The Hidden Dimension of the Secular.

Rethinking Humanism in an age of Religious Revitalism

Humanists should reconsider their often anti-religious stance, argue Henk Manschot and Caroline Suransky, researchers of the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme at the University for Humanistics. There is a special relationship between modernity, secularism and humanism. However, the project of modernity has increasingly come under siege. Therefore, modern humanism too is challenged to rethink its own relationship with modernity and secularism.

Henk Manschot & Caroline Suransky

As the authors indicate in their introduction of this working paper ‘there is a special relationship between Modernity and Humanism, particularly since the Enlightenment’. They share many basic values such as autonomy, civil equality before the law and democracy. They both defend the separation of church and state and advocate the existence of a secular public sphere and of public morality as solid foundations of society. However, in the past decennia, the project of modernity has increasingly come under siege internationally and its key values are challenged from many perspectives. There are philosophical and theological critiques, as well as challenges from the field of political theory. Throughout the globe, fundamental questions have been raised about the meaning and impact of modernity from within diverging political and religious movements, particularly from non-western locations. With modernity heavily in dispute, modern humanism too seems challenged to rethink its own relationship with modernity. The authors argue that this is particularly so in terms of the separation of church and state and with regard to the incongruity of the secular and the religious, something that modern mainstream humanism so far has considered to be fundamental for modern societies.

The idea for this paper originated under special circumstances in the context of the international Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme. For several reasons, the relationship between the state and religion became a prominent issue in the regional programmes of India and Indonesia. Prompted by this development, we invited the prominent scholar Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im to participate in a seminar in May 2009, to discuss his ideas on Islam and the secular state with the participating academics and practitioners in the Knowledge Programme. In our deliberations, An-Na’im reiterated the significance of critical debate not only between different religious and other world view communities, but also within these networks themselves, in order to enrich the quality and complexity of internal debates. He therefore challenged scholars from other religious and world view traditions to critically examine their own particular relationship with the secular as well.

Convinced by the value of this challenge, the authors, who both work at the University for Humanistics in the Netherlands, endeavoured to study the relationship between Humanism, modernity and the secular. The authors work at the Kosmopolis Institute of the University for Humanistics in the Netherlands. This is a small, independent university, inspired by Humanist traditions. With their critical reflection on secularism and humanism, the authors want to contribute to an ongoing dialogue on secularism in the context of the international Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme, at the University for Humanistics and in a broader academic realm. However, in addition, they wish to encourage dialogue on these issues within the wider Humanist community, internationally as well as in the Netherlands. Internationally, secular Humanism is often perceived to be anti-religious. The authors wish to rethink this position as they believe that by critically rethinking Humanism, the Humanist community could possibly contribute more constructively to the ongoing global debate on the question of the secular.

Dr. Caroline Suransky,

Chief editor of the Pluralism Working Paper series for the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme