Godlessness, Secularism, and Religious Liberty:
A common complaint made about secularism is that it is contrary to religious liberty. At best this is a misunderstanding about secularism because a failure to endorse or promote any one religion should not negatively affect the religious liberties of individuals. On the contrary, the creation of spaces where religion is not endorsed or even required can, for many reasons, enhance religious liberty for everyone because it puts everyone one the same footing.Godless Secularism is Not a Religion:
Claiming that godlessness and secularism are religions is designed to give the impression that a secular institution really is promoting some religion and therefore infringes on people's religious liberty. This is not a misunderstanding of secularism; instead, it is a deliberate misrepresentation of godlessness and secularism. By definition, something that is secular must be non-religious. A secular institution might be based on a philosophy or ideology, but it is not based on any religion.Godless Secularism Promotes Religious Neutrality:
In the American context, at least, secularism is religiously neutral. This means that it neither favors nor disfavors, neither promotes nor inhibits, religion, religious beliefs, or religious systems in any manner. In a secular context, religion is essentially irrelevant — it's not prohibited to individuals, but it's also not expected or encouraged either. This puts everyone of any religion or no religion on the exact same level. There should be no threat here to religious belief or behavior.Godless Secularism Promotes Religious Equality:
Because secular institutions must remain neutral in religious matters, they effectively promote religious equality. It may not be immediately obvious to those accustomed to being privileged because of their religion, but equality requires that none are privileged. Privileging one religion in a political or social context is no better than privileging a race or social class. Secularism opposes privileging of any religion or religious beliefs; this is why it promotes genuine religious equality.Godless Secularism Protects Religious Dissenters:
Members of a dominant group who dissent from the group's orthodoxy are among the first to recognize the importance of dismantling privilege. Christians who do not live according to all the dogmas of dominant conservative or liberal churches are thus important beneficiaries from secularism today. Simply being Christian doesn't protect them from the discrimination created by Christian privilege; secularism, however, inhibits Christian privilege and thus also discrimination against dissenters.Godless Secularism Protects Religious Minorities:
Even more so than dissenters, religious minorities benefit from secularism because they will not be put at a disadvantage by a Christian majority. Some minority groups are concerned that a secular system is insufficiently moral and lacks values; there is, however, no value or morality in a system where one religion is privileged simply because the majority has the power to impose its will on everyone. In secular institutions and space, religious minorities are not put at a disadvantage.Godless Secularism Promotes the Dispersion of Power:
A key component of modern liberal democracy is the dispersion of power throughout society and throughout the government. The more power that is concentrated into fewer hands, the more that liberty is endangered. Secularism promotes the dispersion of power by preventing any one religious group from acquiring too much political, social, or cultural power at the expense of everyone else. Secularism ensures that power is spread around as widely as possible and thus also that liberty is enhanced.Godless Secularism is Opposed to Religious Dominion:
There are religious groups which promote the idea that Christians — and thus Christianity itself — should rule society. There are believers who sincerely think that Christians should rule society at all levels because they hold the keys to righteousness and God's grace. Secularism opposes any attempt to establish Christian Dominion over American society because this would end liberty and democracy. Indeed, if government is not secular, then it must be religious and thus a form of theocracy.Godless Secularism is Opposed to Religious Privilege:
Religious privilege in general and Christian privilege in particular are legacies of past eras when certain groups — aristocrats, whites, men — were favored above all others in society. Most of these privileges have been formally eliminated and are informally in steep decline. Only religious and Christian privilege remain to any great degree and the secularization of society is ensuring that their days are numbered as well.Secular Government, Religious Pluralism, and Religious Liberty:
Godless secularism is not a threat to religious liberty because the secular nature of public institutions, the public square, the media, and other aspects of our society cannot infringe on the ability of individuals, whether acting alone or in private groups, to practice their religion and believe religious doctrines. The fact that government or society in general doesn't take sides when it comes to religious beliefs or disagreements does not prevent anyone from going about their religious business.That doesn't mean that secularization has no impact on people's religion, though. For Christians, the secularization of society means that they won't experience constant reinforcement for their religion from the government or mainstream media. Only their churches and religious institutions will tell them that it's important to believe and that they are good people for believing. For some, that won't be enough and they will fall away from church membership, if not belief entirely. Christian leaders may recognize this and that may be why they oppose being forced out on their own.
This isn't different from how minority religious groups have had live. They, too, have lacked official endorsement and reinforcement of their beliefs from major social institutions. The one difference is that they have had to endure the expressions of endorsement and reinforcement for Christianity. Christians wouldn't like it if they constantly heard that another religion and other religious beliefs were better and favored.
Secularism doesn't force Christians to endure this in the same way that non-Christians have. Instead, they are all placed on the same footing: no one is favored or disfavored through official endorsement. This is the only morally and legally appropriate system in a religiously diverse society anyway. Christians may be losing some of their unjust privileges, but that's not a threat to religious liberty generally or Christians' religious liberty in particular.
