Religion in a Secular Society

The judgment that we live in a secular society may reflect an historical aberration, a modern phenomenon, and largely an exclusively Western phenomenon, the recent judicial difficulties of Turkey’s ruling AK Party notwithstanding (but I will return to the subject of Turkey later).

The philosopher Charles Taylor, in his recent book A Secular Age, suggests that a secular society may be one in which one can engage fully in politics without ever encountering God. Apart from some vestigial prayers on such an occasion as the opening of parliament (now to be preceded by a welcome from the original owners of our land) or an occasional speech from a member of a minority religious party who became elected through the vagaries of the system for electing upper chambers and inter-party dealing on preferences, Australian politics are basically secular according to Taylor’s characterisation.

In another sense though, Australia is even more secular than our American counterpart. In 2005, only 40 per cent of Australian marriages took place in the presence of a minister of religion (according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics). America, despite a rigorous separation of church and state, is the Western society with the highest statistics for religious belief and practice. Religious practice in Australia is in decline.

So a secular society may mean a society in which people are predominantly not religious by belief or practice. In that case, though it is constitutionally secular, one would not describe Turkey as secular, given that the vast majority of the population is Muslim, with 95 per cent declaring their belief in a God.

Taylor, however, identifies a third sense of secularism, by which he means to refer to the rise of the alternative of secularism as a form of belief.

A society may be secular in the first sense of religion not being a part of public life, the so-called separation of church and state. It may be secular in the second sense of declining religious belief and practice. Finally it may be secular in the sense of secularism emerging as an alternative belief form.

It seems to me that it is the latter that we are witnessing in Australia, and it appears as a very aggressive exclusionist form of secularism, which views religious belief and practice with arrogant intolerance and dismissiveness. This kind of secularist belief is characterised by attempts to exclude some contributions to public discussion on the basis of a kind of bigotry that classifies the contributions of persons who are religious in a nominalist way.

A question that every intelligent participant in public debate faces is the question of how to conduct oneself in pluralist debate and what are legitimate personal ambitions for that participation. To expect to produce public policy to one’s liking would be an aspiration to demagoguery or tyranny. More than that, it would offend against basic ideals of freedom.

Human persons do not live in isolation but in community. We need a public morality, a set of values that underlies our public structures and institutions and guides our conduct. There are then basic norms that are required for persons to live together harmoniously.

To that end, we each have a personal responsibility to seek to know the truth and to adhere to it. That pursuit of truth is best served by protecting each person from external coercion, from anything that would impinge upon his or her psychological freedom. The right to religious freedom ought not to be impeded, provided that just public order is protected.

The search for truth is an enquiry that should be free and informed and developed by dialogue. Free moral discussion is thus a crucial part of that enquiry.

Society also has the right to defend against possible abuses committed on the pretext of freedom of religion (for example, genital mutilation of women). But governments should not be arbitrary or unfair in that respect. Government has responsibilities to safeguard the rights of all citizens and for the peaceful settlement of conflicts of rights. Peace comes about when people live together in ways that respect the dignity and rights of each.

There is thus a need for a public morality, a set of norms that govern our relationships with each other based on the fundamental notion of equal respect for persons, our inherent dignity, and our inalienable rights. These notions constitute the basic components of the common good. Outside of these restraints and obligations of the common good, persons have freedom in full range.

A legitimate aim of involvement in public debate is to seek to develop policies that give expression to equal respect for persons. There are many differences of opinion as to what constitutes respect for persons and indeed what is meant by human dignity. That discussion is fruitful and worthwhile, and the contributions of a plurality of approaches deepen and strengthen understanding. Open public debate thus serves important functions.

The point is not to exclude considered perspectives from discussion, but to listen to each and to gain the insights that each brings. Bigotry is limiting and destructive of community precisely because it is an effort to isolate and exclude contributions from discussion. In recent times we have witnessed the extraordinary bigotry of exclusive secularism that has attempted to exclude religious perspectives from public discussion.

American jurist Ronald Dworkin (in his book Life’s Dominion)asserts the essentially religious content of respect for the intrinsic value of human life. He argues that state enforcement of responsibilities to protect the intrinsic value of human life would breach the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the understanding that a state has no business prescribing what people should think about the ultimate value of human life, about why human life has intrinsic importance, and about how that value is respected or dishonoured in different circumstances.

