There is a long way to go on fitting religion into this secular New Zealand

Otago Daily Times

2 days ago

Ron Adams asks how the relation between faith and reason plays out.
It used to be said that religion and politics don't mix; religion should be kept separate from the affairs of the state.
However, such separation has never really been achieved in New Zealand. If anything religion and politics are going to bed more often.
Religion has been mandated in local body politics and public institutions as well. By religion, I mean any ideas about how the world works that boil down to belief/faith that cannot be rationally substantiated and are shared by an exclusive few.
The question is, what place do unsubstantiated beliefs have in society's institutions and in the public square?
By their very nature, society's institutions need to operate in an inclusive manner for everyone's benefit.
There are but two ways of looking at the place of beliefs in public discourse. The first acknowledges that spirituality and religious commitments, including atheism, impact every aspect of one's life, and should therefore be incorporated into public life. Tribal societies often take this stance as a given.
Unfortunately it is problematic in at least three ways. It risks people feeling or being forced to conform to a majority or minority opinion. It risks opportunists proselytising a particular belief. And thirdly, it gives rise to an impossible ideal, a so-called principle of tolerance.
However, on many occasions, tolerance is no virtue and for good reason. Besides, when pressed, humans are notoriously intolerant and quick to justify what they think is right. Nonetheless it is important to patiently try to understand the views of others, just as we want others to try to understand our own viewpoint.
The second way of deciding the place of beliefs in public discourse is to act as if religion has no place in the life of public institutions.
The inclusion of "as if" makes this second approach sound inconsistent, but it acknowledges that everyone entertains private beliefs about how the world works. It also acknowledges that culture includes belief commitments which need to be put to one side in order for agreement to be reached for the betterment of a multicultural society.
Rationality can be a common denominator that enables wide community engagement, whereas the inclusion of esoteric religious beliefs can be divisive. As someone who acknowledges he has particular religious beliefs about how the world works, I commend this second alternative.
Is it possible to have a secular society in which religious views are not used to inform public debate? A secular clause in education was first inserted into the Education Act of 1877. From that point onwards, education in New Zealand should have been secular, but in reality, Christian activities such as hymn-singing, Bible reading and prayers were not completely phased out until the beginning of the 1980s.
Education is a test case, in that school life hopes to mimic community life. But in order to avoid religious disagreement, and for the purpose of creating a common learning ground, the secular clause rightly excluded the religious aspect which is an inescapable part of culture.
Predictably however, after Christian activities had largely ceased in schools during the 1980s, a spiritual vacuum was left. Before the end of the 1980s this void was already being replaced by Maori religious activities such as karakia and learning about whakapapa.
Operating as a secular society has proved to be no easy challenge. In the past 30 years Maori spiritual activities and beliefs have infiltrated institutions other than education, and are today obligatory in the public service that in all respects intends to be inclusive.
So, whatever happened to the idea of a secular society in New Zealand? Beliefs have their place in private life and in institutions created for the purpose of fostering them. But the point of a secular society is that it can provide a common basis upon which everyone can learn to work together for its betterment.
Sensitivity to cultural difference, including religious difference, is important for social cohesion in a multicultural society, but one's own particular culture is not sacrosanct in a multicultural setting. Traditional beliefs are no moral high ground upon which to force conformity.
Such coercion undermines the possibility of rational debate. It undermines the value of mixing with others who appreciate the world differently. It is therefore serious business when a government intentionally encourages the religious aspects of a culture, only to have them collide with other beliefs.
Of the many aspects there are to human culture, religious expressions are the most deep-seated. Before a purely rational understanding might even become possible in a culture, religion has historically provided, and still provides, the first explanations for how that culture understands its world.
And this will always be the case since no-one can know all the facts and feelings about a matter in order to make a decision.
By placing our tentative confidence in such beliefs serves to set us in a new direction, helps shed light on new possibilities, helps bring a better rational understanding of the world together, and helps future decision-making. While secular philosophy and science predated the 16th century, these two pursuits have continued to have a history compromised by religious prejudice, even up until Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1869. But history also shows that beliefs enabled a secular approach to negotiating difference.
A secular society is, however, not an end in itself. Reason cannot see with certainty into the past or the future. It cannot provide a way of living in hope.
The recent resurgence of religious belief in Western societies is recognition that there is more to life than the secular. Secularism as a method for learning to work together in society is only a partial solution to citizens finding their identity, a fulfilling life and hope.
I offer these thoughts as a basis for further discussion about how a multicultural society that also wishes to celebrate a unique indigenous culture might work towards realising itself as inclusive and unfettered from random religious mores.
■ Ron Adams teaches ethics and theology in Dunedin.