Same rights for everybody? On secularism,modest establishment and same-sex marriage

Abstract

This article seeks to map the current discussion of secularism and propose two conceptual expansions. The first is to include modest establishment in a framework of secularism defendable by political liberalism, and the second is to consider secularism in close connection to a theory of peoplehood. This understanding is illustrated by a reconstruction of Danish secularism and a recent case of Danish legislation allowing same-sex church marriage. Here, attention will be given to how questions of basic liberal principles in relation to religion spilled over into questions of peoplehood.

Keywords

Secularism Denmark same-sex marriage equality modest establishment state and church peoplehood political identity

Introduction

One of the tensions stemming from cultural and ethnic pluralization of European societies is religious minorities calling for equal recognition and rights. The challenge is that present secularism in such countries traditionally targeted the relation between the majority religion and the state. Now, the same doctrine is required to handle a wide variety of new connections between the state and newer religious communities. As I will argue throughout the article, secularism relates not only to public religion but also to political identity. In this way, conceptualizing and analyzing a country's doctrine of separation of religion and politics pertains to the political status of both majority and minority groups in society.

A case in point: After heated debates in June 2012, the Danish parliament passed an amended marriage act to allow for same-sex marriage on equal terms with heterosexual couples.¹ Compared to other countries with similar legislation the 2012 amendment did not stand out in particular. What made the Danish case controversial was that the 2012 amendment applied not only to civil marriage but also to marriage in the Evangelical Lutheran Church—formally the established national church, Folkekirken. It appeared to be a contradiction: arguably, one of the most central boundaries in liberal democracies, the one separating state and church, was hereby transgressed with reference to another central liberal principle, the one ensuring equal rights for all citizens. In this way, the political decision to legalize same-sex marriages spilled over into fundamental questions of state regulation of religion, Danish peoplehood and “otherness.”

The discussion by extension became part of a larger struggle to either retain or redefine the narrative of the Danish people. In this connection, Danish religious minorities in general have been mostly silent in relation to their formally unequal status compared to the Folkekirke and in particular in relation to the debate on same-sex marriages. The reason might be that their religious freedom is not threatened (e.g. that they are not forced to marry homosexual couples by the state). One conclusion in this article is that, as equal citizens, they should care: As long as most parliamentarians assume a significant sociological overlap between the members of the Folkekirke and the Danish people, a democratic conversation on the boundaries of the political community will continue to keep out religious minorities.

However, the primary aim of this article is not to analyze Danish politics per se but to make a general argument about the concept of secularism. The Danish case tells the story of one kind of ideal-typical secularism often overlooked in the general literature on the topic. Thus, the question guiding this article is: How can we think of a kind of secularism within a framework of established religion, justifiable from the perspective of political liberalism?² As such, this discussion should be of relevance for several European countries displaying similar properties and for reflections on religion and politics more generally.

For this purpose, I propose two conceptual expansions to the concept of secularism taking a Rawlsian perspective as the point of departure. The first is that a modest kind of established religion can be compatible with secularism justified within political liberalism. This builds on the premise that Rawlsian constraints on public reason are indeterminate when it comes to justifying the concrete institutional arrangement of state and public religion affairs. The second expansion embraces a deeper integration of separation doctrines into a theory of peoplehood. It is argued that we would expect to see no doctrine of separating religion and politics without a concomitant claim to political unity of a community that would be endangered without such separation.³ Through the article, I will attempt to show why these expansions are necessary in order to approximate a more nuanced categorization of secularism sensitive to political context.⁴

The article proceeds as follows. The next section briefly presents the political controversy of the same-sex legislation so as to draw attention to the main principles of what we might call Danish secularism, which shares certain features of one type of theoretical secularism called “modest establishment.” Next, I try to put this in a theoretical perspective through a mapping of the discussion on secularism structured by the two conceptual expansions. The final section then sets out to illustrate these points by reconstructing the principles of the Danish church–state regime and identify two distinct variants of secularism stemming from this regime. To be sure, secularism can be a useful analytical concept, but not just any kind of secularism for any kind of political context.

“… The two flags suit one another!”—Establishment and marriage in Denmark

The very first same-sex church marriage took place in Copenhagen on a symbolically charged national flag day, Valdemarsdag. The date is 15 June and marks the legend of the Danish flag, Dannebrog, which allegedly fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse on 15 June 1219 in Estonia. According to legend, it was taken as a sign from God to King Valdemar that their national cause was indeed divine, since the Danes left the battlefield victorious.⁵ Standing in front of the church with the newlywed couple surrounded by cameras, Pastor Michael Hemmingsen stated to the press:

It was very touching to be part of. Today we celebrate Valdemarsdag, where Dannebrog fell from the sky. Similarly, today a big spectacular rainbow colored flag fell from the sky, and let me say: the two flags suit one another! (Østergård, 2012)⁶

Besides the pastor's obvious thrill that something utterly Danish (the flag, the church, the day), can be welcoming to homosexuality, the connection between the legend of Dannebrog and a politicized religious act also appears clearly in this situation. It seemed natural for the pastor to proclaim that a ceremony of the Folkekirke is of relevance for the whole nation. Why is that? Before approaching this question, let us for a moment look at the particular context for the process leading up to this day.

