Secularity in Great Britain

Secularity in Great Britain

By David Voas

What does the term "secular mean in great Britain?

Britain is formally a religious country in a way that many modern states are not, having (different) established churches in England and Scotland.

The links between church and state have very little impact on contemporary life, however. In some cases they seem to achieve the worst of both worlds, creating an impression that offends one side without benefiting the other.

The term “secular” might for many people be associated with the mission of the National Secular Society, a lobby group for church-state separation, which is overtly atheistic rather than merely opposed to giving religion public role.

In common usage, though, a contrast is usually apparent between “secular” and “secularism.” “Secular” is the opposite of “religious,” and simply indicates an absence of religious motivation or content (e.g., secular ceremonies, morality, art, etc.). “Secularism” is an ideology that opposes religious privilege and frequently religion itself. Because the British are typically non-religious rather than anti-religious, many people are secular but far fewer are secularists.

Unlike Americans, Britons are accustomed to the idea of state-supported religious education, religious broadcasting on network television, bishops in the legislature, and so on. Unlike many continental Europeans, Britons do not tend to feel that they need protection from religious institutions. Indeed, the implicit assumption seems to be that a modest dose of religion is good for people—or at least other people.

Social scientific approaches

We can describe three distinct though overlapping ways of being secular: not believing, not practicing, and not identifying with a religion.

The study of secularity thus raises a double problem: first to try to measure religious (non)adherence, and, secondly, to decide what the results might mean. In our view, identifying with a religion, believing in the supernatural, or attending religious services should not necessarily disqualify someone from being regarded as basically secular.

WASP: Really?!

How many people are secular in Britain?

The dominant British attitude towards religion is not one of rejection or hostility. Many of those in the large middle group who are neither religious nor unreligious are willing to identify with a religion, are open to the existence of God or a higher power, may use the church for rites of passage, and might pray at least occasionally. What seems apparent, though, is that religion plays a very minor role (if any) in their lives.

By contrast, the “Sheilaists” are more conscious of spiritual seeking. “Sheilaism” was the self-applied label used by a respondent (“Sheila Larson”, a young nurse) in Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al. 1985):

“I believe in God,” Sheila says. “I am not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.”

Exactly where one should draw the line distinguishing the secular from the rest is unclear. Many nominal adherents are failed agnostics: they used to have doubts, and now they just don’t care. Arguably, most are secular for all practical purposes. If they are included, then at least half the British population could reasonably be regarded as secular.

How are secular people different from others?

There is enormous variation by age in religious identification. Among people aged 65 and over surveyed for the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey in 2004, only 22 percent say that they regard themselves as belonging to no religion, while 63 percent of young adults (18-24) so describe themselves. These differences might be influenced by life stage (if older people are more religious than young ones), but the evidence suggests that in the main they are generational (produced by a steady decline in religiosity over time; see Voas & Crockett 2005, Crockett & Voas, forthcoming).

Exactly half of white men say that they have no religion (in the BSA 2004), versus 41 percent of white women. To put it another way, men make up 58 percent of the secular category as defined above using European Social Survey data, but only 36 percent of the religious groups.

Only 17 percent of religious people are not married, widowed, separated, or divorced; by contrast, nearly 40 percent of the secular are never-married. Most, but not all of this effect is explained by age; among those born before 1970, 17 percent of the secular and only 8 percent of the religious are never-married. Likewise, only 15 percent of the religious in that age range say that they have ever lived with a partner without being married, while 38 percent of the secular have done so.

Both the religious and the secular are better educated, on average, than those who are neither. (About 30 percent have been in higher education, as against less than 20 percent for the others.) High levels of education often produce scepticism about religion and the self-confidence to be overtly agnostic or atheistic, but higher education is also associated with middle class values, civic participation, suburban living, and other characteristics conducive to churchgoing.

Social and political attitudes

The secular are somewhat more likely to appear on the left of a left-right scale (30 percent left vs. 26 percent right), with the opposite true of religious people (25 percent left vs. 31 percent right). The secular are somewhat more likely to say that they never discuss politics; however the statistic is 25 percent vs. 18 percent among the religious.

Again, though, only 26 percent of the secular (vs. 37 percent of the religious) say that they have ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ of interest in politics. These results hold up even when controlling for age.

Conclusion

Are secular and religious people in Great Britain different? Yes and no. The age contrasts are significant, with younger, more secular generations gradually replacing those that are older and more religious. At the same time, people who are consciously and consistently religious or unreligious tend to be better educated and in higher occupational categories than those in the muddled middle. Sociologists of religion have tended to concentrate on the core religious constituency, and this conference is a welcome opportunity to examine the opposite pole. Ultimately, the challenge, though, lies in understanding the group in between. When it comes to religion, the British have been ‘puzzled people’ for decades (Mass Observation 1947). Their secularity, like their religiosity, is casual and unconcerned. Britain may illustrate how the secular triumphs: by default.

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Secularism's success?

Many Muslims view secularism as a pernicious import from the west - but why do they also share some of its values?

Jorgen Nielsen

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April 26, 2007 7:30 PM | Printable version

Some years ago, the Tunisian Islamist leader-in-exile, Rashid Ghannoushi, wrote a book on public rights in Islam. He pointed out that there were particular historical reasons why Europe had separated religion and state. The church had misused its powers, had stood in the way of scientific progress, and the state had made religion a tool of oppression. That's fine for Europe, he said, but in the Muslim world we don't share that history, we have to find our own ways of doing things, ways that make sense for us.

This is a pretty mild Muslim response to the concept of western secularism. In sharper versions, secularism is one of a list of unfavourable western inventions - inventions that include materialism, Zionism, promiscuity and imperialism, to mention but a few.

Why is it that Muslims appear to find it so difficult to see anything positive in Western secularism? Are we so different after all?

