November 04, 2007
Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere
There is a discussion of Charles Taylor's new book A Secular Age at The Immanent Frame, which is a blog of the Social Science Research Council. Charles Taylor himself is posting there:
1. One great problem is that the term “secular” is a western term, and corresponds to a very old distinction within Christendom. Then it goes through a series of changes in order to surface in such neologisms as “secularization,” and “secularism.” But even so, some of the original meanings carry over. These terms are then applied unreflectingly to what are seen as analogous processes and ideas elsewhere, and the result can be great confusion. (Example: discussion of Indian “secularism”, whether or not the BJP is “secular”, etc.)
My way of dealing with this has been a prudent (or cowardly) approach of trying to examine the processes we call secularization primarily in the Western context. This however is not a clean and simple solution either, because a) the religious life of other cultures has impacted on the developments in the West (as Peter van der Veer has pointed out), and also one of the facets of contemporary religious life in the West is the borrowing of forms of devotion, meditation and worship from other parts of the world; and b) there has also been borrowing in the other direction, that is by non-Western societies from the West (hence the fact that certain arrangements of the Indian constitution are captured under the cover name “secularism”).
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 10:49 AM | Permalink
Comments
Taylor says, 'The situation is made worse by an ideology of “secularization” which feeds off the older narrative, which starts from the illusion that “religion” can just be sidelined, e.g., that political debates in a plural society should be carried out in terms of “reason alone” (Kant’s “blosse Vernunft”), without the injection of “religious” premises or arguments; or that we can separate people’s purely secular interests from their religious ones. An outlook of this kind sees any difference arising about the place of religion as the result of an unjust eruption of “religion” into the public sphere, an attempt to set the clock back, etc. ... This outlook also nourishes the illusion that there is a simple solution to the problem of religion in society (you just “separate Church and State,” or just adopt laïcité), which can be applied anywhere.'
I agree that the notions Taylor is criticizing here are in fact overly simplistic and pat, but not all proponents of church-state separation believe in the illusion that Taylor identifies here.
Not having read Taylor's book in its entirety, I wonder whether he would similarly discount that variety of secularism which, rather than seeking to exclude all religious viewpoints from the political sphere, merely seeks to keep religious and political authority structures separate from one another, but otherwise allows religious individuals, parties, and ideologies to compete on an equal basis with their non-religious peers within a system that neither cripples nor privileges either side. In other words, there is no governmental role set aside for a bishop or a council of theologians, but bishops and theologians are free to run for political office, and overtly religious parties are free to organize slates of candidates to compete in the elections. (A system similar in most respects to American constitutionalism.)
I don't mean to characterize Taylor's above statements as a straw-man argument, and I do realize that there are deeper problems related to religion and modern society that are not solved by simply separating church and state.
Posted by: Nizam | Nov 4, 2007 12:33:36 PM
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