What Is Secularism?

I can't recommend Razib's enormously intelligent post on religion, secularization, and various associated topics highly enough, and Reihan's (somewhat more personal) response is likewise thought-provoking. I'd only quibble with Razib's remark that "Europeans are post-Christian, but not predominantly 'secular,' if that means lack of belief in God and a 'spirit or life force'" - not because he's wrong that a widespread "supernaturalism" prevails even (or especially) in the absence of organized religion, but because I think that it's worth employing a definition of secularism that doesn't conflate it with atheism.

In the forthcoming, not-yet-online Atlantic, for instance, I have a short piece analyzing the rise of mass secularism in America, which draws on this paper by Michael Hout and Claude Fischer on the remarkable growth in the percentage of Americans with "no religious preference." Hout and Fischer attribute this growth, in part, to people self-defining against organized religion because of its association with conservative politics, but (like Razib) they shy away from calling this phenomenon "secularism" because many of the "no religious preference" types retain supernatural beliefs. But I tend to think that the term "secularism" is actually most useful, and exact, when applied to a political hostility to organized religion of precisely the kind that Hout and Fischer are documenting, rather than to a more general disbelief in the supernatural. "Secularist" should be synonymous with "anti-clericalist," in other words, rather than with "unbeliever." (It seems like a poor definition of secularist that excludes Deists like Thomas Paine and Voltaire - or that excludes Sam Harris, for that matter, because of his forays into Eastern mysticism.)

There are two strains of secularism, I would argue, which are usually intertwined but philosophically distinct: A soft secularism that argues for a legal separation of church and politics - no school prayer, no federal funds for churches, etc - and a hard secularism that militates for a complete separation of religion and politics, and shades easily into hostility toward organized religion in a general. But neither form precludes private belief in the supernatural. A perfectly "secular" society would be defined not by universal atheism, but by a religion-free politics in the short run, and probably a long-run "decoupling," as Razib puts it, of supernatural beliefs from religious institutions.

The dictionary, of course, tries to have it both ways, like the squish it is.

Photo by Flickr user Dhammza used under a Creative Commons license.

Comments

I agree, the Razib piece is very good. And I agree with you completely (and I've argued this with Derb and Razib before) that defining "religion" as synonymous with "supernaturalism" is incorrect on multiple levels. We are, by nature but to varying degrees, inclined to supernaturalism, and organized religion certainly makes use of that nature - but it is not synonymous with that nature nor, I think, simply derivative of that nature.

As for defining "secularism," I see a problem with making it synonymous with "anti-clerical" because "anti-clerical" is a term more appropriate to a Catholic context and America is (still) a Protestant country, and there is no institutional Protestant clergy as such. A country whose Constitution prohibited religious establishment, whose people distrusted priests, generally did not belong to a church and, if they did, switched readily between denominations, but whose people also overwhelmingly believed in God and read the Bible as God's holy word, would certainly not be accurately described as "secular" - but might well be accurately described as "anti-clerical."

"Secular" means "worldly." We may best define a "secular" outlook as one that is exclusively this-world-oriented. One could perfectly well believe in a variety of supernaturalisms while rejecting the idea of *organizing your life* around a point of reference from *outside this world* such as the will of God or the fate of one's soul.

So: here are my definitions:

A "religious" person is someone who, in organizing their own life, does so with reference to such a point outside the world. A "secular" person is someone who does not. The "religious" person might doubt the efficacy of prayer or the immortality of the soul (or what-have-you), but still live a life organized (at least in part) with reference to a tradition that affirms the efficacy of prayer or the immortality of the soul (or what-have-you). A "secular" person might believe in ghosts or reincarnation or go a-Maying each spring, but still live a life organized without such reference to an outside point - he does not organize his life around, say, tending to the needs of the spirits of his ancestors.

"Secularism" is an "ism" - an ideology. It implies some view about public life, not merely a personal orientation vis-a-vis religiosity. Presumably, that point of view is that the secular outlook should be the outlook of the state - minimally, the state should not be organized with reference to such a point outside the world; maximally, it should indoctrinate the citizenry in a secular outlook.