There are clearly some Islamic movements that are serious in their call for a complete integration of religion and state, in which religion would dominate both public and private life. And, in some Muslim languages, discussion is made almost impossible by the fact that the word used for secularism translates into English as "no religion" or "without religion". This is the case, for example, in Urdu, but the original meaning of the word is simply "that which has to do with this world as opposed to the next".

Once one gets underneath the surface of the topic, though, things become more complicated. And, very importantly, they differ from country to country. Saudi Arabia is not Egypt is not Iran is not Pakistan is not Syria, and so on.

Certainly, Muslims do not like a lot of what they see as western: the loneliness of the individual, the breakdown of the family, the destruction of drug addiction, the random violence and the recreational sex. Of course, they are not alone in feeling these concerns, and it is natural to conclude that they are the result of the decline of religion. But this is also an image made popular by the western media - especially by American films, which everyone can now see on their satellite TVs.

But there are other perspectives. In the mid-1920s, the Egyptian scholar Ali Abd al-Raziq, a professor at the ancient Islamic university of Al-Azhar, published a book entitled Islam and the Roots of Government. In it he argued that the Prophet Muhammad had founded a religion, not a state, so religion should not determine state structures today. The book was immediately condemned and, we are told by most Islamic scholars, is no longer of interest. But it has remained continuously in print since then and can still be bought in Cairo bookshops. So someone must be reading it!

This isn't the only reason to be hopeful. When I spoke recently with a group of Islamic scholars from one of the more conservative movements, we got on to the topic of an "Islamic order". Clearly, it was not enough that a government or economic system should call itself Islamic. It had to be Islamic. But what did that mean?

This question led to a discussion of things like social justice, a reliable legal system, personal liberty, equality, popular participation, accountable rulers and the like. One of the scholars ventured that northern European welfare states were arguably a good deal more "Islamic" than any state in the Muslim world, whatever it called itself.

If there are such important shared values, why then such mixed feelings about the idea of secularism? Clearly the attack on secularism is encouraged by the clerics. If religion in its traditional forms is pushed to the margins of public life, what remains for them? But that on its own is unsatisfactory - the clerics have a widespread and receptive audience for their views.

On the so-called Arab street, secularism is more often than not seen as a foreign import. It was brought in by the colonialists as a way of limiting the power of the Islamic religious institutions that often provided the core of anti-colonial resistance, right back to when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. Many of the modern Muslim states are regarded as the heirs of the colonial powers. And, as a result, secular politics is associated with military dictatorships that were established and nurtured by the opposing powers of the cold war.

Today, many Muslims believe that the only effective challenge to this inheritance comes from the Islamist movements; people arguing for a secular perspective run the constant risk of being accused of collaboration with the west. It is this twin-dynamic that makes it more likely for many to tilt away from modern, pluralistic secularism toward a religious political system.

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Fundamentalist secularists and the religion of atheism

Editorial by Terry Sanderson:

Have you noticed how the concept of “fundamentalist secularists” and “extremist atheists” has been so eagerly embraced by religious people? These phrases are in common usage in America where they were invented, and where ‘secularism’ is becoming a dirty word in the same way that ‘liberal’ or ‘communist’ are. Now, in the US media, accusations of “secularism” are tantamount to calling someone an enemy of the state, even though the state is based on secularism. You can see an example of the way that non-believers are represented as “fundamentalists” and “extremists” in this article, which is typical of many.

As a means of undermining the threat that secularism (and atheism) pose to religious power, church propagandists find that labelling their critics as “extremists” is proving very effective. Nowadays if you have the temerity to even question religion you immediately become a “fundamentalist atheist”. This has happened to Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who simply wrote books giving their opinion that there is no evidence for supernatural beings, that belief in such beings undermines science and that organised religion can in some circumstances justify anti-social behaviour. As Brian Flemming, producer of the film The God Who Wasn’t There says: “The term ‘fundamentalist’ necessarily implies dogmatism. It is simply an inaccurate description of someone who specifically rejects dogma of any kind. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris explicitly reject dogma... Fundamentalism is when reason fails you and you say, ‘Well, this book says so and I’m sticking to it.’ Christian fundamentalists happily and openly do just that. Dawkins and Harris do nothing of the kind.”

Professor Dawkins is now routinely accused of being a mirror image of a religious extremist. This gentle biologist, whose only crime is to pose questions and challenge unreason, is suddenly on a par with Osama bin Laden. According to the new religious thinking, the “religion” of atheism is as evil and threatening as that of the Taliban,.

It is surprising how many people have fallen for this argument. Even some people who think of themselves as rationalists will come out with it. . Why do they attack those who seek to buttress the integrity of science and demand evidence for claims that have wide-spread consequences for the safety of the world?

But as honorary associate A.C. Grayling has written: “It is worth pointing out an allied and characteristic bit of jesuitry employed by folk of faith. This is their attempt to describe naturalism (atheism) as itself a ‘religion’. But, by definition, a religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely in their existence, but in their interest in human beings on this planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or see, what they treat as clean and unclean, who they have sex with and how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five times a day, and so endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong.

“But naturalism (atheism) by definition does not premise such belief. Any view of the world that does not premise the existence of something supernatural is a philosophy, or a theory, or at worst an ideology. If it is either of the two first, at its best it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it, knows what would refute it, and stands ready to revise itself in the light of new evidence. This is the essence of science. It comes as no surprise that no wars have been fought, pogroms carried out, or burnings conducted at the stake, over rival theories in biology or astrophysics.

“And one can grant that the word ‘fundamental’ does after all apply to this: in the phrase ‘fundamentally sensible’.”

A.C. Grayling’s books “Against all Gods” and “What is Good” are available from the NSS shop www.secularism.org.uk.

reposted from: NSS
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

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