Transformations worldliness

Today it is already obvious that religion has ceased to be a private matter of a person; it is returning again to politics, to public space. Many years of expectations of the privatization of religion, its transformation into a Sunday hobby like theater or football, did not materialize. The problem of “public religions” is increasingly coming to the fore. In this regard, Russia is by no means an exception; rather, it only confirms the global trend.

But is the secular world ready for this “revenge of religions”?

The emergence of secularism

The very idea that religions have no place in public space became widespread in the West in the 17th century, when Europe was rocked by protracted religious wars, and the shaky peace was ready to end in another bloodshed at any moment. Civil harmony becomes a matter of life and death: it is necessary to find principles that guarantee the state lasting internal peace, and not a temporary calm before the next storm. There is a need for rules for the functioning of public space that would in no way correlate with religious differences or at least would not cause irritation among the warring parties.

The principle of secularism, that is, the exclusion of religions from the affairs of power, became the sought-after solution, which the leading thinkers of the time seized upon. The state, that is, the secular power, must be the sole sovereign as far as the problem of common goods is concerned. John Locke, in his works on religious tolerance, quite scrupulously describes the boundaries within which religions are allowed to operate. Any religious organization that does not recognize these boundaries is outlawed.

However, it would be naive to believe that the state was ideologically neutral. Instead of one or another religious denomination, it - somewhere earlier, somewhere later - began to rely on a new enlightened secular worldview based on reason, nature, common sense and the ideals of reliable rational knowledge.

The most interesting thing is that it was within the framework of such a worldview that what is known today as religion arose: something private (= not public), purely individual and located deep in the human heart . This leads to the still frequently encountered thoughts about a certain “true” religion, which is opposed to fanaticism and religious obscurantism. Neither Catholicism nor Protestantism in their various variations (except for the liberal one) were “religions” at the beginning of the New Age; they were holistic worldviews, systems of action, for which the political and public components were almost the main ones. It is precisely this connotation that people are trying to capture today with the help of the term “public religion.”

Moreover, the word “religion” (religio) itself was almost never used until the modern era; various opposing traditions were called “faiths” (fides) or “laws” (lex). In order for secularism to work, it was necessary to first turn “laws” into “religions.” It was not possible to do this right away: first the problem was solved by force, and then the process of internal transformation of Christianity began in the spirit of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “Speeches on Religion.”

There were at least two possible strategies for establishing the principle of secularism and the worldview that underlies it. The first strategy was to try to find a general religious consensus and build a civil peace on its basis. In reality, naturally, it was not something common that was affirmed, but that very new secular worldview, formalized by nods to various religions. The second strategy implied the open recognition and imposition of a new progressive worldview (secularism), the only one based on reason and universally accessible to every free individual.

The strategy of general consensus was used in those countries where religious pluralism was original, and dogmatism was not characteristic of existing religions. For example, in the USA a general Protestant consensus quickly developed, and then, when circumstances required it in the middle of the 20th century, a new hybrid - “Judeo-Christian culture”. This hybrid was intended to unite representatives of such different but very influential groups as Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Naturally, Judeo-Christianity was an illusion based on American Enlightenment values, surrounded by biblical quotations. Secularism was established from within: due to the absence of rigid dogmas, religious doctrine was reinterpreted in an increasingly liberal way. Eventually it became absolutely impossible to distinguish a secular worldview from a religious one. While religiosity was on the decline and hardly meant more to most than just the memory of their roots, the common ground tactics worked quite well.

The strategy, based on the open opposition of a secular worldview to a religious one and its forceful displacement from the public space, became widespread in those countries in which there was a powerful unified Church that pursued a consistent policy of strangling not only heretics, but generally all dissenters. A new worldview could arise only in spite of the religious one, as its alternative and irreconcilable enemy. The most striking example here is France, in which “laïcité,” that is, the principle of a secular state structure, formed the basis of the national idea. Another example is Russia, where the Church also made many enemies.

