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Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in
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Democracy, religion and secularism:
reflections on the public role of
religion in a modern society
Brenda Watson
a
a
Formerly Director of the Farmington Institute, Oxford, UK
Version of record first published: 21 Sep 2011.
To cite this article: Brenda Watson (2011): Democracy, religion and secularism: reflections on
the public role of religion in a modern society, Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion &
Education, 32:2, 173-183
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Democracy, religion and secularism: reections on the public role
of religion in a modern society
Brenda Watson*
Formerly Director of the Farmington Institute, Oxford, UK
The present article focuses on the relationship between democracy and secular-
ism and, in particular, the presumption that a secularist approach is the most
practical solution to the problem of pluralism of beliefs. It raises the question of
how far those countries in the West which claim to be democratic are justied
in the way that they treat religion. Logical and pragmatic arguments are put for-
ward suggesting that, in the name of the very values which they profess, secu-
larists should extend a more generous hand to religion as opposed to continuing
the suspicious, confrontational attitude inherited from the Enlightenment. The
article nishes with some brief suggestions towards a practical solution for pre-
serving the integrity of all, religious and non-religious alike, in the public arena.
Keywords: democracy; pluralism; religion; secularism
One of the democratic Wests most serious mistakes in the last two centuries has
been its marginalising and even despising of religion. At a time when democracy is
poised to become more truly implanted in the Arab world, it is particularly oppor-
tune to reconsider what the relationship between democracy and religion might be.
The West may then be able to offer Muslim nations a better model. The Egyptian
Nobel Prize-winner Ahmed Zewaih (2011) argues that extensive science teaching
and development is essential for Egypt to progress democratically. If the virulent
strain of scienceanti-religion which is still bedevilling the West is also conveyed,
this could do damage.
Simon Schama (2011) has sought to open up debate on the future of democracy and
its links with the Enlightenment specically debate in our hearts and minds about
whether secularism has a place in middle eastern democracies. He went on to note that
he has become convinced of the indispensable role played by religion in history.
The requirement of secularity for democracy?
It is largely assumed in the West that a democratic state must be publicly secular.
Keeping religion out of public space is interpreted in many ways but normally includes
such requirements as not permitting reference to God in any public statements,
constitutions, mission statements, state ceremonies, laws etc.; no representatives of
religion in parliament; not permitting religious reasons to be given for consideration in
law-courts, parliament, civic meetings; and no worship in state schools.
*Email: bgwatson@waitrose.com
Journal of Beliefs & ValuesAquatic Insects
Vol. 32, No. 2, August 2011, 173183
ISSN 1361-7672 print/ISSN 1469-9362 online
2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2011.600816
http://www.informaworld.com
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The extent of secularisation in countries which call themselves democracies var-
ies a great deal, from the assertive secularism of France to the passive secularism
of the USA (Kuru 2009, 11). In Britain secularism is in some ways dominant, yet
ofcially restrained. If the mother of democracies manages to cling on to its reli-
giously under-girded monarchy and its Established Church, this is an out-working
of the British facility in compromise whereby historical institutions of government
are permitted to evolve and support democratic rights for all. Many, however, see
both monarchy and the Established Church as anomalies that should disappear in
the interests of creating a truly democratic state. The assumption behind this wish is
that anything to do with religious commitment must be absent from the public
square. A clear indication of the argument here was given by Lord Justice Laws in
the Gary McFarlane case:
In the eye of everyone save the believer religious faith is necessarily subjective. . .the
promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds
cannot be justied. It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But
it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary. . . The law of a theocracy is dictated with-
out option to the people. . . (Christian Concern 2010)
David Kettle (2010, 2), writing for The Gospel and Our Culture Newsletter, sees
this as constituting a new illiberal form of liberalism. Non-believers, however, can
perceive that there is something irrational at work in the Judges summing-up. The
Guardian writer Andrew Brown (2010) takes issue with his dismissal of religion as
subjective:
All societies have to believe that they are founded on objective truths, and not mere
subjective preferences. This is as true of the secular US constitution as of the British
one. Its perfectly possible to replace an established church with an established secu-
larism. But in both cases there will be an unprovable belief system privileged by the
state as true.