American anti-establishmentarianism does not necessarily imply secularism in the sense that I articulate above; it is possible (though I reject this view) to understand the American system of government as having been founded with reference to a point outside the world (being endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and all that). Nor is French laicite (which is unquestionably a species of secularism) incompatible with public funding of sectarian religious schools.

Posted by Noah Millman | June 1, 2007 12:17 PM

"There are two strains of secularism, I would argue, which are usually intertwined but philosophically distinct: A soft secularism that argues for a legal separation of church and politics - no school prayer, no federal funds for churches, etc - and a hard secularism that militates for a complete separation of religion and politics, and shades easily into hostility toward organized religion in a general."

Useful in a debate of this sort is an understanding of the different approaches of the enlightenment. One can properly distinguish the German enlightenment from the British enlightenment and contrast them to the more anti-religious (and violent) French enlightenment. The is especially so concerning their understanding of separation of Church and State. The United States (of coarse) adopted a British worldview on religious/enlightenment issues.

Posted by Fitz | June 1, 2007 1:22 PM

on the charge that converted a muti-dimensional vector ('secularism') into a flat little scalar with fundamentalists at one end of the range and atheists at the other, i plead guilty. i think my usage of the terminology had an american audience in mind, because obviously for an indian (as in brown) the term secularism is exactly what ross offers.

a conversation must deal in common currency, and i am willing to "convert" my tentative definition secularism in the interests of intelligibility and informativeness. but, i an will demur when it comes to noah's suggestion that we should decouple the supernatural from religion. it is too simplistic to say that religion derives from the perception and suspicion of the supernatural, but, i think broadly speaking there is a strong long term tendency for acceptance of the reality of the supernatural to be necessarily contingent upon the supernatural. the customs of the fathers, which may derive from long held supernatural suppositions now overturned, may persist as a ghost or shadow for generations (especially in our age of written memory), but over time it will erode. the jewish customs of the marronos persisted out of habit and tradition long after their acceptance of the supernatural claims of christianity (as opposed to judaism), but those customs become attenuate and finally went extinct. in short, in the long view there is no religion without god. the quasi-religious cults of personality, like those of stalin, die after the death of the living gods and those who remember them, or, stalin himself becomes (or will) deified into a supernatural being.

finally, when i comes to church-state relations it is important to keep local conditions in mind. a lot of the debate is conditioned by the tensions and dynamics within the christian world after 1500, and especially protestant states after 1650. reading the transition from paganism to christianity in the 4th century in the roman empire, i did note that the objection the pagans made was not just that the christian emperors were favoring their personal religion, persecuting the old ways, etc., but were removing customary subsidies to the pagan cults.

Posted by razib | June 1, 2007 2:12 PM

reality of the supernatural to be necessarily contingent upon the supernatura

erra: i meant: reality of religion to be necessarily contingent upon the supernatural.

also, to clarify my response to noah re: supernatural & religion. i am aware that there are those who adhere to, identify with and even practice a religion without belief in the supernatural. there is a common assertion that orthodoxy totally marginalizing orthopraxy is a christian tendency. be as that maybe, i will contend that the persistence of non-supernatural adherents to a religion x is contingent upon the social matrix of a great number of believers who are supernaturalistic and adhere to religion x. e.g., there are many jews who are jews despite lack of belief in god, and the same with hindus (though hinduism does have an atheistic streak, it remains supernaturalistic nonetheless with the belief in karma). but the critical mass of non-supernatural adherents is a social artifact insofar as these individuals have family, friends or community who believe in living gods, and the ritual serves a psycho-social function (vertically by connecting with one's personal past, and horizontally by connecting with one's community). if you magically removed all jews who believed in god and all hindus who believed in god i hold that judaism and hinuism as religious traditions would disappear and remain only memories and myths as the religion of ancient greece is today within a few generations.

i have elaborated my "definition" of religion here.

Posted by razib | June 1, 2007 2:27 PM

Razib:

Thanks for joining in.

I think we agree much more than we disagree.

We agree on the most important factual matter, to whit: that supernaturalist understandings of reality are natural to human beings, albeit the tendency towards supernaturalism varies between individuals (and, for all I know, between groups; I certainly don't rule that out).

