Despite being one of the most important ideas in civilization it’s so often misunderstood. Secularity is spectacularly subtle and I’m astounded people ever even came up with it in the first place.
Pseudo-Secularism
I’ve had to do some deliberation as to what I should call the prevailing idea of secularity which I’m critizing. “Secular” doesn’t work because there is a true, subtle, and vital concept of secularity which I’m arguing we ought to preserve. Atheism misses the mark because that isn’t what I’m objecting to. Physicalism and scientism are very important to the view I’m describing but are again merely tangential to the issue. In the prevailing dichotomy between the secular and religion, secularity roughly has to do with reason, evidence, and neutrality, while religion has to do with faith, dogma, and idiosyncrasy. This position I’m arguing against is a pseudo-secularism which inadvertently and inevitably falls into exactly those patterns of thinking which it would purport to supersede.
Secularity Proper
True secularity is the separation of church and state. Its purpose is not to keep certain ideas out of government. It is to afford the liberal space known as religion where humanity can tend to its deepest convictions. The state ought not become the object of worship.
Forget everything you associate with religion for a moment and think of it as a container for existential purpose, that which justifies. In the original context of secularity this would have been some flavour of Christianity. But the container has come to accommodate all sorts of cultural softwares from animism, to Buddhism, astrology, Hinduism or even personal philosophies. Your religion is the characterization of the fundamental value which your identity serves.
When we try to put a finger on the deepest answers we grasp at some version of reality. We invoke a metaphysics. Often awkwardly. We will inevitably conclude entire other groups of people to be misguided in this regard. Human fallibility means a generous dose of humility is appropriate when facing the ultimate questions. This is exactly why secularity protects that most essential part of ourselves from the violence of the state. Sovereign power is like a natural constant. It’ll always be around. The creation of this anomalous religion category is indistinguishable from the idea that government must be accountable to something higher than itself, that it must not impinge on the mediation of ultimate value. Secularity is that radical idea, the engine that generates the very notion of rights and freedoms which we’ve managed to write into bodies of law. The difficulty lies in dealing with the unavoidable tensions of pluralism.
The Guise of Neutrality
The impression a pseudo-secularist has of the “religious”, perfectly maps onto that of a bygone Christian, perhaps a good deal of contemporary Christians too, with respect to the “pagan”. The word pagan is a historical term which was used by Christians to designate that which wasn’t Christian, a grab-bag of views, rituals, and practices which have largely been forgotten. It would have referred to different particular groups of people at different points in time starting with the polytheists of ancient Rome. The word “heathen” is similar. The pseudo-secular uses the term “religious” in quite the same way. “Pagan” and “religious”, in their respective dogmatic contexts, refer to the old-worlders; those people with their hangups and their ignorance who haven’t gotten with the program. Not like us. We know what’s up. All that other stuff is homogeneously insane. Although the words have well-defined meanings that could be used to organize ideas, I’m referring to the way they operate at the level of tribal attitude. They become a delineation between the acceptable and the contemptible, a veil occluding insight.
Tragic Inversion
The pseudo-secular pretends that what is right is the same as what is logical; as if policy or personal actions could be derived from facts alone. I’m not arguing against reason. I’m saying value-based premises aren’t self-evident and pretending they are is a dangerous game. Pseudo-secularism is blind to the necessity of the mediation of value and the ancient epistemic quest striving toward that value. Religion, that quest of perpetually unexpected form which is clumsily shunted into a category of tiresome opinionators.
True secularity is what protects that core component of all people which cannot be imposed upon. I’m picking on the pseudo-secular because of the deep unintentional hypocrisy, the painful irony of secularism unmaking itself when the pseudo-secular steps on the true and precious principle in the name of its hidden, or perhaps worse, its unconsidered priorities. Without true secularity, society reverts to that timeless top down dynamic of authority where the sovereign and the holy are one, where the answers to the deepest mysteries of human purpose are impudently prescribed by the powerful.