously in politics then there would be some swift laws to kill it. In the House of Lords (the upper house of parliament, somewhat like the US Senate) there are a fixed number of positions for religious clergy. So their influence is tightly controlled.
Religion (primarily Christianity) in Britain is seen more as part of tradition rather than something of a political force. I was married in a Church in 1975 even though I told the vicar I was an atheist. It pleased the families to have a pretty Church wedding that went well with British tradition.
At my father’s funeral in 2000 I organized an entirely atheist service. Not that it was called an atheist service; there was simply no reference to religion, no prayers, no hymns etc. I never announced the nature of the service or explained myself, and absolutely no one mentioned a lack of religiosity. I’m not even sure anyone noticed.
Recent statistics show Britain as being probably the most secular/atheist nation in the western world. The Archbishop of Canterbury stated a few years ago that England had become a nation of atheists. A few years early a well-known bishop had stated on record that he thought the virgin birth and Jesus being divine was clearly nonsense. It would seem that astonishingly atheist bishops are not too uncommon.
Unlike the USA, most people in Britain do not take religion too seriously and religions are fair game for many forms of humor. Again unlike the USA, religious political pressure groups are very weak in Britain.
Americans tend to take life very seriously whereas the British have a much more light-hearted approach to life and especially towards religion. It is easy to tolerate religion in Britain, but in the USA it often asserts itself in a very offensive manner.
Cris