Tag Archives: secularity

Something has to stand in the gap between (ir)religion and state

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Reading this post by Winnifred Sullivan on the Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College decisions, I got the gist of her argument: that we, no matter our political persuasion, have extended the legal “religious freedom” idea to its logical point of absurdity.

But something caught my eye in this paragraph:

But when the church and the state went their separate ways—when the church was disestablished—the intimate articulation of political, legal, and religious fictions lost their logic on a national scale. They no longer recognize one another. The legal and religious fictions of religious freedom have become lies designed to extend the life of the impossible idea that church and state can still work together after disestablishment. There is no neutral place from which to distinguish the religious from the non-religious. There is no shared understanding of what religion, big “R” religion, is. Let’s stop talking about big “R” religion.

This perhaps best articulates the disconnect between religion and the state in which organized religion – and the various means of power which it can assume – is much more free to run amuck over the rights of individual human beings.

I think that, rather than being content with this current separation of religion and state, in which the two “agree” to separate from each other (which has stopped applying in many places), something should stand in the gap between the two. Some sort of fiction – not just an institution, but an entire legal fiction – should act as a buffer between religion and the secular state, in such a way that the state would be able to eliminate any reference to the words “religion” or “faith” from documented law and jurisprudence.

In fact, for any institution or fiction which considers itself secular or nonsectarian (such as education), something should stand in the gap between religion and such-and-such nonsectarian institution.

But what could be strong enough, conducive enough to hold together that wall of separation?

Can the interfaith/intervalues coalitions – those organizations which classify themselves specifically as explicitly welcoming of multiple religions – be part of that wall?

Perhaps

Ishtiaq Hussain gives an interview on his paper “The Tanzimat: Secular Reforms in the Ottoman Empire”, and takes on the fundamentalist idea that sharia is supposed to be a penal law:

Also, read Hussain’s book here: http://faith-matters.org/images/stories/fm-publications/the-tanzimat-final-web.pdf

Bill Maher is right about Abrahamic religion

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The pattern that I’ve noticed about Bill Maher is that he seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Every time he criticizes Christians or Muslims, he is criticized in return by the targeted parishioners and praised by the other group of parishioners, and he is almost always criticized by “liberals/progressives/etc” who take him to task for either his “literalism” or his “excuses for American empire”.

The praise heaped upon him by conservative cultural Christian blogs whenever he calls the Quran a “hate-filled holy book” or describes equating religious terrorism between Christians and Muslims “liberal bullshit”, and the praise heaped upon him from progressive blogs whenever he calls the Abrahamic God a “psychotic mass murderer” and Christians “hypocrites”, all come in spades.

I wonder if people will get that his critique of religion is primarily squared against Abrahamic religion in its entirety, ripping apart all of the sanctimonious rhetoric and ideologies espoused in Abrahamic religion regarding personal (and corporate) morality (not just the mythological stuff). Muslims criticize his critique based on the fact that one of his parents practiced Judaism (???? I mean, he was raised Catholic, he hates both Catholicism and Judaism), the Christians espouse everything from merely “praying for that sinner” to wishing torture on the guy.

I’m not an “admirer” of Maher – the “Gay Mafia” bit during the Brendan Eich-Mozilla-Prop 8 issue was rather ignorant and gave ammo to so-called “Persecuted Christians(TM)” – but he does attack Abrahamic religions in both their “conservative” and “liberal” manifestations. He criticizes the Jim Wallises and Tariq Ramadans, the Anjem Choudurys and John Hagees, and does not give one inch to their rationalizing bloviations about their Abrahamic religions.

And he doesn’t mind being called “hateful against” so-called “people of faith” (which is pretty much code for “Abrahamic religionists and their self-appointed leaders” anyway).

So when it comes to critiquing Abrahamic religions, the concept of “faith/belief”, and their often-unfortunate impact upon civil and cultural life in the world, I wish more people would have as similar of an equal-opportunity secularity as that espoused by people like Bill Maher.