Religion: a Repository of Values?
The turn to ‘post-secularism’, which I introduced at the outset, takes values seriously. The danger in religious versions (and that is what seems to be implied by ‘post-secular’) is that, just as rights live in law and - in a narrow view - reason lives in science, an equally narrow view may claim religion as the home of values.
Steven D. Smith (2010) deplores the exclusion of a values discourse in the modern polity. He sums up the problem with that polity, and the discourse on which it is based, in the word ‘secular’. Smith denies juxtaposing ‘secular’ with ‘religious’ discourse,[1161] yet this is disingenuous when he has chosen a word that arose in a theological context, and currently refers to the separation of religion from matters of state. When he identifies the illicit ‘smuggling’ of ideas based on a ‘purposive cosmos’ or ‘providential design’,[1162] his argument rests on the embeddedness of values in great views of the cosmic order. Yet values need not derive from grand cosmic or theological narratives. They can inhere in simple ethical precepts, from the humanistic bottom up, as well as from the theological top down.What distinguishes religions from other ethical positions, even constellations, is their institutional, traditional and communal structure. This is a strength of religions: they offer membership of a bigger group and a rich body of lore, law and discourse. They are also hierarchical, and usually dominated by a professional class of priests, rabbis or imams. None of these characteristics is dangerous to the social fabric or the well-being of the believers. Yet their very institutional qualities, their self-referential, professional and hierarchical character, can make them difficult models for open public discourse. Just as law must pronounce what is legal and illegal, cleaving normative reality, purportedly according to rules, so religious institutions must cleave the halal from the haram, the kosher from the terefah, according to internal referents.
Formal religion, like formal law, tends to self-referentiality.Davies (2011) and Cox (1965) have both conceived secularization as a process rather than an end point.[1163] Their positions emphasise the multiple parties and identities that may be involved in decisions over matters of faith and the polity. This can extend to law-making based on religion within limited communities. However, on Davies’s account this would clearly be a space for open debate and multiple voices to be heard. By pluralizing involvement in religious, cultural, political and legal discourse, a diverse society may be more fully democratised than by simply accommodating religious and political hierarchies within a corporatist decision-making apparatus.[1164] Religion and secularism are not two opposed alternatives. Nor is religion (any religion) the legitimate guardian of values. Values, to reprise a cliche, are too important to be left to the priests.
E.