We agree that religions require a reference point outside the secular; you call that "belief in God" but I think that's a little confining, as it seems to me you could have a perfectly valid religion that held views on the fate of the soul without positing a single governing intelligence.

We agree that religion has both a "praxic" and a "doxic" dimension, though I think you tend to give primacy to the latter and I tend to give primacy to the former.

We agree (I think) that theology is something distinct from our base supernaturalism. The analogy I like to make: science is to common-sense toolmaking as theology is to innate supernaturalism. In each case, an innate capacity is harnessed to an engine that works according to entirely different principles and is profoundly *un*-natural. I suspect you would reject that analogy because (you would say), science is *true* and theology is *false* - but if we look at both as forms of reasoning within a set of rules and conventions, I think you'll see the legitimacy of the analogy. Let's put it this way: you can accept the idea of *legal* reasoning even though the law by definition cannot be "true" in the sense that science is. Just so with theology.

I don't propose to *decouple* religion from innate supernaturalism; I propose to *distinguish* between them. Indeed, I agree with you that supernaturalism is probably *necessary* for religion. But I don't think it's at all *sufficient*. More to the point, I suspect that to say that supernaturalism is necessary for the development of religion is on par with saying that knowledge of human mortality is necessary for the development of religion: it's true, but I'm not sure it's interesting because the truth is too broad. It's tantamount to saying that we have religions because we are human beings. Indeed, I suspect that supernaturalism is *necessary* for other aspects of human culture than the religious, that it is, on some level, necessary for us to be *human*. The cognitive science on our innate supernaturalism may be better employed to try to understand why religions *fail* to accomplish some of their goals than to try to understand *why* religions exist, and thrive or die.

In general, I don't really disagree with any of your conclusions (and I thought your piece defining religion was extremely good), but I do question two things.

First, most generally, I question your profound commitment to reductionism. I don't think the content of religious differences is irrelevant, any more than I think consciousness is irrelevant because so much of our lives are determined by sub-conscious processes. I think this is an example of the scientific tendency to look for the keys where the light is good - scientists *should* be reductionists, but that doesn't mean we should all always *be* scientists.

Second, more specifically, when you concede the relevance of the substantive content of religions, you say that "this is relevant to the elites only." I disagree with this because, as I say, I think you over-privilege belief over communal practice and tradition in defining religion, and top-down rules *about* practice do shape the behavior of people generally, not just elites. But, more importantly, "only" elites? Elites are a big deal! History is written and, largely, made by elites! If the substantive differences between religions matter to elites, then they matter quite a lot, as far as I'm concerned.

Posted by Noah Millman | June 1, 2007 3:36 PM

noah,

a few points. words are words. unlike an equation i can not attach scalar values to the parameters to express the weightings ;-) so i'll try and dodge things which i think might ultimately be semantical.

first, as a point of fact heritability for 'religiosity' is 0.5. that is, about half the variation for religious zeal can be attributed to genetic variation. twins-raised-apart-studies (bouchard) showed that religiosity is strongly correlated, but religious denomination is totally uncorrelated. so obviously there is a natural variation within the population on various characters, and i suspect the perception of the supernatural is one of them. i think that the basal supernatural reflex emerges from other mental properties, and many atheists are just weak on these properties (e.g., "theory of the mind"). this explains the between sex difference that is cross-cultural i suspect, male and female psychologies different somewhat, religion is compelling to women to a greater extent then men because it appeals to some of their cognitive biases.

as for privileging "belief in god." yes, i do. if you look at cognitive science of religion there is a tendency to focus on supernatural agents because they often serve as the axis mundi for a host of concepts. e.g., eastern indian religion is firmly rooted in karma, and in fact the materialistic groups transgressed by rejecting this rather than god, because god was not necessary in the context of the karmic cycle. but, as a matter of reality gods do tend to be the 'wheel turners' and even notionally non-theistic groups, such as jains, are theistic. so you have a double reality where the religious professionals would marginalize gods (jains and therevada buddhists privilege individual action in regards to attaining salvation), but operational practice is god intoxicated. as you shift up the IQ scale i think you tend to see a move away from simple theism as the motive force, and this is reflected in the intellectual discourse of religious elites, but in terms of modeling human behavior the primacy of theism amongst the population is important to keep in mind.

