Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | A horrifying hypothesis: "t is, in secular France, a heretical notion indeed, that the grand founding ideals of the nation are now obstructing its progress, blinding it to its biggest problems, preventing it from addressing its most critical issues"
An interesting article which I would say bears out my experience of having worked as an officially religious personage in a secular organisation; secular in a way very similar to France vis-a-vis the human person. This article shows up the the achilles heel of secularism: that it is itself an idealogical construction which is intolerant of alternatives and so capable of producing what it abhors. I don't hink that there is an easy solution but I am convinced that hard secualrism such as institutionalized in France at gstate-level, is not a solution.
In chaplaincy it became clear that for an institution to ban religion is to produce a situation where people feel that they are discriminated against and that their concerns are not taken seriously. Thus undermining stated goals of equality, celebrating diversity etc. Bradford University should be credited with drawing back from the brink and starting on a path to soft secularsim; recognizing religion as a factor in people's self-identity and socially constructed identity and that it is also something that informs them as agents within public space and so has to be taken account of even if not allowed to be imposed on others or necessarily to have the casting vote.
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