There is no such thing as a typical situation in which a discussion on secularism can be based on common assumptions and the certainty of the meaning of this word. This applies to secularism just as it applies to laicity. If one abandons national borders, or even just a homogeneous cultural area, on each occasion concepts must be reparameterised, reset. In a debate, in public meetings, in reading, experience has taught me that nothing must be taken for granted. The standard definition – the most widespread in the West – of secularism and secularisation is the one representing the condition (secularism) or the process (secularisation) as something coinciding with modernity, if for no other reason because modernity releases society and institutions from religious legitimisation, reducing any demands to subjugate the State’s sovereignty, the foundations of jurisdiction, scientific research and many other aspects of public life to God or to any transcendent entity.

An effort to outline a precise picture with translations, following in each language the vicissitudes of words such as secular, lay, laicist, secularist, does not solve the problem. Alessandro Ferrara and Agostino Giovagnoli are right, partly from different points of view, to review some of this linguistic adventures, since, for example, one very soon comes across the well-known “French exception”, that of “laicité republicaine” (a form of secularism, let us say, with additives) to then be obliged to address at the opposite end of the spectrum, the American exception of “political liberalism”, (a form of laicity more permeable to public life’s religious pluralism), from the Founding Fathers to Rawls. Generous to the extent that some have introduced the hyperbole of “American theocracy” (Phillips Kevin, in the homonymous book) to describe in a controversial manner the more recent period from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush.

And then there is India, with its extremely original, and a times exceptional, model for the civil and spiritual coexistence of different denominations within the public sphere. Then there is the so very diversified Muslim world, where, however, with the exception of Turkey, secularism’s differential compared to the West seems obvious, to the extent that secularism is often openly defined as the condition of modernity, not (yet) achieved in Muslim countries. Those who believe it is sufficient to pronounce the word “lay” or “secular” in the manner one prefers to, so as to dissolve all doubts, simply become ridiculous. When one resets one’s watch one uses an international standard, not an inner hour. If of course one wishes to communicate with others.

Many possible ambiguities

If one interrogates Wikipedia (in English) the picture becomes more complex and enriched: laïcité is the French concept that indicates the separation between the State and religion, and at times is described using what in English is a neologism, laicity, or translated also using the words secularity and secularization. On other occasions the same word, laïcité, is characterised as not having an equivalent in the English language, similar to the more moderate definition of secularism, but less ambiguous. Secularism therefore is moderate, and in fact describes politics’ independence from religion in general, but at other times appears as an ideology pursuing this objective, also in extreme ways, and in that case the English use of adjectives distinguishes between secular organisations (hence simply lay ones) and secularist organisations, having that separation as the objective of a political and ideological battle. Similarly, in Italian (but also in English on condition one agrees on the distinction) one distinguishes lay people from laicists, and laicity from laicism. There is enough here to prove that on each occasion every concept belonging to this family of words must be accompanied by indispensable explanations. Hence there is infinite room for the rhetorical action that is exercised on the many possible ambiguities between these words.

Consequently, to define linguistic understanding , it is not sufficient to decline the fundamental events of the history of the last three centuries, from Enlightenment to the French Revolution, from Napoleon to communism, which in the etymological sense secularised (expropriating ecclesiastic properties) the European spiritual and material landscape. Nor is it sufficient even for the Western world alone to refer to classical texts and authors representing the canonical passages of modernity’s detachment from religion: Marx, Freud, Weber, Durkheim. On each occasion, for every new debate, one must clarify the premises of words, their relationship with the current issue, so as to avoid extremely serious misunderstandings, also because there are many players who in this debate experience a conflict of interests, and attempt to broaden or restrict the meaning of a concept to improve their own position in the field.

Allow me to quote as an example the Cardinal of Chicago, Francis George, who in one single speech, (made at the Congress Library in Washington, in February 2007) however a brilliant man and one philosophically equipped with Rawlsian ideas, first used the concept of secularism to describe the neutral dimension of the public sphere as far as the various religions were concerned, and who then, however, instantly proceeded to complain that this neutrality, which should be welcomed also by the Catholic Church, is in his opinion being transformed into a supremacy of partisan opinions with regards to gay marriage, abortion etc. and into a triumph for ethical relativism. This situation however, which according to Cardinal George is excessively distorted, is filed away by him under the same label as “secularism” and not let us say of “partisan secularism”, or “transformed secularism”, or even better “hyper-secularism”. I could continue to disagree with him on many subjects, but his definition of the situation could be more coherent.

