Religion is a fraught topic. Sensitive, personal and provocative, discussing its societal role is persistently tricky. There is always the risk of offending someone. Perhaps this fact alone is exactly why it needs to be discussed, with the aim of finding a way to balance religious need and practice with the needs of a society and taking it beyond the personal realm of offense and influence.

It is clear that one of the great achievements of The Enlightenment and The Bill of Rights was personal religious freedom. This took away one of the great historical restrictions on what people must believe or practice. The separation of church and state was also critically important for establishing a freer society. This concept became a useful model for religious denominations to exist side by side without bloody confrontation, since it demonstrated that it was possible to retain personal beliefs without imposing them on others. This freedom was intended primarily for the people and their personal beliefs, and was not designed as a freedom for the Church to impose its agendas.

But the enormity of the institution of religion was too complicated and entrenched for The Enlightenment and other secular movements to remove religion from public life completely. Religion continued to have much sway and say in the society and politics. This influence of the Church stemmed from their sense of ownership of the societies that they ruled for many centuries. This attitude of cultural superiority by the Church not only barred a diverse spread of other religious and cultural entities in the sociocultural, financial and political life of Europe and America, but also contributed acts such as missionizing and proselytizing non-Christian communities elsewhere. Religion and the religious identity thus became an agent of othering.

Public Religion Crossed the Lines…

This is to say, the mechanism of The Enlightenment could not sufficiently draw a strong line between personal religion and the influential role of religion in the public realm.

As philosopher and psychologist, William James (d. 1910) stated, a person’s religious experiences and mystical epiphanies are inaccessible to others. Therefore, these personal and mystical experiences can remain private and personally significant without any imposition on others. In fact, the Enlighteners were not necessarily atheists, but many replaced the concept of theism by deism. That is to say, the interventionist God of the medieval period (theism) faded away in The Enlightenment, in favor of a god who created the world and left it to rational humans to govern it (deism). The theistic God continued to be worthy of worship, but if a god who had abandoned the world and is not present in the world, he is therefore not necessary of worshipping.

A personal religious experience is one thing, but the institution of the Church with its sociopolitical agendas is another.

Historically speaking, the Church was the source of many good acts in society through altruistic and kind-hearted Christian citizens as well as the progressive Jesuit, Franciscan and Benedictine missionary groups. But these should be distinguished from powerful religious establishments whose policies were designed to dominate people culturally, psychologically, politically and financially. Despite the pleasant choral church melodies, the artistic paintings of Jesus and the saints, the kind priests and nuns, and great humanitarian acts such as giving food and medical care, the Church was at times a dangerous institution. Christianity during the Middle Ages imposed its ethics on education and culture in many intricate ways, and this continued down the centuries, even to today. In modern times, religious institutions continue to influence and control politics, even standing by and supporting autocrats for the sake of power. They continued asking the faithful to send donations while being exempt themselves from paying taxes.

History testifies to the flocks of Christian missionaries who, through the institution of the Catholic Church and other religious groups even within democracies preaching individual freedom, poured into colonies around the world in order to proselytize the defenseless masses. This condescending move considered that the subjugated peoples of those colonies had been living their whole lives based on the wrong beliefs; a colonial religious attitude of ‘world wrongism’ became more apparent. The Church then continued to exploit democratic freedom during and post-Enlightenment to cement its public presence both in Western societies as well as in the colonies.

The exclusion of the Jews and Muslims from the mainstream Western politics was rampant at the beginning and during the peak of The Enlightenment. The forgotten history of the first arrival of the free Muslim groups in America was at the time of Columbus, way before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Later the arrival of the African slaves among whom many were Muslims and literate in Arabic was subverted and suppressed by the white slave owners and almost all of the Muslim slaves were forced to convert to Christianity. (See Sam Haselby, “Muslims of Early America,” Aeon (May 20, 2019)) https://aeon.co/essays/muslims-lived-in-america-before-protestantism-even-existed.

