Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
So,
on the 29th of March, 2014,
it was a momentous day in this country.
And it was the kind of day
that's normally associated with months, if not years, of planning,
extreme levels of stress,
copious amounts of alcohol
and a great, big, fancy cake,
because this was the day
that same-sex marriage became legal in Britain.
And by the end of the year, by the end of 2014,
just under 5,000 people had married a partner of the same sex.
Would you might think
it's the kind of thing that people would like to celebrate?
These are couples in love, committing their lives to each other.
But not everybody was happy about this,
and 14 people in particular were very unhappy about this.
They were the bishops of the Church of England,
who, in the House of Lords,
had voted against the legalization of same-sex marriage.
And in doing this,
the Church were reflecting broader religious concerns in the country
that legalizing same-sex marriage,
or as they put it, "redefining marriage,"
would impose some kind of secular ideology
and undermine their religious freedom.
And this conflict between the religious and the secular
is something that affects people all over the world.
According to a recent study
by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom,
there are a total of 71 countries around the world
with blasphemy laws or policies in place.
I'm just going to pause for a second to let that sink in, right?
Seventy-one countries around the world with blasphemy laws or policies.
And 86% of these laws
have prison sentences attached to them,
or, in some cases, punishments that were even more severe,
including death,
which is about as severe as it gets.
Now, you might have seen this.
It's a very high-profile case.
It's the case of Raif Badawi.
And he was a blogger,
and in 2014,
was sentenced to ten years in prison and a thousand lashes
for the crime of insulting Islam in Saudi Arabia.
But this isn't just something
that affects far-off countries with strict laws.
And in fact, there's a very good argument to say
that in the same way that the 20th century was shaped
by these big ideological conflicts and battles
between capitalism, communism and fascism,
the 21st century will be shaped
by these conflicts around the religious and the secular.
Now, reactions to the theme of religion tend to come in one of two forms.
On one side of the debate are people like the new atheists.
So, I'm sure you recognize this chap here, Richard Dawkins,
or Sam Harris, for example,
or the late Christopher Hitchens.
And they argue
that religion is an irrational, primitive, dangerous force in the world.
And so, when they talk about religion,
they very often highlight the violence that religion causes.
So this would be cases like 9/11, for example,
or the July-7th bombings in London, 2005,
or the rise of ISIS.
And so, from this perspective,
these conflicts around religion are innate to religion itself.
And religion has these unique qualities to it.
And so, they argue that if we want to live together as a species,
religion needs to be controlled and contained
and maybe even eliminated,
but certainly should be kept as far away as possible from political affairs.
On the other side of the argument
are scholars and commentators like, as you can see here, -
this is Karen Armstrong,
or Tina Beattie, Reza Aslan, Keith Ward, for example,
who argue that these issues of religious violence
are not unique to religion itself, but misinterpretations of religion,
these are perversions of religion.
And so, when they talk about religion,
they like to talk about the good things that religion does.
They see it as being a positive, benevolent force for good in the world.
This will be things like providing people with a sense of meaning and identity,
bringing communities together,
inspiring people to go out and do good charitable deeds.
And it's certainly true
that there are lots of religiously inspired charities out there in the world,
in inhospitable, dangerous places,
doing good work,
organizations like Muslim Aid, for example, or CAFOD.
And so, from this perspective,
religion shouldn't be kept out of politics,
but religion should be promoted and encouraged and empowered
to do all of the good things that it's capable of doing.
Now, both of these approaches have got a bit of a problem,
which is that they're really talking about two sides of the same coin.
Because the thing that makes religion do bad stuff,
like encouraging people to go kill each other,
is the exact same thing that makes religion do good stuff,
like inspiring people to go and help each other.
And this thing is group identity,
and religion is really good at doing this.
After all, what could be more important
than the question of whether or not God exists?
And if God does exist, what God wants from us?
Or what will happen to us when we die?
These are some of the deepest, most profound questions
that human beings have ever asked.
And if religion can answer these questions,
and it claims to be able to answer these questions,
then religion can provide a very powerful bonding device
between people who share the same kinds of belief.
Okay, but here's the problem.