When Cardinal George asks: “Which kind of democracy leads to secularism?”, he refers to secularism as a weed that must be eliminated, which is seriously worrying if the word is instead used also to define the liberal and pluralist characteristics of the American constitutional democracy. This is dangerous linguistic ambiguity. But is it only this? The American Cardinal (and other men of the church with him) no doubt make partisan use of this concept, treating the word describing a historical process, ultimately liberalism, as a synonym for an “anticlerical ideology”. But those who rhetorically overturn these excesses, rejecting the distinction between laicity and laicism, such as Massimo Teodori in “MondOperaio” (no. 6, 2007), re-proposing an anti-religious rhetoric expressed with reason in other eras in Italian history, are also mistaken. Distinctions between various levels and forms of laicity, both old and new, more or less radical, should be welcomed, although of course there is no decisive formula for political conflicts, which should be analysed and solved one at a time.

The distinction between laic and secularist

If one searches for enlightenment in the texts of the Roman Church one discovers that both the Pontiff and the cardinals, when wishing to criticize what they consider anti-religious excesses, speak of the “negative effects” of secularism, but they do not denigrate secularism as such as Cardinal George did in that speech. They consider this as a historical process. The distinction between laic and secularist has in the same way become quite common, as decreed by the Great Dictionary of Religions (directed by Cardinal Paul Poupard, Piemme, 2000), in which laicism is described historically as “the tendency to exclude the Church from society”. This same Dictionary explicitly addresses the distinction between two kinds of secularisation: the first kind is the movement leading to secularity, the second is the movement leading to secularism. And while secularity denotes earthly reality’s autonomy from the ecclesiastic institution and humankind’s becoming adult (benign aspects that also the Church therefore takes into account), secularism is an immanentist and atheist ideology, closed to the values of religion (and hence destined to remain within the area of evil). As in the speech made by Cardinal George, who on that occasion – hence if he had wished to use the Poupard formula – would have done better to specify that the Church’s target is secularism distinguished from secularity! Subtleties that obviously vanish when the discussion turns tough.

The misunderstandings generated within the Islamic world

It would however be an illusion to consider these words, or others, as conclusive with regards to a semantic process, destined to continue for a lengthy period, especially because increasingly close international cultural relations even between distant and different worlds emphasise the limitations of each language. The amount of misunderstanding generated within the Islamic world is indescribable. A conference on “Islam and secularism” can turn out to be a meeting characterised by liberalism and westernising, envisaged by the organisers almost as an equivalent of “Islam and democracy” (since the separation of politics and religion is a characteristic of liberal institutions),but could equally legitimately be an encounter for the promotion of a new spirituality in the presence of an anti-religious trend, evident also in Islamic countries. Hence against secularism.

In Egypt, an intellectual who describes himself as being secular, is most probably someone who joined the opposition in the times of Sadat and his reforms that corrected the Constitution in a religious sense, and someone who nowadays is close to the positions assumed by those in power, with Mubarak; however, this insistence on the word “secular” can also imply sympathies for a Nasserian past, for Arab socialism or for communism. The President of the Egyptian Association of Authors, Mohammed Salmawi, believes that for the sake of clarity one should replace the English word “secular” with “civil”, if wishing to make clear in Egypt what we mean when using the words laic or secular. A recent booklet by Jean Baubérot bears witness to this variety of situations. The author, who teaches “The History of Laicity”, a subject to which he devoted previous books, has now published “Les laïcités dans le monde” (PUF, 2007), hence in the plural. This is the beginning of the outline of a map, from Paris to Jakarta, from the canon of laïcité to Indonesian State theism (pluralistic), from American “political religion” to Indian pluralism; a map used for analysing the state of the art in each situation with regards to relationships between State, society and denominations, and thanks to which the history of others, for better or for worse, usefully clarifies our own.

Learning today how to cope with translating the words describing “multiple laicities”, or relations between denominations, institutions and societies within different contexts, is the preliminary contribution one can offer to the cause of good relations between different cultures. Societies most proud of their liberal practices should offer themselves up, not only as examples of cultural territories capable of neutralising conflicts between religions, and between religions and non-religion, but also as the centre of irradiation of wise dialogue, in which each party learns to also understand the language of others and to defuse explicit and implicit exclusivisms.