The Church continued to be dominant in culture, politics, and in finance from the early Enlightenment period all the way to the present, and people have followed its teaching closely, sometimes even to their own detriment. The powerful vicars of the Church made unverifiable and even damaging claims, ranging from the causes of diseases to natural disasters. A public language of fear was propagated by the Church, for example, claiming that those who “accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior” will go to Heaven, and the rest will go to Hell. Holding such a belief in one’s heart is not so harmful in and of itself, if an individual finds it personally helpful and inspiring. But such a belief is precarious when its public declaration makes Christians think they are more righteous than others and that people with different beliefs are going to hell – that is when the troubles begin.

The mandate of The Enlightenment was to subdue the medieval Christian mindset and their language of threat and fear. The loud public language of intimidation and othering, threatening the non-believers that they will burn in the fires of hell and similar exhortations was gradually replaced by an acceptable and civil language.

Recognizing that beliefs require indoctrination, the dominant religious groups targeted the vulnerable children of vulnerable populations to propagate such an agenda. It was during the peak of the Enlightenment in the 19th century that in North America (Canada and the US), as well as in Australia, indigenous children were forcibly taken away from their parents and sent to religious schools in territories far away from home in order to ‘civilize’ them and convert them to Christianity. The pain that came with this indoctrination strategy was immeasurable, and the damage was sometimes more horrific than just the forced psychological indoctrination: some mass graves of these native children were later found in such Church-sponsored schools. These atrocities went on during the peak of The Enlightenment under the nose of the guardians of freedom for all. (These shocking scenarios about indigenous children remained unmentioned and unacknowledged until recent decades, when the Canadian and Australian governments officially apologized for the inhumane act of their political predecessors for their shortcomings. The Vatican recently apologized for it too. The United States has not yet apologized for the same misconduct.)

Not There Yet!

The public role and behavior of religion in Western societies may be less egregious now, but it still has an outsize say in the debates over social issues. To differing degrees, public religion in general has either rejected or challenged various modern social phenomena such as LGBTQ individuals, the use of contraceptives and condoms, access to abortion, and divorce. The pronouncement of the Catholic Church’s disapproval of the use of condoms even in the African continent, despite the scientific evidence of how much condom use prevents cases of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, is another example of the intrusive and dangerous role played by public religion. Laws have recently been used to bypass the Church’s restrictions (i.e., LGBTQ rights) but that the pressure and disapproval continues, and the power of public religion is still very strong. Some religious denominations can also be relentless in carrying the torch of antiquity, maintaining the old unscientific beliefs by preventing church-going Christians from being “contaminated” by modern ethics and modern sciences, such as in the fields of geology, evolutionary biology and paleontology. The same is true about doubting and rejecting vaccinations and medical recommendations.

So where is the line between public and private religion? One’s personal beliefs should remain sacrosanct and respected and private. But in nearly every society, public expressions of religion can be found. Whether through the ringing of church bells or loudspeakers broadcasting calls to prayer, images of the crucifixion or statues of goddesses, religions use such expressions in the community to remind and inspire their followers. In general, the public religion is still very much present in the fields of education, culture, morality, politics and finances. But in today’s multicultural societies, such public expressions begin to feel unnecessary at the least, and invasive and disturbing at the most. People do not have the choice to ‘not hear’ the bells or the Muslim call to prayers, or ‘not see’ the graphic crucifixion statues on the street corners. The primary schools still are by and large the focus of the religious institutions as part of maintaining a strong foothold in the formative years of children. A similar and even a more radical scenario in indoctrinating the children is the case in the Islamic societies. 

Such public expressions of religion in multiculturalist societies will have to be eliminated, even as the adherents of those religions personally still feel strong devotion to their faith. The new Enlightenment can move societies into a period of calm and peace and respect where private religious practices continue unhindered and unquestioned, but religious expressions in the public realm are curtailed in order to prevent communicating messages of separation within the society.

The more mature humanity is, the greater chance of avoiding confrontation. What we have so far is a quasi-tolerance of other religions under the banner of freedom of religion. The global village in an Age of Enlightenment means peace and acceptance; it also means an inclusive multicultural world without a dominant or privileged place for religion in society. Religion can and should be kept out of the public realm, where everyone should be able to feel at ease no matter their religious beliefs.