Terry Sanderson

Last week, I met with the president of the National Secular Society, Terry Sanderson. (See link on the right). Mr. Sanderson’s perception of the state of religious belief in Britain and in Europe as a whole is that it is experiencing significant decline. The original secularization thesis predicted that modernization would result in religion becoming obsolete. The United States has clearly proved an exception to that rule, causing controversy and confusion among scholars and sociologists. Sanderson’s primary explanation of the strikingly different levels of secularization between modern Europe and modern America (along with the developing world) is the feeling of security Europeans derive from their social health care system. He says that the reason secularization is happening in Europe so dramatically is “because we have a hugely successful social and health service that protects you from cradle to grave—you will never find yourself in the gutter dying in this country.” He argues that Americans feel less secure than Europeans because they lack this “social safety net” and thus, find themselves in “a very powerless state if their health declines.” Poverty and lack of security, Sanderson posits, results in a higher need for religion. “You can see it in Haiti where religion is being reinforced by this earthquake because that’s all they have—they have nothing else to turn to.” Mr. Sanderson predicts that America’s need for religion will lessen “when Mr. Obama gets his healthcare bill through…the more social care there is provided by the state, the weaker religion will become.”
Note: If interested in this explanation of the disparity between the religiosity of the States and the secularism of Europe, see Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart’s Sacred and Secular, in which they present a “revised theory of secularization based on existential security” that seeks to account for the religious variation evident throughout the world.

Sanderson recognizes that religious belief can be a positive force in society, especially in building community bonds and providing relationships. However, he believes that religion can also bring irrationality into societal policy making. He referred to a debate in Parliament last year over a proposal to legalize assisted suicide by allowing relatives to bring their loved ones to a clinic in Switzerland that provides euthanasia without being prosecuted for aiding and abetting suicide. According to Mr. Sanderson, when the debate came forward in Parliament, 80% of the population supported the proposal. However, “a small group of Christians in Parliament blocked it and said, ‘No, our religion says you can’t do this, so nobody’s going to be able to do it. You can’t make a decision on your own, we’re making it for you’—and that’s where I think religion brings irrationality and authoritarianism. It takes peoples decisions away from them. If you want an abortion, that should be your decision. It shouldn’t be the church who says it’s against our teachings, so nobody’s going to have an abortion or whatever. All these social issues that the church is obsessed about controlling… In some respects, I think their attitudes about these issues have driven people away.”

When it comes to the question of religion’s place in the political sphere, Mr. Sanderson’s primary frustrations are the overrepresentation of religious interests in the government and lobbying by religious groups for privileges and exemptions. Sanderson supports the right of religious groups to “lobby in the same way that any other group can lobby—but they don’t lobby in that way. They have special privileged access to the political process because of their place in the establishment.” In addition to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s direct access to the Prime Minister, twenty-six seats in the House of Lords are reserved for bishops who contribute to making legislation. “So that’s not ordinary lobbying.” In order to level the playing field, Mr. Sanderson argues that the bishops should be removed from the House of Lords and that each religious group should be required to operate on an equal footing with all other groups lobbying for change. In addition to the twenty-six bishops, the Chief Rabbi, and potentially a prominent Muslim representative, has been given peerage in the House of Lords in order to create a sort of multi-faith representation in Parliament, which Mr. Sanderson views as “unhealthy.” On top of that, thirteen faith advisors were recently appointed to increase understanding and engagement between faith groups and the government. In the future, Mr. Sanderson hopes that members of the House of Lords will be elected rather than appointed—“and if that happens, these religious representatives will have to get in on their merit rather than that they are religious representatives.”

Mr. Sanderson also disapproves of a perceived push by faith groups for privilege and exemption based on their religious beliefs. He mentioned several examples of recent attempts to obtain religious privilege in the workplace. A Jewish woman applied for the position of food taster at Marks & Spencer (a grocery store) but refused to taste anything with pork in it, and M&S was subsequently prosecuted for refusing her the job. Similarly, he gave the example of Muslim workers at Tesco supermarkets refusing to sell alcohol and pork products. In a variety of ways, religious activists are “becoming very pushy and are trying to obtain privileges that nobody else can have. You know, the rules are for everybody else, but not if you’re Christian or Muslim…” Mr. Sanderson pointed to the current debate over the equality bill which aims to eliminate discrimination against groups based on gender, age, disability, religion, and sexual orientation. According to Sanderson, “religious elements are trying desperately to get themselves exempted from this, particularly in relation to homosexuality. They’re saying, we don’t want this to apply to us. We need to be exempted from it—otherwise, we might have to employ homosexuals and allow them to become priests.” The government initially allowed them to “continue discriminating;” however, the National Secular Society actually sent a complaint to the European Commission which had previously issued an anti-discrimination directive to all of Europe providing the minimum standards for anti-discrimination. The NSS complained that the British government, in allowing “opt outs” to various religious groups, was not abiding by the directive which only allows exemptions to those directly engaged in promoting religion. In response, Sanderson said that the European Commission wrote to the British government, directing them to narrow the exemptions, which they are doing with the new equality bill, and “the religious establishment is fighting like crazy and is really kicking up a stink about it.”

Finally, we discussed Mr. Sanderson’s view of the definition and purpose of secularism. In his words, “secularism is about accommodating everybody, ensuring everybody’s safe and that no religion has supreme power as it does in, say, Saudi Arabia or Iran or Iraq where minority religions are absolutely persecuted to hell. If you want to stop that happening, secularism can help. It can actually help minority religions to have a voice and not be trampled underfoot by majority religions. And I think that’s a much healthier way of doing things…So I think the framers of the American Constitution had it absolutely right. They were so prescient—they foresaw what was coming, and they made contingency arrangements. They said, ‘You know, if we don’t establish any particular religion, then we won’t have the religious wars that they’ve had in Europe.’ And you haven’t.” Sanderson believes that “secularism can stop religious warfare in its tracks. We’ve got a slogan that says ‘Secularism Protects,’ and I think it does. There’s nothing fundamentalist about that. I understand that religious people do think that Christianity should dictate our lives, and there are people who think that religion is so important to them that it’s necessary for us to imbue everything. I think they are the fundamentalists. People who want secularism say, ‘Look, you’ve got your place, we’ve got our place, everybody’s got a place. You can’t force us to believe what you believe just because you think it’s the right thing.’ And secularism protects people from that. I think it really important. There’s nothing fundamentalist about it. If secularists are fundamentalists, the whole of the United States, the whole of France, the whole of Turkey, the whole of Japan—they’re all fundamentalists because they’re all secularists. They have to be if they live in a secular country with a secular constitution. So I don’t think it’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s fundamentalist. I think it’s absolutely essential.”