At its worse, politics of course provide a very different prosaic performance, in which the exploiterers of resentment seem to prevail over those promoting understanding. Reality should however prevail in the end with an inevitable thrust towards pluralism, arising from increasingly frequent travel, immigration, education and from the global city increasingly including the planet’s inhabitants. It is certainly true that this situation presents analogies with the industrial revolution and the urbanisation of over two centuries ago, and like then results in phenomena involving loss of identity, jealousy, envy and rancour. The uprooting of old villages and in an urban dimension, the closeness to people with different cultures and beliefs results in conflict and tension that are unloaded on the Other, even more so because the certainty of greater well-being becomes increasingly weaker. New challenges appear, even before affecting politics, to our ability to understand what is happening. One cannot escape the fact that a debate concerning laicity and secularism nowadays obliges society – in the presence of so many new elements – to redefine itself, precisely while the social identities and certainties of yesterday’s world are vanishing.

The laic-catholic war

The advocates of confrontational and hardened laicism, due to its development during the atmosphere of battles against an invasive, hegemonic and majority Church, as in the peasant Italy of the first half of the last century, often seem no less perplexed than those who are nostalgic of a religious enchantment of society that no longer exists. The persistence of religion is experienced by this minority as a daily defeat of the Enlightened imposed by darkness, like revenge imposed by a residue of ignorance, a sort of conviction that obliges one to always be on guard against the risks of social control imposed by the clergy. This prediction that secular thought has almost totally abandoned irreligious tendencies (as expressed by Valerio Zanone, in his Dizionario di politica, Utet 2004), has turned out to be only partially true, also due to the continuation of fundamentalist positions within the Church and among Catholics, who however appear to have assumed a broad range of positions, more or less invasive and respectful of the “secularity” of society and the institutions.

In Italy, there is litigation between Catholics, and not an inevitable open position concerning the family, education, legislation with regards to bioethical issues, and sexual freedom; however, the dialectics resulting are perfectly compatible with democracy, no less so than conflict concerning levels of taxation or military missions abroad. What is amazing is that reflective positions on both sides are not definitely gaining the upper hand, but that a certain compulsion to repeat “role games” – invasive clergy against intransigent laicists – continues to hold the stage. These are probably “reactive identities”, on one hand due precisely to the fact that the condition of those professing a religious faith is a minority one, and that the position of laics (laics, laicists, secular people or secularisms) has basically become the majority one. The first increase their intransigence and discover in fundamentalism a symbol of resistance that is meant to replace lost hegemony. The second group – children of political traditions that are now orphans – search for a surrogate of political and cultural identities, otherwise evanescent, in this laic intransigence. This is why the laic-catholic war always ends up being broadly invoked by minorities who wish to strengthen at all costs the sense of their presence on the scene. It is possible that this nature of our times – which Habermas calls post-secular – considered instead by many a dimension of dialogue – is rightly or wrongly seen as a threat to is one’s own existence.

Among others, one of the consequences of this quarrelsomeness – expressed by noisy minorities – is that it makes the understanding of international issues more difficult; the idea that it is sufficient to accompany the drive of development so as to also see modernity implemented, and with it the elimination of all that is holy as well as the extremisms linked to it, clashes with events, with a reality that appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Hence one observes a revival of religions at a global level, especially through their increased “visibility”, through their demand not to remain within a private dimension and instead play a significant role in society’s life, thereby occupying areas that politics have vacated. Has secularisation therefore slowed down its advance leaving the field to an opposite movement? De-secularisation? Or de-privatisation? Or as some have defined it, “post-secularism”? One must, as suggested by Habermas in his recent paper published by this magazine (La voce pubblica della religione, «Reset», no. 104), distinguish between institutional political secularism, and hence the separation between the State and religious denominations, and social secularism, meaning a less widespread presence of religious practices among populations. The first concept is one of liberal democracy’s inevitable conditions. The second is a condition relatively independent from the State’s nature; a country may register a decline in religious practices among its citizens, but still be governed by a theocracy (Iran, for example), or on the contrary have very high levels of attendance at religious functions, but be based on a secular system (Turkey).

Charles Taylor’s “Secularism 3”

Charles Taylor introduces a third kind of secularism – calling it “secularism 3” – which concerns the ongoing change addressed from the viewpoint of psychology and imagination; the closeness of other faiths, resulting from immigration, low-cost travel, the contiguity between different cultures, the decrease in participation in the active life of churches, the impetuous success of multi-coloured cultural models and lifestyles within the great bazaar of the media landscape. All this confronts us with a new, recent an unprecedented situation; nowadays, the professing of a faith, living within the context of a certain religion, is no longer the basic condition offered to human beings in the Western world; believing in God is no longer the default condition, the typical one of eras during which that faith was shared by the majority, if not the entire population amidst which by chance one was born and lived. Believing in the God of the tradition in which one grew up is no longer the mainstream condition, a “natural” one, that of a faith taken for granted, such as the Catholic faith for Italians or Spaniards, and the Muslim faith for an Egyptian or a Turk (I must add “for the moment”, but I do so hesitating slightly because even those are no longer frozen situations). Things have changed, believing in a faith, living culturally within another religion, believing in a transcendence without any specific name and catechism, being an atheist, cultivating other forms of spiritual belonging and affiliation, are all options among other options. Being a believer in the western world is neither more natural nor easier than being a non-believer; it is no longer a condition incorporated and entrenched in a social condition, it is no longer undisputed, no longer shared by a peaceful and consenting majority, but a choice that exposes one to conflict. Taylor explains that we have moved from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which even for the most solid of believers, belief is one of many human possibilities we may choose from. Faith in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives.

