1. Introduction
Liberal democratic governments are supposed to be, and often declare themselves to be, ‘secular’.Footnote 1 Must governments that lay claim to this description refrain from sponsoring religious symbols or expressions? We might naturally suppose that to say that a ‘secular’ government should not sponsor religious expressions may seem almost like an analytic truth, akin to the truth that bachelors are unmarried. And yet, in practice, liberal democratic governments often support religious symbols and expressions, as the recent Italian cross caseFootnote 2 and the American cross, Ten Commandments and Pledge of Allegiance casesFootnote 3 reflect.
So, what should we make of this puzzling combination of profession and practice? Are governments that purport to be secular and yet support religious symbols or expressions just being hypocritical, or incoherent? Are they deviating from principle under the crushing weight of tradition or the crude pressure of public opinion? Such diagnoses are familiar enough, but they are too simplistic; or so I will argue in this article. I will argue that there is no simple or across-the-board answer to the question of governmentally sponsored religious symbols and expressions. As they say, it all depends. Religious symbols and expressions sometimes may be unsuitable for a secular government but, depending on the facts and the context, they may also be permissible, or appropriate, or even commendable.
2. Three Versions of ‘Secular’
We should start with some distinctions. Government, we are assuming, is supposed to be ‘secular’, but what does ‘secular’ mean? Scholars increasingly recognise that ‘secular’ is a many splendoured notion,Footnote 4 but among the various kinds or conceptions we can pick out three, which we might call the ‘classical’, ‘comprehensive’ and ‘agnostic’ versions of secularity.
The first of these versions, dominant in the Middle Ages but less common today, understands the term ‘secular’ as one compartment or subcategory within a more encompassing reality.Footnote 5 More specifically, ‘secular’ means something like ‘in and of this world’, and the term serves to distinguish the this-worldly or temporal domain from a different world or dimension of reality, described with adjectives like ‘spiritual’ or ‘eternal’. A ‘secular’ ruler – a king or prince – has jurisdiction over affairs of this world. It is not the ruler's responsibility to ensure the salvation of souls in the next world; that is the business of the church.
In this version, ‘secular’ emphatically does not mean ‘not religious’. Rather, ‘secular’ gets its meaning from a larger framework that we would be likely to perceive as religious. So ‘secular’ is itself, in a sense, a religious term.Footnote 6 Here is an illustration. In the medieval world (and perhaps still) Catholic priests are classified into two categories, described as the ‘secular’ and the ‘regular’ clergy. ‘Secular’ priests are not wayward or apostate clerics who have forsaken the faith while keeping their collars; rather, they are priests who work in the world, in a parish, in contrast to those who withdraw from the world to live under the ‘regula’ of a monastery. In the same way, secular rulers are supposed to concern themselves with the affairs of this world, but it in no way follows that they should refrain from acting on or expressing religious beliefs that are relevant to this-worldly affairs.
Although this usage is still available, it has been to a significant extent displaced in modern times by a different usage which treats ‘secular’ simply as meaning ‘not religious’.Footnote 7 So a ‘secular’ institution – or theory, or reason – would be an institution or theory or reason that is ‘not religious’. But what, if anything, does this ‘not religious’ stance entail or imply about the status of ‘religion’? One possibility is that a secular position denies or rejects religion or – what arguably amounts to the same thing – engulfs and subsumes it. So a secular thinker would be one who believes that religious views are false or without value – a Daniel Dennett or a Christopher Hitchens. Or, like many a social scientist, the secular thinker may acknowledge religion (and perhaps even purport to value it, or even to believe in it) while also maintaining that religion can be fully accounted for in secular terms – in the ways of understanding practised in disciplines like sociology, anthropology and psychology.
This version of secularity may be called ‘comprehensive’ because it maintains that everything that is real and true can be adequately accounted for in secular (meaning non-religious) terms. Such a view is evident in the scientific naturalism that pervades a good deal of academic thought.Footnote 8 Whereas in the classical version, the ‘secular’ was a subcategory within a larger ‘religious’ framework, in the ‘comprehensive’ version of secularity the relation is reversed: ‘religion’ is a somewhat shady subcategory of a larger reality that is not itself religious. If the classical account makes the secular religious, the comprehensive account renders religion secular.