Since the founding of the new democratic constitutional monarchy of Denmark in 1849, the Folkekirke has been formally tied to the state. In spite of the intentions of the founding constitutional meeting, the Folkekirke never established its own constitution and thus its autonomy from the state. To this day, the state maintains a pre-constitutional right to intervene, even in the inner affairs of the Folkekirke, while other religious communities are mostly left untouched. A lack of governing laws for the Folkekirke makes the head of the church today, de facto, the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs and the legislative body of the church is de facto the Parliament of Denmark. Thus, in this policy area, the state takes a rather peculiar role integrating an old, pre-constitutional, monarchist régime with liberal democratic government.

This was the context of the amended marriage act, which concerned the concept of marriage in general pertaining to both civil marriage and marriage in the Folkekirke (though formally to all other religious communities). Consider the following two very different perspectives taken from the debate on same-sex marriage in the Folkekirke leading up to the passing of the amendment. In a sense, they are political statements just as predictable as they are controversial.

With homosexual marriage in the church we are able to take yet another step towards a society, which fully accept the equal status of individuals—no matter who you are or who you love. (Minister for Gender Equality and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Manu Sareen, 2011a)

The arrangement between the Parliament and the Folkekirke was built on mutual respect and a clear understanding of who is master in which house. This understanding has now been abandoned by the new government. (Per Ørum Jørgensen, Christian Democrats, 2011)

The two quotes are representative of the positions taken in the debate. Per Ørum Jørgensen is one of the more moderate voices within the politically right-wing, conservative landscape. He essentially represents a value-conservative fraction in Danish politics who mainly regarded the case as a question of how the relationship between state and church ought to be regulated.

Of course this stands in contrast to the proponents of the new amendment who primarily considered it a matter of expanding equal rights for all citizens. Manu Sareen's own center-left political party, De Radikale, has, together with other center-left parties, attempted to promote such a political agenda.

Thus, the amendment was predictable in the sense that amendments to the existing law on marriage in the Folkekirke have been discussed with varying strength the last three decades. And as the coalition agreement of Sareen's government stated: “The government intends to give all members of the Danish Folkekirke the opportunity to get married in the church—regardless of their sexual orientation. The government will therefore repeal the prohibition on marriage of homosexual couples in the Folkekirke …” (Statsministeriet, 2011: 65).⁷

However, if the draft amendment was predictable, it was politically controversial in equal amounts: it dealt with the question of homosexuality in relation not only civil marriage but to Folkekirke's own interpretation of Lutheran tradition and culture. Even though marriage does not adopt a sacramental status in Evangelical Lutheran theology as it does in e.g. Catholicism, the case of same-sex marriage is indeed a delicate matter and has been subject to intense theological debates for more than a century.

Nevertheless, because of the institutional arrangement of the established church, the central objection in the debate on same-sex marriage was not a normative–conservative defense of the traditional family structure as we have seen in France or the United States, but it was whether the state was actually intervening in “the internal affairs” of the church.⁸ Of course, this question might depend on whether one considers the institution of marriage to be an internal affair for the church.

The reason that the separation question between the Folkekirke and the state is a particularly delicate matter is because constitutional law does not formally settle the boundaries between the established church and the state. To manage the privileged position of the Folkekirke, customary practices are instead evoked, but they sometimes conflict. On the one hand, according to basic liberal principles of religious freedom, there has been a customary practice of state non-intervention in the Folkekirke ever since the first democratic constitution in 1849. On the other hand, an extra-constitutional practice of supreme authority of the state over the established church can technically still be introduced (though rarely and with caution).⁹ Thus, in the draft amendment, we saw this logic affirmed: “the competence to enforce judicial regulation of affairs, which are defined as internal ecclesiastical rest with the Minister for Gender Equality and Ecclesiastical Affairs.” (Folketinget, 2012a: 3).

By legally defining marriage as the same type of living arrangement officiated by the identical rituals (with the exception that a pastors can refuse to participate in case of same-gender marriages for reasons of conscience), the government was thus accused of de facto acting as a supreme authority with direct consequences for the Folkekirke's ecclesiological self-understanding: “The parliament makes promises on the behalf of the Church. The majority act as an archbishop, or even as a pope for the Folkekirke” as one of the 10 bishops complained in a national newspaper (Rehling, 2012). And the spokesperson for the Conservative People's Party asserted, “It worries me that politicians who normally support a separation of the church and state are beginning to interfere in the internal affairs of the church so much as they do” (Clausen, 2013).

To these objections, Sareen maintained that it was “the right of the state to legally define living arrangements,” and what they proposed was to call it marriage in general regardless of homosexual or heterosexual orientation (Schnabel, 2011). Along with the government, they simply wanted to get rid of the distinction between registered partnership and marriage.

At this point, we can appreciate, that Minister of Gender Equality and Ecclesial Affairs, Manu Sareen's draft amendment was not only predictable and controversial, but it appeared to contradict the government's own agenda.

On the one hand, the coalition government that Sareen represents consists of parties that all strongly opposed the former center-right government's tight leash on the Folkekirke, and its unwillingness to equalize other religious communities with the Folkekirke. On the other hand, the intention to supplement the existing marriage ritual with a new one was framed as a matter of not discriminating against citizens on the grounds of self-ascribed sexual orientation. But this framing was only possible because Sareen considered the Folkekirke as falling under the responsibility of the state: the state legislates on its behalf and thus falls under the same standards of rights and duties as any other public institution. That the church is subject to state policies was logical for Sareen:

… I am content that the Danish Folkekirke now welcomes the whole nation [hele folket] … It is both a human right to practice one's religion and to be free from discrimination due to one's sexuality. These rights are now also granted to the homosexual members of the Folkekirke. (Sareen, 2011b)

Thus, according to Sareen, the state not only held the right to enforce the amendment on the Folkekirke; they responded to a moral duty to do so to ensure human rights in the national church and thus for the whole nation.