While “secularism 1” describes the institutional separation between the Churches and the liberal State, “secularism 2” describes the sociologically measurable degree of the Faithfull’s participation in religious life and “secularism 3” is the description of this new world in which the religious option is one of many, no longer the default option, according to Taylor’s effective IT expression. A world open to options, in which the number of the faithful falls while on the contrary that of religions does not; on the contrary the number of religions has increased. There are in the world 9.900 autonomous religions, with a tendency to rise and new ones are added every day. Christianity today has 33.000 denominations, compared to the 1.800 in 1900. The number of “languages” interacting within society’s public stage is also increasing and are part of “secularism 3”. As far as intercultural understanding is concerned – not only international since it moves within each society – there are now new possibilities, but also new problems.

In this Babel of cultures and religions (including non-religions, atheisms, agnosticisms, philosophies, spiritual movements) the liberal State’s neutrality is absolutely fundamental for regulating the traffic and reducing the conflicts, but it is no longer sufficient. The institutional endowment of “secularism 1” (liberal constitutions) is hence indispensable, whatever the levels of “secularism 2” may be. “Secularism 3” however also requires active and systematic commitment, with adequate means for the understanding of others and other options. Those who speak of a special effort to be invested in the immense work of translation needed by our societies are right, also because many of the options available claim the right to be heard more clearly. The principle of this world (described by “secularism 3” – and not so different to what Habermas and Eder call post-secularism) can only be that of equal respect between denominations and options in liberal organisations. Equal respect that must inspire the treatment of both religious and non-religious positions.

Bibliographic notes

A controversial and extremely critical attitude with regards to the American tendency to use religion as an ideology for covering and supporting American material and military interests can be found in Kevin Phillips’, American Theocracy, Garzanti, 2007. The Italian version of Cardinal Francis George’s speech to the Congress in Washington, and entitled What Kind of Democracy Leads to Secularization?, pronounced on February 13th 2007, was published in “Vita e Pensiero”, No. 3 of this year. For this debate it is also useful to consult in the Dizionario di politica, by Bobbio, Matteucci, Pasquino (Utet) the pages on Laicità by Valerio Zanone and Stato e confessioni religiose by Francesco Margiotta Broglio. The edition of “Mondoperaio” (6-2007) dedicated to laicity, in addition to the article quoted here by Massimo Teodori, Laicismo e laicità: l’imbroglio di una falsa contrapposizione, also contains an article with a different point of view by the editor Luciano Pellicani, entitled I valori dello Stato laico, who in defence of a clearly secular standpoint also acknowledges regards to Christianity, that “without its active presence, Europe would be morally and spiritually much poorer. All the more so because the “metaphysical need” was certainly not extinguished by the triumph of “profane science”: a science constitutionally incapable of answering questions addressing the ultimate meaning of life”. By Mircea Eliade see Miti, sogni, misteri, Lindau 2007. For the use of “civil” instead of “secular” as suggested by Mohammed Salmawi, see the beate published in the on-line magazine «Resetdoc» by the Reset-Dialogues On Civilizations Association (www.resetdoc.org). With regards to the increase in the number of religions in spite of the fall in the number of believers, see the essay by Klaus Eder on post-secularism recently presented at Milan’s Bicocca University by Marina Calloni for the Department of sociology, and soon to be published; also see Eder’s articles published by Reset. For references to the effects of the industrial revolution and the sociology of foreigners by Georg Simmel: see Alessandro Pizzorno, Il velo della diversità, Feltrinelli, 2007. Charles Taylor’s large book entitled A Secular Age, was published in 2007 by the Harvard University Press.

Giancarlo Bosetti is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Italian bimonthly «Reset». He teaches Journalism at La Sapienza University of Rome.

This text was presented at the Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations round-table “What is Secularism?”, organised for the UNESCO World Philosophy Day held in Istanbul on 22 November 2007.

Translation by Francesca Simmons