But, then again, the secular thinker might be more modest in his claims. He might acknowledge the existence of religious views and ways of life and decline to judge one way or the other whether these views and ways are true or valuable or reducible to non-religious terms. His confidence, probably, is in the non-religious approach to matters – the approach of science, perhaps, or philosophy. Such non-religious domains, he thinks, are where reliable knowledge resides. But he concedes the possibility of truths and realities that transcend and elude these approaches. We might call this third position ‘agnostic’ secularism; though not religious, it remains non-committal with respect to the truth or value of religion.
3. Which Kind of Secularity?
Thus far we have distinguished between three different versions of secularity, which I have called the classical, comprehensive and agnostic versions. So, which if any of these versions describes the position that a government committed to being ‘secular’ ought to take today?
One familiar way to approach this question is to start with the classical worldview that characterised medieval societies in the West and then ask how the world changed with the break-up of Christendom.Footnote 9 So let us consider three different ‘post-Christendom’ interpretations or scenarios. In the first scenario, with the disintegration of Christendom the power of the Church declines, and Christianity fractures into contending factions of Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Anglicans, and so forth. But everyone, or nearly everyone, in Western civilisation is still Christian or Jewish, or at least monotheistic in one form or another.
In this scenario, ‘secular’ might continue to bear something like its classical meaning. Despite serious theological disagreements, most everyone still believes that both this life and the life to come are real but distinguishable, and the term ‘secular’ could still serve to indicate that distinction. A ‘secular’ government, while concerning itself with this-worldly matters, would still be free or perhaps even obligated to act upon relevant religious truths, and to acknowledge the religious framework that establishes the limits of government's secular jurisdiction.
Now consider a second scenario. Suppose that the break-up of Christendom leads not just to religious fragmentation but also, over time, to a decisive decline in religious faith. The development of the Enlightenment and the progress of science eventually attract most people to the view that the only kinds of reality that exist are the material, empirical realities accessible to scientific study. Older beliefs about God, spirit, heaven and resurrection come to seem like antiquated superstitions. In this scenario, it seems that ‘secular’ governments would naturally abandon the classical position in favour of a comprehensive secularism. Such governments might still try to accommodate any remaining dissenters who cling to now discredited faiths. But most people, or at least most right-thinking people, now understand that the natural or material world – the ‘secular’ world – is all there is, and government ought to respect and operate on that understanding.
It also might turn out, though, that many or most people, though largely bereft of religious faith, are more restrained in their affirmations and negations. They are not confident that there is a God or a spiritual or eternal domain; but then again, they are not confident that there is not. They answer the question of religious truth with, as Paul Horwitz puts it, the ‘eternal maybe’.Footnote 10 In this scenario, people might favour a less cocksure, more agnostic version of secularity. And they might naturally desire that government operate in accordance with that more qualified or modest view of things.Footnote 11
So, depending on the facts, there could be governments – ‘secular’ governments – that would gravitate to any of the versions of secularity: classical, comprehensive or agnostic. We can imagine any of these possibilities. But enough of ‘could be’: what are the facts, really? Which of these scenarios best describes the world we live in?
The answer to this question may vary from place to place and time to time. But it seems safe to say this much: at least in Western nations, each scenario captures some but not all of the social reality.
In the immediate aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, the nations composing what had been Christendom probably came close to fitting scenario one. Nearly everyone was a theist of some kind – most often some kind of Christian. Later, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars and theorists foretold the development of something like scenario two: as science and modernity advanced, religious belief would fade.Footnote 12 As late as 1968, Peter Berger predicted that ‘[b]y the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture’.Footnote 13 By now it is widely recognised, though, that these secular prophecies have not been fulfilled: religion has not dwindled away. By century's end, Berger told a different story. ‘The assumption that we live in a secularized world is false’, Berger declared.Footnote 14
The world today, with [the] exceptions [of Europe and of ‘an international subculture composed of people with Western-type higher education’], is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labelled ‘secularization theory’ is essentially mistaken.