To sum up, the case analyzed here represents an example of a government stepping beyond what can be justified from the point of political liberalism. The apparent contradiction was that the government ended up promoting gender equality at the expense of the Folkekirke's autonomy and the neutrality of the state. This was exactly what they were criticized for.

However, to better understand this contradiction, we will have to consider how we can think conceptually about such a doctrine with established religion—a question to which I now turn.

Mapping secularism

In this discussion, I lean on Laborde's recent discussion on political liberalism. Rawls asked, “How is it possible for citizens of faith to be wholehearted members of a democratic society who endorse society's intrinsic political ideals and values …?” (Rawls, 1997: 781). To this, Laborde points out that the demands of liberal justice are inconclusive on whether the liberal state should “be a state of separation (of state and religion) or of recognition and establishment (of religion by the state)?” (Laborde, 2013: 67). What are these demands? Rawls captures these in the proviso of political liberalism pertaining to political and social institutions: regardless of one's actual background reasons (e.g. religious), political arguments should be translatable into public reasons able to “be affirmed by all free and equal citizens, given the fact of reasonable pluralism” (Rawls, 1997: 776, 795). But though Rawls believes that the principle of separation of church and state supports the political values of such a liberal state (Rawls, 1997: 795), in practice it is still not clear what exactly separation entails. Does the proviso require the liberal state to be impartial toward all religious communities or the state to take a complete hands-off approach to religion per se. As Laborde argues, depending on different possible interpretations of the proviso, both separation and establishment can be criticized for not meeting the requirements of public reason (i.e. being only justifiable for non-public, religious or secularist reasons). At the same time, Laborde argues that, within Rawlsian requirements of political liberalism, it is possible to provide political reasons for both institutional arrangements in some moderate form (Laborde, 2013: 82).¹⁰

Following Laborde's discussion of Rawlsian political liberalism, I ask: How we can think conceptually about Danish and similar separation doctrines with established religion? To arrive at this, we will first have to revisit the discussion on secularism in the next section. Here, I will try to reconstruct the concept and position it in relation to other ideal-typical secularisms.

A concept of secularism

In the literature on secularism, there has been an increasing sense that the premises on which secularism once was built no longer hold the same legitimacy. A fairly prevalent version of this is represented by William E. Connolly who argued that “the historical modus vivendi of secularism” which sought to “chasten religious dogmatism and intolerance” today has a blind spot: “a single, authoritative basis of public reason and/or public ethics that governs all reasonable citizens regardless of ‘personal’ or ‘private’ faith” does not honor the present need for “a vibrant public pluralism” containing both religious and irreligious perspectives (Connolly, 1999: 4–6). I believe this perception of legitimacy-in-crisis relating to secularism rests first on the notion of the cultural and religious composition of populations getting still more heterogeneous and thus not supporting one, but diverse and multiple comprehensive, doctrines. This overlaps with the second notion, which is that the social imaginary supported by secularism has changed—a notion perhaps best captured by Charles Taylor.¹¹ He points out that the conditions under which modern separation doctrines function have changed considerably from what he termed a Durkheimian imaginary (i.e. a “sacralizing” societal order, or later, building a modern political identify around a religious core) to a post-Durkheimian one today. This latter supports what Taylor famously has called the “immanent frame” which potentially fosters a deep plurality of ways of life exacting a social moral order beyond the old dichotomy of religion/politics (Taylor, 2007: especially Part IV).

The resulting crisis of legitimacy is thus not of a legal kind (a lack of harmony between law and separation doctrine), but one related to the democratic regulation in a society of late modern social imaginaries (Redhead, 2006: 642; Taylor, 2007: 445). Culturally fragmented populations, which secularism regulates as a whole, have changed to such a degree today that it is unclear which kind of values secularism promotes, and for whom.

If we accept this diagnosis of secularism today (which I see no reason not to), we might also agree that any discussion on secularism today must begin with the question posed by the Indian political theorist Rajeev Bhargava (1998, 2009): if the very foundation on which secularism is supposed to build is corroding, should we then seek alternatives to secularism or alternative conceptions of secularism?

I believe the concept of secularism is still a useful concept in the study of politics, not only as a descriptive concept of formal institutions, but in addition, as an expression of political thinking and practice serving a particular function (to separate religion and politics). In this formulation, I am drawing on Michael Freeden and his notion of “conceptual morphology” (Freeden, 1996). Secularism can be treated as an analytical tool to identify a particular kind of political mechanism—to exercise ideological power through political language. The version of secularism that comes to dominate in a given political context may change over time and competing doctrines are constantly challenging the status quo.¹²

In the following, I suggest two conceptual expansions to the authoritative story of contextualized secularisms. The modest hope for this article is to contribute to a move toward an even more nuanced and precise analytical concept of comparative secularisms.

