Religious freedom sacrificed on the altar of the state

The Australian ^ | 19dec03 | Waleed Aly

[Int]

Religious freedom sacrificed on the altar of the state

19dec03

Following the recommendation of a committee of French MPs, French President Jacques Chirac yesterday called for a new law banning conspicuous forms of religious dress in public schools. Not surprisingly, this has met an angry response from French religious leaders; the implications for their congregations are obvious.

The significance of the recommendation, however, is counter-intuitive. It has more profound implications for secularism than it does for those it immediately affects. This is because it threatens the paradigmatic foundations of liberal secular thought. To the extent this decision embodies a development in secularist philosophy, it wages war on itself. Secularism appeals to people because it expresses resistance against the authoritarian evil of an ideological dictatorship. It promises a society in which religious and other minorities can live free from repression, not having to conform to and live in accordance with a world view to which they do not subscribe.

An inviolable separation was erected between church and state or, more generically, the sacred and the secular. Christianity, once a powerful imperial force in its own right, now rendered such things unto Caesar. Religious communities could practise their respective faiths, but theological jurisprudence would play no conceptual role in government, which was to be freed from the bounds of religious law. It was a freedom-enhancing theory.

Chirac's call, however, is the antithesis of this. It denies freedom. It creates an aggressively anti-religious symbolism that says that if religious beliefs are to exist at all, it is best they exist where they cannot be seen. This does not even respect the separation of church and state, much less fortify it. Rather, it represents the annihilation of church by state. The tragic irony of this is that if the proposed ban becomes law, the French parliament risks effectively moulding all people into an artificially created, authoritarian homogeneity. The state will have become publicly hostile to certain modes of religious expression that have no effect on governmental administration.

The rhetorical effect of this is the creation of a dominant, governmentally approved ideology to which one must adhere at points of public intersection. That sounds eerily like the theocracies from which many secularists seek refuge. It does not leave church and state to operate in their respective spheres. Instead, it is in serious danger of replacing the medieval Christian church with a new, secular church.

Secularism may well entail that, in pursuit of a free society, government is not encumbered by religious law but the logical consequence is that secularism must be encumbered by its own philosophical foundations. Chirac threatens to shake these foundations. If secularism moves in this direction globally, it will have become the very oppression it purports to remedy.

[jim35]

Look for the ACLU to take this ball and run with it.

[Ophiucus]

Like they haven't already - it's already a punishable offense to be Christian in public.

[gcruse]

Matthew 6:5-6: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...."

Many liberal Christians interpret Matthew 6:6 literally. Jesus believed that prayers are to be an intensely personal event between a person and God; no one else should be present. Prayer to him was a private matter. Jesus condemns prayers in situations where other people are present.