‘Essentially mistaken’, maybe, but not wholly and utterly mistaken. The numbers of non-believers have grown.Footnote 15 And these non-believers – or believers in a comprehensive naturalism – are well placed; as Berger indicates, in some cultural neighbourhoods (like universities), and in some regions (like Europe), theirs seems to be the dominant orthodoxy. Even where religion persists, moreover, it is one option among many.Footnote 16 And, as Charles Taylor has argued, a belief that is understood to be both optional and embattled is not the same sort of innocently self-confident thing as a belief that is taken as axiomatic.Footnote 17
If citizens of modern democracies were required to cast their lots with one of the three views, it seems likely that most citizens would align themselves with either the ‘classical secular’ or the ‘comprehensive secular’ position. The percentages would differ: in the United States, where most people claim to be religious,Footnote 18 more citizens (outside of universities) would probably favour something like the classical view, while in Europe the proportions might be reversed. Self-identifying agnostics would probably be a small minority. And yet, if Taylor is right, an aura of agnosticism would hover over the voting, affecting even many of those who endorse the classical or comprehensive views.
4. Secular Government and Religious Expression
The question we began with was whether a ‘secular’ government could or should sponsor religious symbols or expressions. We noted that to many thinkers it may seem to be something akin to an analytic truth that a ‘secular’ government would not sponsor such symbols or expressions. So the fact that ostensibly secular governments often do engage in such expression stands as proof of hypocrisy or inconsistency. But the ensuing discussion suggests that the issue is not so simple.
4.1 Divergent Implications
We have seen that secularity comes in different forms or versions. And the different versions have different implications for the relationship between a secular position and religious expression.
We have already observed that in the time and realm of what is sometimes called Christendom, the classical version prevailed. Kings and princes were ‘secular’ rulers; they had jurisdiction over the here and now of this world. But it was understood that this temporal or secular jurisdiction was nestled within a larger reality that we might describe as religious. In that classical arrangement, not only could secular rulers acknowledge and affirm religion (in various ways), they were effectively bound to affirm at least some religious beliefs. For one thing, temporal or secular did not form a dichotomy in which ‘religious’ was the other term; rather, religion pervaded life on both sides of the ‘spiritual/temporal’ divide. So there was hardly any escaping from religion (although the very pervasiveness of ‘religion’ may have meant that the concept was superfluous and ill-suited for picking out any particular area or dimension of realityFootnote 19). In addition, the jurisdictional boundaries that defined the rulers' proper domain were themselves ‘religious’ in character; so secular rulers would, of necessity, recognise and appeal to ‘religious’ understandings and propositions in determining the limits of their own power.
Conversely, a government committed to comprehensive secularism would not endorse religion. But it might well criticise, or denounce, or even suppress religious institutions, traditions or beliefs. Some Marxist political systems of the last century were examples of this stance, as is the secular Mexican regime depicted in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory.Footnote 20
It might seem, by contrast, that a government committed to agnostic secularism would refrain from saying or conveying anything one way or the other about religion. But that conclusion would be mistaken, for two reasons. First, agnosticism does not entail silence with respect to religion. An agnostic individual need not refrain from talking about, and making assertions about, religion.Footnote 21 On the contrary, an agnostic is likely to believe, and assert, that the evidence and arguments that have been offered both for and against religion, or for and against the proposition that God exists, are inconclusive. This is a claim about religion; moreover, it is a claim that contradicts the contrary claims both of many religionists (who believe that the evidence and arguments for God are persuasive and sufficient) and of more hard core atheists (who believe that the arguments against God are persuasive and sufficient). Like an agnostic individual, an agnostically secular government might make these sorts of (controversial) statements about religion. And from the more devoutly atheistic standpoint, even these sorts of respectfully agnostic statements (asserting that religion might be true, or valuable) could look like statements favourable to religion.Footnote 22
Agnostic secularism will also reflect a stance on religion in another, more indirect, way. Religion, as William James argued, often presents what James described as ‘forced options’ in which a withholding of decision is itself a decision.Footnote 23 Suppose you are camping in the woods and are desperately hungry, though not actually in imminent danger of starvation. One of your camping companions offers you a plateful of freshly picked mushrooms, but another companion says, ‘Those mushrooms are poisonous. If you eat them you'll die.’ On a purely intellectual level, you may reserve judgment about which of these companions to believe. But you can hardly avoid either eating or not eating the mushrooms. It might be said that while suspending judgment at one level, you nonetheless make a practical or provisional judgment in your behaviour. If you eat the mushrooms, you are acting as if the claim that they are poisonous is false. It might be said that you are treating the claim as false. Conversely, if despite your hunger you decline to eat them, you are acting as if the claim is true, or treating it as true.