He earlier had noted that the Judges words were a lurch away from the Christianity
of our constitution. . . that does in some sense necessarily privilege Christianity.
Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of this particular case, the points which
Brown (2010) makes are important. Lord Laws was in fact speaking from a positiv-
ist position with its clear-cut fact/belief divide. This is very denitely a committed
position, not a neutral one. His assumption that there is no truth in religion is simi-
larly a specic publicly un-provable personal judgement. The anti-discrimination
legislation which he was defending is shot through with beliefs and values, notably
the belief in the equality of all people and their right to equal opportunities. It raises
the question, therefore, of the justication for any state legislation whatsoever. In
practice life has to be lived by what are probabilities. Absolute certainty is impossi-
ble because subjectivity necessarily enters into everything thought, said or done.
The supposed glory of a democracy is that the disagreements between citizens on
such important matters can be openly debated instead of dogmatically set aside in
the way that Lord Laws advocates.
A far more moderate discussion of the relationship between religion and democ-
racy appears in an article by Cecile Laborde (2010) for the RSA Journal. It is worth
noting that the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures
and Commerce) is a highly self-conscious Enlightenment institution which largely
174 B. Watson
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ignores religion. Laborde (2010) argues that the future of democracy depends on
secularism but is careful to note that:
. . .secularism properly understood as a political philosophy need not be anti-
religious. The secular state is not a state committed to substantive atheism or to the mar-
ginalisation of religion from public and social life. It is, rather, a state in which citizens
share a language a secular language for discussing political issues. (10)
She seeks to play fair to religion by acknowledging that many religious people can
and do accept secularist values. She notes that:
. . .anti-religious sentiment can be as suspect as appeal to religious truths. . . Neither
the view that religion is true, nor the view that religion is false, counts as a public rea-
son. . .as neither can be proven according to widely accepted epistemological stan-
dards. (Laborde 2010, 14)
Despite acknowledging that neither atheism nor religion can rationally prove their
beliefs she still, however, wants a secular state: What is not permissible is to subsi-
dise religion on the grounds that it is intrinsically valuable, or that it promotes
important truths, since this would violate the requirement of state neutrality
(Laborde 2010, 14). Yet, as we have already seen, the state cannot be neutral, and
the claim that it is or can be indicates naivety or self-delusion.
The purpose of the present article is, therefore, to examine more closely the
claim that in order to be democratic religion must be kept out of the public arena.
Several arguments are considered under three headings: Rationality, Historicity
and Practical consequences.
Critique of the need to privatise religion in a democracy
Rationality
There are problems connected with the word secular. It can be understood as
dened primarily by what it is not, and to the extent that it does signify positive
values this can reinforce the negativity in its meaning. Such inherent negativity very
easily implies, and will actually promote if used extensively without specic coun-
ter-balancing, a negative view of what is excluded, namely of religion. It is a short
step from the constant afrmation of non-X to the notion that X is unimportant
per se.
Such a step is aided if various logical fallacies waiting in the wings are allowed
an appearance. Four in particular are dangerous and widespread in the West.
1. The ease with which what it is not, i.e. religion, can be seen as a single
monochromatic entity
In the real world religion embraces huge and often incompatible variations.
Besides sociological classication into major world religions, there are highly
signicant differences in interpretation within each world religion. Moreover, many
religious people are unhappy to be pigeon-holed within any specic religion or
religious grouping. The enormous range of interpretations regarding religion warns
us against any monolithic understanding of the term. Lumping all religious people
Journal of Beliefs & Values 175
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together, however wildly different they are in perception and performance, is a com-
monly heard logical fallacy of misleading generalisation (concealed quantica-
tion); the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris et al.) offer hundreds of
examples of this fallacy at work. More moderately inclined atheists such as Polly
Toynbee (2008) also can state, for example, that religions infantilise us with impos-
sible beliefs; each religion believes it has the one divinely revealed truth and
religions are inherently anti-women and anti-gay. All these statements may be true
of some religions but certainly not of all, as is implied.
