I became involved in these discussions because I noticed the term 'secular' being used in tandem with a description of the materialist, atheistic worldview. Whether the author was making positive or negative comments about 'secularism' in question, I feel it's a significant error to make the jump from 'secularist' to 'atheist' without marking the potential issues that arise between the two philosophical positions.
The largest problem that arises is the conflation of an increase in secular views with the decline of religion in society. Secularism, as a social movement, reduces the necessity of inhabiting any particular religious identity in civil society. The central idea is that public discourse, justified by non-religious arguments allows full participation to people of diverse backgrounds and private commitments. Secularism should contribute to the decline of religion in the public sphere, but it is not, in itself, an anti-religious movement.
Religious people, from any tradition, benefit when civic and religious identity are separate. Religious beliefs motivate and guide political, economic and social participation among adherents, but the possession of non-religious language creates a common ground for discourse on important issues that is absent in confessional language.
My argument about the benefits of a pro-religious view of secularism is strongly influenced by my own society. It’s useful to look at Canada as an example of type of transformation religion undergoes when societies become more secular.
In his brief article on Secularism in Canada , William Stahl discusses what he calls the ‘disembedded’ nature of religion in Canada.
“Until the 1960s, however, the Dominion Census or Statistics Canada did not allow a response of “no religion.” Since then, the “religious nones” have grown from 4 percent in 1971, to 7 percent in 1981, 12 percent in 1991, and 16 percent in 2001. The GSS puts the figure at 19 percent of Canadians over 15 in 2004 (see Table 1). In addition, 25 percent of Canadians reported they had not attended services in the previous year, up 5 percent in the past two decades. People in these two categories are disproportionately young (see Figure I), disproportionately live in British Columbia (see Figure II), and are more likely to be native born Canadians than immigrants, or if an immigrant, to be from China or Japan. In part, the low levels of affiliation in British Columbia are affected by the disproportionate numbers of immigrants who are from China and Japan in the greater Vancouver area. Also, note the anomaly in Quebec, which in 2004 had the largest number of people who never attend services (35 percent), but the lowest number of people who claim “no religion” (9 percent).”
His theory is that the relationship between individual and institutional religion has changed, that the decline was in meaningful affiliation with religious institutions, not in religiosity itself. Thus leading to a form of religious belief and practice not embedded in recognizable community groups. His conclusion returns me to my original point: “The number of people in Canada who would fit the “classical” definition of being secular is quite small.”
As far as I’m concerned, the number of people who would fit the ‘classical definition’ is quite large, going beyond those who claim to have no religious affiliation but still believe in God and have personal religious practices, and including many of those who recognize their religious affiliations but promote the division between their private religious identity and their public identities as Montrealers, Quebecers, and Canadians.