First expansion: Modest establishment

Even though several analysts consider secularism in the case of a state with established religion, calling these arrangements forms of secularism might be seen as a rather controversial claim (e.g. Berg-Sørensen, 2013; Dabelsteen, 2012; Modood, 2013; Mouritzen, 2006; see also note 3). If we go back to Bhargava's approach to secularism, he, in fact, rejects the idea of states with established religion as being secular, distinguishing between theocratic, established and secular states (2006: 641).¹³ He argues that we should think of a kind of moderate secular state not based on absolute separation (which he objects to) but on the before-mentioned contextual secularism “… that meets the secularist objection to non-secular states, and the religious objections to some forms of secularism” (Bhargava, 2006: 646) through the notion of principled distance, to which I will return below.

Two questions should be raised at this point. First, it is not clear why a formal connection between religious communities and the state should result in compromising disconnection at the level of laws and public policies. For example, countries like Norway, England, Denmark, Finland and others, in general do not have religious laws, but they are rather secular and democratic (for England, see Woodhead, 2013; for Nordic countries, see Christoffersen, 2010a: 193–196). It is not entirely obvious why Bhargava draws the line against establishment of religion. Especially considering his central argument of opening up the concept of separation to two meanings: either as exclusion of religion, or separation as a boundary or “principled distance.” Principled distance as the guiding principle for contextual secularism is that the state acts in a non-sectarian way which best promotes “religious liberty and equality of citizenship” (Bhargava, 1998: 515). But it seems to me, that looking at democracy in Western Europe the lesson “… lies not in the need for a ‘wall of separation’ between church and state but in the constant political construction and reconstruction of the ‘twin tolerations’,” as Stephan has pointed out (2000: 41). If the principle of mutual respect between the church and the state—in order to promote acceptable religious liberty and equality—appears to be the main concern for Bhargava's principled distance, why should we assume an a priori institutional arrangement of separation?

This leads to the second question, which pertains to the level of ends. Is establishment of religion compatible with some account of liberal democracy where the state itself is supposed to be secular?

In a recent article, Cécile Laborde (2013) offers a helpful ideal–typical categorization of state-religion regimes ranging from militant separation, over-modest separation and modest establishment to full establishment. Through a reconstructed Rawlsian liberal theory of justice, she argues that both modest separation and modest establishment can be, “… compatible with the full exercise of religious rights by all citizens” (Laborde, 2013: 81). From this perspective, some version of establishment of religion can be justified: if it is but symbolic or non-coercive, it can be considered a non-justice-infringing case possible within the realm of political liberalism—that is, not undermining fundamental principles like freedom of conscience or equality between citizens (see also note 3). The institutional set-up of moderate establishment might not be incompatible with the idea of a Rawlsian “overlapping consensus,” since it stresses the value of neutrality of grounds in public reason (not of conscience).¹⁴ According to Laborde's reconstruction of Rawlsian public reason, the kinds of demands the public sphere is subjected to are indeterminate about non-justice-infringing religious symbols such as modest establishment (Laborde, 2013: 80).

Of course, even though secularism and liberalism are highly aligned, some forms of secularism cannot be justified by liberal political arguments. Think here of Laborde's “militant” secularism (2013: 68) or Bhargava's “amoral secular states” (2006: 642; see also Bader, 2007: 97). Similarly, some forms of liberalism are not necessarily secular (Connolly, 1999: 10). With Laborde, I try to make the point that modest establishment is one out of several formations of secularism possible within a liberal framework of justice. Building on her reconstruction of political liberalism, even Bhargava's pragmatic Dworkinian notion of “treating everyone as equals” rather than equal treatment (Dworkin, 1978 quoted in Bhargava, 2006: 649)¹⁵ evoking an ethos of the secular republic to protect equal citizenship, does not in itself appear to conflict with a moderate version of establishment.

This ends up in the illustration in Figure 1, which contains two dimensions. One horizontal on the kind of separation the doctrine is based on, and one vertical on the kind of political identity formation connected to the separation.

Figure 1.

Secularism between separation and peoplehood—an ideal-typical model.

Bhargava operates with both ethical and political secularism and, as far as I can see, only political secularism is compatible with political liberalism. Figure 1 thus exhibits forms of secularism compatible with basic (Rawlsian) demands of political liberalism. Bhargava distinguishes between three types of political secularism. The first two types are based on separation-as-exclusion (Bhargava, 1998: 493): one he terms “hyper-substantive” secularism (1), a strict enlightenment-inspired doctrine which is “comprehensive, universally applicable, authoritative and final” (Bhargava, 1998: 514), and the other “ultra-procedural” secularism (3), a doctrine “suspicious of all ultimate ideals … to disengage ourselves from all substantive procedures, possessing absolute priority over all substantive values” (Bhargava, 1998: 514). He then points to another logic of separation, that of separation-as-principled distance in which his preferred contextual secularism (4) is positioned. Inspired by Laborde's reading of Rawls' political liberalism, I suggest we can imagine one further type of separation-as-principled, that of modest establishment (2) and represents the first expansion. Modest establishment and contextual secularism are both disconnected at the level of policy, law and institutions, but also do not share ends with the given religious communities. If a state shares its end with the established or any other religious community, indeed it would be hard to call it secular. But what makes them different in particular is the kind of peoplehood supported by separation as principled distance. I discuss this in the next section as the second expansion. We can thus understand the four ideal–typical secularisms as four possible ways within the framework of political liberalism to enforce the distinctiveness and the worth of a political community in relation to religion in the public sphere.

