Just Because It's Secular Doesn't Make It Good

There's a fine line between neutrality and secularism in politics.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Alexandre Prévot from Nancy, France

As a leftist, I support a totally secular government. Human beings are interfaith, in every country, and one religion should not have more say over the laws than any other. If there’s one thing I agree with atheists on, it’s that religion muddying the waters of federal laws and government tends to be extremely damaging. My religion informs my leftist politics, but politicizing it only undermines its purpose and its beauty. There is no joy of a Christian empire; it defeats the purpose of Christianity — just look at the United States. Not to mention that, yes, despite the fact that I myself know many “good” “open-minded” Christians, the majority of them are close-minded bigots and the laws they might enact would be, well… it’s cliché to point to The Handmaid’s Tale, but I have a feeling it would be pretty accurate.

But secularism isn’t always by default “good.” Secular governments have just as much power to be damaging as religious ones, just in different ways.

Let’s take a look at France, shall we? A country that prides itself on its secularism, even in its constitution stating the principle of laïcité, the separation of one’s private religious life and a public secular life. Sounds good on the surface; many French people believe this is “neutrality.”

However, in practice, this has evolved beyond neutrality and into bigotry, Islamophobia, and antisemitism. An important distinction of French laïcité is that while its government promises neutrality and secularism in its dealings, which is good, unlike the American constitution, there is no guaranteed freedom of religion in France. And in fact, in July, the country set up an “office of secularism.” The right-wing French minister (yep: secularists can be right-wing and oppressive too, and don’t you forget it) responsible for the creation of the office stated in 2020 that his personal mission was to ensure that “never at any given time is Allah superior to the Republic.”

France regularly enacts laws and rules specifically geared toward Muslims, forbidding or attempting to forbid them from wearing hijabs, wearing full-body swimsuits, homeschooling their children, and more. This extends to Jews as well in displays of the Star of David or wearing yarmulkes, and supposedly, even “large” crosses or crucifixes for Christians. It would be fair to say that these laws are the most frequently applied to Muslims, because this is what happens in white western countries. If these sort of measures were being applied to American Christians, their prevalent and unfounded fear that the government is trying to control their religious beliefs would seem prescient instead of insane. So much for the country of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

One of my conservative family members once told me that “Democrats” were trying to replace God with the government. Of course, now I know that prayer, churches, and nonprofits have failed to provide meaningful social change or address economic injustice, and that there are more caveats associated with them than any governmental institution ever, and that anything relating to so-called “liberty” is only applied to the wealthy and privileged, and God has nothing to do with it. More hilariously, Democrats are just as culpable as Republicans in maintaining a capitalist and imperialist war-mongering country, despite the fact that the majority of Republicans still sincerely believe Democrats are equivalent to communists. How I fucking wish.

Since the 20th century, the American government has been successful in equating communism to atheism, and unfortunately, for a long time, they were right. The initial communist uprisings beginning with Lenin insisted on the rejection of religion not just in the creation of a government system, which I support, but in people’s personal lives and places of worship as well. Many countries rooted in various systems of communism still oppress, punish, or banish certain expressions of religion, even when it does not threaten the government’s power to try to express it. Some countries, communist or no, have made it effectively illegal to evangelize — I believe there is room for debate on this, for most of the religions who would evangelize do mean harm, but I’m not certain an outright ban is wise.

Whether policy or philosophy, however, the idea of secularization does not necessarily mean superiority of thought. It’s incredibly naïve to believe that ridding the world of religion would rid of us bigotry, and I believe France’s outright bigotry is a fine example of that naivete, where Muslim women are being openly and legally harassed by French officials. Meanwhile, Muslims in France are of a significantly lower socioeconomic status and far more likely to die of COVID-19 than their white, secular cohorts. As you can see, France’s version of secularism is just as much about money and race as American Christianity. And both seek to oppress certain people in order to maintain their own wealth and power.

Europe is quite secular in beliefs overall, and that is unlikely to change. So for them to continue on in oppressing Muslims and Jews in this way is indeed no different than early communists oppressing Christians, or conservative Christians oppressing LGBTQ people. '

Luckily, Christian communism — real Christian communism, not just deconstructed evangelicals voting for Democrats — is on the rise. Communists are openly seeking to advocate their cause among religious populations and are no longer insistent upon the cause of atheism. In communist Cuba and other more socialist Latin American nations, Christianity is still widely practiced. To quote The Mandalorian, “This is the way.” I do not and will not adhere to any past or present form of communist thought that would take away my religious practice or those of anyone else. Secularism and atheism are no longer synonymous with communism. Take that, atheists! More importantly, take that, Republican evangelicals!

We all have very personal reasons for our religions or lack thereof. We may try to rationalize it, but there are a lot more emotions attached to it than we think. It depends greatly on when, where, and how we were raised as well. People have a very strong likelihood of practicing the religion into which they were born; that’s just statistics. So, it is scary to think about someone having the ability to punish us for practicing our religion. Right now, many conservative Christians somehow believe they are being martyred for, say, being asked to wear a mask in public here in the United States (which has nothing to do with religion!) while Jews and Muslims are literally being forbidden from expressing their actual religious tenets AT ALL in the public sphere in France.

Any political movement on the left will find it exceptionally difficult to succeed without the assistance and help of religious people. We don’t have to pretend to be that annoying COEXIST sticker, but yeah, you know, on the other hand, we ARE going to have to coexist. Our solidarity should be humanism, in caring and loving and providing material needs for other people on the planet, even ones who are different than we are. Whether that humanism is based in religion or secularism, the HUMAN is the most important part here. Whatever your religious beliefs, I hope we can all keep that in mind.