Dr Nigel G. Wright: Hard and Soft Secularisms

You can learn a lot about the religious history of these islands from the built environment. From parish churches and cathedrals through to Nonconformist gothic and Gospel Halls it is all there. Yet one building tells a different story from most and intrigues me much.

|PIC1|In the corner of Red Lion Square near Holborn in London stands Conway Hall, home to the South Place Ethical Society and the National Secular Society. If ever there were a stamping ground for the anti-religious secularist cause this is it. The impression is strengthened by the bust of Bertrand Russell and the statue of Fenner Brockway nestling among the beer cans in the square's central park. From here secularists sally forth to do battle with the forces of superstition and irrationality, also known as religion. Yet paradoxically the congregation of the South Place Ethical Society and the building in which it meets on Sundays are the lineal descendants of a General Baptist church which first met in the City of London, where the original building can still be seen. Like many others, this church slipped into Unitarian convictions in the eighteenth century and then, this time uniquely, embraced secularist convictions in the nineteenth, abandoning all belief in transcendence. Since then, while retaining some characteristics of a Nonconformist congregation including the list of names of former ministers and then 'lecturers' in the vestibule, the society has followed its unorthodox path.

As a Baptist of decidedly orthodox convictions, I follow this story with interest. Like other Christians I regard secularism as problematic. Or do I? Like the word 'Christian', secularism may denote not one perspective but several, two of which I can distinguish from each other. There is 'hard' secularism and there is 'soft' secularism.

Hard secularism is a materialist philosophy which rejects any version of human existence embracing a transcendent or supernatural dimension. Consequently, all religion is illusory, with the exception perhaps of Buddhism which being non-theistic might just be worth a thought or two. In fact, religion counts not only as illusory but also dangerous. In the words of Richard Dawkins, 'good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but for good people to do bad things it takes religion.' For this reason religion is to be opposed in the name of truth and tolerance and relegated (the word is significant) to the realm of the private where it can be prevented from shaping the public realm. The publicity information of the National Secular Society begins with an extensive list of those in public life who take every opportunity to express their disdain for religion, including Richard Dawkins, Polly Toynbee, Ludovic Kennedy, A. C. Grayling, Philip Pullman, Peter Atkins and others from the 'usual suspects' files of Christianity's cultured despisers. It is hard for a Christian to do anything with hard secularism other than oppose it.

But then there is soft secularism which should be regarded not as a religious or anti-religious perspective but as a political one. We might also call it 'civil secularism' in that its concern is not with the truth or otherwise of religious claims but with 'civility', making societies workable, especially when those societies comprise citizens of diverse religious and ethical points of view. How can we learn to live together for mutual benefit when we are divided over some of the most fundamental questions of existence? It is to the advantage of all that the civil realm must be seen as religiously impartial, seeking not to impose one particular religious or denominational vision upon everyone but holding open the ring for all to seek for truth and meaning in their own ways, and discriminating against no-one on the basis of creed, colour or ethnicity. In this meaning of the word, India is a highly religious country but has a secular state neither to oppose nor impose religion but to provide the conditions in which religious and other worldviews might be freely pursued. Likewise Turkey, overwhelmingly an Islamic country, defines itself as a secular state and so avoids the wrong turns which are frequently in evidence when religion and coercive power are conjoined. Soft secularism, if not without its problems, nonetheless seems to me to be a force for good in a complex world, a way of managing complex plural societies. And such secularism as a civil and political strategy is not incompatible with Christian convictions.

From this point of view the roots of Conway Hall in a Baptist congregation become intelligible. Baptists were a world away from being secularists of the hard kind but can be seen to have some kinship with those of the soft variety. They were the first to begin to imagine a different kind of society, one which would be based on radical tolerance and the abolition of compulsory religion. They argued for freedom of religion and understood that this implied freedom not to believe as well as to believe. They believed that the state should not be tied to any one religious denomination and were fervent advocates of disestablishment. They would certainly have argued that Christians who shared their vision could do productive business with soft secularism.

This leaves us with a problem. How do we disentangle hard and soft secularism from each other, especially when hard secularism sometimes uses soft secularism as a cloak to advance its anti-religious agenda? This is an issue for both secularists and Christians. The more hard secularists are hostile to religion the more they undermine the legitimate claims of soft secularism. The more Christians identify soft secularism with the hard stuff the more they resist those legitimate claims in the name of faith.

What is needed is a more intelligent level of debate, and good debate like good theology is always based upon proper and clear distinctions so that we really can know what we are arguing about.

Dr Nigel G. Wright

Dr Nigel G Wright is the Principal of Spurgeon's College, London. He was also President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain from 2002 - 2003. Currently a Council Member of the Baptist Union & former Moderator of its Doctrine and Worship Committee, Council Member of the Baptist World Alliance & he has previously chaired its Study Commission on Christian Ethics from 2000-2005. Dr Wright is a Council Member of the Evangelical Alliance, and is a Board Member of Moscow Theological Seminary.