“Free,Compulsory and (Not) Secular”: The Failed Idea in Australian Education*

The nineteenth century radically transformed education from a church function to a state duty. During the early to late 1800s, Australian legislators debated the foundations of education for their new society. Decades of acrimonious argument, and sustained (but failed) attempts to create a workable denominational system led the colonies to explore more radical options. To minimize religious division, Australia's proposal was for public education to be “free, compulsory and secular.” New South Wales legislated these then politically progressive principles in the Public Instruction Act of 1880, following Victoria in 1872, and Queensland and South Australia in 1875. No state defined the term “secular” and each interpreted it differently. Prolonged, ambiguous applications of the secular principle continue to create confusion and division today. This article examines constructions of the “secular” in education and compares the approaches of Henry Parkes in New South Wales and George Higinbotham in Victoria. It follows the erosion of secular intent in public and parliamentary debates from early settlement to 1880.     

Convictions,Loyalties and the Secular State

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between communal religious identity and the secular, liberal state. It addresses the concern that religious allegiance undermines an individual's or group's political loyalty. The liberal secular state is threatened when a religious community participates in public discussion because this challenges the positioning of religious belief as personal and private. Currently this issue is brought into sharp focus by the identities of Muslim people although it is by no means restricted to this religious group. The early Christians negotiated the difficulties of loyalty to the empire and worship of the one true God as uniquely divine. The work of William Cavanaugh and Maleiha Malik is utilized to argue that religious communities can participate in public discussions in secular liberal states while living by narratives not shared by these polities. In fact religious communities can deepen the moral discussions of liberal secular states by bringing to its instrumental rationalism convictions established on alternate beliefs and narratives about the human condition. The recognition of the public role of religions need not induce panic in the liberal secular state and may secure religious communities sufficiently to allow mature, critical debate and discussion of their loyalties.     

Religiosity or racism? The bases of opposition to religious accommodation in Quebec

Though Canada is internationally lauded for the success of its multiculturalism policies, debates about immigrant integration have arisen in recent years. These debates have turned on the extent to which religion should be accommodated in the public sphere. They have also been disproportionately concentrated in the French‐speaking province of Quebec. This paper asks whether this disproportionality is due to the Quebec population being particularly unfavourable to religious accommodation and, if so, whether this disfavour is grounded in racial antipathy toward newcomers or in the province's unique religious history. The findings show that while opposition to religious accommodation is higher in Quebec, and higher among francophones, it is rooted more in the low level of religiosity of the francophone population than in racial animus. These results emphasise the importance of correctly conceptualising distinctions between ethnocentric and culturally based sources of group conflict in multicultural settings such as Canada.     

The crucifix as a symbol of secular Europe: The surprising semiotics of the European Court of Human Rights (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In March of 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled counter to current trends found in many European courts and legislatures as the ECHR affirmed the right of the Italian state to display crucifixes on the walls of its public school classrooms. Those who succeeded in arguing for the presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms did so not by advocating for the now entrenched human right of the freedom of religious expression, but by suggesting that the crucifix was, in fact, not only a religious sign but also a cultural and historical one. The crucifix, according to many of the religious and governmental claimants to the case, is a symbol that stands not just for Christianity but also for “tolerance” and, therefore, as a sign of secularism. The petitions heard in the Court, its decision, and the concurring opinions are revealing of the ambiguity of the categories of religion and secularism in Europe today. In this article I use the ECHR ruling to explore the lack of agreement surrounding the distinction between the religious and the secular and the implications this shifting boundary holds for different     

A Secular Australia? Ideas,Politics and the Search for Moral Order in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Australia

This article argues that the relationship between the religious and the secular in Australia is complex and that there has been no simple transition from a religious society to a secular one. It argues that the emergence of apparently secular moral orders in the second half of the nineteenth century involved what Steven D. Smith has termed the “smuggling in” of ideas and beliefs which are religious in nature. This can be seen clearly in the economic debates of the second half of the nineteenth century in Australia in which a Free Trade based on an optimistic natural theology battled with a faith in Protection which had powerful roots in a secular form of Calvinism espoused by David Syme. The article concludes with an analysis of twentieth‐century historian W. K. Hancock's comparison of the medieval commonwealth and Machiavelli, concluding that Hancock found both the Free Trade and the Protectionist visions of moral order to be inadequate.     

