The terms secularization and secularism
have had a variety of meanings since they were coined; "secularization"
in the mid-seventeenth century and "secularism" in the mid-nineteenth,
both incorporating the word secular. "Secular," from the Latin
"saeculum," a generation or age, originally referred to secular clergy
who were not in a monastic order. It also came to refer to the worldly
realm. Secularism is used here in two current senses—an emphasis
on the this-worldly rather than the other-worldly, and what is called in
the United States as the "separation of church and state." In Latin
countries terms based on laic imply stronger state controls, based on their history of struggles with the Catholic Church.
Secularization
involves both increasing state control of spheres formerly controlled
by religious institutions and the expansion and freedom from religious
control of nonreligious institutions, both state and private, and
comprising education, social welfare, law, publication and the media,
and forums for the expression of belief and action. In some areas,
notably Turkey and communist countries, there has been state control of
religion, rather than separation of church and state, and it is unclear
if such countries should be called secular. Every secular country has a
different version of secularism, and none of them has an absolute
separation of church and state. Secularism involves belief in the
priority of this-worldly considerations, and an end to religious
doctrinal influence on law, education, and welfare, and the need for
equal treatment of various beliefs and believers. To its opponents
secularism often implies unbelief, a sense also included in some
dictionaries but denied by most secularists, whether or not they are
believers.
Secularism has also involved
egalitarian political and social treatment of religious minorities and
unbelievers, which had not been true of either Protestant or Catholic
majorities, while Islam had a place for minorities but an unequal one.
The major Asian religions have traditionally been more religiously
tolerant and have had fewer struggles over secularism.
The terms secularism and secularization
are related to each other at some social and conceptual levels, but it
is important to distinguish between them because they do not refer to
the same thing. Both terms can be construed as identifying perspectives,
beliefs, and values that are characteristic of a particular society and
its cultural history, and each term draws its meaning in part by
juxtaposition with the phenomenon of religion. Practically
everything about secularism and secularization is a matter of dispute
among scholars who investigate such matters; hardly any position or
perspective passes as uncontested.
Secularization
is the transformation of a society from close identification with
religious values and institutions toward nonreligious values and secular institutions. The secularization thesis refers to the belief that as societies progress, particularly through modernization and rationalization,
religion loses its authority in all aspects of social life and
governance.The term secularization is also used in the context of the
lifting of the monastic restrictions from a member of the clergy.
Definitions
John Somerville
(1998) outlined six uses of the term secularization in the scientific
literature. The first five are more along the lines of 'definitions'
while the sixth is more of a 'clarification of use':
- When discussing macro social structures, secularization can refer to differentiation: a process in which the various aspects of society, economic, political, legal, and moral, become increasingly specialized and distinct from one another.
- When discussing individual institutions, secularization can denote the transformation of a religious into a secular institution. Examples would be the evolution of institutions such as Harvard University from a predominantly religious institution into a secular institution (with a divinity school now housing the religious element illustrating differentiation).
- When discussing activities, secularization refers to the transfer of activities from religious to secular institutions, such as a shift in provision of social services from churches to the government.
- When discussing mentalities, secularization refers to the transition from ultimate concerns to proximate concerns. E.g., individuals in the West are now more likely to moderate their behavior in response to more immediately applicable consequences rather than out of concern for post-mortem consequences. This is a personal religious decline or movement toward a secular lifestyle.
- When discussing populations, secularization refers to broad patterns of societal decline in levels of religiosity as opposed to the individual-level secularization of (4) above. This understanding of secularization is also distinct from (1) above in that it refers specifically to religious decline rather than societal differentiation.
- When discussing religion, secularization can only be used unambiguously to refer to religion in a generic sense. For example, a reference to Christianity is not clear unless one specifies exactly which denominations of Christianity are being discussed.
Abdel Wahab Elmessiri (2002) outlined two meanings of the secularization term:
- Partial Secularization: which is the common meaning of the word, and expresses "The separation between religion and state".
- Complete Secularization: this definition is not limited to the partial definition, but exceeds it to "The separation between all (religion, moral, and human) values, and (not just the state) but also to (the human nature in its public and private sides), so that the holiness is removed from the world, and this world is transformed into a usable matter that can be employed for the sake of the strong".
Secularism is the principle of the separation of government institutions and persons mandated to represent the state from religious institutions and religious dignitaries.
One manifestation of secularism is asserting the right to be free from
religious rule and teachings, or, in a state declared to be neutral on
matters of belief, from the imposition by government of religion or
religious practices upon its people.
Another manifestation of secularism is the view that public activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be uninfluenced by religious beliefs and/or practices.
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What is the relationship between secularism, the state policy; and secularisation,
the social process? Most conversations tend to confuse the two, moving
from one to the other. However, we don't really have a clear map of how
the two are related to each other. Does the adoption of secularism as a
policy lead to the process of secularisation in society? Or is it the
other way round? Is it possible that groups such as the Islamists who
oppose secularism may be, inadvertently perhaps, facilitating
secularisation?
The general understanding about
the relationship between secularism and secularisation is based on a
reified reading of European history. The potted version would run
something like this: "Once the Catholic church was challenged there was a
lot of fighting and eventually people decided that tolerance is the
best way forward. They also realised that the most convenient way to
operationalise tolerance would be to separate church and state, public
and private spheres." There are many problems with this narrative,
including questions of historical accuracy, as well as immense
variations and reversals in the European experience. However, it is
important here to note that in this version secularism and
secularisation seem to have developed together.
Paradoxically,
for the world beyond Europe the policy prescriptive has been the
opposite. Since the late colonial period – and particularly for
predominantly Muslim societies today – the policy dogma has been that
the adoption of secularism as a state project will lead to the process
of secularisation. But secularism as a separation of church (religion)
and state does not make ready sense in societies where there was no
hierarchical, structured church that had inherited an empire's state
apparatus as the Roman Catholic church had in Europe. In the various
versions of Islam,
Hinduism, Buddhism etc there has been no one clerical figure vested
with the kind of power and authority that the pope excersised over
domains now assumed within the modern state.Secularisation is not just
the increase or decrease in visible markers of religiosity or in church
attendance, but also a fundamental shift in religious belief towards
rationalisation and objectification.
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Works
about secularism and secularization have been scattered over time and
region, with the greatest concentration covering the "secularization
thesis," most popular in Great Britain, which posited a steady progress
of secularization, which has not since occurred outside Western Europe.
India, where secularism is a central political issue, has seen more
varied literature on the subject. Many works relevant to secularism and
secularization are centered on different concepts.
2. Secularism
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