In a similar way, James argued, religion often presents us with forced choices in which, although we may wish to suspend judgment intellectually, in our actions we will inevitably treat particular religious propositions as true or else false. If the evangelist says, ‘Accept baptism and be saved; refuse baptism and you will be damned’, you will either accept baptism or you will not accept it; either way, you will be making a practical or working judgment about the truth of the evangelist's claim. Typically, the term ‘agnosticism’ describes people who, while perhaps uncertain, act as if religious claims were false. David Novak asserts that ‘[d]espite the attempt to create a neutral position called “agnosticism”, one can show that agnostics are actually timid atheists’.Footnote 24 But an agnostic might go the other way. Anthony Kenny, a philosopher and professed agnostic, maintains that ‘[b]eing agnostic does not mean that one cannot pray. In itself, prayer to a God about whose existence one is doubtful is no more irrational than crying out for help in an emergency without knowing whether there is anyone within earshot’.Footnote 25
The ‘forced choice’ logic that applies to agnostic individuals extends to governments as well. Religious faiths will make claims on government – claims both as to what government should do and what government should say. If the religious rationales that support such claims are true, government would be well advised to heed these prescriptions. Conversely, if government attempts to adopt an agnostic stance towards the religious premises and accordingly rejects the prescriptions, then government will in effect be treating the religious claims as false. And government will be conveying the message not that religious beliefs are false, perhaps, but that for public purposes these beliefs should be disregarded or treated as if they were false.
Thus, of the three versions of secularity that we have identified, none entails that government must be silent with respect to religion. And at least one of the versions (namely, classical secularism) permits or even requires government to affirm some religious propositions.
4.2 Mere Secularity?
But a proponent of the common view (namely, that secular governments should not sponsor religious symbols or expressions) may attempt to brush away these complications. What is wanted, he might assert, is not any particular version of secularity, but rather secularity pure and simple. Much in the way that C S Lewis tried to identify a ‘mere Christianity’ that captured the essence of the faith without taking sides among the various Christian factions and divisions,Footnote 26 a proponent of secular government might argue that government should simply stick to the secular or ‘not religious’ domain without endorsing or siding with any particular version of secularity, whether classical, comprehensive or agnostic. Just as a secular government is supposed to be ‘neutral’ towards religion,Footnote 27 a merely secular government would be neutral as among the various versions of secularism.
But is such a neutral, merely secular, position possible? Suppose a government is going on its merrily secular way, doing its secular business, not troubling itself about whether religious claims are knowably true, knowably false, or unknowable; but then people begin to make claims or demands on government involving religion. They want government meetings to begin with prayer,Footnote 28 or they want government to print ‘In God We Trust’ on the currency.Footnote 29 Or, from a different perspective, they want government to intervene in churches to eliminate abuse or discrimination.Footnote 30 How is the government that aspires to be merely secular supposed to respond to these demands?
If the government were to deliberate about these demands, form and express judgments regarding the (religious or anti-religious) rationales offered for and against such demands, and then make decisions in accordance with those judgments, government would surely be departing from mere secularity and moving toward some more particular version of secularity. Suppose citizens want to begin government meetings with prayer because, they say, God will then bless the nation;Footnote 31 otherwise God will withhold his blessings and the nation will suffer. If this rationale is correct, then the nation would be well advised to conduct public prayer. But if government accepts the rationale and practises official prayer, it will surely have departed from simple secularity in the direction of something like the classical version. Conversely, if government declines to accept the rationale and prescription, it will in effect have moved towards a more agnostic or perhaps comprehensive version of secularism.