One main point of Figure 1 is to emphasize that the “question about the kind and degree of equality under a given institutional regime of state–church relationships is different from the question about the concrete institutional forms of such relationships” (Lægaard, 2008: 164). Not at least in relation to religion: What if the most relevant challenge to “a fair distribution of more intangible forms of social recognition” (Laborde, 2013: 86) in practice is to be found at the institutional level in, say, Denmark, while it is to be found at the discursive level in the United States? To be more specific, in countries with symbolic modest establishment, we often see a defense for the symbolic establishment for reasons of peoplehood and not out of religious reasons (which is rare in the fairly secularized political debates there). In contrast, religious reasoning often permeates US political debates, but they nonetheless strongly observe state neutrality toward religion (e.g. Modood, 2013: 178; Smith, 2012).

As Taylor has claimed, “American secularists often confuse total separation of church and state from that of religion and state” (Taylor, 2009: 1149). What if secular state institutions supported, for whatever comprehensive reasons, can be as alienating to its citizens in actual politics (because of discursive dominance of one or few comprehensive views constituting the institutions) as a symbolic non-coercive state officially recognizing religion? Far from being able to satisfyingly settle this question here, I do want to suggest that one possible approach could be to consider the politics of peoplehood as one additional category of the concept.

Second expansion: Peoplehood

An additional difference in Figure 1 on the vertical side is that ultra-procedural and contextual secularism share a consensus on the proper church–state arrangement based on what, in short, can be termed universalistic peoplehood, while hyper-substantive and modest establishment secularism share a rather strong (or particularistic) notion of political community (I will expand on this below). The difference between the two sides designate whether the rights and duties derived from political identity find their source from particularistic themes of peoplehood or whether they spring from common, universalistic standards indifferent to particularistic grounds.

This is the second suggested conceptual expansion of secularism: to consider more directly the question of which kind of political community, the given type of separation evokes. Admittedly, various thinkers have been concerned with the connection between the development of secular doctrines and the mobilization of modern political identity (e.g. see Asad, 2003: 181–202; Bhargava, 1998: 508–511; Connolly, 1999: 73–96; Taylor, 1998: 38–48, 2007: 445–459). But it seems to me that understanding how secular institutions and their underlying political principles are in practice “translated” to correspond to or even affirm the inevitable narrative of belonging to a particular people as part of the concept of secularism would contribute to a better understanding of current doctrines of secularism.

Before proceeding, I will have to qualify what I mean by integrating secularism and peoplehood conceptually from an interpretive, “Freedenian” perspective.

First, at a conceptual level, I conceive peoplehood as being part of the concept of secularism. I deliberately do not mean to make the (different) claim of secularism being an explanation for a certain mechanism for creating a people. Let me briefly expand on this point.

While I propose that the concept of secularism implies certain kinds of peoplehood to be normatively appropriate, this does not exclude the possibility that secularism also partially explains the kind of peoplehood observed empirically. My emphasis is not only on peoplehood as an empirical phenomenon by which political principles are conditioned, but also on peoplehood as a certain political idea in line with liberty or democracy. As such, people is a category along with a particular range of other categories which help secularism become not just an abstract, vacuous concept of separation. However, that the notion of a people exists as part of secularism does not exclude that it also finds simultaneous application ‘outside’—that is, in the concept's idea-environment as its explanation. This assumption that ‘political concepts do not relate to each other entirely by negation’ (Freeden, 1996: 67) allows me to assert that while ‘people’ in much political theory is considered to be a distinct political (and sometimes even moral) category, at the same time it is often used as a quasi-contingent category as part of the concept of secularism—like autonomy or liberty, as Freeden has pointed out (Freeden, 1996: 67).

Second, what does it mean to treat peoplehood as a conceptual expansion to secularism? Here, Freeden's discussion of political concepts is fruitful. The definition, or better, the specificity of political concepts is derived on the one hand, from components whose empirical absence in political discourses would make the very concept unintelligible and therefore can be considered ineliminable (the following reading is based especially on Freeden, 1996: 60–67). Regarding the political concept of secularism, the ineliminable feature would be the separation of religion and politics. Without separation, the concept of secularism would collapse into meaninglessness. On the other hand, Freeden argues that the concept cannot be reduced to its ineliminable component. Rather, the specificity of political concepts is secured by a range of non-random additional components in a limited number of recognizable patterns. These components Freeden calls “quasi-contingent” categories since they refer to a defining component of the concept, but its specific features are dependent on particular context and circumstances.¹⁶

Coming back to a secularism justified by Rawlsian political liberalism, additional categories such as religious liberty, religious equality and governmental neutrality are common denominators (here, I quote Robert Audi's three principles of church–state separation to ensure toleration, which can be considered an authoritative voice from within the liberal tradition, see Audi, 2011: chapter 2). Yet, while Audi discusses democratic governments and political conduct by individuals (Audi, 2011: 4), he remains silent on the political community, which the polity should regulate. I wish to identify political identity as an additional category to the concept of secularism.

Peoplehood conceptually understood is thus a quasi-contingent category since the intelligibility of secularism as an abstract concept is not dependent on a particular type of people (e.g. whether we are observing separation in an ethnically homogenous or multicultural nation). Put differently, the empirically ascertainable cultural commonalities of Western-style secularisms ascribe to separation some minimal element of peoplehood. Here, we would hardly see any separation of religion and politics without some degree of a claim to political unity.

