The Secular State

Jul 12, 2010 Editorial

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Two weeks ago, an organisation by the name of the “Inter Religious Organisation” (IRO) announced that religious leaders were the “conscience of the nation”. From that self-professed platform, its co-chair Bishop Juan Edgehill denounced the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discri-mination (SASOD) of using its festival of gay films to “corrupt” young minds. Edgehill, who is also Chairman of the Ethnic Relations Commission – and who spoke from the latter organisation’s headquarters – pronounced that “all” religious texts were opposed to homosexuality, which was “evil”. While he conceded that homosexuals were entitled to all the rights conferred on Guyanese citizens, his Co-Chair Reverend Ronald McGarell announced that religious leaders have decided that society needs to be protected from homosexual behaviour, since in addition to the religious transgressions, it violated “natural law”.

While Swami Aksharananda, a Hindu member of the IRO disassociated himself with the statement and posited that the Hindu position was more “nuanced”, the issue resonates in a host of other countries where religion is pitted against the credentials of the modern secular state, of which Guyana counts itself a member. It is important to interrogate the notion of secularism so that we may be able to better deal with the present contrempts. Secularism, like all concepts, can only be appreciated genealogically and in this instance arose from two different historical contingencies – both European. After a long bloody struggle among Christian sects from the 16th century, Church and state were sundered and minority faiths gradually recognised. The state took an equidistant position from the “truths” of the various faiths and protected the key principle of “freedom of conscience” for all citizens. This may be called “Reformation Secularism”.

The other tradition developed later in the 18th and 19th centuries as Europe, joined now by the US, strove to inculcate the Enlightenment values of equality, democracy and citizenship. This led to conflict not only with the political and economic establishments but with the religious one that wielded tremendous social power through their control over the definition of everyday mores and norms. These traditional norms often clashed with the new values of “liberty, equality and fraternity” especially as they reinforced hierarchal patterns of domination and submission and intolerance of dissidents and minorities. This “Enlightenment strand of secularism” privileged democracy over freedom of conscience and consciously sought to confront conservative forces –such as the churches – that opposed the norms of democratic citizenship.

Against this background, Cécile Laborde, professor of political theory at University College, London poses the question : “How can we properly justify the secular state? A secular state is not defined by its substantive commitments, institutional settlement or specific policies. Rather, it is defined by the type of justification it offers for them. So, following (John) Rawls and other theorists of public reason, we can say that in justifying laws and policies, the state and its officials should not exclusively appeal to comprehensive, substantive views about the truth (or falsity) of religion.

In a liberal, pluralist society, it is legitimate that the relative ordering and weight of different political values in relation to particular controversies be a subject of democratic deliberation. So, contemporary debates about abortion, sex, homosexuality, and so on must be fought democratically, by appeal to public (secular) reasons. Religious believers, while they hold profound, comprehensive beliefs about what the demands of morality entail in these cases, should be prepared to offer political, secular reasons to justify their views in public, given that these will be used to justify the exercise of state coercion on all citizens.

They do not, however, carry greater weight than other democratic values, whether these are women’s rights, children’s rights, equality as non-discrimination, the social good of all loving relationships, freedom of speech and so on. So, by appealing to the justificatory structure of the secular state, we can keep recent controversies on the plane in which they belong: that of the legitimate and reasonable discussion of citizens’ rights and liberties in a democratic society.”

We suggest therefore, that in a secular state the IRO disabuses itself of the idea that it is the “conscience of the nation” and engage those with whom it may disagree by utilising rational, secular arguments.

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