2. Subtle encouragement to oppose secularism to religion
Such opposition is reinforced by the fact that when people argue for a secular state
they have something very positive in mind. The high esteem in which secular is
regarded in the West signies the values which have coalesced around it such as
equality, tolerance, the freedoms of the individual etc. This use of secular as a
way of referring to these kinds of values easily becomes a claim to possession of
such values, giving the impression that these are primarily non-religious and not
also religious values. Yet, most religious people who fully accept the value of, say,
equality are not so much agreeing with secularist beliefs, as seeing equality as the
natural out-working of their religious belief. The New Testament points very clearly
to the notion that all are equal. The early Christian movement was remarkable
indeed for the much fairer way in which it treated women by comparison with the
legal and political restraints imposed on women in the Graeco-Roman world. Again,
the movement to abolish slavery was spear-headed by people of religious
persuasion.
If it be objected that it is only since the Enlightenment that racism, sexism and
the like have been focused on in a real thrust towards equality, we need to remem-
ber that change in values which do not appeal to selshness requires a very long
incubation period, similar to how long-buried seeds suddenly appear as plants in
Spring. Such high ideals are very hard to actualise with the power of vested inter-
ests ranged against them. It is unsurprising that within religion itself powerful forces
have been arraigned against the very ideals at the centre of religion which is why
religiously inspired movements for reform have always been a feature of great
religions.
As Melvyn Bragg (2011) clearly showed in his TV programme, the King James
Bible was a powerful source of inspiration for religious people working and ghting
for democracy. He acknowledged that the Bible could be used also for reactionary
purposes, but the fact that many saw its message as pointing in the opposite direc-
tion to freedom is sufcient to put a question mark beside claims that equality is a
secular value and not also a religious value. It constitutes the logical fallacy of
Bogus Dilemma to oppose religion and secularity in this way.
3. The temptation to vilify what it is not
When secularism is strongly advocated, the vilication of religion may happen
unintentionally yet by implication. This is because when secularism is afrmed as
good it necessarily implies a judgement on what it is not, i.e. religion, even if that
judgement is not voiced. From that it is quite an easy step to adopting a sneering
attitude towards what is deemed of little importance.
176 B. Watson
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Scott Aiken and Robert Talisse (2011) discuss what they term Moms maxim;
i.e. a polite taboo in ordinary conversation on political, moral or religious argument
because some people might nd this uncomfortable. They note that the implied
judgement on what is not afrmed can easily encourage what they term a No
Reasonable Opposition strategy by which we tell ourselves that our opponents
really have no objections anyway; we portray them to ourselves as benighted, igno-
rant, unintelligent, wicked, deluded, or worse (Aiken and Talisse 2011, 38).
A clear application of Moms maxim appears to be in the political world. Ron-
ald Dworkin (2006), for example, began his book Is Democracy Possible? by refer-
ring to the conduct of American politics as in an appalling state. We disagree,
ercely, about almost everything. . . each side has no respect for the other. We are
no longer partners in self-government; our politics are rather a form of war. Simi-
larly, scorn of religion is a marked feature of intellectual life in the West. Unless
restrained, this constitutes an affront and betrayal of the very notions of tolerance
and openness for which secularism claims to stand.
4. One-sided application or non-reciprocity
Laborde (2010) argues that in a democratic state all must be bi-lingual speaking a
secular language for the public square as well as their own faith language. The rea-
son Laborde argues thus is obvious, because secular language makes no reference to
God and religious people can talk it without losing integrity, while atheists cannot
use religious language without losing integrity. The same argument applies regarding
the notion of worship in schools. The non-religious cannot be expected to pray if
assemblies are religious, but the religious can happily join in secular assemblies
without any problem. Atheists cannot be asked to speak religious language, while
religious people can be asked to speak secular language. The state which has to
embrace all varieties of belief must have a lowest common denominator principle.
Yet, this is not as un-contentious as it may appear. For secularist language is
inherently atheist not in the explicit sense of actually verbalising that there is no
God but by omission of any reference to God. Atheism is, therefore, privileged it
is the default position making religion effectively an outsider. So this is a duty or
imposition only on religious people. Atheists do not have to be bilingual. Is this
fair? It is interesting that Lord Laws, in the judgement earlier referred to, actually
gave as a reason for secularity:
The precepts of any one religion any belief system cannot, by force of their reli-
gious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If
they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would
be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.
