Secularism Rant

Graham Martin clears up some confusion

Photo: Freefoto

Being a student at a largely non-white University (Bradford), Christmas can be a problem. As an apparently ‘secular’ institution, we’re supposed to talk about the Winter Holidays, not the Christmas Holidays. We’re not supposed to have ‘Christian’ Christmas imagery around the Union — apparently St.. Nicolas doesn’t count, as long as he appears in a Coca-Cola red costume. I’m not going to comment on the effects of other religion’s festivals, but it can be much the same (and while we’re at it, a belated ‘Eid Mubarak’ from January!).

Secularism can be a major problem and I continually find major problems in other people’s definitions of it. First, can we get this straight, Secularism is a faith — it is not the absence of faith. It’s very much connected to atheism, which is not the absence of belief in a God — it’s the firm belief in the absence of any God — big difference. Devout atheists hold the creed “There is no God”. Devout secularists hold the creed “There is no God, and no Religion that thinks he does exist has any place in our society”.

Whether that implies that Christians themselves cannot be involved in society depends on a couple of things. Firstly, whether the Secularists in question will allow Christians to participate on a ‘leave your faith at the door’ basis, and secondly, whether the Christians in question think they actually can leave their faith at the door. Well, personally, I don’t think I can, which gets me into plenty of trouble. I guess I could write a whole new article on the latter question, but I shan’t just yet.

The next confusion is over whether Secularism is a tolerant faith. Apparently, the problem with Christianity is that it is intolerant (big debate there, but we’ll save it for another time). Secularism is not tolerant — when in government (e.g. currently in France) it forces all religions and their adherents onto the sidelines. Suddenly, those who hold another faith have no place in public life. It is essentially a fundamentalist belief (NB: Atheism technically doesn’t possess this element).

You see, it isn’t whether a faith is tolerant of everyone else, it’s whether that faith respects everyone else. True, many Christians lack respect for people of other faiths, but nowhere in the Bible does it actually say you should force all other faiths out of the public sphere. We celebrate Christmas publicly, and we (hopefully) don’t complain when others celebrate their festivals. To do otherwise would be to deny the multi-faith nature of our society, leading down the road towards division and hatred.

So what is it that we need instead? We need to accept that we live in a multi-faith society, and ensure that we look out for each other, especially where it helps us to do so; simple as that. We also need to make sure that we are clear about the difference between the Secular and the Atheist, as this can cause serious confusion. And above all we need to remember that we hold to a Gospel of Grace and Love; and that no matter how wrong others might be, they are still loved and cared for by God. There is nothing we can do which can change that, but we’d do ourselves a lot of credit if we actually lived it out, unashamed, in our lives.

Graham Martin