The process of establishing a group identity
inevitably creates boundaries and divisions,
because in order to say who is inside the group,
you have to say who is outside the group.
So the process of constructing a group identity
invariably creates dynamics of in and out, us and them.
And these dynamics are all the more potent
when you're talking about something like religion,
which is after all a question of life, the universe and everything, right?
It doesn't get more bigger than this.
It's certainly more profound and important than more mundane matters in life,
like disputes over what kind of music you like, or sports,
or the question as to whether you should put pineapple on a pizza.
And by the way, the answer to that question is no,
you should never ever put pineapple on a pizza.
And so,
this potential for conflict over these issues -
religious issues, by the way, not the pizza issue,
it's a separate thing altogether -
the potential for conflict over these particular issues
is heightened all the more when they're promoted politically by the state.
And you don't have to look very far to see this in action.
In the United States, at the present time,
Donald Trump has established very close links with the Christian Right,
and he's currently pursuing an agenda based, amongst other things,
on restricting women's rights to reproductive healthcare,
limiting the availability of abortions,
undermining LGBT rights, and so on.
So, when you bring religion and politics together like this,
you create the recipe for potential conflicts and tensions,
disputes between people who have different worldviews,
different beliefs and different value systems.
So how do we solve a problem like this?
Well, I wasn't asked to come here tonight to give you any answers to these problems,
which is a good job because I don't have any.
But one possible answer to this
or one possible thing that could be part of an answer to this
might be secularism.
Now, secularism very often gets a bad press.
Oftentimes, when you talk about secularism,
people think that you're really using some kind of secret code for atheism,
or that secularism is in some way antireligious.
Just to see how silly this idea is,
I again refer you to the case of the United States,
which despite the best efforts of the Christian Right and Donald Trump,
is a secular country.
It has a secular constitution,
it has secular laws
and it has a separation of Church and State,
despite being one of the most religious countries on the planet.
And you know, this is all, really, that secularism is,
this separation of Church and State,
and this means two things.
First of all, it means that the State is free from religion.
So religious authorities, religious organizations,
don't get to have special privileges in life.
They don't get to vote directly
on the laws that govern the lives of other people,
like voting in the House of Lords to try and stop same-sex marriage.
But it also means -
and actually this is a point that very often gets lost
when people talk about secularism -
it also means that religion is free of the State.
So politicians don't get to impose their worldviews and their beliefs
on religious organizations.
So currently in the UK, for example, which is not a secular country,
the Church of England has very close links to the State,
and if the Church of England wants to change any aspects of its liturgy,
the way in which it conducts worship,
its statement of the things that it believes,
it has to get formal approval from Parliament.
Now, these concepts are not difficult to get our heads around,
and the advantages are obvious.
Freedom from religion
means that individual citizens can go about their daily lives
unencumbered by religious rules and regulations.
Freedom of religion
means that citizens are free to practice worship however they choose,
within the constraints of the law.
So there's a very good argument then to say
that by framing the relationship between religion and politics in this way,
secularism is uniquely well-equipped
to uphold the rights of all citizens equally before the law,
irrespective of their religion or belief.
But look,
I'm not here tonight to tell you that secularism is perfect, okay?
Because it's not,
and secularism has problems too.
For one thing, there's no single form of secularism.
Secularism practice is shaped by the context in which it develops.
So, secularism in the United States is very different to secularism in France,
which is very different to secularism in India.
And some people may protest
that secularism itself is trying to impose some kind of worldview
on the rest of society.
Okay, but here's my final point, right?
There is no perfect answer to this question.
There is no silver bullet,
there is no magic cure for all of the problems that society has,
and as you might have noticed, it has quite a lot.
So there is no perfect answer to this,
but secularism at least allows us to approach this problem
in a way that is slightly different from this binary choice
between "religion is all bad" and "religion is all good."
And I might suggest
that if we do want to live together peacefully as a species,
then having a political framework
that upholds and respects the equal rights of all citizens equally before the law,
regardless of what they believe,
might be a pretty good place to start.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I really wanted to say tonight.
So thank you very much for coming, thank you for listening,
and enjoy the rest of your evening.
(Applause)