I agree with Ilkham that the idea of a ‘secular’ state that separates religious authority and state authority is a Western phenomenon that  arose from the desire to remove political power from the all pervading control of the Church in Europe. But it’s very hard to define a secular state in practice. The UK has a state religion (Queen Elizabeth is head of the Church of England) but it is highly secular whereas the USA which has a clear separation of religion and state as declared in the Constitution, is highly religious. The majority of Americans report that religion plays a very important role in their lives. And let’s not go into France’s Laicite laws which ‘privatized’ religion and may as a result be accused of not allowing religious freedom for many in the public space.

Religion actually plays different roles in different societies whether the state is officially secular or not and a lot depends on the culture and social norms within the particular context. It seems to me that the real issue is how much people feel safe and free to practice their religion (or not to believe at all) and whether the state protects or discriminates against them accordingly.

What is happening in your country? How safe do you feel?

And let’s not go into France’s Laicite laws

Of course, this is what I was thinking of while reading Ilkham’s post 😂 I think France’s laïcité is such a strong example of intertwined religion, culture, and politics shaping a particular conception of secularism. With France as an example, when a particular sect of a religion has such a strong effect on a culture and its politics, it’s not shocking when a certain ‘flavor’ of secularism in practice looks more like laïcité for anyone who isn’t Catholic because other non-separations of religion from authority are long-held cultural practices, beliefs, etc.

Where I come from in West Michigan in the US, we see this a lot but accelerated by American polarization. In our context, party identification and theology are tightly interwoven on the political right, but less so on the left. Growing up, I had a lot of friends who were never religious, but as they got more politically polarized, they began to adopt more fundamentalist protestant Christian identities along with their party identity. Because our region has a particular history of Christian fundamentalism (to clarify, I say fundamentalist in a theological sense, not in a derogatory sense), we see this effect pop up in seemingly strange ways, including my favorite—a ‘pro-life drain commissioner’ billboard before non-partisan county elections. For my home region, I’m not sure what bipartisan secularism would look like or if it’s even possible.