“This Greater Issue of Light against Darkness”: Sereno Edwards Bishop,Missionary Religion,and the Hawaiian Islands, 1827–1909

The history of nineteenth‐century missions provide a fruitful field to explore the development of religious thought and practice in a secular setting. This article shows how the religious views of the clergyman and educator Sereno Edwards Bishop, born in Hawai‘i of American missionary parents, were shaped by his childhood among the mission community in Hawai‘i and by his American college education. These instilled in him a liberal approach to theology that was informed by a spiritually alert sense of Hawaiian geography and environment. Contrary to the notion that he cast his faith aside in addressing matters of wider social and political importance, Bishop emerges as someone who thought critically about mid‐nineteenth‐century Protestant Christianity, grounding his perspective on politics, society, and natural history in Hawai‘i according to his religious principles. Given Bishop’s specific intellectual and cultural heritage, it is difficult to subsume his perspective within broader narratives of American expansion; rather, both Pacific and mainland American elements shaped the thought of such mission‐descended figures.     

From home to city: gender segregation,homosociality and publicness in Istanbul

This article examines the complex and tangled relationships between home, city, and gender in Bagcilar, a municipality in Istanbul governed by Islamist-oriented political parties since 1992. Focusing on women’s spatial experiences at the intersection of the private and the public, the traditional and the modern, the secular and the religious, this article argues that home provides a medium through which gendered forms of governance and publicness are produced in the city. Home as a domestic sphere confines women’s roles to those of motherhood and wifehood, but also functions as a place of sociability for women. The municipality’s Islamic political discourse, combined with secular urban practices, mobilizes women through familial norms, gender-segregated events, and women-only sites in Bagcilar, where home and urban space are mutually constructed, regulated, and legitimized. Thus, women’s publicness, which derives from but goes beyond domesticity, also enables intimate same-sex sociality in urban spaces. Although this creates only conditional access to the city for women, their agency and engagement with the city emanate from such publicness.     

Negotiating alliances: Muslims,gay rights and the Christian right in a Polish‐American city (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Muslim involvement in debates over municipal gay rights legislation became a hotly contested issue in Hamtramck, Michigan, during the summer of 2008. The article analyzes how faith‐based and other kinds of alliance building that took place in the context of these debates impacted processes of boundary formation among Muslim, Christian and secular‐humanist groups. In Hamtramck, debate over the Human Rights Ordinance served as a rich and generative nexus point for the proliferation and exchange of ideas about the incorporation of Muslim values and sentiments in the public sphere. A study of these debates offers us a window into understanding the politicization of Islam as a minority religion, the symbolic space it occupies, and its engagement with the institutionalization of secularism in the US at the current time.     

Post-secular geographies and the problem of pluralism: Religion and everyday life in Istanbul,Turkey

The concept of post-secularism has come to signify a renewed attention to the role of religion within secular, democratic public spheres. Central to the project of post-secularism is the integration of religious ways of being within a public arena shared by others who may practice different faiths, practice the same faith differently, or be non-religious in outlook. As a secular state within which Sunni Islam has played an increasingly public role, Turkey is a prime site for studying new configurations of religion, politics, and public life. Our 2013 research with devout Sunni Muslim women in Istanbul demonstrates how the big questions of post-secularism and the problem of pluralism are posed and navigated within the quotidian geographies of homes, neighborhoods, and city spaces. Women grapple with the demands of a pluralistic public sphere on their own terms and in ways that traverse and call into question the distinction between public and private spaces. While mutual respect mediates relations with diverse others, women often find themselves up against the limits of respect, both in their intimate relations with Alevi friends and neighbors, and in the anonymous spaces of the city where they sometimes find themselves subject to secular hostility. The gendered moral order of public space that positions devout headscarf-wearing women in a particular way within diverse city spaces where others may be consuming alcohol or wearing revealing clothing further complicates the problem of pluralism in the city. We conclude that one does not perhaps arrive at post-secularism so much as struggle with its demands.     

The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: Catherine Byrne's JORH Article “Free,Compulsory and (not) Secular”

The original meaning of the term “secular” in the “free compulsory and secular” nineteenth‐century Australian public education acts is often contested, and has recently become part of a contemporary debate about the presence of confessional religion in state schools. I outline four different interpretations expressed in Australian education history writing, then review the recent Journal of Religious History article “Free, Compulsory and (not) Secular” by Catherine Byrne, arguing that it belongs to the secular liberal or “Whig” interpretation of the meaning of “secular” in the acts. The article is critiqued for forcing sources to conform to an overly rhetorical narrative device: a polarised structure valorising Victorian legislator George Higinbotham, and demonising New South Wales legislator Sir Henry Parkes. The article is also criticised for sub‐optimal source‐work, lack of awareness of the corpus of Australian education history, and overt contemporary policy agendas. I also suggest that the larger “Whig” interpretation of “secular” as part of a liberal progress narrative, underemphasises a religious hermeneutic and a critical theory hermeneutic: that a Protestant consensus about state schooling and “secular” in the Public Education Acts was also a deeply sectarian device for excluding Catholics from a dominant social settlement, just one part of a systemically divided and prejudicial culture.     

