Beyond belief
Sir: Tim Farron (‘Church and state’, 25 February) repeats many of the common errors made by those of faith. He starts by equating secularists with atheists, yet they are quite distinct. To be an atheist is simply not to believe in the existence of a God. That’s it. You can be an atheist and almost anything; communist, fascist, socialist, liberal, conservative.
A secularist believes in the separation of church and state, as many people of faith do as well as atheists. This separation is enshrined in the secular US Constitution, in one of the more religious countries in the West. Secularism is actually the only possible guarantor of religious freedom, something Farron says he’s in favour of. Without secularism, religion holds a formal, authoritative role in public life. But they can’t all do that, not least because the major religions are mutually exclusive. If you don’t want secularism, you have to decide which version of which religion shall have a public role, to the necessary exclusion and disadvantage of all the others.
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