What 'secular state' should mean

The terms "secularism" and "secular state" having been bandied about quite a lot recently, I felt I had to get up to some mischief. I went around asking people whenever I heard them use those terms, "What on earth do you mean by secularism? How would you define it? What kind of state is conceived by that?"

As expected, I got as many different answers as the number of people I asked. Many, however, started their answer the same way: Keep religion out of politics. But what exactly does one mean by that in practical terms? The fact is, some people have developed their ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, by reference to religion. When they participate in the public square, even if they don't cite chapter and verse of their scriptures, invariably these same values would shape their views. Surely, we cannot expect to isolate out those views?

When pressed thus, most people would agree that it would not be realistic. This suggests that "Keep religion out of politics", in practical terms, is little more than saying that religious leaders should stay out of the political arena -- a kind of minimalist secularism.

Is it good enough? I don't think so. 

Suppose a religion teaches its flock that males are superior to females, that men can divorce their wives at will but not the other way around, that male employees in a workplace should not take instructions from female bosses, and daughters remain the property of fathers until sold into marriage. Suppose a large plurality of a Singapore's population subscribe to this religion, and without the overt involvement of this religion's clergy, its adherents press for these values to be incorporated into law and policy.

Meanwhile another religion preaches that the big bang and evolution never took place; that humans are shaped from wet clay by some celestial being and baked to final form.

Should we amend our laws and policies to reflect these views? Cleanse our physics and biology curriculum, and modify our education programs to inculcate the value that females are inferior to males? Should we start reducing women's rights? Should a memo be issued to the civil service not to promote women to head departments? 

I think most of us will think it abhorrent to go down this route, yet we have no intellectual tool to stop these demands in their tracks if we don't have a more robust understanding of what secularism should mean, beyond saying that religious leaders should stay out of politics. 

The weakness lies in the habit of describing secularism in the negative, in opposition to religion. Occasionally, we even fail to distinguish it from the idea of "multi-religious" -- of many faiths. A society, comprising as it does numerous people of individual minds, can be multi-religious, but a state, which must maintain a single coherent creed, can never be multi-religious. It can be non-religious, but that again is a term that is negatively defined, and ultimately tells us very little.

Another danger coming from a confusion of "secular" with "multi-religious" is the discounting of views that do not stem from any religion. There is a tendency to think that by averaging (or locating the lowest common denominator of) the opinions of various extant religions -- and usually only with reference to the views of religious scholars and their interpretation of doctrinal truth -- one can arrive at a happy median for a "secular" state. Firstly, this has the flaw of treating freethinkers' and atheists' input as irrelevant, like abstention votes in an election; secondly, averaging of religious views can produce results that are remarkably conservative, because religious leaders and vocal adherents generally tend to be un-modern, even compared to their flock.

Even if one strips away religious leaders' or vocal religionists' views and merely average the views of the lay public, plus those of freethinkers, you may still end up with state policies that are abhorrent. Racism and sexism are still widespread, let alone homophobia. Should our state then, in the name of democracy, amend our laws and government programs to reflect the racial chauvinism, patriarchal condescension and obscurant homophobia all around us?

Many of us think not. We think the state should be an enlightened one. At the same time, we believe in democracy, which means that state policies should reflect popular will. But what if that will is religiously informed and opposed to enlightened leadership?

 
Breaking away

It is therefore very important to break away from a negative definition of secularism to a positive one. Secularism cannot be just an absence of clergy interfering in politics; it cannot even just mean an averaging of popular opinion, racist attitudes and all. It has to mean much more than that. It has to mean a certain set of positive values. Well, what are they? What are the values a society should hold dear if it is to successfully sustain a secular state? 

There are many versions of humanism, and as an idea, it is at least as old as Confucious, for Confucianism is a form of humanism.

Humanism is a set of ideals centred around the human and aiming for his happiness and betterment in this life through empirical enquiry and critical thinking, and the ethics of living and socialising that come out of such thinking and enquiry.

Secular humanism, its most modern form, has certain tenets which are well encapsulated on answers.com:

Secular humanism describes a world view with the following elements and principles:

• Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
• Reason, evidence, scientific method – A commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
• Fulfillment, growth, creativity – A primary concern with fulfillment, growth and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
• Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
• This life – A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
• Ethics – A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
• Building a better world – A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Very few realise how much humanism has contributed to what we now consider right in the world. Take, for example, the idea of equality -– between races, sexes, regardless of religion. This springs from humanism. If you ever thought that the idea of gender equality came from any religion, you're kidding yourself. Look around any major religion and you'll see that, with few recent exceptions, women's access to clergy positions is still highly restricted. If we relied on religion only, we would not have many features of what we consider a progressive society.

Even Islam, one of the most progressive religions when it came to race and class, did not extend equality to non-Muslims.

Modern humanism, on the other hand, asked the empirical question -– where is the evidence that one class of persons is inferior to another? And if there is no objective evidence of inferiority, then by default, all should be equal.

Likewise, the idea of individual liberty too springs from humanism. Traditionally, many religions have various rules for social control, often euphemistically called "correct behaviour". In contrast, by keeping the human being, his fulfillment and happiness at the centre of humanist principles, modern humanism is a liberating philosophy. That many religions today do not enforce their codes of behaviour as strictly as in the past is due to the tempering influence of modern humanist thinking on religions. Examples: how Christianity was rescued from its previous attachment to slavery, how Hinduism was rescued from its rigid caste system, and how modern Islam differs from fundamentalist Islam in its treatment of women.

Statue of priest and child slave In 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted a gift of a hundred Moorish slaves from King Ferdinand of Aragon, giving some of them to his favorite cardinals.

Even morality does not have to spring from religion. Humanism, through the process of enquiry and critical thinking, is more than capable of arriving at a set of values. Better still, because humanism demands respect for new objective facts and constant reexamination, these values do not ossify.

Despite being castigated by many evangelical Christian leaders, we owe a huge debt to humanism, without which modern society as we know it would not have come about.

A secular state therefore would do well to subscribe to secular humanism as its core value, with its laws and policies reflecting the principles of humanism, and not merely be an averaging of various religious or popular views.

Yet, we are all in favour of democracy. State policies should reflect popular will, we say. What this means is that to be sustainable, a secular state must not only promote inter-religious tolerance, it must actively promote secular humanism, in order to create a virtuous loop. Unless a population actively supports secular humanism as the state's guiding philosophy, the state will fall captive to one religious group or another sooner or later.

In such situations, the state has to stand its ground and say: No, we abide by the principles of secular humanism, for without it, "secularism" ultimately means nothing.

© Yawning Bread 

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