Is secularism sustainable?

Far from being a weapon against religion, this text returned all religions to the private sector and established state secularism in the public sphere.

Our observations

The French State does not favour any one religion and guarantees their peaceful co-existence in respect of the laws and principles of the Republic. In application of the secular principle, the law of 15 March prohibits all clothing or other attire displaying religious worship to be worn in schools.

This undeniable event in our history put the end to a monarchy with divine rights. France established itself as a benchmark country for human rights and the concept of secularism progressively became one of its protective frameworks. Secularism crossed a threshold with the Concordat of , which placed the Church under the guardianship of state power, particularly creating civil marriage and the civil state. The year was crucial because it marked the beginning of the separation of the School and the State.

The Jules Ferry laws established free mandatory public education and secular instruction. Since this time, the question of secularism has remained closely tied to the sphere of schooling. This law definitively sealed the separation between Church and State.

Connecting the dots

It was also the beginning of so-called French secularism, which proclaimed the freedom of conscience and guaranteed the freedom to practice religion. Excerpts from the guidance memo created by the Secularism Monitoring Centre in French:. There is greater cultural diversity in France today than in the past, which is why the country needs secularism now more than ever, for it enables all citizens, whatever their philosophical or religious beliefs, to live together, enjoying freedom of conscience, freedom to practise a religion or to choose not to, equal rights and obligations, and republican fraternity.

Copson refuses to sweep such degeneration under the carpet and thus invites the serious question, how do we prevent such betrayal of ideals. Second, and preying on this first objection, is the fact that secularist countries are rarely happy ones; or, more precisely, rarely happy with being secular.

Fighting for equal fairness for all makes a great street banner.

Human nature finds it a harder task. Humans are tribal animals. They have strong identities. They are not animals instinctively inclined to arbitrate objectively between tribes or to fight for the rights of other tribal members. We can and we do, but it can often feel like hauling yourself up by your moral bootstraps.

We are not naturally secular and, as a result, secular societies often struggle with simmering identity issues. Once again, Copson is commendably honest here. The result has been political instability, attempts to reintroduce sharia law, successive military coups to maintain a kind of order, and occasional flirtation with what we might call theocracy.

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Pictures of gun—toting gendarmes confronting burkini—wearing bathers on the beach are an ISIS recruiting poster. But sometimes they have wounds to lick.

Secularism and Religious Freedom

Hard secularism treats them like second class citizens, and even soft secularism can run roughshod over deeply—rooted culture, concerns and commitments, and end up feeling like a legally—fortified landgrab by a small, unrepresentative urban elite. The implication is pleasantly ironic: To exclude them is to provoke the kind of reaction that is slowly undermining some secular societies.

In aspiring towards fairness, equality and freedom secularism purports not to take sides, and although this is obviously betrayed by the facts of hard secularism, it seems credible for its softer variety. If you are going to welcome all the players onto the pitch, the argument goes, you need a referee who can apply the rules of the game in a non—partisan way. The only people who can referee are the players themselves. Indeed, they are the only ones who can draft the rules in the first place.

This does not mean that the constitutional principle of government impartiality between different religions and worldviews is illusory, or a lie, but it does mean that it is a much more contestable concept than is sometimes imagined. However, what that means in practice is far from settled or even settle—able. In short, arriving at a secular settlement actually only kicks the can further down the road, inviting the question: This is seen in certainly inherently ethical — indeed inherently metaphysical — issues on which a state, whether secular or not, cannot but take a stance.

For example, what form of personal union between adults should states recognise? Historically, in the UK, marriage was lifelong, monogamous union between one man and one woman. A decade or so ago, that was supplemented by civil partnerships so that state could recognise the union between two people of the same sex but mark it out a different from marriage.

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Then, a few years later, it introduced the right of same sex couples to enter into a marriage union. Each of these positions contains a view of what form s of union it is proper for a state to recognise, views that were often aired in more intelligent if less noticed debates around the time of the Marriage Same Sex Couples Act in There was and is no neutral position here. The debate can be extended. Why deny the rights of the so—called polyamorous who deny that relational exclusivity is necessary for recognising a union?

Why, indeed, not extend the right to polygamous arrangements, such as are permitted in certain interpretations of Islamic law, whereby a man may marry up to four wives?

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Speaking personally, I can think of various reasons to deny these extensions of recognition, but my views inevitably draw on my anthropological, and beneath it, theological and metaphysical commitments. Similarly, the state cannot decide on these matters from a position of metaphysical neutrality can. Impartiality is not an option. The secular state, like the humans that inhabit it, is condemned to operate in a contentious ethical landscape, however much it pretends to have transcended it.