The Secular Outlook

Introduction: The Secular Outlook What nobody would have thought possible in the 1960s and ’70s actually happened in the following decades: a widening of the gulf between religious believers and unbelievers. Christianity is growing modestly, Islam is growing exponentially, but atheism also has more adherents than ever before. A lively debate on religion is also taking place. Books like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006)1 are being sold in huge numbers, but so are books written from an explicitly Christian or other religious point of view (e.g., those by Karen Amstrong). At the same time, the world is being confronted with a relatively new phenomenon: religious violence – in particular, religious terrorism. Governments are suddenly facing religious leaders who issue death sen- tences for writers, and they are struggling with the demands of religious minorities in the midst of their liberal democracies. This book addresses some of these issues and makes a case for a “secular outlook” on life. That implies that it is not primarily concerned with defending atheism, nor does it defend theism – its central concern is to show how religious believers and unbelievers can live peacefully together and what principles the state should try to stimulate in its citizenry to achieve social harmony and social cohesion. The underlying idea is that the basic principles of secularism are important for the time in which we live. * * * In recent decades we have, according to many people, witnessed an upsurge of religion. Among scholars there seems to be a nearly universal consensus that the so-called “secularization thesis” has failed. The secularization thesis, advocated by seminal social thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, held that religion would gradually fade in importance and even M 1 Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, Black Swan, Transworld Publishers, London 2006. Cliteur—The Secular Outlook cintro.indd 1 4/15/2010 6:17:46 PM 2 Introduction: The Secular Outlook cease to be significant with the advent of modern society. Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, amongst others, all subscribed to this vision of the future course of events. However, in 2000, the sociologists of religion Rodney Stark (1934– ) and Roger Finke (1954– ) suggested that it was time to bury the secularization thesis.2 Up until the 1970s and ’80s secularization seemed to be on the march in Europe, especially in the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. But this, some scholars say, all changed 10 to 20 years later. A number of them referred to a “revanche of God,”3 or a “return of the sacred.”4 Even so notorious a secularist philosopher as Jürgen Habermas (1929– ) seemed to have second thoughts.5 Secularization was not an irreversible process, many scholars now write. Theodore Dalrymple (1949– ) captures the mood rather well: In my naive, historicist way, I assumed that secularization was an irreversible process, like the breaking of eggs: that once people had seen the glory of life without compulsory obeisance to the men of God, they would never turn back to them as the sole guides to their lives and politics.6 Whether this reversal of the climate of opinion is real or superficial, whether it is temporary or permanent, remains to be seen. But what can be said is that ideas of secularism and the secular state no longer go unchallenged. This challenge comes from two sides. On the one hand, it comes from those advocating a greater influence of religion on the state and the public domain on religious grounds. On the other hand, it comes from those who, on non-religious grounds, claim that we should give more attention to religion. 2 Stark, Rodney, and Finke, Roger, Acts of Faith, University of California Press, Berkeley 2000, p. 79. For the opposite view, see: Paul, Gregory S., “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Social Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies,” Journal of Religion and Society, 7 2005, pp. 1–17. 3 Kepel, Gilles, La Revanche de Dieu: Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans à la reconquête du monde [The Revenge of God: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Out to Reconquer the World], Le Seuil, Paris 1991. 4 Bell, Daniel, “The Return of the Sacred,” in: Daniel Bell, The Winding Passage. Essays and Sociological Journeys 1960–1980, Basic Books, New York 1980, pp. 324–355. 5 See on this: Habermas, Jürgen, and Ratzinger, Joseph, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2005, and for an analysis of this exchange of views: Bowman, Jonathan, “Extending Habermas and Ratzinger’s Dialectics of Secularization: Eastern Discursive Influences on Faith and Reason in a PostsecularAge,”Forum Philosophicum, 14 2009, pp. 39–55, p. 29: “Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger agree that we have entered a postsecular age (2006).” 