Transmitting the Faith in a Secular Society

Abstract

It is to state the obvious to say that the handing down of the faith, be it Muslim or Christian, in the late twentieth century is a very different matter from what it was in generations past — to say nothing about whether the process has become easier or more difficult. At the core of the problem is that complex of phenomena crystallized in the term ‘secular’, the fact that it is in the context of a secular society that the religious communities wish to pass down the faith to their children. The problem is exacerbated by widespread confusion over what may be understood by the term ‘secular’. In Europe it often has political overtones. In France it is associated with a particular concept of collective identity related to an anti-clericalist republican tradition which has enshrined an almost fundamentalist laicism in the legislation of 1905 and subsequent laws. It is a more amorphous and certainly less provocative concept in countries like Germany or Britain where institutionalized Christianity retains different forms of legal and material privilege in relation to the state.