Secular Religion in Democratic Systems

November 28, 2006 T.S.Khanna on
Secular Religion for Democracy

In primitive societies, autocrats were accepted as a legitimate force by traditions, customs, or habits. In religious societies, political power is legitimized for religious leaders through myths and legends. In democratic societies, the political quest of government, for its legitimacy and stability, must focus on the relationship of power to the citizens’ perception of justice, reason, and morality.

It is relatively simple to identify such relationship in a society with a common culture but it becomes a most complex issue in a secular democracy with diverse religions and cultures.

There seem to be three major sources of influence on human culture; religion, education, and economics. The nations with a single predominant religion can accommodate with relative ease the cultural variations due to different levels of education and economic status of the citizens. However, the cultural variations generated or influenced by diverse religions are hard to compromise. In a secular democracy, it is not easy to visualize and establish a sustainable relationship of power to justice, reason, and morality that may be acceptable to the citizens with diverse religions.

It seems that secular democracies can thrive for a certain period. Beyond that period, suicidal forces develop to cause its breakdown. During the thriving period, the prevailing mindset of the leaders is unfortunately not tuned to identify the growing cells of social cancer. Yet, the best time to get rid of the cancer cells is when one is in the best of health, otherwise.

To continue to thrive, secular democracies need to develop and establish a supportive secular religion. The secular religion may be developed by a compromise of values of the mainstream religions of the nation, essentially ignoring their customs, ceremonies, signs, and symbols. The primary values of religions, namely, belief in God, love for God’s creation, kindness, helping the less fortunate, charity, honesty and integrity, maintenance of peace, pursuit of excellence, and performance of duty, that unite the religions may be emphasized in the proposed secular religion. The auxiliary values that divide religions may be ignored in developing the secular religion.

Once such a religion is established, secular governments may
1. Provide incentives for citizens to adopt the secular religion without having to abandon their respective religions;
2. Make it mandatory for all public officials to adopt the secular religion;
3. Forbid the public display of any sign, symbol, dress, or any activity that may identify one’s religion; and
4. Disallow tax deductibility for religious donations; true spirit of a religion does not thrive or survive on money and those who wish to donate must be willing to do so regardless of the tax benefit.

The proposed secular religion would serve as chemotherapy for the cells of social cancer in secular democracies. The case in point is that of the USA and India, the flagships of secular democracy with many similar problems.