The Evangelical Alliance, Religious Liberty, and the Evangelical Conscience in Nineteenth-Century Britain

This article explores the difficulties nineteenth-century British evangelical ecumenists faced as they attempted to develop distinctive practical initiatives that could commend widespread support across the denominational spectrum. In particular, it focuses on the nascent Evangelical Alliance's growing concern to promote religious liberty overseas. By following the debates within the Alliance about the need to pursue religious liberty and attending to the obstacles preventing such a course of action this article suggests the need to distinguish between a qualified agenda committed to securing religious rights (religious liberty) and a broader agenda committed to securing political rights (religious equality). By favouring the former, the Evangelical Alliance succeeded in developing a distinctively pan-evangelical initiative that commended relatively widespread support. Thus evangelical concern for religious liberty must be distinguished from the distinctively Nonconformist promotion of religious equality.     

“… but in its proper place. …”Religion,Enlightenment, and Australia's Secular Heritage: The Case of Robert Lowe in Colonial NSW 1842–1850

Over the last few decades historians have been rediscovering Australia's religious heritage, often in response to entrenched narratives depicting Australia's social, intellectual, and political history as a triumph of secular enlightenment over vestiges of Old World partnerships of religion, state, and society. That Australia has a rich secular heritage is indisputable, but to draw a sharp distinction between the “secular” and the “religious” is anachronistic and misguided, and any attempt to tell the story of Australia's secular heritage must acknowledge that the “secular” often found its justification flowing from more general religious premises grounded in enlightenment ideals such as rational religion, rational piety, and general Christianity. Indeed, when liberal democracy was emerging in the colonies the “secular” had to be justified in terms acceptable to the public square and these terms were broadly religious. Robert Lowe is an apt case study for divining the nature of the secular in colonial Australia, for his thought and political activity show the subtle and complex way that ideals such as “enlightenment,” “religion,” and “secular” entered into dialogue rather than warfare with one another and contributed to social institutions judged suitable for a fledgling pluralist nation.     

Return of the Whig: Reviewing Historiographies of the Meaning of “Secular” in the Australian Colonial Public Instruction Acts

The term “secular” in the Colonial Australian public instruction acts was always controversial. Recent policy debates seek to draw a connection between its original intent and removing religion from schools, notably Marion Maddox's Taking God to School (2014), and Catherine Byrne's “Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular” (2013). The issue resurfaced recently in a NSW Teachers' Federation Research Paper (Waight, 2022), and in Gross and Rutland's Special Religious Education in Australia and Its Value to Contemporary Society (2021). I propose that while this is a valid public policy issue, any originalist argument actually relies upon a singular historiographical argument, namely a “Whig” historiography. However, across historians the meaning of “secular” has actually been evaluated through four different historiographies: a “Whig” progress narrative; economic materialism; critical theory; and a religious/nationalist approach. Maddox, Byrne and Waight's approaches can be characterised within a “Whig” approach to Australian education history, originally found in “The Melbourne School” of Austin and Gregory, and the textbooks of Barcan. Its revival presents a good opportunity to survey the topic of education historiography, assess the “Whig” argument, and to propose that religious/nationalist historiography provides a more accurate interpretation of the original intent of the term “secular.”     

Freedom,Religion and the Making of the Modern State in Japan, 1868–89

This paper rethinks the article of religious freedom of the Meiji Constitution of 1889 and calls into question the liberalist paradigm employed to understand the Constitution and modern Japanese history. In this liberalist framework, the Constitution manifests the peculiar and authoritarian nature of the pre-war Japanese state. In particular, the 28^th article, which provides for the conditional freedom of religious belief, is seen as no more than a cover for social control by the state. This paper examines the histories of the ideas of religion and freedom, and the religious freedom article, and argues that the most appropriate task is not to measure how much religious freedom the Meiji Constitution failed to guarantee against a de-historicised liberalism, but rather to consider the function of the very inclusion of religious freedom in the Constitution. I argue that the inclusion of religious freedom as a generic type of liberty in the Meiji Constitution was instrumental in the creation of the private modern individual as a subject-citizen. It is through this private individual citizen that the modern state as a public, secular authority was created.     