May we not say that excluding religious people equally pushes them out in the cold
and our constitution would be on its way to ideological totalitarianism by imposing
a secularist world-view?
Laborde (2010) tries to say that religious convictions are not excluded if they
can be expressed in a secular language open to all: By exercising religious restraint
when we are sincerely unable to provide secular reasons for our views, we show
respect for our fellow citizens, only seeking to appeal to public standards (13). The
problem is that the widely accepted epistemological standards to which appeal can
Journal of Beliefs & Values 177
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be made may have already excluded the possibility of a religious perspective. This
is the case if only empirical evidence can count, available supposedly to everyone.
Lord Laws, quoted previously, was appealing to the empirical positivism so com-
mon in the West generally. This has been so embedded in its education systems in
particular that is has affected almost everyone (see my article What is education?
[Watson 2009]).
What kind of inclusivity is this? Even without any element of possible scorn of
religion, there is something unprincipled about a notion of claiming, as the secular
state does, to embrace difference whilst banishing some from the public square. This
is a kind of inclusivism which excludes many, and a notion of equality which denies
the rights of some (cf. George Orwells [1945] famous aphorism in Animal Farm: all
animals are equal but some animals are more equal than other). This does not make
logical/rational sense. Nor does it make historical sense, and to this I now turn.
Historicity
Not only are there religious reasons for adopting democratic values; they may be
seen as originating in the centuries-long immersion of Western civilisation in specif-
ically Judeo-Christian thinking. The rationale, historically, for the value of equality
lies in the teaching that God loves and values every human-being, high or low, rich
or poor, strong or weak, as epitomised powerfully for the public in the Christian
nativity stories.
The Christian origin of equality is no idle claim but is cogently argued for by
David Bentley Hart (2009), who offers an impressive refutation of secularist
attempts to re-dene and re-position Christian achievement in the Ancient World.
He considers that Christianity:
. . .introduced into our world an understanding of the divine, the cosmic and the
human that had no exact or even approximate equivalent elsewhere and that made
possible a vision of the human person that has haunted us ever since, century upon
century. (203)
It follows that Christian values and beliefs about the world and human nature have
so deeply penetrated our culture that Enlightenment atheism, Humanism and the
like are virtually singing from the same hymnbook of values.
Striking recent testimony to this comes from research done by Niall Ferguson
(2011) for his TV series Civilisation: The West and the rest. A scholar from the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported:
We were asked to look into what accounted for the ascendancy of the West all over
the world. . . At rst we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we
had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we
focused on your economic system. But in the past 20 years we have realised that the
heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so
powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made
possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic
politics. (Ferguson 2011, 287)
It is interesting to note, however, that this comment is not reected in the choice of
killer applications into which Ferguson arranges his material. Many Western intel-
lectuals indeed would vehemently disagree with the Chinese scholar. They would
178 B. Watson
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see the value of equality emanating not from Christianity but from the Enlighten-
ment, which rebelled against Christianity by re-animating the virtues of the ancient
classical world. Thus, Robert Louden (2010, 38) argues that the Enlightenment was
a morally motivated effort to expand human freedom and equality and establish a
lasting peace and he notes that for a brief period during the Enlightenment, there
was an enviable level of commitment to making a moral world.
Yet, the Enlightenment itself was inextricably inuenced by religiously promul-
gated ideals and endorsed and promoted by many religious people (e.g. Descartes,
Locke, Newton, Berkeley, Priestley, Mendelssohn, and prominent Deists such as
Paine, Tindal, and Toland). Nor can the value of equality be accounted for through
the re-discovery of the classical world. Its spectacular achievements did not include
anything approaching the inclusivist ideal of treating women, slaves, the poor, the
sick and disabled as equal citizens.
