Pluralism not Secularism

I have previous on this one as a secondary school teacher and a local authority education adviser. In the early nineties the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Forsyth, took it into his head to jerk new life into religious observance in schools. At first I was not particularly bothered by this, on the basis that it would all be pretty innocuous anyway – that it was something like the Queen, an old ignored neon sign that occasionally flickered. But I was energetically nudged by a colleague to take the issue more seriously and soon agreed that the on-going inferred assumption that the Christian god underpinned, however modestly, the whole fabric of education in Scotland, even in what were then often called non-denominational schools, was basically unjust. To its great credit my local authority (with the exception of a horrified Director of Education) backed this view and told Forsyth to take a running jump. Such days.

The timing was nice. There was a good deal of thought being given then within sectors of the educational world to the business of fundamental values and how they could be handled and clarified in non-religious schools and colleges. The terms “non-religious” and “non-denominational” are germane. With their corollaries they mirror the state-scale definitions “secular” and “theocratic”. The problem with the negative terms is precisely that – they are written with the minus sign. My interest here is not with the essential limitation of defining oneself or one’s stance in negative terms. That is a whole other story. It is more to do with the implication of opposition, the ease with which “non-religious” slips (or is pushed) into “anti-religious”.

“Secular” is cabin luggage for stuffing with a whole variety of meanings, but the problematic “anti-religious” one predominates. This is understandable since modern ideas of fundamental community or national ethos have over the millennia been gradually, and incompletely, wrestled from the arms of theocracy. And the “anti” version has itself two main meanings which can be easily (and maliciously) confused. For example “anti-clerical” may mean hating priests or simply being determined that priests do not dominate and control public life. Further, the agenda of those who want to retain the vestiges of clerical control is boosted by the confusion between the meanings – hence the current wailing about being persecuted by the secularists. And, at the other extreme, there are those who really do want the last Kirk minister to be strangled with the last copy of the People’s Friend.

So I am suggesting that we stop using “secular” and use “pluralist” instead. This is the notion of a nation or community that contains folk with diverse world views and which clarifies certain fundamental values to be shared by all. I believe that it is in the interest of everyone that in a new community or nation the pluralist ethos is confirmed in a charter, as a key part of the constitution. Everyone, that is, except those who will not be content until a cabal of priests or Brahmins or Mullahs is in complete control, or until religious belief of all varieties is proscribed by law.

David Mackenzie May 2024