The Political Theology of The Morpeth Review, 1927–1934

The interwar years saw the initiation of a number of important periodicals that reflected the emerging vitality of public intellectual life in Australia. One such publication was The Morpeth Review, a quarterly that appeared between the years 1927 and 1934. Edited by three Anglican intellectuals — E. H. Burgmann, Roy Lee, and A. P. Elkin — it included contributions from prominent historians, political scientists, anthropologists, cultural critics, and theologians. Though its range of concerns was broad, it was guided by a basic vision of intellectual and social life that aimed at reconciling the conflicting elements of modernity. Such conflicts included the divide between the world of work and the family, the divide between classes, between nations, and between church and state, or more broadly, between the secular and the religious spheres. This article will suggest that in the endeavour to reconcile such competing elements The Morpeth Review expressed a kind of political theology that was modernist in inspiration (welcoming science and the critical consciousness) and drew on several overlapping traditions of thought including liberal Anglicanism, Christian socialism, and British idealism, all of which rejected the modern tendency to compartmentalise life and with it to relegate religion to the private sphere.     

Mission Impossible: "Nonsectarian" Prayer in the Military Chaplaincy

Abstract

Recent media-saturated events such as then-Navy Chaplain Klingenschmitt's hunger strike in front of the White House, an ultimately unsuccessful class-action lawsuit against the Navy that alleged discrimination against evangelical Christians, and formal charges of religious bias at the US Air Force Academy have renewed concerns about the content of chaplain-led public prayers in ostensibly secular contexts. Some have accordingly touted the advantages of offering "nonsectarian" prayer in command-hosted settings, where attendance by service personnel is mandatory in a real or de facto sense. This paper argues that this push toward nonsectarian prayer ultimately does a disservice to the chaplains themselves and the religious communities from whence they come, whether civic prayer is interpreted as an instance of "ceremonial deism" or a rite of civil religion. But the solution it offers is not for public prayers to become more religiously particular, but for military commanders to cease requesting that chaplains lead public prayer of any kind in such settings.     

Public Faith and the Common Good A Radical Messianic Proposal

Abstract

The article inquires into the implications of Christianity not being a religious perspective among others in the contemporary Western debate on religious pluralism. A quick glance at a recent debate in Sweden serves to demonstrate how Christianity, although marginalized in its traditional forms, remains a dominating cultural interpretative scheme that continues to influence the majority’s view on private and public, individual and collective, rational and irrational. Against this background, the author argues, it is imperative that any Christian theologian who engages in the question of religion in the public sphere in the Western world, also must critically confront the question of Christianity’s particular status. Not least in light of contemporary right-wing rhetoric about the West as an exclusively “Christian civilization,” theologians need to reflect on how to avoid articulations of the Christian vision of the common good that manifest themselves at the expense of other religious traditions. The article ends by sketching a possible direction for such reflection.     

Found in Translation: Habermas and Anthropotechnics

Abstract

In his recent work on postsecular societies Jürgen Habermas has stressed the need for a dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens aimed at strengthening social integration and rejuvenating the moral bases of modern political and juridical institutions. This dialogue should focus on the translation of religious traditions into rational, secular forms. In his more recent work on the social function of rituals, however, he rejected the Durkheimian view of public secular rituals as mechanisms for fostering social integration. In this article I discuss Habermas’s early reflections on postsecularism and assess his interpretation of public religious rituals as sources of social integration. I then propose an alternative to his translation proviso whereby religious symbolic content would be translated into behavior-regulating technologies aimed at developing the dispositional resources needed for a continuous postsecular dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens.     

THE LOST ATLANTIS OF OBJECTIVITY: THE REVISIONIST STRUGGLES BETWEEN THE ACADEMIC AND PUBLIC SPHERES1

This article examines the theoretical and methodological implications of the revisionist debates. It focuses on the political, academic, and moral dimensions of the process of rewriting history and its interrelation with the public sphere. The article examines the recent debate in Greece and compares it with case studies of Germany, Spain, Israel, the Soviet Union, and Ireland. It comments on the common elements of these cases and proposes a basic typology of the revisionist debates in terms of similarities and differences. It categorizes the revisionist endeavors into three types: the successful, the failed, and the bewildered.