A Voice from the Mountains
19th November 2014, 03:45
I was reading an interesting book of concisely-stated philosophical ideas called "50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know" by Ben Dupré (which I found online by the way). One of the chapters is about secularism and I found it interesting how the US was contrasted with Europe here, and seeing that many Avalonians are European and lots are also American, I wondered what the response would be here to this. I would suspect the author is American except that he uses British spelling conventions (for example "centre" rather than "center").
Here are the relevant excerpts:
The First Amendment of the US Constitution, adopted together with the rest of the Bill of Rights in 1791, states that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' By forbidding the state from declaring an official religion and by guaranteeing freedom of religious express, the Founding Fathers of the USA laid the foundations of the 'wall of separation' (in Thomas Jefferson's phrase) that divides the proper spheres of faith and politics.
'Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?' -- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
Profoundly secular in the sense that it has moved the management of worldly affairs from divine to human hands, the Amendment has nevertheless been instrumental in fashioning one of the most vibrantly and variously religious societies on earth. There is no shortage of moral issues that divide Americans deeply and which have the potential to inflame passions and tear communities apart: abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, prayer in school, censorship, among many others. Yet powerful constitutional safeguards -- and above all the strictly observed separation of church and state -- have ensured that such matters have, for the most part, been resolved peacefully and within the confines of the law. ...
What is most striking about the American experience is that it is quite exceptional. While Europe is and was accepted, not least by those who framed the US Constitution, as the birthplace of secularism, the reality today is that European countries are both less religious and less secular than the USA. This reality is not often fully acknowledged within Europe itself, however. Modern, self-styled 'secular' Europeans typically look uncomprehendingly to the east, where they see the dangerous fundamentalisms of Asia; and superciliously to the west, where they detect the bland fervour of American religiosity. With zealots on each side, the temptation from the superior middle ground is to see secularism as the crowning achievement of European, rather than Western, civilization. But the picture is misleading.
Nowhere has Europe's angst over its secularist identity been clearer than in the recent manoeuverings of the European Union (EU). The EU -- a project originally sponsored by the Christian Democrats and sanctioned by the Vatican -- came to bitter blows in the early 2000s over the preamble to the constitutional treaty. In its original draft the preamble made mention of both God and Europe's Christian values, but anxieties over what such references said about Europe's shared identity and values finally led to a compromise wording that mentioned 'inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe'. Further soul-searching was occasioned by the eastward expansion of the EU, which first incorporated assertively Catholic Poland and then faced the challenge of accomodating Turkey -- a country where, alarmingly from a secularist perspective, a greater democratic freedom had been accompanied by an increasingly public demonstration of its Muslim culture and religion. ...
The contrasting experience of Britain and the USA suggests that secularism can be the most effective means of promoting religion. In an interview in 2003 Alastair Campbell, British prime minister Tony Blair's master of spin, shot down a journalist asking about Blair's religious beliefs: 'We don't do God.' Public displays of religiosity are known to be vote losers in the UK -- in spite of the fact that the country has an established church (the Church of England) and its monarch is not only head of state but also 'Defender of the Faith'. In contrast, in the USA, where the Constitution requires strict secularity, it is virtually obligatory for aspiring politicians to play the 'religion card' and it is a political platitude that no atheist could ever be elected president.
Here are the relevant excerpts:
The First Amendment of the US Constitution, adopted together with the rest of the Bill of Rights in 1791, states that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' By forbidding the state from declaring an official religion and by guaranteeing freedom of religious express, the Founding Fathers of the USA laid the foundations of the 'wall of separation' (in Thomas Jefferson's phrase) that divides the proper spheres of faith and politics.
'Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?' -- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
Profoundly secular in the sense that it has moved the management of worldly affairs from divine to human hands, the Amendment has nevertheless been instrumental in fashioning one of the most vibrantly and variously religious societies on earth. There is no shortage of moral issues that divide Americans deeply and which have the potential to inflame passions and tear communities apart: abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, prayer in school, censorship, among many others. Yet powerful constitutional safeguards -- and above all the strictly observed separation of church and state -- have ensured that such matters have, for the most part, been resolved peacefully and within the confines of the law. ...
What is most striking about the American experience is that it is quite exceptional. While Europe is and was accepted, not least by those who framed the US Constitution, as the birthplace of secularism, the reality today is that European countries are both less religious and less secular than the USA. This reality is not often fully acknowledged within Europe itself, however. Modern, self-styled 'secular' Europeans typically look uncomprehendingly to the east, where they see the dangerous fundamentalisms of Asia; and superciliously to the west, where they detect the bland fervour of American religiosity. With zealots on each side, the temptation from the superior middle ground is to see secularism as the crowning achievement of European, rather than Western, civilization. But the picture is misleading.
Nowhere has Europe's angst over its secularist identity been clearer than in the recent manoeuverings of the European Union (EU). The EU -- a project originally sponsored by the Christian Democrats and sanctioned by the Vatican -- came to bitter blows in the early 2000s over the preamble to the constitutional treaty. In its original draft the preamble made mention of both God and Europe's Christian values, but anxieties over what such references said about Europe's shared identity and values finally led to a compromise wording that mentioned 'inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe'. Further soul-searching was occasioned by the eastward expansion of the EU, which first incorporated assertively Catholic Poland and then faced the challenge of accomodating Turkey -- a country where, alarmingly from a secularist perspective, a greater democratic freedom had been accompanied by an increasingly public demonstration of its Muslim culture and religion. ...
The contrasting experience of Britain and the USA suggests that secularism can be the most effective means of promoting religion. In an interview in 2003 Alastair Campbell, British prime minister Tony Blair's master of spin, shot down a journalist asking about Blair's religious beliefs: 'We don't do God.' Public displays of religiosity are known to be vote losers in the UK -- in spite of the fact that the country has an established church (the Church of England) and its monarch is not only head of state but also 'Defender of the Faith'. In contrast, in the USA, where the Constitution requires strict secularity, it is virtually obligatory for aspiring politicians to play the 'religion card' and it is a political platitude that no atheist could ever be elected president.