Revolution, Rebirth, and Repression: Secularism and Religion in the Modern World

Introduction
In 1968, the sociologist Peter Berger wrote in the New York Times that by “the 21st
century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to
resist a worldwide secular culture.” (Berger). This, however, appears to be largely untrue, as
religion’s role in society remains quite prominent. If anything, its prominence is increasing.
One of the reasons behind this is that religion temporarily provides a source of social and
psychological stability. Additionally, by exploiting the tool of ‘religious offence’, it has
subverted and is subverting secular law to gain a greater following in secular society. This
essay argues how, in practice, the religious member of a society does not carry an
“asymmetrical burden” (Habermas), because in most societies religious citizens are given
natural immunity in light of ‘sensitive beliefs’. In modern society, a misinterpretation of
secularism is protecting religion from criticism, helping it to spread by granting it
exemptions, and treating religion as a ‘higher’ form of belief than any other.
By understanding the revolutionary origins of secularism, it is possible for us to understand
what secularism actually intends to do in a society, and interpret modern secularism and
religion based on that.

A Background on the Return of Religion

Most of the world is now officially secular, leading many to declare that
Enlightenment ideals have defeated ‘ancient superstition’ . The number of religiously
unaffiliated has been growing in recent decades (it was at 16.3% in 2012, and is even larger
as of now), and is predicted to continue growing1 (The Global Religious Landscape).
However, while the unaffiliated group will grow in size, it will likely pale in
comparison to the growth of religion. According to the Pew Research Center, Islamic
population will grow by 73% from 2010-2050, while Christianity and Hinduism will grow
35% and 24% over the same time period. In contrast, the religiously unaffiliated are predicted
to grow by 9%. This is compared to a 35% overall population growth, meaning the share of
the unaffiliated population will actually decline (The Future of World Religions)

1
The unaffiliated rate is somewhat misleading, since it also includes some of those who follow cults or
superstitions that are not formally constituted as religions. Note that the unaffiliated population does not include
most of those who partake in folk religion (exact classifications are defined in the study).
 But it is not simply a matter of population only. Religious regimes have been gaining
traction (or maintaining power) in the Middle East, India, and Africa. In the USA, while 29%
of the population is unaffiliated, only 0.2% of Congress (1 member) belongs to that category
(Modeling the Future of Religion in America; Diamant). If anything, the world’s governments
are simply remaining, or becoming more religious.
What happened to the grand ideas of secularism? How did the bastions of enlightened
secularism turn into hotbeds for theocratic ideologies?

The Secular Republics

We live in a world where the majority of nations are constitutionally secular republics.
To understand secularism, it is necessary to understand its revolutionary origins. Even though
revolutions have been relatively common in human history, something makes the revolutions
of the last few centuries (the first being the American Revolution) quite different from the
revolutions that came before them. In particular, Enlightenment ideals played key roles in
nearly all major revolutions that occurred after the American Revolution. Revolutions in
America, France and India, to name a few, were spearheaded by an educated, and largely
secular, if not outright atheistic elite.
Voltaire wrote that “Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the
Christian religion in horror.” Denis Diderot took an even stronger stand writing “Man will
never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Jawaharlal
Nehru said that “The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in
India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and
wished to make a clean sweep of it.”. Even Mahatma Gandhi, who considered himself Hindu
(What were Gandhi’s religious beliefs?), believed that “there is no religion higher than
truth.”2
The American Revolution too had its prominent secularists, with Thomas Jefferson
calling “the Christian philosophy, the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system
that ever shone on man”. Even though, as authors Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait
point out in God is Back, their secularism was not as defiant as French atheism (Wooldridge
and Micklethwait), it clearly demonstrates a criticism of religion.

2
While this statement is not atheistic like the ones that precede it, it does show that Gandhi believed that ideals
like peace and nationality ought to be placed higher than religion. While he was religious, Gandhi believed that
a nation should be valued higher than any one religion, a very secular belief.
 Having seen the horrors that organised religion could cause, the founders of modern
republics made their best efforts to create secular governments. How then did religion begin
to regain popularity, and does it threaten the foundations of the secular world?

Religion in Modern Society

There is little doubt that religion is returning to people’s lives in the modern day, as
well as the politics of most nations. Americans say their religious beliefs played a larger role
in deciding their political stance than the opinions of family members, friends, TV
advertisement, and media, among other factors (Religious Beliefs Have Greatest Influence on
Voting Decisions); and India has been ruled by a religiously-oriented party for the last decade.
How are the very nations that fought revolutions to create secular republics now turning away
from their secular ideals?
Firstly, it is necessary to understand the differences between the type of religion that
revolutionaries sought to separate from politics and the kind of religious movements that are
prominent in today’s political environment. The former were highly organised religions,
deeply intermeshed in the workings of state. These religions featured leaders, usually
aristocrats, who controlled the populace. Modern religion is a stark contrast; the populace
create the religion. American Evangelical Christianity, for example, relies on communities
and Churches3. The people build their religion, and are united in it. Modern forms of religion
portray themselves as being ‘for the people’.
Secondly, the attitude surrounding religion and modernity has changed significantly.
No longer is religion seen as an antagonist to technology, or vice versa. The growth of
American televangelism is an example of how religion can work with rather than against
modernity. Similar activities have become commonplace globally. It is not unusual to find
religious groups using platforms like Facebook and YouTube to promote themselves. These
‘media-preachers’ use the influence of social media in the public sphere (Çela) to spread their
own religious ideologies in a manner that traditional religious means cannot. The most
famous example of this is the rise of Buddhist-nationalist groups in Myanmar, who used
Facebook to spread pro-Buddhist and anti-Muslim propaganda (Stecklow). And while many
media preachers have political underpinnings, many also believe that they are simply doing
what they can to help people in the ‘profane’ and ‘heartless’ modern world.