6 Dalrymple, Theodore, “When Islam Breaks Down,” in: Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, M What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2005, pp. 283–296, p. 283. Cliteur—The Secular Outlook cintro.indd 2 4/15/2010 6:17:46 PM Introduction: The Secular Outlook 3 The latter approach is defended under the banner of “multiculturalism.”7 Those two positions, although leading to the same end, must be carefully distinguished. Moreover, there is another distinction that we have to honor. On the one hand, we have the discussion among sociologists of religion about the validity of the secularization thesis. Does it hold? Is it true that modernization is pushing religion to the margins of existence? Or should we follow Stark and Finke in burying that thesis? This “secularization debate” is to be distinguished from a debate among constitutional scholars, moral philosophers, and political theorists on the question of how the state and society should react to the presumed come- back of religion in the public arena.8 This second debate is not about the process of secularization but about the value of secularism in both ethics and politics. We should carefully distinguish secularization from secularism. First: what is secularization? Daniel Philpott (1967– ) avers that: Secularization is a rather descriptive statement, holding that the political ends of citizens, organizations, and societies themselves are no longer as explicitly religious as they once were or are no longer explicitly religious at all.9 In the words of the American sociologist Peter L. Berger (1929– ) secularization is the “process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.”10 In contrast to secularization, “secularism,” in the sense in which I will use the term, is a normative or ethical creed. The secularist contends that the best way to deal with religious differences is a morally neutral vocabu- lary that we all share and a morality that is not based on religion. The 7 See: Baber, H.E., The Multicultural Mystique: The Liberal Case against Diversity, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY 2008, p. 26 ff. Severe criticism of multiculturalism is also found in: Rooy, Wim van, De Malaise van de Multiculturaliteit [The Malaise of Multiculturalism], Acco, Leuven/Voorburg 2008; a defense in: Parekh, Bhikhu, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, Macmillan Press, Basingstoke 2000; Parekh, Bhikhu, A New Politics of Identity: Political Principles for an Interdependent World, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2008. 8 See on this: Sajó, András, “Preliminaries to a Concept of Constitutional Secularism,” International Journal of Constitutional Law, July 29, 2008, pp. 1–25; Sajó, András, “A Reply,” International Journal of Constitutional Law, June 15, 2009, pp. 515–528; Zucca, Lorenzo, “The Crisis of the Secular State – A Reply to Professor Sajó,” International Journal of Constitutional Law, June 15, 2009, pp. 494–514. 9 Philpott, Daniel, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics, 55 2002, pp. 66–95, p. 69. 10 Berger, Peter L., The Social Reality of Religion, Allen Lane, London 1973, p. 113; for a commentary see: Madan, T.N., “Secularism in Its Place,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 46, M no. 4 1987, pp. 747–759, p. 748. Cliteur—The Secular Outlook cintro.indd 3 4/15/2010 6:17:46 PM 4 Introduction: The Secular Outlook words “secular” and “secularism,” in the sense that I use them, do not entail any negative attitude to religion.11 Although George Holyoake (1817– 1906) coined the term “secularism” as a “policy of life for those who do not accept theology,” I will not subscribe to his semantics.12 Secularism should also be clearly distinguished from the position of those who predict the demise of religion (i.e. “secularization”). In her book The Case for God (2009) Karen Armstrong (1944– ) writes: “Contrary to the confident secularist predictions of the mid twentieth century, religion is not going to disappear.”13 My point is that Armstrong, like some other authors writing on religion and secularism, mixes up “secularism” and the “secularization thesis.” A secularist to her is someone who believes in the secularization thesis. This book is mainly devoted to secularism, not to secularization. Armstrong and others may, of course, gleefully criticize the secularization thesis, but that is flogging a dead horse. Their argumentation has no consequence whatsoever for the viability of secularism as a moral and political philosophy or a vision of how the state should relate to religion. On the contrary. This subject is topical. It has been

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