Renewal of secular society

On a first reading, President George Abela's Republic Day speech balanced a proposal for institutional innovation - the Council of State - with an affirmation of continuity with tradition. While upholding the principle of separation of Church and State, he underlined the continued relevance of "Christian values" for society.

But if things are to remain traditional, they are going to have to modernise.

Anything less, and we are likely to see more of the paradox displayed in the defence of the crucifix in the classroom after the Lautsi case hit the headlines - when the cross was defended by being secularised as a national cultural symbol.

To take the main argument seriously was to believe that, in this case, it was not the cross that redeemed Malta but rather we who redeemed it by making it part of our cultural (not salvation) history.

Paradox may be difficult to escape anyway. The paradox in reverse - of self-styled strict secularism becoming involved in religion - may be found in France.

All Church buildings pre-dating 1908 are owned by the state; in the case of Alsace and Lorraine, all such buildings are, irrespective of date, and Christian and Jewish teachers of religion are state employees.

Meanwhile, the law that forbids the ostentatious use of religious "signs" in schools requires the state to decide what counts as properly "religious". As the anthropologist Talal Asad has observed, all this hardly counts as separation of Church and State.

The point is not to criticise France for inconsistency. It is rather to show that even with the most determined will in the world, the relations between religion and state, or rather between the religious and the secular, are intricate and difficult to separate completely in practice.

Which is not to say that the quest for a secular society is futile. But we do need, according to the card-carrying secular philosopher Juergen Habermas, to think afresh what a secular society should be.

Habermas included his reflections of "post-secular" society in his recent book Europe: The Faltering Project (Polity). He sees a Europe-wide insecurity about secularity's achievements. Apart from immigration, he points to three factors.

First, there is media reportage of conflict around the world, which often involves a religious or confessional dimension. Religion may well not be the principal cause of the violence and intolerance, but it may seem so to European viewers, who then also find that one of their deepest held beliefs - that the world will follow Europe's path of secularisation - requires, shall we say, stronger faith.

Second, the very pluralism of values within contemporary European society gives more salience to religion in public life. Faced with splits over critical issues concerning (say) assisted fertilisation or euthanasia, the weighing in of religious figures in the process of persuasion is bound to be more significant and, importantly, to be advertised as such. (And the current climate favours conservative religious organisations.)

Third, what used to be an academic debate, over the nature of culture "clashes", has now been commercialised. Whether the concern is Islam or the Vatican, the debate takes place in the media, hyped and heated.

Habermas does not believe that the old balance between religion and state, reached in the 18th century, is sustainable or desirable any longer. What is needed is not a modus vivendi in which every group goes its way in its own enclave.

However, neither can shared civic life and debate be conducted without some sensitivity to, and allowance for, cultural difference.

He believes that there should be public space for argument and reasons to be given in religious terms. The guarantees of secularity would still be there if such contributions were separated from the decision-making of the state.

Habermas argues it would even go against the interest of the state to try to reduce the polyphony of voices heard in public, since some of the cultural resources needed to generate a shared civic life might thereby be lost: "Especially regarding vulnerable domains of social life, religious traditions have the power to provide convincing articulations of moral sensitivities and solidaristic intuitions."

In other words, there are liberal democratic reasons for encouraging religious institutions to participate in public debate, even if they do not separate their arguments into religious and profane strands. But it would only be in "secular translation" that any argument could make it onto the formal agenda of parliament, government, the judiciary, etc.

The conclusion that Habermas has drawn is that even secularists have things to learn about what being faithful to secularity entails. The flipside to that, I'd say, is that even religious believers have things to learn about what being faithful to tradition in civic life demands.

ranierfsadni@europe.com