Let us now return to the question of how to categorize different ways to constitute a kind of people. One way to approach the ideological production of secular ideals as they confirm and animate civic ideals of peoplehood is to address Rogers M. Smith's theory of peoplehood (2003). The project of Smith is to render intelligible the production and reproduction of political identities. The intention is understand how political elites seeks to “inspire allegiance among relatively politically inactive and as well as active constituents” (Smith, 2003). This helps to explain why certain visions of political order are given particular priority. Religion is often part of this construction of national belonging (though far from the only element), which is why we can imagine secularism as a particular narrative of peoplehood (e.g. see Smith, 2013).

In order to see where religion fits in Smith's theory of peoplehood, we will have to briefly look at how he breaks the concept of political membership down into at least three fundamental “themes” that all successful stories of belonging must include. The economic theme concerns the material worth of being a people, while the political power theme deals with how to promise citizens personal physical security and power as a collective and how leaders can gain support to their own power base (Smith, 2003: chapter 1).¹⁷ Without going into depth with these, I want to bring attention to the final ethically constitutive theme, which is about who the citizens normatively are and, accordingly, what is expected of them. This is the element of people making which indicates that people does not simply choose its own identity. Persons are “organically” embedded in the nation due to a common heritage, an original race, shared ancestry or some comparable tie. Civic identity or virtue, Smith finds, is particularly bound up with religion and ethical myths which affirm both their worth and obligations (Smith, 2003: 64). Such themes might be the numerous founding myths of nations, of how they fought for independence in the past or even in pre-historical time. As Smith concludes

… enduring successful accounts of peoplehood inspire sense of trust and worth among members of a people by weaving together economic, political power, and ethically constitutive themes tailored to persuade a critical mass of constituents while also advancing partisan elite interests. (Smith, 2003: 70)

One vital point is that it is very difficult to imagine any stable political community without an ethnically constitutive theme, but at the same time, Smith invites us to be cautious of categorizing different kinds of peoplehood as either “civic” or “ethnic.” This is a distinction in much nationhood literature, but it seem to imply that some nations are purely civic, e.g. in the sense of Habermasian constitutional patriotism, or nationalistic-exclusivist.¹⁸

Smith instead distinguishes between ethic themes constitutive of either “universalistic” people (e.g. universal human worth qua human rights; or universal worth because we are all children of God) or “particularistic” people (e.g. common French language or culture; or a Lutheran religious heritage). Of course, in reality, no kind of peoplehood would exist purely in any of those categories. With Smith, I will stress that, within Bhargava's political secularism (including his own contextual secularism), we should distinguish between two strands of “ethical worth themes”: one particularistic and one universalistic. Both of which are variants of what Smith calls ethically constitutive themes, but with quite different ways to affirm a people.

Analyzing the doctrine of separating or distinguishing between religion and politics through the lens of Smith's politics of peoplehood suggests that secularism is partially maintained for the purpose of telling a specific story of a people. One might say that religion in political discourse serves the function of contesting or decontesting whom “the people” is and why each member belongs to it. In other words, how a democracy treats its religious communities tells much about the political production of its people.

In the following section, I will apply the conceptual understanding of secularism developed in this section, by comparing the Danish case with the second quadrant in Figure 1. The framework helps us to distinguish between one national variant of secularism which is based on establishment justified by basic liberal principles from another which falls out of the framework of liberally justified secularism.

Reading the Danish debate on public religion through the concept of secularism

It might not be an exaggeration to claim that Danish secularism is so intimately linked to the idea of a Lutheran people (“folket”), that debates on politics and religion at times revolve around disagreement as to what “Danishness” truly is (see also Østergård, 2006). This fairly strong particularistic notion of political identity might be the reason why political opponents are occasionally portrayed as un-Danish or ahistorical when they dare to question the raison d'être of Folkekirken (literally meaning the People's Church).

As touched upon in the introduction, the secular state takes on a peculiar role in relation to the established church. Legal scholar Lisbet Christoffersen has pointed out that the whole notion of legal authority in Lutheran societies like the Danish is based on the principle that “there is no law but secular law” (Christoffersen, 2013a: 118). As a consequence, secular law is expected to protect both liberal rights (e.g. freedom of and from religion) and to secure a space for religious communities. I argue that the Folkekirke is integrated in the above secular law in the following way. All religious communities enjoy their liberal rights as long as: (a) they too recognize no other law than secular law and (b) that the Folkekirke maintains its historical (and still legally unsettled) link to the state because it is of special cultural importance to the nation.

Even so, Danish law is not Lutheran. Legislation passed by the parliament is fully secular. However, secular law is functioning from within a political identity which is quite particularistic. Thus, the secular state not only goes to the Folkekirke to quench its thirst for belonging and (particularistic) ethical worth, but it is also perceived to hold the responsibility to keep the source pure. Thus, a majority in both the parliament and the church is reluctant to let the latter govern its own affairs as it could lead to religious contestation and denaturalize the image of the Folkekirke as a site of shared national belonging (see also note 22). “No law but secular law” indicates that the church, its organization and governance in principle is a secular affair. Only the internal affairs related to rites and worship are (mostly) a theological, and thus not political concern.

As mentioned in the introduction, the Folkekirke's special status is relevant for minorities in Denmark, as long as the former is regarded as the primary religious site for affirmation of Danish peoplehood. It indirectly refers other religious communities to an unequal position in terms of symbolic recognition of citizenship (see also the concluding remarks).

