The End of Secularism, Part II

A Bill of False Goods

The philosophy underpinning the specious claim that the state should be secular, and non-religious is now passe. It has not survived two main campaigns of attack. The first campaign shredded the pseudo-historical/eschatological underpinnings of the theory. Under the aegis of this theory, religion was supposed to disappear, somewhat like Marx's withering away of the state.

People in the Soviet Union waited 75 years for the totalitarian communist state to become redundant and disappear. Unfortunately, history did not prove to be on the side of the doctrinaire Marxists and Communists. Neither has history proved to be on the side of the secularists.  The secularists argued that the modern world would progressively come to rely upon naturalistic science and its burgeoning store of knowledge: the need for religion would fade; inevitably modern societies would become more secular. Religion, if it survived at all, would be severely curtailed to an irrelevant private sphere. It was historically inevitable, the secularists argued, that religion would be completely disregarded in the public sphere as irrelevant, because religion would have become largely extinct.

Historians and sociologists have now debunked the secularist credo as being based on highly speculative views of the past and wilfully ignoring the recrudescence of (particularly orthodox) religion in the modern world.

Hunter Baker, in his book, The End of Secularism documents the success of this first "campaign front" which had discredited the historical and sociological foundations of secularism. But there is another, second front which has proved equally devastating to the cause of secularism. Post-modernism has turned its guns upon the philosophy of secularism and has stripped away its veneer of neutrality and objectivity. Under the post-modern critique, secularism becomes just one more value-laden heterodoxy

vying for public supremacy instead of the eye-in-the-sky judge of all the rest. . . . With the advent of post-modernism, the license to question without being questioned and to have one's own position left unexamined for personal prejudice and interest has been revoked. (Baker, p.108)

On this second campaign front, Stanley Fish (Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a Professor of Law at Florida International University, in Miami; Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago; previously professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University) has led the charge. Fish argues that if you analyze the secularists from John Locke onwards, each advocates some neutral zone of thought and ideas allegedly common to all men, upon which all can agree, and in which tolerance can and ought to operate, regardless of one's other religious and philosophical commitments. However the mere assertion of a "neutral zone" means that all secularists end up drawing a line that excludes--and that line is drawn on the basis of brute assertion and/or prejudice. The cone of tolerance turns out to cover anything that I, the secularist, find tolerable.

The legerdemain often found is that the secularist will assert some abstract principle for including some principles or beliefs as tolerable, and excluding others such as appealing to "common sense" or "reasonableness" or "fairness" or "the nature of things" in an attempt to cloak the fact that it just happens to be their own prejudice or belief. Fish argues:

If general truths were perspicuous and easily applicable to specific situations, or if there were agreement about which policies and practices are beyond the pale (of tolerance), or if procedural rules that respect no persons are fair to all were easily identifiable, tolerance limits would be self-establishing and no coercion would be required since everyone would readily agree to what they already agreed about. Cited by Baker, p.110)

In other words, if all was as clear as the secularists loftily claim there would be no debates or arguments about what is acceptable or tolerable in the public square, period. In fact, such common ground does not exist, and secularists are loathe to admit it. They are flat out disingenuous in the matter.

But surely, someone would argue, there must be deep foundational principles, common to all men, to which we would all willingly submit, despite whatever other differences we might have. Thomist scholastics would argue yes. There is the faculty of Reason, they suggest, which is common to all men. By means of rational argumentation and reasoned discourse, all men can operate on neutral common ground, regardless of whether they they atheists, Christians, Buddhists, or environmentalists. No, says Fish--this too is a myth and betrays sloppy thinking. For reason, in the end, draws upon ultimate and foundational truths to establish itself and to appeal to in order to answer the "big questions". In the end, everyone brings in their ultimate, foundational beliefs and appeals to them to solve issues. Without such recourse to ultimate or foundational truths no problem or debate can ever be resolved.

Fish illustrates this by deconstructing the principle of "fairness" which is repeatedly appealed to by the secularists. People instinctively think that in the public square processes and decisions should be fair. A major news network in the US has as its slogan, "fair and balanced". Clearly the notion has traction and visceral appeal. Yet the appearance of common ground around "fairness" is chimerical.

I think it is fair to distribute goods and privileges equally, irrespective of the accomplishments of those who receive them. You think it is fair to reward each according to his efforts. I think it is fair when everyone has a chance to speak. You think it is fair when everyone who is qualified has a chance to speak. The disagreements between us cannot be settled by the invocation of fairness because what divides us are our differing views of what fairness really is. (Mine is roughly egalitarian, yours meritocratic.) Those differing views are substantive--part and parcel of some contestable version of what the world should be like--and unless one of us persuades the other to exchange one vision of what the world should be like for another, the distance between us will not be bridged. (Cited by Baker, p. 111,2)

Secularism, then, is just one more religion competing for dominance in the public square, seeking to persuade others to its vision of the world. Its deceit is that it declines to acknowledge this overtly as an honest broker, even while it is attempting to exclude all other religions from participating. In other words, it wants to define the playing field, the rules, be the umpire, and have total control of the ball at all times. Or, to change the analogy, it wants everyone to play in the public square with its stacked deck.