This argument is linked in Australia to the Australian Constitution. Section 116 provides:

“The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”

The meaning of section 116 was determined by the High Court of Australia in the famous “Defence of Government Schools” case in 1981. Barwick CJ:

“the establishment of religion must be found to be the object of the making of the law. Further, because the whole expression is ‘for establishing any religion’, the law to satisfy the description must have that objective as its express and, as I think, single purpose.”

The purpose of these provisions in the Constitution is, then, to limit the role of the state, not to limit the role of the church or any other religious grouping. Having come from a society where the king nationalised religion and made the church a department of state under parliamentary control, persecuting and marginalising those whose religious opinions differed from those of the state, it is not surprising that the founders wanted a constitution which would allow maximum freedom of religion. Where religion is concerned, it is the church that needs protection from the hubris of politicians and not vice versa. The church did not impose religion upon England. England imposed its views on the church.

On these grounds, Dr John Fleming, President of Campion College, argues that the Constitution does not exclude religious arguments, religious people or the churches from public debate. The opposite is true. People are not to have their religious freedom infringed by the state and are to be permitted to express their religious opinions in the public square. The Constitution itself recognises the legitimacy of religion in the public square when, in its Preamble, it says that we, the Australian people, are “humbly relying on the blessings of Almighty God”. This is further supported by the custom of the parliament to begin each day with prayer, including the “Our Father”.

Perhaps it is fairer to say that the Constitution provides for the co-operation between church and state, religion and state. Michael Hogan, Research Associate in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, put it this way:

“Australia does not have a legally entrenched principle, or even a vague set of conventions, of the separation of church and state. From the appointment of Rev. Samuel Marsden as one of the first magistrates in colonial New South Wales, to the adoption of explicit policies of state aid for denominational schools during the 1960s … Australia has had a very consistent tradition of cooperation between church and state. ‘Separation of church and state’, along with ‘the separation of powers’ or ‘pleading the Fifth’, are phrases that we have learned from the US, and which merely serve to confuse once they are taken out of the context of the American Constitution.”

What Australia does have is a principle of state neutrality, or equal treatment, when dealing with churches. This principle dates back at least to Governor Bourke (if not to Macquarie) in colonial New South Wales, and extends all the way into contemporary Australia where government moneys at all levels go quite happily to the churches so that they can run schools, hospitals, employment agencies, social welfare bureaux and even drug injecting rooms. This principle of neutrality is not entrenched in state or federal constitutions, and has no legal standing. (Constitutionally, state governments could still conceivably nominate an established church; only the Commonwealth is forbidden to do so by Section 116 of its Constitution!) Ultimately, the strength of the principle comes from the conventions hammered out in colonial Australia that saw English and Scottish established churches deprived of their priority in government funding. It survives into the twenty-first century because no major party could seriously contemplate abandoning it.

The principle of state neutrality has coexisted in Australia with a strong secular tradition in politics. Michael Hogan, writing in the Australian Review of Public Affairs, claims that for most of our history most Australians have been quite happy with the principle that governments should not favour one church over another.

Notwithstanding the legal position, many politicians and others have behaved in a way that does not respect the Constitution, by demanding that bishops, priests, ministers, churches and other religious bodies stop “meddling” in politics. Such ad hominem attacks represent an egregious appeal to prejudice and unjust discrimination against certain people or institutions. It is also hypocritical in the strict sense because such advice is usually given by, but not expected to apply to, those whose religion is variously described as secular, “humanist”, atheistic or agnostic.

Examples of publicly expressed religious bigotry by significant members of the press, political establishment, and others abound. The views of Christians are associated with fundamentalism, that unenlightened and ignorantly dogmatic religion, which is impervious to science, reason and compassion. Alex Mitchell, columnist for Sydney’s Sun Herald, exemplified the crudest expression of anti-Catholic bigotry when accounting for the way in which New South Wales senators voted against a private member’s bill to overturn the ban on therapeutic cloning in 2006. Senators Ursula Stephens and Steve Hutchins were described as coming “from the darkest recesses of the NSW right”, while Senators Bill Heffernan and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells were “mediaevalists” who “took their stand somewhere around the fifteenth century when the Spanish Inquisition was in full swing”.

Senator Amanda Vanstone, in supporting therapeutic cloning, said, “There are different views on when life begins, but no religion has the right to seek to have its view legislated.” Never mind that Senator Vanstone then voted to have her own religious views legislated. Each politician was expected to vote, and Vanstone cast her vote according to her own opinion. But she was wrong to tell politicians of a different religious opinion from her own that they did not have the same right to seek to persuade the parliament to a particular point of view. There is nothing in the Constitution to justify the denial of equal rights to free speech on the basis of a person’s religious or other opinions.

