Keyword: Secularism
Secularism, like most political keywords, doesn’t mean one thing. Instead we must define secularism from the historical context of its usage. In the readings “Introduction: Contemporary Secularity and Secularism” and “Rethinking Secularism” the authors do just that. What we find is that secularism is related to differentiation—keeping different aspects of social life separate and specifically differentiating between religion and the state. The forms of secularism vary depending on the religious composition of the nation.
Secular is derived from the Latin word saeculum, a unit of time roughly equal to the maximum life expectancy of person (Calhoun 38). In the Middle Ages, this notion of impermanence was extended to mean ‘the world’, as opposed to the Church. ‘Secular’ priests worked out in the world at local parishes while ‘religious’ priests worked within the seclusion of a monetary (Kosmin 2). Later, during the Reformation, secularization referred to the seizure and reappropriation of Church property for non-religious use (Kosmin 2). Thus secular began to indicate a separation from the Church or the divine.
However, It wasn’t until the 18th century that secularism as a core element of a nation’s political realm developed. The American and the French Revolutions produced the two main “intellectual and constitutional traditions of secularism”— a “soft secularism” and a “hard secularism” (Kosmin 2). The variations are a reflection of the symbolic and cultural encoding of the religious legacies in national institutions and mentalities. In France, the absolutist monarchy tied its legitimacy in the Catholic religion (Kosmin 2). The Revolution against the State was therefore also a struggle against priestly authority (Calhoun 42). The resulting doctrine of secularism, laïcité, was suspicious of and antagonistic to religion and its influence on the state and society (Calhoun 42). The battle between the Revolution and the Church, between secular democracy and conservative tradition dominated France through the 19th and early 20th centuries (Calhoun 37). This prolonged struggle to secularize the state induced the parallel secularization of society. Today, laïcité is apart of French identity and exceptionalism (Calhoun 35). In the U.S. a very different form of secularism took hold in the formation of the nation. The Reformation shifted Christianity from a centralized, political entity to the individual (Kosmin 3). As the first Protestant nation, the U.S. “soft secularism” accounted for this shift. U.S. secularism means “opposition to an established religion and religious hegemony in the political or public arena” (Kosmin 11). In this separation the individual’s right to freely practice religion without state interference (i.e. an official religion) is protected. This more moderate approach created an open marketplace for religion (Calhoun 37). Thus while government and religious institutions are separate in terms of the law, there is a widespread religiosity among the populous (Kosmin 6).
This condition causes the relationship between religion and secularity to oscillate. Or as author Barry Kosmin states: “religion… frequently sanctifies the goals of a basically secular society, and the secular society affects and influences the very meaning of religious identification and association” (10). For example, religious arguments have been upheld in the determination of the legal status of marriage for homosexuals. A rise in evangelical “mega-churches” can be attributed in part to the process of secularization (Calhoun 40). While they may deliver a message of religious fundamentalism, they also are organized to deliver secular services like job placement and disaster relief (Calhoun 40).
These two forms of secularism have been adopted by many other nations, varying with the religious configuration in place. However, we can identify some commonalities of secularism, including its perceived association with modernity. Secularization is associated with differentiation (Kosmin 4). According to Max Weber, the differentiation of “value spheres” is fundamental to modernity (Calhoun 46). Weber also argued that the process of secularization was a direct result of rationalization and disenchantment of the world as more is explained by modern science (Kosmin 6). This disenchantment can be characterized by a “secular faith”: the idea that most of the world can be explained by “nonmetaphysical, nontranscendent knowledge” (Calhoun 38). In this sense, secular is purposefully non-religious (Kosmin 6). Many people hold this kind of faith in one way or another. A belief in a self-moving, market economy is a good example of this (Calhoun 37). Clearly, secularism maintains a significant presence in modern times. Secularism takes on different meanings depending on the nation’s political realm and public life. In American and other postcolonial states, soft secularism fosters religious pluralism. Hard secularism thrives in Europe, where the anti-churching struggles resulted in strong aversion to religious-political rule (and religion in general).