in regards to theology, i do not totally reject your analogy. in short, i think theology is what you get when you mix a particular mentality with religious ideas as they are. it is an attempt to rationalize ideas in common currency, as one can see with the rise of christian theology from the nexus of christianity and greek philosophy. that being said, i tend to be of the view that theology is "quasi-propositional," it has the form of rational discourse, but i don't think in reality it is like this at all. scott atran in in gods we trust reports psychological studies which show that subjects can't really agree upon inferences from religious axioms (in this case the 10 commandments) when not in communication. i think that the consensus that religious philosophers come to are socially mediated, people converge upon a view for culturally conditioned reasons (reformation thinkers refused to abandon the trinity even when confronted with its lack of sola scriptura support). as an example i will offer the deviations of chinese muslims during their period of isolation from the ummah under communist rule. religious isolates seem to "random walk" through "idea space" constrained by cultural conditions when separate from the main stream of religious thought. in contrast, i think mathematics is genuinely propositional because the chain of inferences is validated by proof. science is different because of empirical checks, science without experiment or observation is not really valid science because human rationality decoupled from mathematics has a really hard time projecting entailments which aren't subjective.

i agree that supernaturalism is not sufficient for religion. that being said, many intellectuals reject that it is necessary, and so that is why i harp on this point. they often bring up therevada buddhism as an example of an non-theistic religion, but i have to remind them buddhism as a religion has been popular precisely because it is accommodating to modal mass psychology. the scholars and intellectuals have one view, but the masses continue to worship the gods (sometimes even the same gods as their hindu neighbors). i want to emphasize the necessity of supernaturalism because many intellectuals presume that it is a trivial aspect of our history, when i think it is not at all. finally, if you look at the "theologies" generated by men such as john polkinghorne, an anglican priest and physicist, you'll see that it is really, really, strange insofar as it accepts a lot of materialist suppositions (he accepts bodily resurrection as an alternative to incorporeal souls because the former is a material explanation). elites tend to take these ideas seriously, but the discussion often deviates into really obscure territory in the grand context of things.

as for your point about elites and top-down percolation of ritual, custom, tradition, etc. there is a lot of variation in this. some calvinist protestant thinkers in the netherlands have questioned whether europe was really ever christian because of the shallowness of christian practice and the notionality of christian belief in the pre-modern times (see anton wessels' work). in contrast, saudi arabia is obviously a state where wahhabi cutom and tradition are enforced on everyone, there is nothing notional here. in short, yes, i agree elites are important, but i think that ritual, custom and tradition, as well as professions of belief, are ingroup-outgroup demarcation points. people kill over them. but, i don't generally accept that the substance of beliefs are critical because i don't see that they exhibit much psychological depth. that doesn't mean people dont' believe in the trinity, or nirvana or the concept of tawhid. but, i think it is like accepting that there are 6-dimensions in the universe. one can see where this view comes from the chain of propositions, but one can't imagine it because of the constrictions of the human mind. additionally, i am generally skeptical of functionalist explanations for religious customs and traditions (e.g., hindus are vegetarian because meat goes bad in hot climates).

the importance of the various parameters and levels of organization has to be contextualized by the questions at hand. in this case i'm focusing on the psychology because many atheists think they can argue religion away. if i was going compare though the competitive distribution of various sects in the united states then i would have to look at other levels of organization, as modal psychology wouldn't tell me anything.

Posted by razib | June 1, 2007 4:27 PM

a clarification on the chain of propositions. say you have a set of propositions....

a->b->c->d....

in mathematics proof means that going from a to b you have 100% confidence that a->b is a->b and not something else. you can continue the chain with confidence because there is not possibility of error in any of the links (this is theory of course, people make mistakes, but it is close enough to reality in math that this is how it works). in contrast, i think that in a lot of philosophy there is a weakness on each link. if the weakness means that there only 95% chance that a->b really is a->b, then you have noise creeping into the system and a valid chain of propositions decreases in likelihood the more and more you go down the line. it is like that in much of science, the only thing is that empirical tests can "correct" the 5% error that creeps in and get us back on track. i don't think anything like that exists in theology, though i guess god could show up and manifest himself as 3 and 1 ;0)

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