Both strategies for promoting secularism turned out to be surprisingly fruitful: until the 1980s, everything seemed to be going well. Religions were no longer perceived as a source of problems, and much more attention was paid to ethnic and class contradictions. The secular worldview, implemented either openly, as an alternative to religious prejudices, or hidden, as something common to different religious traditions, was accepted by everyone with a bang. However, it was precisely this success that played a cruel joke on the “progressive” worldview. It began to be perceived not just as an alternative worldview that needs to be defended and improved, but as the only normal view of a person on the world, society, nature and himself . The secular worldview began to be positioned as the pure quintessence of common sense. Anyone who doubted the naturalness of such a vision of the world risked being branded a retrograde at best, and a fanatic at worst. Accordingly, secularism as a social structure, logically resulting from a secular worldview, began to be perceived not as a value that should be protected and defended, but as a natural, almost natural state of affairs.

After the collapse of communism - the last clearly expressed ideological project - there was only one legitimate way of existence left in the modern world - liberalism (in the broadest sense of the word). Within the framework of liberalism, religion was not destroyed; on the contrary, they tried to cultivate it in every possible way as one of the natural manifestations of human nature. Liberal secularism has become so strong that from now on liberal thinkers are beginning to worry not so much about secularism as about the problem of protecting religions and respecting the rights of religious minorities.

And it was at this moment that, for lack of a better term, we will have to call “public religions” literally burst onto the stage of history. We are not talking about new religious movements or New Age, which fit perfectly into the secular vision of the world as marginal sects or classical private religions, but about the revival of the so-called traditional religions. Islam became revived and radicalized and began to fight for its own Islamic project. The Iranian Revolution of 1979, their first significant victory, had an inspiring effect on the Islamists. In the same year, American Protestants formulated the platform of the “moral majority” and identified themselves as a serious political force. In short, it suddenly became clear that religion is not an abstract “piety”, but a real force with very visible, including political, interests.

Secularism as a procedure

It turned out that secularism only works in relation to its own constructed religion. As soon as religious traditions began to speak on their own behalf, it became clear that secularism is not so neutral and not so unproblematic. Both the strategy of a “common” platform and the strategy of establishing a secular worldview began to fail.

To develop a common platform, at least two conditions are necessary: ​​firstly, the parties must be willing to make mutual concessions, and secondly, there must be common principles acceptable to all. However, if mutually exclusive conditions are put forward and if the parties have no desire to agree, then the goal of achieving consensus - especially on a secular platform - becomes increasingly unattainable. “Judeo-Christian culture” in the United States is faced with the problem of Islam, which has not yet been able to be integrated into a new hybrid, for example, into the culture of “monotheistic religions.”

Problems also arose with the secular worldview. Firstly, it ceased to attract supporters, ceased to be the default worldview - more and more people began to question it; secondly, the supporters of this project became convinced that they were not defending any values, but were simply defending the only possible conditions of normal existence, guaranteeing an acceptable existence for everyone. From this conviction, in fact, follows a reaction very characteristic of secularists to the return of religion to the public space: instead of a serious analysis of what is happening, emotions and complaints about religious extremism and fanaticism come to the fore, as well as the fact that churches have forgotten their true calling and minded their own business (politics, culture, art, education).

Once the inadequacy of previous concepts of secularism became apparent, attempts to reform it began. Today they are trying to present secularism as a neutral procedure; they are trying to disconnect it from the secular worldview, which is beginning to rightly be positioned as just another alternative view of the world. What is happening, so to speak, is the “privatization of the secular worldview.” Neutral norms and procedures should now dominate in the public space. This approach is (or has been) most consistently advocated by John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor. Public space is a mechanism that ensures the negotiation process between representatives of different religious or anti-religious worldviews. And if Rawls believed that there is no place for religion in public space, just as there is no place there for all other holistic worldviews, then Habermas is ready to recognize the right of religious people as religious people to participate in debates, provided, of course, that they are able to implement translation of their demands into a generally understandable secular language, which is the universal negotiating language of the modern enlightened world. Secular-minded fellow citizens, in turn, are required to be able to perceive the arguments of religious people and help them translate their demands into a generally understandable language and vice versa.

Secularism as a procedure is an attempt to solve the problem of religious minorities. Liberalism positions itself as a world order in which no one feels oppressed. However, in the case of religions, this principle is violated: in order to fully participate in public life, religious citizens have to split their identity into religious and civil: the first prevails in private life, the second in public. In this sense, they find themselves in less favorable conditions than the bearers of secular worldviews, for whom their public existence turns out to be a natural continuation of their private life. Procedural neutrality is designed to overcome this injustice. Today we are in the process of transition from ideological secularism to procedural secularism.

