Most of the twentieth century can be seen as a progressive advance for various stripes of political secularism – from the Communist authoritarian to the liberal democratic one. This historical trajectory was complicated by the anti-colonialism of Gandhi and disrupted by the 1979 revolution in Iran which established the Khomeini-led Islamic republic.
In Western Europe, right into the 1990s, and in contrast to India and some Muslim-majority countries for instance, there was a sense across the political spectrum that political secularism was a done deal. It was a non-issue, with perhaps some reaction if some secularists pushed for the historical development to be speeded up or taken too far, like when the Mitterand government in France proposed removing public funding for Catholic schools in the 1980s, or when bishops defend the state link with the Church of England.
Yet, this century is proving to be a time for re-thinking secularism (what some call ‘post-secularism’) across the globe. Different parts of the world have their own re-thinking in process and of course start in quite different places – as this series of blogs will discuss. In the case of Western Europe which I focus on in this piece, the debate has crucially to do with the reality of multiculturalism.