From a philosophical angle, Roger Trigg (2007) points out that Nietzsche, an
implacable opponent of Christianity, also attacked the idea of human equality: He
believed that, once Christian metaphysics was removed from the scene, equality
could no longer be taken for granted. Trigg continues: the project of nding a
rational basis for equality is not an irrelevant academic exercise (Trigg 2007, 82).
The historical evidence for the links between democracy and Christianity needs
to be taken very seriously indeed.
Practical consequences
The privatisation of religion comes with a large and complex price tag.
1. Marginalisation
What is not articulated can very easily disappear from view altogether. This is espe-
cially the case when considerable effort is required in real use of freedom to pursue
an ideal, as it is regarding religion. To sustain religious faith is far from easy it
requires a maximum use of autonomy and self-discipline for people to free them-
selves from many factors such as conditioning by others, internal emotional drives,
problems imposed by ignorance and lack of experience.
2. Closing down options
This is not only unfair to religious people, but it also infringes the very concept of
freedom, which secularists claim as so decisive. What is excluded, not thought about,
not focussed on, is not an area for free choice because people cannot decide on what
they know nothing about. Therefore, this impacts on the freedom of choice at the
heart of the much-claimed secular pursuit of autonomy. This may be a largely unfa-
miliar view of religion which has tended for most people to be associated with emo-
tionalism, obedience to authority, and faith presumed to be irrational. It indicates yet
again the dangers of a monochromatic view of religion which thrives on ignorance.
3. The promotion of hypocrisy, lack of transparency and deception
The private/public dichotomy appears to be a convenient way of resolving many
tensions. At root, however, it is impossible to draw a strict line between private and
Journal of Beliefs & Values 179
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public. What anyone believes really rmly always inuences for good or ill
how they act and react all the time. People carry their private world around with
them, whether it be religious, atheist or whatever, just as what they experience in
the public world affects their private world. Attempting to require this separation of
private from public thus invites a form of schizophrenia rigidly enforced in totalitar-
ian states but properly having no place at all in a democracy. Rather, a thriving
democracy requires the proper voicing of all views which are not actually anti-
social. It is signicant that the religious reasons that Bush and Blair had for
embarking on the war with Iraq did not receive open theological debate. It can be
argued that absence of debate at a religious level had very serious consequences.
4. Inhibiting the search for social cohesion
Religious people learn from this one-sidedness that their views are not welcome or
at most they are tolerated in patronising fashion. The secularity of the public space
has already excluded the possibility of taking any religious position seriously. The
zig-zag approach of Britain towards the arrival of large numbers of Muslims, Hindus
and Sikhs unfortunately illustrates this only too well. Lack of initial proper welcome
in the 1960s and 1970s produced eventually a policy dubbed multiculturalism
which went to the other extreme in actually promoting a ghetto-mentality which
need not take the host cultures values and beliefs seriously. The current disenchant-
ment felt by many for such multiculturalism is justied to some extent, yet the fair
and properly democratic way forward must be to want open dialogue which encour-
ages, instead of discouraging, public afrmation and criticism of deeply held beliefs.
5. The danger of promoting fundamentalist attitudes
By not permitting religious voices to be properly heard in public, a dangerous
ghetto mentality is fostered. This means that many criticisms of what might be
termed unsavoury developments in religion are not heard by the very people who
most need to hear them. This is particularly serious regarding the development of
fundamentalist attitudes which harden under duress. The explosive power of reli-
gion and its capacity for going wrong argues for the public voice of religion, not
banishing it to the private sphere. Let the light of public debate and of understand-
ing shine on unacceptable developments. This will help, for example, democrati-
cally orientated Muslims everywhere to deal with the dangerous rebrands in their
midst. The London 7/7 bombers, for example, were badly let down by the state
education they received in Britain, which failed to engage with the religious
instincts of those vulnerable to becoming fundamentalists.
6. Re-interpreting religion
Excluding religion from the public domain goes against the grain of what religion
is. To privatise it is to re-interpret it in such a way that religious people cannot rec-
ognise it. The derivation of the word religion is what binds together. All reli-
gions stress the communal side and the ideal unity between belief and outward life.