Here, we can identify Danish secularism as representing the logic of modest establishment discussed in section “Mapping secularism”: The Folkekirke might not be “justified by appeal to principles of justice,” but at the same time, it is not perceived to be “in violation of them” either (Laborde, 2013: 82).¹⁹ This historical modus vivendi appears so strong that the locus of disagreement between the leading politicians is not whether the church should remain established, but rather how it should be established (Dabelsteen, 2011). Within this discourse, I identify two dominating variants in Danish politics. One interpretation is (mostly) within non-justice-based state recognition of religion, and another is placed in the muddy waters mixing ethical and religious reasons with political reasons.

Three dimensions of Danish secularism: People, church and equality

I suggest that the two variants are part of a general national tradition of separation principles which consist of three main characteristics: (a) it evokes an understanding of the Danish people, folk, as an ethnic, cultural and religiously homogeneous people; (b) it perceives the church, kirke, as the fourth independent pillar of the Danish state besides the classical thee state powers²⁰ (this is the formal establishment); and (c) an understanding of equality, lighed, between all members of the church. The last dimension can also be understood as a particular interpretation of religious tolerance—the idea of the “inclusive” church, which may contain a wide range of different denominations within the perimeters of Evangelical Lutheran theology.

About the general Danish interpretation of separation principles, two facts should be noticed. The first is that the church-state-regime of establishment was forged at a time (1849) when an astonishing 99% of the population were members of the Folkekirke. Up until 1985, 91% of the Danish population were members, and today it is still surprisingly high (just above 78%) (Statistics Denmark, 2014). In that sense, the general premise of Danish secularism has historically been the religious homogeneity of Danish society and was contrived in what might be called a “multi-Lutheran” social imaginary, where religious conflicts confined themselves to this religious outlook (Dabelsteen, 2012).²¹ Keeping this in mind, the second fact might come as a surprise. The Danish population is considered to be one of the most secularized in the world when measured on religious practice and personal belief (Norris and Inglehart, 2004: 84).²²

I identify Danish secularism with the second quadrant in Figure 1, because it operates with a framework of Lutheran secular law embedded in a particularistic political identity—not unlike what Taylor has termed as the common ground strategy—a mode of religious conflict resolution, which premises some sort of shared religious and cultural political identity within in the state.²³ In general, religious freedom and institutional tolerance is fairly strong in a comparative perspective, but as pointed out before, at both institutional and policy levels Danish politics relating to religion is sometimes characterized by contradictions.

Assertive and accommodationist secularism

During the period of political modernization from the beginning of the 19th century, two variants of this ethno-Lutheran secularism have separated off.²⁴ The first can be termed assertive Danish secularism, which can be considered the ideological defense of the current institutional church–state regime. It predominantly finds it proponents in the leading political figures from center-right to populist-right end of the political spectrum.²⁵ The central argument here is for the Evangelical Lutheran Church to maintain a constitutionally privileged relation to the state in contrast to other religious communities such as Muslims and “dissenting” Christian denominations. This reasoning is first of all fueled by a fear of politicization of religion in the public sphere should absolute religious equality be implemented. As long as religious conflict is confined to the Folkekirke (as it effectively has been throughout modern history), social order is maintained. Second, they believe that the religious or spiritual liberty (in Danish “åndsfrihed”) is best protected in the Folkekirke when the church is not institutionally autonomous in relation to the state. Rather, the state should carefully assess the will of church and then decide on its behalf. To remove the top decision-making layer of the church, organization ensures that the clergy would not have to fight over the true exegesis of the Gospels for the Church. Otherwise, it would become as spiritually paternalistic as the church they originally protested against (i.e. the Catholic). At this point, it appears to conflict with Rawlsian political liberalism since political order is prioritized over Folkekirken's freedom to govern itself out of fear of religious conflict (all other religious communities are fully autonomous). In that sense, a particularistic vision of peoplehood is asserted on political institutions unequally. Third, many of the proponents of assertive Danish secularism still simply regard the Danish people as an Evangelical-Lutheran people. As such, this secularism expresses a kind of religious tolerance, which, with Rainer Forst, could be termed a “permission conception” (Forst, 2012): they might accept non-Evangelical Lutheran citizens as part of society, but on the condition that they recognize and abide by official Christian institutions and practices.

The second position I call accommodationist Danish secularism. It is extensively a critique of the assertive pushing for liberal principles. It is prevalent among the leading politicians of the current government.²⁶ Even though they share the acceptance of the cultural and particularistic primacy of the Folkekirke in Danish identity, they still criticize the current institutional regime for unduly excluding other religious communities from equal political treatment. Furthermore, they have traditionally been skeptical about the enforcement of the customary practice, that is, they questioned the quite extensive authority of the state when it comes to the internal affairs of the Folkekirke in both administrative and matters of dogma. They wish the status of non-members of the Folkekirke to be considered as equal in their right to enjoy various privileges.²⁷ Thus, we can observe a rather different take on religious tolerance more in accordance with a principle of treating all as equals (not equal treatment, since established religion is upheld). As a whole, the accommodationist variant does not envision a solution through secularization of society but through inclusion of other religions.

