By David Rand
In North America, Quebec is in the vanguard of secularism with its Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, or Bill 21. Although modest, this legislation nevertheless goes farther than any other in Canada. According to the mainstream media and most of our politicians, Bill 21 arouses fierce, even hysterical, opposition from the English-speaking world, including Anglo Quebecers.
And yet, secularism enjoys apparently widespread Anglophone support. Among individuals and organizations who claim to be progressive, it is common to support secularism. Furthermore, the principle of separation between religions and the State is well known in the English-speaking world. The expression “wall of separation” used in an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, is famous. However, the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of a State religion, does not mention the separation principle and, even worse, bans any constraint on the free exercise of religion, thus granting religious practice a seemingly absolute privilege.
Jefferson was in fact an admirer of the English philosopher John Locke, who in 1689 authored his famous Letter Concerning Toleration in which he proposed a policy of religious neutrality in order to ensure a degree of social harmony. However, Locke excluded Catholics from his supposed tolerance, expecting them to remain loyal to a foreign prince instead. Moreover, his distrust of non-believers was even stronger because he considered them completely untrustworthy, an atheist’s promise or oath having no value whatsoever in his opinion.
Although the word “secularism” was coined in English almost two centuries later, the Lockean approach remains at the heart of secularism as understood in the English-speaking world. That approach involves two central concepts: (1) simple neutrality between the various religions, without necessarily separating them from the State; and (2) the assumption that every person worthy of consideration has a religion, or in other words, a strong anti-atheist prejudice. There is thus a tendency to reduce secularism to mere religious neutrality. Even today, when anti-atheist prejudice is much less pronounced than in Locke’s time, atheists are often seen as another “religious” community to be added to the mix, without questioning the Lockean model.
Here is a recent example. The humanist and ostensibly secular organization Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFIC) opposed the Charter of Secularism proposed by the Parti Québécois government in 2013-2014 and it currently opposes Bill 21. In January 2021, CFIC clarified, during an on-line presentation by its spokesperson on secularism, that its definition of secularism does not include the principle of separation, but is limited to religious neutrality alone. Thus, CFIC adopted a tendentious definition of secularism in the hope of rationalizing its opposition to laïcité in Quebec.
As a result of the two concepts explained above, religious belief obtains a privileged status, much higher than the status accorded to philosophical or political convictions. But with republican secularism (i.e. laïcité), as understood in French-speaking countries, the tendency is in the opposite direction: towards placing all these personal convictions, religious or otherwise, on an equal footing.
Lawyer François Côté, in his brief presented in 2016 to the Quebec National Assembly’s Commission des institutions, explains this discrepancy well. The “secularist” tradition assumes that an individual’s religious affiliation is an absolutely intrinsic characteristic, as essential as his or her physical characteristics. The individual is thus totally at the mercy of his or her religion, devoid of free will in both belief and practice, and it is therefore unthinkable to ask that individual to distinguish between deeply held religious beliefs and the practice of exercising these beliefs.
This unsolvable incompatibility between the Lockean and republican models of secularism has become even more pronounced in recent years with the spread of various ideologies strongly inspired by postmodern philosophy which promotes cultural and intellectual relativism. These ideologies emphasize personal feelings, particular identities and power relations, at the expense of objectivity and universalism. As a result, the essentialization of religious affiliation is further reinforced, making it even more inviolable, an immutable attribute, like a racial identity.
But let’s end on a more positive note. Despite the fierce anti-secularism of Anglophone elites, the opinions of ordinary English speakers are apparently more nuanced. For example, according to a Léger poll conducted in 2019, a few months after the adoption of Bill 21, 38% of those polled in Canada outside Quebec were in favour of banning visible religious symbols worn by civil servants in positions of authority. This is not a majority, but it is significant.
David Rand is president of the organization Libres penseurs athées (or Atheist Freethinkers) and author of Stillbirth, The Failure of Secularism in the English-Speaking World