Secularism Poses Threat to Democracy
Posted: 30 July 2009
The dominance of ‘the religion of secularism’ in the public sphere threatens the prospects for future freedom and equality of expression.
Civil liberties and human rights which we have taken for granted for a generation are at risk from the rise of secularism, according to a new report from the Jubilee Centre.
‘Democracies cannot shake off their Christian past without shaking off the liberties which flowed from it,’ warns the report’s author Dr Philip Sampson.
Sustaining Democracy argues that ‘secularism’ itself has become ‘religious’, claiming the privileges of religious judgement for itself to the exclusion of other religions.
‘If a view differs from the secular consensus, it is “ill-considered” and “prejudiced”, and should not be entertained,’ the author reflects. ‘Where would this have left the abolitionists or the civil rights movement?’
Faced with the perceived vulnerability of democracy to global forces, secularism has responded with two principal strategies, both of which appear to have failed – namely, the traditional moral impulse to identify ‘evil’ and eliminate it, which resulted in the ‘War on Terror’, and the reassertion of secular liberalism, sometimes associated with an aggressive New Atheism.
‘If the secular world continues to ignore Christian scholarship,’ cautions Dr Sampson, ‘then Western democratic institutions will be further denied access to the resources necessary for renewal. We will be left merely with modernist materialism, what Europe’s most distinguished living philosopher, Jurgen Habermas calls ‘postmodern chatter’, or moralistic fundamentalism (whether Liberal, Christian or Islamic).’
In the report, Dr Sampson argues for the disestablishment of a ‘secular’ religion, the opening of the public sphere to a prophetic Christian understanding of tolerance towards all religions, including that of ‘secularism’, and wonders whether the tools for renewal of Western democracy could lie in the hands of the still vibrant Church in Africa, Asia and South America.
In another recent research paper, the Jubilee Centre also argued that ‘equality’ is gaining a life of its own, overriding other human rights and stifling discussion about what is morally good, while ‘public reason’ is being wielded to silence religious voices in public.