PART II

- Romantic Secularism -

Romantic Secularism is based on a social contract that proposes that the highest political values are individual freedom and political equality. Romantic Secularism respects the role of reason and religion in forming one’s beliefs, but really champions the individual and their right to their own experiences as the means by which they determine both their religious convictions and their governments.

Its defining features are the constitutional wall that separates the private realm of beliefs or spirituality from the public, material world of actions so that individual freedom of conscience would always be protected and democratically granting sovereignty to the people. In Romantic Secularism, there is a strong line dividing the public and private spheres. Romantic Secularism ensures that individual human rights and democratic rights are constitutionally protected. The American Constitution was the first expression of Romantic Secularism, and remains its purest form.

 

Influence of Romanticism on the American Constitution

 

When reason was first advanced as an alternative source of moral authority, few were convinced that humans could actually reason objectively enough because the predominant view at the time was that humans were naturally selfish. This position was rationally argued by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1689), but was more widely accepted on the basis of the theological notion of original sin. Consequently, Enlightenment thinkers like Locke (1632-1704) and Voltaire (1694-1778) were not immediately successful in having their ideas implemented.

It first took Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-1778) Romantic Movement to convince the West that human nature was essentially good before humans would be trusted with the independent ability to reason and vote. But Rousseau was not fan of reasoning and education alone - he actually first got noticed as a serious intellectual for making the argument that education was most frequently used for selfish purposes and was NOT contributing to morality.  "I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.".

Rousseau, as the poet’s philosopher, argued that without oppressive institutions, humans were naturally moderate and compassionate and therefore could be relied upon to use their own sentiments and ability to reason to effectively govern themselves. Rousseau’s arguments were widely and readily accepted and thus played a critical role in the political de-establishment of both the church and monarchy in France and America.  

Romanticism paved the way for both reason and sentiment to flourish, but it was sentiment that played the leading role. Thomas Paine’s infamous pamphlet “Common Sense” was not entitled “Learned Reason” and even he was not an atheist. Neither was Jefferson.^[i] Nor was Jefferson an advocate of judicial supremacy as many of today’s secularists would like to believe. In Jefferson’s view the people were clearly the final arbiters of all political conflicts, he was more committed to the notion of ensuring the individual remained the ultimate moral and political authority, than preserving the notion that science and reasoning was always superior to religious beliefs.

Many atheists and secularists believe that Jefferson promoted reasoning to the exclusion of religion but that is overstating his position. In the American constitution, it was the “common sense” of the people, not the judiciary, academics or legislature, that usurped moral authority from the mutually entrenching monarchy and institutional churches.Ironically, today, it is the secularists who are essentially arguing that the electorate are essentially bad therefore justifying an active judiciary to overturn majority votes.

The important point is that in order to fully appreciate the history of secularism, it is necessary to reframe politics not as a two-sided tug of war between reason and religion, but rather more like a three-legged stool. The third leg is the individual's subjective experiences, against which both the objective truth claims of science and religion must be evaluated.

Seeking a common moral truth requires respecting this trinity of truths claims because each has their respective strengths and weaknesses. Romantic Secularism, tried to balance all three, and was the first response to the tyranny of the monarchy's divine right to rule.

As a quick aside, many people dismiss this argument because the founding fathers were hypocritical in that they owned slaves; therefore their commitment to democracy should not be taken seriously. This seems reasonable in today's context of universal education and inexpensive access to books and information, but in their day, education was a luxury only affordable by the wealthy. Becoming wealthy enough to become educated in political philosophy required significant leisure time only possible with the use of slaves, and many other classist advantages, creating a catch-22. Thankfully, the wealthy in Locke's day saw fit to use their wealth to become educated and still saw the just potential in principles that they did not adhere to personally. Universal education was not considered a public good worth investing in until democracies emerged.

 

Advantage - Accommodates Monotheists

 

By separating the institutions of church and state, American citizens were the first to gain the unprecedented power to choose both their religious beliefs and their governments. Romantic Secularism in America is not in direct conflict with monotheistic beliefs because the wall of separation allow for belief in one moral truth for all to be practiced by both church and state, but only within their respective jurisdictions.

Monotheists felt comfortable with this compromise because their private churches were still able to hold them accountable to stricter moral rules and values were still allowed to be promoted as universal truths. Romantic Secularism can be expressed in the following assumptions:

1.       There are two moral universes: one public and one private;

2.      Each citizen is sufficiently free to use the knowledge arising from their own personal experiences, religious beliefs and from science, academia and the arts; and is allowed to formulate their own their moral opinions and conduct their private lives accordingly, but also contribute to the public moral code through their right to vote;

3.      Governments are to remain neutral with regard to private beliefs in order to protect equality and freedom of religion and conscience.

Romantic Secularism is appropriately titled for three reasons:

 

1.        It was rationalized on the belief that individuals using their experiences and sentiments were better trusted than institutional clergy, judges or bureaucrats, to arrive at moral conclusions, and therefore should choose both their religious and political authorities.

