1. By way of introducing this theme
I would like first of all to say that the question before
us is undoubtedly a delicate and complex one: how is
it possible to correlate religious experience and secularity?
Is there not perhaps an opposition between these two
different visions of life and the world? At the same
time, we cannot but be aware of the difficulty involved
in providing precise meanings to the terms in question,
that is to say the definition of religion and the meaning
of secularity and secularization. Nonetheless, it seems
to me that religious experience and secularity have much
more in common between them than what appears. Religious
experience has its locus in that in-depth perception
man has of truth and the sense of his being and existing,
of his accomplishments and the global destiny of his
history. A perception of being in the world and in history
that holds a meaning, a truth that does not limit itself
to what can be readily intuited, but urges man, in taking
care of himself, the world and others, to set off, to
go out, called by the Mystery that sustains the reality.
In the original context of religious experience, man
does not fancy knowledge as mere control of what is different,
whose outcome could consist as much in the magical manipulation
of such knowledge as in the declaration of its irrelevance
to his existence. Rather, religious experience enables
an open relationship that gives rise to a
different way of living, since it places man at the very
heart of reality, at a point of observation from which
things themselves appear as j being
sustained by perspectives other than the simple human
logic. Religion, thus, gets involved in the wonderful,
progressive dialogue between those questions and answers
that gives flavour to the day-to-day life, in that project
of salvation inscribed in the heart of every human being,
which finds its initial formulation in the questions
of 'whys'. We read in the Vatican Council II document,
Nostra aetate, no.l: "Men ~i expect from
the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles
of the human condition, which today, even
as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: What
is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What
is morally good, what sin? Whence suffering and what
purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness?
What are death, judgment and retribution after death?
What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery
which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and
where are we going?" Are these not also perhaps
the questions that cultures and philosophies grapple
with?
To what has been said, we may add a note of historical
character. Generally, to Christianity is attributed the
image of a religion of secularization and secularity,
with a threefold underlining: (1) Secularity is a historical
development drawing inspiration
from Christian Biblical reflection; above all because
the Biblical revelation understands God and man as subjects
of a partnership, characterized by the freedom of encounter
and dialogue. (2) Secularization/secularity is a cultural
and anthropological phenomenon triggering a change in
religious experience and its function in relation to
shaping the world and history. (3) Secularity proclaims
the freedom and responsibility of man who, according
to the plan of the creation, is called to take upon himself
the responsibility of his choices. In this sense, secularity
appears as universal cipher of human existence. These
presuppositions lead to the conclusion that secularization/secularity
represents a hermeneutical principle for interpreting
and understanding the meaning of Christian religion.
The outline presented above is to some extent corroborated
by a recent work by the distinguished scholar of dialogue
between Christians and Hindus, Raymond Panikkar, La
realtà cosmoteandrica. Dio-uomo-mondo (Cosmotheandric
Reality: God-Man-World), Milano 2004.
Here the author emphasizes the need to distinguish
between secularization, secularism and secularity for
understanding the religious experience in life and
in culture. The three terms — God-Man-World --
are not equivalent, but they express different interpretative
modalities with regard to the meaning of religion.
For this reason, a distinction becomes necessary, which
the author himself subdivides in the following manner.
a)
Secularization is the process whereby some areas of
society and culture become
divested of influence by religious symbols and institutions.
Such a process appears
to marginalize the importance of religious experience,
which has to remain a private
and individual affair, while stressing at the same
time its importance in the search for
meaning from the part of individuals. What is decisive
is the fact that religion should
not become a hindrance to the free expressions and
emancipation of a culture and
society. These demands have given rise to a particular
situation on the one hand and
this is the thesis of much of the sociology of religion
: religiosity seems irrelevant to
the social spheres and cultural decisions especially
of Europe and North America, as
is shown also by the growth of religious indifference;
on the other hand, one notices a
strong revival in the demand for religion, its functional
deployment for the well-
being of man, to such a degree that an author like
P. Berger would speak of a "de-
secularization", meaning to say a public rehabilitation
of religious experience.
b)
Secularism appears, instead,
as an ideology that underpins the merely empirical
character of everything that exists, as it leaves
no scope for transcendence which is
considered simply as an illusion created by the mind.
The supernatural or the super-
rational world is anything but real; because this
world only is real. Saeculum is all
that really there is. It is not just accidental that
secularism has been one of the obvious
motivating force behind a philosophical trend that
is intent on proclaiming the
uselessness and the inexistency of the divine,
and confining everything to man. It is the human
being, according to philosopher L. Feuerbach, the
beginning, the centre and the end of religion.
There is no need to postulate beyond so as to satisfy
the human need to provide meaning to his life and
search for happiness. The divine or the chance
and fortune come to the same and change little
in relation to the fact of the transitoriness of
life, which is meant to end with death. What is
important is to be able to go through the happenings
of life with dignity and equilibrium. In the final
analysis, one can live well even without the hypothesis
of the existence of a God.
c) Secularity represents the view that the world and
life belong to the ultimate sphere of reality; that they
represent, in other words, a stage subordinate to Being. "Secularity",
writes Panikkar, "is neither dualistic nor monistic,
but implies a vision of the real that is advaita or non-dualistic,
which insists upon the ultimate importance of the secular
dimension of reality, often forgotten by many a religion" (p.
131). One of the decisive consequences is the constitutive
relationship between God and the world, in the sense
that God is for the world just as the world is of God
and for God. In this perspective, Secularity represents
a relative novelty in the life of man and his culture.
It manifests a particular experience of time, of interrelations,
of ethics. To deny to secularity its real and structural
character means to degrade life to a simple game deprived
of dignity or importance. At the same time, the reduction
of all reality solely to secular dimension carries the
danger of suffocating life, depriving it of its feature
of freedom and openness to the absolute. Is it not perhaps
because of our inability to work out a synthesis between
the sacred and the secular that we have the crisis that
is taking hold of our present-day history, above all
in the form of fundamendalisms which put forward anew
a dualism in life and culture?
In any case, even though
secularity is a fundamentally Western phenomenon, today
it appears more than ever as a transcultural fact peculiar
to our age. Panikkar observes that "a special mention is deserved by the modern
Indian use of the word 'secular', which has found its way
into its Constitution. By 'secular State' is meant a State
that is neither a 'theocracy' nor an atheistic State, but
a government that is tolerant of every religion and is
respectful of the freedom of cult without favouring any
one religious institution over another" (pp. 131-132).
(all text is available
in pdf)
|