Or suppose government says, ‘We reject the demand for official prayer, but not because we believe the religious rationale supporting the demand is false, or even unknowable. We reject the demand, rather, because it is none of our business – not within our secular jurisdiction – even to consider such rationales or proposals’. In other words, the government rejects the demand for prayer while explicitly declining to endorse comprehensive or even agnostic secularity. Wouldn't this steadfastly non-committal government have adhered to a position of mere secularism?
But then the question arises: why would a government adhere to this sort of tenaciously non-committal secularism? It seems clear that not all citizens favour this position. Nor can government plausibly contend that this sort of secularity is ‘neutral’ as among the various religious and secular belief systems and commitments held by citizens; rather, the position quite obviously rejects the religious beliefs of some citizens – beliefs both about prayer and about the proper character of government. The position also rejects the beliefs of citizens who might favour a more aggressively comprehensive version of secularism – the Sam Harrises of the world.Footnote 32
So, what sort of justification might be given in support of this position? The position might be argued for on classical secular premises: government should be merely secular because that is its proper role within the providential scheme. This was, arguably, the position promoted by, among many others, Roger Williams.Footnote 33 But then the merely secular position will have moved towards classical secularity, at least at the level of fundamental justification, and so the ‘merely’ will have faded away. The merely secular position might instead be justified on grounds of comprehensive secularism: government should be merely secular because religious beliefs are wrong-headed or are reducible to secular terms. Or the merely secular position might be defended on more agnostic grounds: government should stick to the domain of the secular because religious claims are irredeemably uncertain and hence best relegated to the private domain. But these defences, again, align the merely secular position with one or another version of secularity, at least at the level of fundamental justification.
And so it seems that the resolution to remain merely secular, when challenged, is pushed towards some more particular version of secularism. And this observation holds, it seems, for secular justifications that try to avoid mentioning fundamental philosophical or theological issues at all. Suppose someone contends that government should be merely secular because, given religious diversity, a secular government is better able to maintain civil peace, or is fairer to all of the diversely minded citizens.Footnote 34 These arguments are eminently contestable, of course, on both empirical and theoretical grounds. What is most pertinent for present purposes, though, is that these arguments already sound in one or another more basic view. Why should civil peace be the dispositive desideratum, while the anticipated blessings of providence – blessings to be poured out on devout political communities – count for little or nothing? It seems that the proponent of this sort of justification has already begun by assuming something like a comprehensive or agnostic secularism.
5. Conclusion: What is to be Done?
The purpose of this article has been a modest one. As against the common view which holds it to be an obvious or even analytic truth that secular governments should refrain from sponsoring religious symbols or expressions, I have tried to argue that the matter is not so simple. Historically, the concept of the ‘secular’ had religious origins and received its meaning from a religious framework, and the concept in no way entailed that government should not act upon or express religious beliefs. And, although the meaning (or rather meanings) of ‘secular’ may have changed and diversified, the various conceptions of the ‘secular’ still do not mandate that government refrain from taking positions for or against beliefs that we classify as ‘religious’.
While arguing about what secularity does not entail, this article has not attempted to prescribe what government should do in the matter of religious symbols and expressions. On the contrary, the apparent implication of our discussion has been that there is no simple or across-the-board answer to that question. In the simplified scenarios that we have considered above, the question would be more tractable. Thus, if everyone, or nearly everyone, in a community were some sort of classical theist, or else some kind of comprehensive secularist, or else stalwartly agnostic, it would be easier to prescribe what government should, or should not, say about religion. But if, as I have suggested, contemporary democratic societies tend to be a mixture of all three views, it is harder to say.
Nor is it my purpose to propose solutions. Still, given the urgency of the problem – it is seemingly at the heart of what in the United States are called the ‘culture wars’Footnote 35 – we might conclude by noticing one obvious but dubious response to the problem, and also one less obvious and inelegant but more promising response. The obvious response is majoritarianism. If most citizens favour legislative prayer or public crosses, then these symbols and expressions will be maintained; if the majority shifts, the practices will change as well. In fact, I think the majoritarian response deserves more respect than it sometimes receives. Still, the majoritarian solution conflicts with the widespread assumption that the purpose of constitutional law or fundamental norms with respect to matters like religion is to protect minorities. And it is a bit unsettling to contemplate that, say, crosses or Ten Commandments monuments will be put up when one party is in power, taken down (and destroyed?) when the other party prevails, and so forth.