How, then, should Christians argue and debate in the public square. Certainly not by checking in their faith at the door, according to Fish. Christians should not be tempted to accede to a religious-state separation. He advises that

Christians should refuse "to traffic in liberalism's vocabulary (fairness, equality, mutual respect) but to reject it and try, instead, to 'rout liberalism from the field'" in order to be true to their [Christian] beliefs. They should not "bring [their deepest convictions] to the table of rational, deliberative, and open inquiry, because to do so would be to make rationality, deliberateness and openness into their gods." (Baker, p.113)

Now this is very insightful--far more insightful than many Christians are with respect to their own position. We have one cavil: it would be helpful for Fish to distinguish between "reason" and "rationalism". It is rationalistic inquiry that is inappropriate--for rationalism asserts the ultimate sovereignty of the mind of man over all reality--and as Fish astutely observes, this is nothing other than an opposing religion and an idolatry. In the Christian world-view, reason is always a hand-maiden, subordinate to the Creator God, and having authority only because it proceeds subject to God's self-revelation at all times.

Finally, Baker turns his attention to John Rawls, whom we may call the leading philosophical exponent of secularism of the egalitarian kind--at least he is regarded by many as such. Rawls has argued strongly for a "religion-free" public square. If religion is excluded from the outset (that is, kept in the private sphere), then Rawls argues it is possible to derive a reasonable mix of political values to which we can all be bound. It is the way forward for a truly plural and secular society. Comprehensive doctrines (such as metaphysical and religious systems) are excluded from the outset and are inimical to a fair and reasonable public square.

A fundamental problem, of course, is that from the very beginning Rawls has queered the pitch. Christians cannot leave their Christian faith at the door to the public square without denying their faith. In truth, Rawls is calling upon Christians to give up their faith, for if the Christian faith is not relevant and applicable to the public square, along with all other reality, it is not relevant and applicable to anything. Either Christ is Lord of all, or He is Lord of nothing.

Secondly, (as Baker and Fish have already argued) in the public square every participant is confronted with issues and matters that draw upon premises which in turn draw upon ultimate world-views. This is particularly the case where fundamental constructs such as justice, freedom, human rights, crime and punishment, fairness and equity, distinguishing between sins and crimes, and fundamental societal institutions such as family, church, state, are under discussion. The reality is that debates over these weighty matters cannot be resolved without recourse to some set of transcendent or ultimate values. Without such, questions can never be resolved because all participants are drawing upon (usually suppressed) comprehensive doctrines--which is to say that all participants in public square debates are drawing upon their respective religious convictions. This explains why debates in the public square today consist largely of ships passing in the night. Because it used to be fashionable to exclude one's religious convictions from the debate, participants in public debates end up merely asserting their positions and largely ignoring their opponents, or, worse, resorting to denigration or ad hominem attack.

Baker illustrates how Rawl's position leads to indeterminacy in public debates. He skewers the matter nicely.

How would his (Rawls's) philosophy play out for even a matter of very basic justice? The classic example raised in critique of Rawls has been with regard to abortion. Here is what Rawls once wrote on the matter:

Now I believe any reasonable balance of these three values (respect for human life, reproduction of political society, and women's equality) will give a woman a duly qualified right to decide whether or not to end her pregnancy during the first trimester. The reason for this is that at this early stage of pregnancy the political value of equality of women is overriding, and this right is required to give us substance and force.

Consider a similar formulation presented by Paul Campos:

The reason why abortion must be prohibited is that at every stage of the pregnancy the political value of the due respect for human life is overriding, and this prohibition is required to give that value substance and force.

Looking at those two statements, it is extraordinarily difficult to imagine how Rawls could see public reason compelling the first rather than the second. . . . We reason from premises. The premises Rawls uses to set up a public deliberative space are too thin to give substance to necessary public debates. (Baker, p.116,7)

Secularism's call for a non-religious public square and for the ultimacy of a pluralistic, neutral public sphere is an intellectual slight-of-hand. This is evidenced by the reaction amongst Christians and others when they buy the bill of goods from the secularists, only to regret it bitterly when they realise they have been duped. In the end, the claims of the secular public square extend without limit as the realm of its dominion imperialistically expands. It emerges out of the shadows as representing a comprehensive and fundamental religion in its own right. On this tilted playing field, secular rights will trump religious faith every time, so church offices and employment cannot be withheld from homosexuals, for instance, and relations between parents and children are no longer private matters, but part of the vital interests of society, and must also be subject, therefore, to secularism's diktats.

If you think this is going a bit too far, and being a bit extreme, read Baker's chapter entitled "The Department of God" which profiles the Swedish government's forced secularisation of the Lutheran Church in that country. It provides a telling case study of how the wolfish idolatry of secularism has laid aside its former clothing of tolerance toward our Lord.

Secularism's attempt to keep Christians as Christians out of the public square was a bill of false goods from the very beginning. It remains for Christians to realise this and grasp that even Unbelief has seen it to the case, and to re-occupy the public square without shame or apology.