After writing my previous post, I read Gillan’s excellent post over at the God and Politics blog, which I do commend to you. At the bottom of the article, he linked through to an article on the Theos Think Tank website, written by a Christian barrister, entitled “Is Secular Law possible?” I would encourage anyone who has an interest (either positive or negative) in religion in the public sphere to read it. It’s not a short article but it will be well worth your time.
It basically argues: (1) secularist law – i.e. law which excludes any religious influence – is impossible, but ‘secular’ law (understood correctly) is possible; (2) secular law is only possible because of Christian foundations in distinguishing between law and morality; (3) secular law is imperative, the idea of limited government logically comes from Christian foundations.
In these days of alleged ‘militant secularism’, I think it’s high time that these kind of issues got out into the open and were actually discussed rather than simply being assumed. What kind of secular society do we want? I don’t think we want a secular society which can be used as a weapon against religion. To whet your appetite for the article, I’d like to quote from the first section on morality, which puts rather more eloquently what I have said here before: