Secularism

Jacques Berlinerblau begins Secularism: The Basics with the stated intention of explaining “how political secularism came to be; its ten core principles; four basic frameworks of secular governance; how secularism intersects and diverges from atheism; who secularism’s opponents and proponents are; and what its relevance is to our world today” (11).  Berlinerblau achieves these goals admirably, with one exception.

Such an ambitious program needs a clear structure, which this book provides. Part 1 presents ten core principles of political secularism in a concise, chronological, textually anchored account of centuries-long developments in Western religious thought, dispelling the misconception that secularism sprang up recently as a weapon wielded by antireligious people. Part 2 lays out four frameworks of secular governance, exhorting readers to “embrace complexity,” showing quite persuasively that secularism functions differently in each nation where it has been constitutionally implemented. Part 3 describes two groups who share nothing in common except their ill-conceived opposition to political secularism: a cohort on the right (CRAS: conservative religious antisecularists) and a cohort on the left (POMOFOCO: Berlinberblau’s shorthand for postmodern, postcolonial, Foucauldian antisecularists).

Berlinerblau defines political secularism as a system in which “legally binding actions of the secular state . . . seek to regulate the relationship between itself and religious citizens, and between religious citizens themselves” (5). Part 1 succeeds in showing that political secularism came into being inadvertently through a series of meandering historical accidents that gave rise to ten principles that we can articulate in retrospect. Helpfully, Berlinerblau presents the genealogy of these principles with the assumption that the reader does not have prior knowledge of the historical sources, and he includes visual aids that show the relationships between concepts. We learn that not all ten principles must be operative for a government to qualify definitionally as secular, though subsequent chapters cite striking examples of the catastrophes that occur when too few principles are upheld, sometimes simply due to constitutional noncompliance.

This book’s persuasive power rests on its close examination of constitutions and law codes, the focus of part 2. Four frameworks are elucidated in chapter-long case studies of the United States (separationist), France (laïcité), India (accommodationist), and Soviet Russia (atheistic secularism). This organizational setup serves the central point, which is that regional history shapes the emergence of political secularism in each country. Each framework “mixes and matches, emphasizes and deemphasizes” the ten principles (53). For example, while French laïcité prioritized the state control of religion in response to the power of the Catholic Church during the ancien régime, India’s accommodationist constitution, drafted against the backdrop of violent conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities, allows state intervention in the lives of religious groups only as a last resort. The varieties of secularism multiply as each of these secular frameworks are taken up and modified in other nations. The examination of Turkish laïcité, Ethiopian separationism, and Chinese atheistic secularism in chapter 10 demonstrates how difficult it is for secular states to resist becoming authoritarian and to meet the needs of religious minorities while maintaining neutrality. Berlinerblau’s suggestion that premodern Chinese Confucianism functioned well as an “unconscious proto-political secularism” is fascinating, and challenges prevailing theories that link secularism exclusively to the advent of industrialization and Western liberal democracies (121).  

Berlinerblau presents many instances in which secular governments fail to live up to their own legal standards and visions of freedom, but rather than using these shortcomings to reject secular principles, he argues that they must be more consistently applied. For example, France fails to uphold equality and the disestablishment of religion in its unequal distribution of state funds. A law enacted in 1905 allows the state to subsidize the upkeep of cathedrals but not mosques, and so French Muslims would benefit from a more consistent application of laïcité. The chapter on Soviet Russia highlights instances where militant authorities abrogated principles of secularism, such as freedom of conscience and the belief/acts distinction, in an effort to enforce freedom from religion above all else, furthering Berlinerblau’s argument for more principled secular governance, not less, since the alternative is usually arbitrary violence. Without an impartial referee, abuses of authority abound.

In part 3, Berlinerblau discusses opponents of the impartial secular governance that he has spent ten chapters outlining. He reproaches POMOFOCO antisecularists—a group in which he includes Michel Foucault, Talal Asad, and Saba Mahmood, whose work I regularly assign in my courses—for their complicated prose, their misidentifications of the origins and consequences of political secularism, and their failure to suggest workable alternatives to the oppressive secular hegemonies they criticize. I share Berlinerblau’s desire for clearly written sentences, evidence-based genealogies, and fair and actionable policy programs. Nonetheless, I would consider it a pedagogical mistake to omit these scholars, who ask us to reject false binaries, to question received historical narratives, and to delight in language games. My students have found the struggle with POMOFOCO prose rewarding, enabling them to experiment with a skepticism that leads to more nuanced positions than those with which they began.

My students often need assistance making analytical distinctions, especially ones that cut against their expectations. Thankfully, this book explicitly dispels common misconceptions that I have encountered in many classrooms: Not every religion is anti-LGBTQ, and not every secular state is pro-LGBTQ. Not all secularisms are atheistic or antireligious, nor are all religions fundamentalist. While the English freethinker George Holyoake contended that secularism should be “a philosophy and a system of personal ethics” (89), Berlinerblau admonishes readers that “political secularism was never meant to be a religion, or a mass movement. It’s not a faith, nor an identity, but an approach to governance. It is an approach to governance that people with a religious identity may support” (135). Indeed, religious minorities are often the citizens most vocally in favor of political secularism, as a matter of survival. This point bears repeating to students who can learn, with our help, how to assess empirical facts when forming judgments.

Secularism delivers on its promise to cover the basics, which are presented as digestible components with chapter-specific further reading lists around which topical essay assignments could be designed. Berlinerblau has succeeded in writing an engaging and pedagogically useful introduction to secularism.  

Eva Braunstein is an adjunct professor of religious studies at California Lutheran University.

Eva Braunstein

Date Of Review:

July 28, 2023