Moreover, a major problem for all secular states is how to ll the vacuum created
by the abandonment of what Richard Harries (2008) has called the enchantment of
religion. Are the alternatives to religion for holding democracy safely together,
180 B. Watson
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such as nationalism, reliance on reason, trust in individual autonomy, or the rule of
law, adequate? Secular states, by privatising religion, have created a vacuum need-
ing to be lled with ideals, values and beliefs. As the Archbishop of Westminster,
Vincent Nichols (2010, 47), put it: increasingly in our society there is a sense that
we need some stronger shared foundations.
Towards a solution
It would appear, therefore, that the secular state is not only irrational and un-princi-
pled but also pragmatically unsound. A change of heart is thus needed in our soci-
ety concerning thinking about religion, which has been too often demonised,
especially by those who should know better by the educated elite.
If public space in a democracy should not be characterised by the absence of
religion, how can the state play fair to both religious and non-religious people?
How can religion be properly represented in education, both in schools and univer-
sities, in the media, in political debate and in public awareness generally?
There needs to be clear articulation and nurture of those values which demo-
cratic states must hold in common to ourish or even to survive. Equally, however,
the origins and raison dtre of those values held in common must be openly
acknowledged as both non-religious and religious. In this way, citizens who think
differently over so important a matter as the source of democratic and moral com-
mitment will not feel excluded.
Obama (2006, 55) managed to include both religious and non-religious fairly in
this statement as a basis for public policy-making:
We value a faith in something bigger than ourselves, whether that something expresses
itself in formal religion or in ethical precepts. And we value the constellation of
behaviours that express our mutual regard for one another: honesty, fairness, humility,
kindness, courtesy and compassion.
The crucial point is to nd a way of being inclusive while articulating a religious
position as well as a secularist position. It should not be beyond the wit of intelli-
gent and sensitive supporters of democracy to nd phrases which can do this. I
offer a few examples:
(1) The constitution could openly acknowledge the validity of a religious per-
spective even as not all might hold it. Words such as: We hold these truths
to be self-evident, which many of us see as under God. . . could be used.
(2) Mission statements for schools, organisations, hospitals, etc. could include a
reference to the way many people see the values expressed as emanating
from their religion. Thus, for example: These are the values to which we
are committed. . . We see these as our duty as human-beings and, for some
of us, also as religious people.
(3) Times for public prayer could also be possible provided that alternative ways
of responding are voiced. Thus, before public meetings a short period of
silence could be prefaced by words such as Please use this two-minute per-
iod of silence to reect or to pray, according to your beliefs.
(4) For school assemblies, religious material could be introduced in some such
ways as the following: Sing these words as a song or as a hymn according
Journal of Beliefs & Values 181
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to what you believe, or Listen to this prayer and if you wish, silently say
Amen.
In such ways religion would thereby be welcomed alongside atheism/agnosticism
with the proviso common to both religious and non-religious commitments that they
do not seek to destroy democratic values. Individuals in a society will opt for one
or the other, but effectively to outlaw one of these from public expression would be
the mark of an irrational leadership of that society. It would be just as irrational to
insist on the divine ordering of society as in a theocracy as to insist on the secular
ordering of society as in an aggressively atheist regime, for both embody contested
views which cannot be rationally and publicly resolved.
Finally, it should be remembered that a democracy thrives on the airing of dis-
agreements, provided this is done in a respectful, intelligent and sensitive way. This
is where freedom of speech comes into its own the ability to say what others may
disagree with. An impressive example of this at work is the support the gay activist
Peter Tatchell (2010) gives to those threatened with the law for voicing strong
homophobic views. In December 2010 he wrote:
Bigoted views should be rebutted by debate and protest, not by criminalisation. . . A
free society depends on the free exchange of ideas. . . .Lets not forget that generations
of people suffered to win us the right to freedom of expression; people like the
martyred Bible translator William Tyndale and the jailed Chartist leader William
Lovett.
In a democracy, the inherent controversy surrounding what people see as the most
important aspects of life should not have the effect of pulling people apart but
rather of bringing them together in civilised and civilising interaction.
Notes on contributor
Brenda Watson was formerly Director of the Farmington Institute, Oxford, UK.
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