THE RULE OF LAW AND THE CHALLENGE OF PLURALISM - 5

[Abstaract / Preamble ]    [ Conception and Legitimisation of Power ]   [ Source, Nature and Scope of Law]    [ Law and Morality ]   [Secularism the Solution? ]   [ Option of Pluralism ]   [ Challenge of Pluralism / Conclusion ]    Is Secularism a Solution? Nigerian society is an amalgam of Christians, Muslims and Animists and given the plurality of world-views, beliefs and cultures many have often suggested secularism as a framework of our coexistence. The quest for justice and the enthronement of the rule of law is something that all groups will have no difficulty in agreeing. They may not, however, agree on the nature, content and scope of the law, as has been amply demonstrated. Is secularism therefore a solution? What exactly is secularism? What has it to offer? Secularism, as has been alluded earlier, is one of those waves of European thoughts triggered by the renaissance. Renaissance itself represented the culmination of the infusion of thoughts and ideas into Christian Europe. The ideas of the renaissance appeared to have taken on too fast for the Christian scholars to cope. In the words of Vergote, “Too closed in on themselves and too cut off from the new scientific and philosophical culture they could not distinguish what was legitimate in the new ideas and they advanced many condemnations which they later retracted. Their authoritarian attachment to old forms of power can be criticised. We should recognize that the task was not easy for religion in the West. So many new ideas so profoundly shook the ways of thinking that the religious authorities were not successful in harmonising them with the facts of faith. For the classical Christian understanding, all authority emanates from God; the democratic understanding affirms that power comes from the people. The Bible recounts the individual creation of man by God; evolution defends the conviction that man is the product of the creation of life. The new historical criticism was applied to the sacred texts just as to the secular documents of antiquity, and it showed that these texts abounded in mythological representations ... how then could it be maintained that these texts were divinely inspired? There was no need to draw up a list of the problems ... They were not able to respond adequately to the challenge of the new civilization.” (23)This rather long quote was deliberate, for it is necessary to capture the context within which secularism developed and to dismiss the popular idea among both Christians and Muslims that Christianity is inherently secular. Rather Christianity, unable to stand up to secular forces capitulated. In other words having been unable to convert the world it converted to the world and some of its later-day scholars tried to rationalise this conversion. The term ‘secularism’ was itself developed first in 1854 and later popularised by the two German sociologist of religion, Marx Weber and Ersnt Troeltsch. But it never was clear what exactly secularism was suppose to mean. For even after conquering Christianity it continued to be hunted by its ghost. As Vergote explained, “Thus there is a great ambiguity in the idea of secularisation. In the first place it means access to the autonomy of the cultural entities which make up the secular world. In the second place, it implies for certain people the exclusion of all relationship with God. The variety of the relations of different European states to religion reflects the different modalities of secularization. In certain democratic states the Protestant religion remains the state religion, while in the whole social, political, cultural and scientific domain is in reality completely autonomous with regard to religion. ... Only Marxist states have officially adopted a comprehensive ideology of secularisation and try to impose it by education and by force.” (24) The situation in the United States of America is not any clearer. For as Dr. Kenneth Wald, a Professor of political science and an author of a seminal work on religion and politics in the United States, had occasion to say in response to a question, “The constitution did clearly establish a secular state or a secular government, but in doing so there was no intent to prevent religion from having an influence in society broadly, and in politics specifically. There were religious ideas that had a strong influence on the constitution itself, and the nature of the political system that was created. Religious values have been a very powerful influence for a variety of movements, including those to abolish slavery, and to promote civil rights. And religious institutions remain important places were people learn civic norms. So there is no attempt - and it really would have been impossible - to rule religion off the political agenda. All the constitution attempted to do was to say that the state as a government does not take any particular position with regard to religious questions or religious issues.” (25) In the light of this confusion, what would be the status of states like Britain where the monarch is officially the head of the Church of England? But what did it offer Europe? Certainly democracy and scientific progress, but at what price? Europeans at least are no longer in doubt about the enormous problems that their romance with secularism has generated. The post-modern society has long lost faith with promises of modernism which secularism once championed. “The modern era”, Vergote observed, “had put its enthusiastic hopes in the mastery of nature and society. For more than two centuries man believed that the continued perfecting of rationality would have as result the unceasing growth of his power and, consequently, an increase in well-being and happiness, freedom and equality among people. Now, not only has he experienced the limits of his power, but he has discovered that the rational and technological civilisation creates new problems and that it endangers the balance between man and nature, individual and society. The deception is all the more painful because the progressivist had exalted people’s desires and confidence.” (26) The failures of the secular state are all too glaring, at least, to those living in them. Newbigin has put it strongly, though not in so many words when he said, “If there were no contemporary challenge from Islam, Christians would still have to face up to the manifest failures of the liberal secular state. We should be grateful that the powerful challenge of Islam makes it impossible to evade the issue.” (27) How therefore does secularism help our heterogeneity and plurality in Nigeria? It is difficult to see how. What is certainly not difficult to see, however, is the fact that secularism is patently Euro-Christian, a product of Europe’s own experience with Christianity, and is therefore not universal. The idea of secularism itself  is far from clear and it would be difficult to arrive at a consensus as to what it exactly entails. The consequences on Europe, which embraced it whole-heartedly, is not encouraging either. The assumption that secularism is neutral is clearly incorrect. What more, secularism is intolerant of other, especially non-Christian, faiths. Do we need any more evidence than Bosnia?