It is by means of this thinking â?? and not without irony â?? that we arrive at secularism and the concept of the secular public square. The word â??secularâ??, originally from a Latin word meaning â??generationâ?? or â??ageâ?? was adopted in early Christian writings to mean â??this ageâ?? or, more precisely, â??confined to this present age that is passing awayâ??. The secular was Christianityâ??s gift to the world, denoting a public space in which authorities should be respected but could legitimately be challenged and could never accord to themselves absolute or ultimate significance.
This was something the early Church understood well. In Peterâ??s letter to Christians scattered around the eastern Mediterranean, he told them they were â??a people belonging to Godâ??, but that didnâ??t mean they owed nothing to the earthly rulers under whom they lived. On the contrary, they were to â??submit â?¦ to every authority instituted among men: whether â?¦ king â?¦ or â?¦ governors, who â?¦ punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.â?? (1 Peter 2.13-14) But this, in turn, does not mean that such kings and governors are, by definition, right, and Peter proceeds to advise his readers what they should do when injustice is done. Similarly, the anonymous second-century writer of the Letter to Diognetus, explains to his reader: Though [Christians] are residents at home in their own countries, their behaviour there is more like that of transients; they take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to anything and everything as if they were aliens â?¦ their days are passed on earth, but their citizenship is above in the heavens. They obey the prescribed laws, but in their own private lives they transcend the laws. The Old Testamentâ??s nervousness about a single individual mediating Godâ??s rule for the people crystalises into the Christian denial that any particular political order is sacred, and, in doing so, produces the concept of a secular public square of which we are inheritors.
But we are only inheritors of it, as Rowan Williams has argued, because we are inheritors of the Judaeo-Christian intellectual foundations on which it is built. A belief in the provisionality and impermanence of political power, which forms the basis of political liberalism, is Christendomâ??s legacy to the modern world. Accordingly:
Western modernity and liberalism are at risk when they refuse to recognise that they are the way they are because of the presence in their midst of that partner and critic which speaks of â??alternative citizenshipâ?? â?? the Christian community â?¦ the distinctively European style of political argument and debate is made possible by the Churchâ??s persistent witness to the fact that states do not have ultimate religious claims on their citizens. Societies that forget this seminal Christian vision of â??dual citizenshipâ?? stumble towards absolutism, (Archbishop Rowan Williams)
either in the form of religious theocracy or state totalitarianism, in such a way as dehumanises its own people. This is an error into which theophobic secularism can fall.
God and Caesar
When the Church is regarded as an enemy to be overcome or a private body that must be resolutely excluded from public debate, liberal modernity turns itself into a fixed and absolute thing, another pseudo-religion, in fact â?¦
Unless the liberal state is engaged in a continuing dialogue with the religious community, it loses its essential liberalism. It becomes simply dogmatically secularâ?¦ (Archbishop Rowan Williams)
By concluding in this way we have consciously moved from a negative argument â?? defending Christianity against the largely baseless accusation that it is an inherently private phenomenon â?? towards a positive one â?? that the secular public square, properly understood, is a Christian legacy and one that requires an ongoing Christian presence to remain true to itself.
