Written by Jordan Bishop | 19 February 2012
Posted in Comment - Faith

 Photography: UK Home Office

Politics – aided and abetted by the media en masse – is a buzzword business. Usages range from selective sound-biting, employed to convey the party line (e.g. “The Big Society”), to disingenuous sanitising aimed at distracting or minimising negative press (e.g. “The Big Society”). Sometimes certain buzzwords garner a party neutral standing. These phrases are unanimously accepted as either negative or positive, the mere mention of which by Right or Left constitutes cheap political point scoring.

One current example is secularism. As a concept it really isn’t anything new; the ever reliable Wikipedia informs me the term was originally coined “by the British writer George Jacob Holyoake in 1851.” Of late, however, secularism has been increasingly taken as something of a dirty word, looked down upon as a barrier to individual freedom rather than an arbitrator.

Conservative party chairman Baroness Warsi is the latest to imbibe secularism in this negative form. In her piece for The Telegraph on Tuesday February 14, she wasted little time in setting out her stall, writing of her fear “that a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies.”

Semantically pedantic as it might be to point out, this statement seems to make little sense. Secularism, if taken as intended, cannot be militant because it’s founded upon a principle of neutrality in government. Neutrality cannot be aggressive by its very definition, the logical extension of which indicates that the values of secularism should only be seen as either in operation or not.

However, perhaps it would be fair to say that Warsi’s main concern stems precisely from the notion of neutrality, and the alleged lack thereof. Neutrality implies a freedom from religious influence, but it also rests on the assertion of contrary equality: that religion will be free from influence. Secularism protects all viewpoints equally and indiscriminately. In the Baroness’s view this is simply not being put into practice: “We see it in any number of things… when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings” and “when states won’t fund faith schools”.

Of course, in the nominally Anglican Britain these concerns aren’t too relevant at present. Irrespective of location though, and religious audiences notwithstanding, her remarks remain incongruous. If, as she says, “secularism is not intrinsically damaging” unless pushed to an extreme, where is the necessity for a state to fund faith schools? What need is there for faith, which depends upon internal belief, to receive external manifestations in government buildings? The two spheres ought to be able to operate peacefully and independently, a co-harmonious relationship which is all too often blurred by secularists and their opposition.

One can’t help but feel that complaints voiced against the pseudo-movement of “militant” secularists is an attempt to redress this balance. Organised religion has always thrived on persecution; indeed, the more any group feels maltreated, the closer it is able to bond. Baroness Warsi, in taking on this particular language, is participating in a specific defence of all faiths, a defence based upon apparent inequity. The reality being that faith is increasingly met with indifference rather than the active discrimination purported as taking place.

Effectively, these comments, consciously or not, regard the presentation of a means by which religion is able to stay publically relevant in the 21^st century. On the one hand religious faith is being encouraged to unite in a common cause; whilst on the other hand faith is presented as providing a unique role in society. Together these approaches combine in an attempt to elevate religion from a private realm and back into the common societal conscience.

Whilst few would deny that private faith is justifiable, understandable, as well as a legal and moral entitlement, there should be no move to transform and elevate religion beyond the parameters which a given culture or zeitgeist attributes towards it. Given the fallacy of a cohesive, aggressive secularism, the need for confident religious response is significantly undermined; indeed it may even be counterproductive.

Similarly, to pair this stance with ideas of faith as providing a unique role is feeble and tangential. So when the Pope, as in his 2010 visit to the UK, cited atheist extremism in Nazi Germany as evidentiary that the “exclusion of God” and religion lead “to a truncated vision of man and society”, the implication was that faith alone might prevent such atrocities. Right...

The same problem of purpose arises in the claim that having a history steeped in religion is reason to maintain and propagate faith. That’s like suggesting we all dress in tights and speak in totally incomprehensible pentameters, because it’s traditional. A foundation needn’t be maintained purely because it was there first: society moves on and humanity progresses, call it the rational equivalent of intelligent design.

Faith may have a role in society for certain individuals, but that role is not irreplaceable in the absence of religion. Common humanist values of reason, ethics and justice can be equally beneficial in fighting bigotry and fostering understanding. Indeed, it is secularism which allows both approaches to exist autonomously and in open discourse. So in a developing world, specifically the West, religion will stay relevant through merit, not in optimising supposed threats or attempting unnatural projections.

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