However, it is already clear that procedural neutrality will not solve the problems it was designed to solve. Procedural secularism will still remain the fruit of a secular worldview that determines the basic parameters of these procedures. Nods to religious traditions will remain just that, nods. Pure procedurality, as John Milbank argues, is an illusion. Any social system is always based on some values. For example, “neutral” secular procedures recognize only the individual with his rights and religious needs. But what about the rights and freedoms of religious groups? As long as the principle of “one person, one vote” prevails, religious groups will never be able to claim their rights. The mathematical majority will always oppress the small minority. This principle is a guarantee that the voice of religious traditions will never be heard. This is exactly what Talal Assad talks about when analyzing the situation of Muslims in Europe. In such a situation, the only way to express yourself is to become the majority, but then everyone else will suffer deprivation.

Moreover, why do the proposed procedures turn out to be secular? Not everyone is comfortable in the conditions of such procedures. W. Connolly has already introduced the concept of “cultural suffering,” when pain is caused not by one or another social deprivation, but by the very organizational structure of society. In such conditions, some group will sooner or later try to establish its own “procedural neutrality.”

But the main problem is not even how the coexistence of different religions within a single society is possible, but that neither Catholicism, nor Protestantism (except for their liberal movements), nor Islam, nor Orthodoxy are religions. Religious traditions cease to be religions in the liberal sense of the word and become something for which, within the framework of secular discourse, there is probably not even a suitable word. We can call them an alternative worldview or an alternative value world. Moreover, this alternativeness is not only to each other, but also to the secular as just another worldview. And here a fundamental question arises: how is it possible for different value worlds, including an institutional dimension, to coexist within a space whose unity is ensured exclusively by formal, but not neutral, norms?

At the beginning of the 21st century, the world again risks returning to the situation of the 16th – 17th centuries. Civil interfaith and interreligious peace is again a matter of life and death. However, unlike that era, secularism no longer seems to be a salvation.

What's next?

The secular project suffered a decisive defeat: it lost, partly by its own will, its universally recognized monopoly on the description of reality. As long as he defined what religion was and where its boundaries ended, everything was fine, but as soon as the religions themselves were given the floor, problems began. Secularism, even procedural, is beginning to show more and more failures, while, thank God, these failures are exclusively theoretical in nature. Before disruptions become practical, it is wise to consider options for future developments.

One of the possible strategies is a new attempt to establish secularism, based on a secular worldview, on secularism. Such a move implies a rejection of the idea of ​​tolerance and respect for the rights of minorities. It is necessary to forcefully expel religions from the public space, turning them back into “religions.” There are supporters of such a policy both in Russia and in the West. Among them are American intellectuals Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and many others. In Russia there are many of them among the so-called anti-clericals. In essence, this is a repetition of the policies pursued in modern times, starting from the 17th century.

Another option is to reject secularism, and at the same time the idea of ​​a universal one-dimensional public space. For example, John Milbank talks about the need to return to a “complex social space”, which implies the opportunity for different groups to lead an independent existence and determine their own rules. He is echoed by the political theorist William Connolly, who proclaims the need to move from nominal pluralism to real pluralism, allowing each group to maintain its identity not nominally, but in reality. Here, of course, a whole series of questions immediately arises: if common values ​​disappear, which, albeit by force, are imposed on everyone, then won’t this lead to the disappearance of a single state, a single nation, a single people? Will societies consisting of disparate groups whose members speak different languages ​​and appeal to different values ​​collapse?

Finally, the third, partly compromise, option is the development of social networks, when formally people live nearby, but belong to different networks, often not in contact with each other.

These are just some of the possible options for further developments. They will be realized if religions continue to increase their presence in society, and the number of people who take secular principles for granted continues to fall. The main thing that supporters of a secular worldview and, accordingly, a secular structure of society must do today is to recognize themselves as a party to the conflict, a party that once won, but whose victory is not eternal and can be challenged at any moment. Secularism is the same worldview as the religious worldview. Therefore, instead of shouting about extremism and fanaticism, it is necessary to again learn to publicly defend our values, our ideals. After all, the problem of the return of religions to the public space is not a problem of violating some once and for all social boundaries, but a problem of different worldviews and different views on social reality arising from them.