Tony Abbott was constantly questioned about his objectivity and even his right to be able to hold the office of Minister for Health because he is a Catholic. This was a constant theme in the debate over the abortion drug RU-486. And the same line of questioning of his religious views continued in relation to the therapeutic cloning debate:

Question: Do you get the feeling that every time you open your mouth on these issues of conscience or ethics people—your critics—impugn your motives because of your religious faith?
Tony Abbott: I think that it’s noteworthy that no one was demanding that religion be kept out of politics when Bruce Baird, Barnaby Joyce and Stephen Fielding opposed the Government’s immigration bill but, on this particular issue, there are enormous demands, including from prominent members of the Labor Party, that “religion” be kept out of politics.
Now, the truth is that I certainly haven’t injected religion into politics, and I don’t believe on the stem cell issue or the cloning issue anyone has injected religion into politics. The arguments that I’ve used, and other opponents of change in this area have used, are all based on human values. They’re not based on religious teaching.
Question: But it’s a religious issue. Stem cells is a religious issue, and you could easily argue that case as well, couldn’t you?
Tony Abbott: Well, I—my arguments are not based on religious teaching. They’re not based on Scripture; they’re not based on what the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Dalai Lama has said—they’re based on what I think are decent human values that can be apprehended by anyone, regardless of his or her religious views.

Abbott exemplified the classical Catholic approach to debating moral issues in the public square when he insisted that he was arguing on the basis of agreed “human values” (the wrongfulness of killing the innocent), and the scientific account of when human life begins. He did not appeal to data which is the sole preserve of revelation.

To make it clear that people should discount views contrary to those held by the elites, media outlets commonly describe dissenters as “devout Catholic” or “fundamentalist”. We have yet to see anyone from the elites described as “atheist” or “agnostic”. Why not? All human beings are influenced by their personal religious and philosophical commitments. Why is this only to be considered a problem for Christians? The attempt to define out of public debate contributors who come from selected religious viewpoints (but not others) exemplifies how deep anti-religious and sectarian bigotry goes, especially among those who would regard themselves as “enlightened”, even “educated”.

When Christians, either as individuals or in company with others of similar mind, take part in public discussion, they do so simply as citizens expressing a view about the common good and the principles that are needed to protect the common good. They are behaving responsibly by taking their civic role seriously, provided of course that they conduct themselves properly within the norms of the Australian democratic system. This caveat also applies to those who replace intelligent argument and debate with ad hominem attacks which invite people to disregard fellow citizens on the basis of their religion.

The view that human life is to be protected is implied by the simple idea of equal respect for persons. It is legitimate to argue about who is a person, but that is not essentially a religious debate, even if religious people may be inclined to be more sensitive to the need to protect those who are most vulnerable on the fringes of life.

The Constitution protects religious freedom, including freedom of association and of expression. The right to be involved in public debate is protected. It is manifestly unjust and extraordinarily bigoted to claim that religious people ought not to be permitted to contribute or that their contribution ought not to be considered.

At the same time, contributors to public debate need to be aware of the sensitivities of others. Public policy advances through seeking points of agreement and being careful to respect areas of disagreement. There is a role for what the philosopher John Rawls calls “public reason”—a discussion that takes place on the basis of agreed fundamental principles.

However, it is important that there is also continued discussion of those fundamental principles, as well as on the application of them, and it is appropriate in a pluralist society that all perspectives are brought to bear upon that discussion in a considered way.

During last year’s phony federal election campaign, the journalist David Burchell wrote of Kevin Rudd’s canny decision to present his political philosophy chiefly in terms of a personal sense of faith. This was seen as politically opportunistic rather than reflecting the reality of what Mr Rudd called a basic congruence between the Christian ethic of respect for individual human dignity and freedom, and the social democratic tradition out of which his party has evolved.

The journalist’s cynicism belies our common need to listen to, to search for, and to identify those core values that will make our communities great, whoever and how many espouse them, and from wherever those values might originate.

The great traditions in every age and culture have tended to identify the very same core values. Our human need for a transcendent reality that is beyond the merely human ultimately outlasts every other alternative belief form both intellectually and emotionally.

Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini is Associate Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family.