3
While Evangelicism has its roots in the movement of Martin Luther, it was largely overshadowed until the late
19th and 20th centuries, when several Evangelical movements were formed across the world. The American
‘Great Awakening’ helped set the stage for massive conversions in the 20th century (Melton). About 25% of all
Americans today are Evangelical Protestants (America’s Changing Religious Landscape).
 This likely gets to the heart of the reason why religion has returned to public life. In a
world where loneliness is becoming significantly more prominent (Snell), religion provides
social stability and a sense of community. As many testimonies demonstrate (Ng), religion,
faith, and God can serve the social purpose of ‘rescuing’ one from loneliness. One can see
why the pandemic was a godsend to religious communities: it caused a spike in loneliness
(Lin), which led to a significant rise in religious faith (Sahgal and Connaughton). There is
also concrete evidence to support the thought that religious people coped better with mental
problems arising from the pandemic (Iyer, et al.). The social benefits seem to offer many a
‘refuge’ from the modern profane world.
It is therefore evident that religion is not only returning to the public sphere, but also
to politics. While secularism does not object to a society composed majorly of one religion, it
is when that religion begins to influence a nation’s politics that it erodes the secular nature of
the nation. As is clear from the examples, religion has not solely been used to alleviate people
of mental and social stress, it has also been used to influence officially secular governments,
and in many cases, it seems to be threatening the secular foundations of the modern world.

How Does the ‘Rebirth’ of Religion Change Modern Society?

It seems to be the case that religion is a tool (Duclos). The impact of a tool depends
on who wields it, and so when discussing religion, it does not make sense to approach it from
a consequentialist perspective. This will inevitably lead to biassed examples, and an
incomplete argument.
To understand why religion has a massive impact on society, it is necessary to
understand the appeal of the supernatural; something that cannot be observed through
conventional means. It is argued that an idea beyond nature and beyond humanity cannot be
evaluated based on human ideals; that ‘faith’ cannot be proven. By declaring itself beyond
the ‘merely observable’, religion pressures the secular citizen to make amends to their
reasoning to ‘see’ the ‘justification’ for some ethical argument. It is precisely because
religion is not publicly accessible (to use Rawlsian terminology) that religion is compelling.
In the modern context, secularism has been altered to mean a system that protects religious
beliefs. While secularism is intended to protect freedom of religion, it is by no means meant
to protect religion from criticism. Under true secularism, religion is treated the same as any
other opinion, however the vast majority of secular republics today try to safeguard religion
or some religions from criticism.
 This is likely one of the reasons that religion has flourished in secular societies. While
everyone can object to an atheist or an agnostic belief, to object to a religious one is
considered a violation of the ideas of a ‘freedom of religion’.
If retaliation by ‘religious offence’ remains a weapon in the arsenal of religious and
political leaders, then the future of secularism is under threat. In the worst case, this would
mean that the government exempts religion from law more and more often, in effect putting it
above the law. Thus the state might give certain religious organisations special preference, an
act which is corrosive to secularism.
This is not solely a theoretical argument. A number of officially secular states already
grant exemptions to religion. Some Native American tribes are permitted to use the
psychoactive drug peyote (illegal in most of the USA) as it forms a part of their religious
rituals (American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994); and religious
institutions are granted exemption from the Australian Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 (under
Articles 37 and 38), giving them the ‘right to discriminate’ against certain genders.
By granting specific religions or religious institutions as a whole exemptions from
laws that apply to non-religious institutions, the government protects religion from the law,
something that should not happen in a secular society. Even if these laws apply to all
religions (as in the Australian case), they are treating religious belief as a ‘higher’ form of
belief, compared to secular institutions, which are not exempt from these laws. These
examples counter the fundamental essence of a secular state, which cannot, as the
Constitutions of both the aforementioned countries state, create laws that favour one religion
or the idea of religion itself, as opposed to secular beliefs4.
As the number of religious people in society grows, it is likely that religious
exemptions will become more and more prevalent, possibly to the point where religions are
exempt from numerous laws, eroding the secular foundations of modern society.

Conclusion
This essay helps us understand the three main factors that underlie modern religious
growth: the idea that it is ‘for the people’, its positive psychosocial effects, and its usage of a
misinterpretation of secularism that allows religion to be given special privileges.

4
Both Constitutions prohibit the government from “establish[ing]” a religion. In effect, by granting certain
religious groups, or religious groups as a whole specific exemptions from secular law, they are setting the
precedent that religion is a higher form of belief; putting religion above secular law.
 Additionally, it shows us that, usually, religion poses a threat to the foundations of
secularism, and that its presence in our society is a reminder of a bygone era. While religion
may provide temporary psychosocial benefits to believers, its long-term consequences (like
the threat it poses to secular states), have the potential to cause far more damage than can be
justified. In the face of growing opposition to secularism, it is necessary for the public and
the state to reaffirm its position among the highest of human values.
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