Democracy under threat from secularism, report warns

In the report 'Sustaining Democracy', the Christian think tank warns that secularism is jeopardising civil liberties and human rights, and claiming the privileges of religious judgement for itself to the exclusion of other religions.

"Democracies cannot shake off their Christian past without shaking off the liberties which flowed from it," warns the report’s author Dr Philip Sampson, mediator, family court adviser and research fellow.

He criticised the tendency of some secularists to disregard religious views as "ill-considered" and "prejudiced".

"Where would this have left the abolitionists or the civil rights movement?" he said.

Dr Sampson warned that secularism had responded to the "perceived vulnerability of democracy to global forces" by seeking to identify and eliminate evil, as seen in the war on terror, and by reasserting secular liberalism. Both strategies, he said, had failed.

"If the secular world continues to ignore Christian scholarship then Western democratic institutions will be further denied access to the resources necessary for renewal," Dr Sampson cautioned.

"We will be left merely with modernist materialism, what Europe’s most distinguished living philosopher calls ‘postmodern chatter’, or moralistic fundamentalism (whether Liberal, Christian or Islamic)."

Dr Sampson went on to argue for the disestablishment of a secular religion and the opening of the public sphere to a prophetic Christian understanding of tolerance towards all religions, including secularism.