 

2.        It reflected the sentimental belief that the private and public realms could co-exist without conflict. For some this belief rested on the assumption that religious values would remain consistent with the universal moral truth as rationally determined by the political system. This opinion was expressed by John Adams: “The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever.”[ii]

 

3.         Few truly gave up believing in a universal truth that covered both sides of the wall of separation. Both sides considered it a practical, temporary compromise that would disappear as their version of objective truth eventually converted the other. For the secularist, this meant that secularization would eventually render religious beliefs obsolete. For the religious, it meant that eventually God’s moral truth would triumph either in the afterlife or here on earth through universal acceptance of Christianity. This is the unifying power of metaphor at work; the ability to gloss over inconsequential differences, in order to build common ground. 

All things considered, the private/public jurisdictional wall did work very well for over two hundred years. This was because for the most part churches had no interest in the Bees Keeper Act and the state had no interest in declaring saints. Most importantly, where there was overlapping interest; there was consistency—murder and theft are both sins and crimes.

 

Disadvantage - No solution for Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Same-sex marriage is proving to be a serious constitutional problem for Romantic Secularism because the jurisdictional rules do not work with this issue. Marriage does not fall neatly into either private or public classifications, because marriage has both spiritual and material aspects and consequences. The definition of marriage demonstrates how the theoretical line between public and private can break down. Consider the following quotation from an article entitled “Celebrating marriage across Canada” that illustrates the private and public nature of marriage:

Leigh Cousins, who proposed to Mandy Randhawa in October after 11 years of dating, says their marriage is not only a personal affair but a social and political statement to show their hopes and dreams are no different than other couples. “There is something very important and sacred about being public about it,” says Randhawa. “For me it’s a celebration of my love and my choices and my life as an individual.”[iii]

Unfortunately, when the private/public line breaks down, and protected freedoms clash with equality rights, Romantic Secularism has no way to declare a winner by appealing to a higher value. In Canada, this legal conundrum was explored in a 2005 article in Ontario’s Lawyers Gazette:[iv]

While courts have been expanding equality rights to cover a range of different types of discrimination not specifically set out in Section 15, the real test to its mettle will come when courts are forced to stack it up against other protected rights.

 

Beverley Baines, a law professor at Queen’s University, was quoted in the same article:

“However, I don’t think we fully grasped the threat that major religion – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – would pose for woman’s equality rights…” Baines says she was “astounded to learn that 75–90% of marriages in Canada involved some form of religious auspices.” She thinks “churches should get out of the marriage business” otherwise it will be difficult to keep civil and religious regulation of marriage separate. While the Supreme Court insists there is no hierarchy of rights in the Charter, there is no “clear foundation to sustain it” she says.

 

Bigger problem - No principled way to Resolve conflicts between Equality Rights and Religious Freedoms

 

The second reason for today’s crisis is that there is a clear moral conflict between the principles underlying liberal democracies and most traditional religions because their scriptures are quite explicit on the heterosexual nature of marriage. Finally, all the major religions are consistent on the issue (even Buddhism as expressed by the Dalai Lama) making political majorities much easier to obtain. Even abortion did not have the power to unite the religious community politically; therefore this is a significant development in the history of Romantic Secularism.

Across the United States, courts have not found traction in resolving the same-sex marriage debate because, just like the Canadian Constitution, the American Constitution has no principled way to settle a conflict between equality rights and freedom of religion. Acknowledging that there is no higher principle to break the tie, David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, arch-enemies on the same-sex marriage issue, wrote the following warning in 2009 as an appeal for compromise:

In all sharp moral disagreements, maximalism is the constant temptation. People dig in, positions harden and we tend to convince ourselves that our opponents are not only wrong-headed but also malicious and acting in bad faith. In such conflicts, it can seem not only difficult but wrong to compromise on a core belief. But clinging to extremes can also be quite dangerous, a scorched-earth debate, pitting what some regard as a nonnegotiable religious freedom against what others regard as a nonnegotiable human right, would do great harm to our civil society. When a reasonable accommodation on a tough issue seems possible, both sides should have the courage to explore it. [v]

The practical limitations of the theory behind the separation of church and state will become more obvious as unforeseen consequences arising from conflicts between woman’s issues, reproductive technologies, and bioethics are litigated. In summary, same-sex marriage is the issue that has created a constitutional crisis for Romantic Secularism because:

1.      Marriage is a public announcement of a private commitment with both public (property) and private(spiritual) implications, making a mockery of the private/public distinction necessary for the smooth functioning of Romantic Secularism;

 

2.      All traditional religions are consistent on the matter making a majority easier to achieve;

 

3.      Splitting marriage into its spiritual (religious marriage) and material aspects (secular civil unions) still does not offer the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) community the full acceptance and feelings of equality they are seeking;

4.      As Hobbes first articulated, monotheistic religions teach a higher allegiance to their religion over state authority, creating a profound crisis where the two conflict;

5.      Both sides have constitutionally-protected rights at stake, and each believes the other side is betraying the spirit of the secular constitution, rather than acknowledging the limits of the constitution.

The consequence is that citizens drift to morally consistent communities, rather than separate their political and spiritual morality, creating literal walls of separation.  To quote Northrop Frye again, "Metaphors are words with power".  Next in the history of secularism is Rational Secularism, which has also played a significant, if indirect, role in American and international politics.