The inelegant but more promising approach would take advantage of the fact that law and government are, typically, polycentric and multilevelled. There are different units and levels of government: cities, states or provinces, agencies of various sorts, the national government. And there are different kinds and levels of law: judicial decisions, regulations, local ordinances, statutes, constitutional decisions and provisions. This multiplicity allows for mixed and varied messages: government may affirm religion in one place or on one level while steadfastly refusing to do so in other places or on other levelsFootnote 36 – pluralistic public expression for a pluralistic society, if you like.
Thus, in the United States, all three versions of secularity are arguably affirmed, not just in private but officially, in different places and in different ways. The national motto (‘In God We Trust’), printed on every dollar bill, resonates with a classical view. So do the embattled words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. On the other hand, as I have argued elsewhere, the Constitution itself remains steadfastly agnostic. Unlike the preceding Articles of Confederation and most state constitutions, the national Constitution contains no language that explicitly acknowledges deity. This agnosticism was deliberate. When the Constitution was proposed, critics attacked it for its failure to acknowledge deity, but its supporters stood firmFootnote 37 and this resolution has withstood subsequent efforts to add religious (or more overtly secular) language to the document.
In the nation's public schools, the situation is different. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, public schools often practised a so-called ‘non-sectarian’ form of religion in which brief prayers and Bible reading exercises were a regular part of the school day.Footnote 38 This practice can be seen as an effort to maintain a kind of classical secularity in a religiously pluralistic community. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, under the mandate of the Supreme Court, the schools moved (sometimes haltingly, and grudgingly) to eliminate all religious exercises,Footnote 39 to teach about religion, if at all, only in an ‘objective’ fashion (or, in other words, to study religion as a secular phenomenon), and to teach evolution but not creationism or intelligent design.Footnote 40 While not expressly affirming comprehensive secularism, these changes all resonate with that view; they support comprehensive secularism by omission, so to speak, in much the same way that an American history textbook that never mentioned blacks or women – never said anything about them either favourable or unfavourable – would be likely to be interpreted as supporting white male hegemony. So it is not surprising that the secularity of the schools has provoked frequent objections and litigation from more devout citizens.Footnote 41
In short, in the political system of the United States, all three versions of secularity are overtly or obliquely conveyed, in various ways and places. It is not a spectacle calculated to gratify the intellectually fastidious; and one can certainly argue about the quality and proportions of the mix. But, given the diversities of secularity that flourish and the unavailability of any merely secular stance, it is perhaps appropriate, or at least necessary, that all of these secularities should have their public manifestation.
This situation might lead us to see the American Supreme Court's decisions addressing religious symbols in a different and perhaps slightly more charitable light. Officially, since the mid-1980s, the court has said that the Constitution forbids government to endorse religion, but the court has found ways to uphold some religious symbols, including a nativity scene in Pawtucket, Rhode Island,Footnote 42 a menorah display in a Pennsylvania public building,Footnote 43 a Ten Commandments monument on the Texas state capitol grounds,Footnote 44 and the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance.Footnote 45 The Justices' explanations for these results have often left readers unpersuaded, or even insulted.Footnote 46
Instead of pretending that such symbols and expressions do not convey any religious message or meaning, the court might have explained that such traditional symbols, although assuredly religious, form an acceptable and even valuable part of the mix of messages that a diversely secular society may predictably and properly produce. Indeed, an aggressive cleansing of the public square of all religious symbols and messages, combined with the agnosticism of the Constitution itself and the more comprehensive secularism of the public schools, might create the justified perception that the nation had embraced a more militant secularism in a comprehensive, or at least agnostic, version. That sort of secularity was never the Supreme Court's goal;Footnote 47 nor would it fit the pluralistic but pervasively religious character of the American people.
The American court's shortcoming, in sum, has arguably been not in the results it has reached as much as in its effort to pretend that these results follow from a simple but misguided proposition – namely, that ‘secular’ equals ‘not religious’ equals ‘neutral’. Acknowledging the falsity of that proposition would be a step towards not a pleasing coherence, perhaps, but at least towards greater clarity about what sort of coherence we can and cannot expect.