A final defining characteristic of the two variants of ethno-Lutheran secularism relates to what role religion is assigned in the public sphere. The assertive version takes an exclusivist stance toward religion in public reason: Religion in the public sphere should only relate to religious practices and not to politics. As such, any kind of religious conflicts or programs should not spill over into arguments over public law. Assertive Danish secularism would argue that the Folkekirke, almost literally, is the embodiment of the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms, and thus as the condition of possibility for secularity itself. As the former government's minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs stated: “The Constitution establishes in an Evangelical way that we are citizens in two kingdoms … On Evangelical ground we shall distinguish between what is the kingdom of the king and of God” (Hornbech, 2009). It is a conception of tolerance founded in a cultural, religious hierarchy legitimized by a majoritarian perception of authority and is seen as a remedy to avoid conflicts by repressing religion from the public sphere.

In contrast, accommodationist Danish secularism is more inclusive on that matter and is reluctant to consider neither the existence of an autonomous Folkekirke nor alternative forms of religious practice in the public sphere as threats to the social cohesion of the Danish society. They seek to include other religious communities in the deliberation of how to arrange the political institutions. Nevertheless, both of these competing secularisms share an understanding of the Folkekirke as a public good for the wider society and not just for church members which is why they both rely on a particularistic social imaginary.

Concluding remarks

This article suggests a conceptualization of secularism which integrates a theory of peoplehood at its heart. In the first half, I point out that Bhargava helps us to make explicit which kind of separation a given secularism is based on within political secularism but fails to recognize some forms of establishment as a possible political secularism. In a recent reading of Rawlsian liberalism, Laborde offers exactly this, but does so at the expense of Bhargava's more nuanced political secularisms (she rejects certain types as a consequence of her critical republican perspective). I thus reconstruct the concept of secularism by merging these perspectives, while at the same time differentiating the kind of peoplehood supported. The result is a distinction between four ideal-typical secularisms illustrated in Figure 1.

The second half of the article builds on this conceptualization of secularism, and I argue that the Danish case is a particularly illustrative case of the conceptual framework developed here. To use Freeden's terminology, what assertive and accommodationist Danish secularism share is a similar conceptual morphology: They both ground their boundary-setting between religion and politics in a Lutheran conception of secular law coupled with a particularistic peoplehood. However, it is especially when it comes to the additional quasi-contingent category of religious equality that they differ. This, I conclude, is at the same time, what draws the line between what can be justified by basic justice and what cannot.

When accommodationist political discourse supports a purely symbolic establishment, and insists on the equal inclusion of citizens irrespective of religious or irreligious persuasion, I argue it is a type of principled distance supporting a particularistic political identity, and thus holds the potential to reside within the parameters of principled distance: within basic liberal justice. In the case of same-sex marriages, however, we saw a struggle to strike a balance between liberal principles of religious freedom and gender equality and a dependence on an existing accommodationist social imaginary. Building on the conceptualization of secularism, the case showed when and why the accommodationist variant stepped out of its otherwise liberal boundaries (even though there was an attempt to excuse this with reference to another liberal principle of non-discrimination).

But even though we can identify a variant of Danish secularism (most often) compatible with Rawlsian liberal justice, it is possible to add a further objection, which I believe pertains to all similar “modest establishments” in Europe: the unequal symbolic recognition of citizenship (on this point, see also Laborde, 2013: section IV; Bhargava, 2011).

The same-sex marriage case can teach us something more general about secularism: the amendment not only concerned the rights of homosexual citizens but also the affirmation of a particular cultural norm in Danish political identity. Religion sociologist Grace Davie with her term, vicarious religion, has conceptualized a phenomenon similar to that of the Folkekirke. Davie points to how a minority of the population functions as devout people of faith on behalf of the consenting, though not actively religious majority (Davie, 2007). According to Davie, vicarious religion is not only performed religion on behalf of the majority. Religious communities can often become subject to questions of pressing moral and political issues, which are difficult to solve elsewhere in society.

In this respect, it is not surprising, that both civil and Folkekirke marriages were legalized for same-sex couples. Traditionally, the national church has been a central site for affirmation of Danish peoplehood as a vicarious (official) religion. The theme of sexual tolerance might be a difficult question for the vicarious religion to deal with, but it might also function as a normative compass in the troubled waters of multiculturalization for a (until not many years ago) highly homogeneous population. If homosexuality now is part of the national narrative of Danish peoplehood, how are other religious communities then evaluated if further formal equality between religious communities is to be obtained?

In an increasingly multicultural context, the state and the government find it still harder to legitimize interventions like the 2012 amendment. Again, the obvious problem is religious equality vis-à-vis peoplehood. Even though the Folkekirke still enjoys certain privileges compared to other religious communities, the church is so vulnerable to political intervention that it might not compensate for the advantages. This may explain why only few of the “dissenting” religious communities have complained about their formally unequal religious rights compared to the Folkekirke. They know that there are strings attached.

On the other hand, a republican critique of political liberalism suggests that they should be concerned about both the “privileged” Folkekirke and new marriage legislation. The Folkekirke is not only a peculiar historical artifact and a church for the majority of the Danish population, it is still, symbolically, an important site of the people. When the 2012 amendment was passed and thus applied to the rituals and self-image of the Folkekirke, it also evoked a certain vision of Danish peoplehood.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Anders Berg-Sørensen, Rogers M. Smith, Sune Lægaard and Lisbet Christoffersen as well as the anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Should any error reside in the text, I bear the responsibility.

Notes

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