The freezing of secularism

[RedWorker]

Why is secularism frozen? There has been little to no progress that I can see in the recent years in separating the state from religion.

In my country, the state still has vast ties with not only Christianity but in fact the Catholic Church. The state finances it through all sorts of tricks. Furthermore, there is religious content everywhere in public institutions, including for example schools. For example, Christmas is always celebrated and Jesus Christ etc. are talked about, as if this was entirely normal. The average person probably doesn't even realize there's a religious aspect to it.

There's even an optional subject in public education named "religion", which in fact is not the study of religion but religious indoctrination, and of one specific branch: Catholicism.

Why don't liberals take issue with this? Are they too busy licking capitalist ass? Does the bourgeois regime still really depend on support from the church?

[Synergy]

U.S. perspective here:

AFAIK, people left England for North America so they could double down on preaching/following religion, plus steal land from the natives, etc. I don't think it's too surprising that a country founded on that kind of community would still hold a lot of religious beliefs.

[BIXX]

I honestly don't care. I feel I have bigger things to worry about than whether or not the state and church aren't separated.

[WideAwake]

Red: You are right, and you know something? This world is so upside down and many things are so wrong, that marxist parties when they rise to power do not apply marxist political systems (Examples: Communist Party of China, Socialist of France). And christians do not really follow authentic christianity (Authentic christianity preaches that people should think more about others than their own selves and that all christians should give all their wealth to the poor to be christians. Matthew 19:21, James 5:1-7, Philippians 2:3-4)

People do not really do things by the book, most humans are not devoted to their own religion, to their favorite political ideology and not even to a diet that they are following. I used to a gym where people complained about why they couldn't lose weight. And they said that they followed a diet from monday to friday and binged on weekends. And the same happens with christianity (most christians are not real authentic christians). And most communist parties are not really authentic communist parties

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Why is secularism frozen? There has been little to no progress that I can see in the recent years in separating the state from religion.

In my country, the state still has vast ties with not only Christianity but in fact the Catholic Church. The state finances it through all sorts of tricks. Furthermore, there is religious content everywhere in public institutions, including for example schools. For example, Christmas is always celebrated and Jesus Christ etc. are talked about, as if this was entirely normal. The average person probably doesn't even realize there's a religious aspect to it.

There's even an optional subject in public education named "religion", which in fact is not the study of religion but religious indoctrination, and of one specific branch: Catholicism.

Why don't liberals take issue with this? Are they too busy licking capitalist ass? Does the bourgeois regime still really depend on support from the church?

[Armchair Partisan]

Why is secularism frozen? There has been little to no progress that I can see in the recent years in separating the state from religion.

In my country, the state still has vast ties with not only Christianity but in fact the Catholic Church. The state finances it through all sorts of tricks. Furthermore, there is religious content everywhere in public institutions, including for example schools. For example, Christmas is always celebrated and Jesus Christ etc. are talked about, as if this was entirely normal. The average person probably doesn't even realize there's a religious aspect to it.

There's even an optional subject in public education named "religion", which in fact is not the study of religion but religious indoctrination, and of one specific branch: Catholicism.

Why don't liberals take issue with this? Are they too busy licking capitalist ass? Does the bourgeois regime still really depend on support from the church?

This is one thing that grinds my gears too. Apparently, Wikipedia and a few of its sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#Friendly_and_hostil e_separation) record a difference between "friendly" (translation: the state is nominally secular but the favorite churches still have a lot of influence) and "hostile" (translation: actual secularism) separation of church and state, making the latter seem like a bad thing. An Orwellian piece of linguistic manipulation, that is. Fact of the matter is, it seems like an institutional religion or two are always useful for a ruling class, which is why secularism hasn't been pursued to its logical outcome - plus appealing to people's reactionary religious beliefs is always a useful political trick in a bourgeois democracy, while a principled secular program risks losing votes.


I honestly don't care. I feel I have bigger things to worry about than whether or not the state and church aren't separated.

Nothing new there, you pretty much don't care about anything.

[KillGreed444]

I take issue with it. I live in the US, and religious fundamentalism is so bad where I'm at, that people truly believe that European settlers had good intentions upon arriving in the new world, while being oblivious to the fact that, for example, when the puritans arrived, while escaping religious persecution from the Catholics and Europe, what did they do to the people they found here that didn't believe as they did, they persecuted them. It was religious-motivated hypocrisy on a global scale, literally. And when I was in high school in 04 to 08, every Wednesday morning most student went outside to the flag pole for "Prayer at the Pole", and then it was on to world history will people believed that manifest destiny was mostly peaceful and not a by-product of religious mandate. And now, under the curtain, the Corporate Machine and the Vanguard of the Political right are trying to turn our government into a Theocracy....slowly and in a very clandestine manner.

[Comrade Jacob]

Religion needs to be proletarianised but should still be kept from the state. I wouldn't say secularism is frozen, although the US is trying it's hardest to overthrow secular governments.

[Cymon]

I think the OP largely considers the issue from a Western perspective. I suppose one could be bothered by the fact that people talk about Christ, but the fact is that Christianity, especially Catholicism, is growing fast, specifically in Africa and Asia.


Globally, Africa is undoubtedly the continent where growth is most notable. The rate at which the number of Africa’s Catholics (almost 199 million in 2012) has risen, is almost double that of Asia (29%) and far higher than the population growth rate in that same period of time. (...) The Catholic presence in Africa is stronger (the number of African Catholics has risen from 13, 8% in 2005 to 16, 2% of the total number of the world’s Catholics in 2012). Europe’s Catholics, however, continue to drop in number: from 25, 5% in 2005 their number has fallen to 23, 3% in 2012.
Source: vaticaninsider

So yeah, people talk about Christ, as to many people He is part of their daily lives. Literally millions of people identify with Christ, especially in poor countries.

Now, there is a lot to say about the relationship between the state and the church, but in my opinion there should be no relation whatsoever. I think that any relation between the state and the church (financial or otherwise) corrupts the authentic message of Christ. So, I agree with OP's conclusion, but not with his reasoning.

As far as I know, the United States government has never been a big fan of Catholicism. In fact, during the 1960 campaign, after a number of accusations, John F. Kennedy was forced to explain that he would not take orders from the papacy if he came into office. (I can't give a source because I have less than 25 posts, however, you can check out the article "Anti-Catholicism in the United States" on wikipedia)

The hard thing is that relations between the state and the church can never be generalized, because the specifics of that relationship are different in every country. In Europe for example, the German 'kirchensteuer' creates a very complicated relationship between state and church. In Belgium priests are actually on the payroll of the state and are thus de facto a kind of civil servants. In the Netherlands, the church doesn't get any kind of funding (except for the maintenance of monumental buildings, but this is largely economically motivated to stimulate tourism).