The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization [1967]

Abstract

Böckenförde shows how and why the modern state is a product of the historical process of secularization. Three key conflicts between papacy and European kings led to the establishment of administrative, political, and later legal structures independent from the Catholic Church: the Investiture Controversy (1087–1122), the confessional wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the declarations of rights as universal rather than based on religion in the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776 and the French constitution of 1789. The modern state emerged from this process independent from the Church, without claims on the religious lives of its citizens or questions of sin and salvation. Böckenförde regards the constitutional recognition of freedom of religion as the bedrock of modernity. In the article, Böckenförde identifies what he regards as the core challenge facing the liberal democratic state, formulated in his most prominently cited sentence: ‘The liberal secularized state is sustained by conditions it cannot itself secure.’ Böckenförde argues that the modern state relies on a moral substance, thriving only under conditions of solidarity and cohesion that need to emanate from within society. Religiosity is one potential source of this moral substance. At the same time, one of the goals of the liberal state is the promotion and safeguarding of pluralism: If the modern state were to promote a given worldview or a sense of morality, it would violate the very liberalism on which it is founded. This dilemma has become known in the literature as the ‘Böckenförde dictum’.

Patriotism as a Political Religion: Its History, Its Ambiguities, and the Case of Hungary

“…has to do with the detachment of the political order as such from its spiritual and religious origin and evolution; with its 'becoming secular' in the sense of exiting a world in which religion and politics formed a unity to find a purpose and identity of its own, conceived in secular (political) terms; and, finally, with the separation of the political order from the Christian religion and from any specific religion as its foundation and leaven". (Böckenförde [1967(Böckenförde [ ] 2020 What in fact happened, and this is what the concept of "political religion" with all its ambiguities expresses, was that the new nation-states did not represent a break with religion, only a transformation thereof, a "migration of the holy" from the church to the state (Bossy 1987;Cavanaugh 2011). Moreover, well into the 18th century, the political religion of the state retained its overtly religious character.…”

The proliferation of secular religions

“…Let us not forget that in 1922, Carl Schmitt also introduced the modern concept of political theology which was more limited than political religion, for it referred only to conceptual analogies between theology and political theory (or, literally, 'the modern theory of the state'), without examining the more detailed practical or institutional analogies between religion and politics. 11 The line of argument was nevertheless similar, and the set of related terms still keeps growing: since then we have seen quasi-religion, pseudo-religion, surrogate or ersatzreligion, lay spirituality, laicised mysticism, secularised eschatology, inner-worldly religion, immanent faith, secular myth and many others. 12 'Secular religion' is therefore at best an umbrella term, and the only reason one might feel justified to use it is that all similar terms express the same ambiguity of drawing an analogy between the secular and the religious, while maintaining that ultimately, the two remain different.…”

Shaped by the pantheistic ideology of the founders, Türkiye has used its national education curriculum as an instrument of social engineering

“…Rather than securitizing any particular periphery through the control account of assertive secularism, the accomodationist account of passive secularism is ideally meant to allow enough space in society where "the state safeguards its institutions' neutrality and separation from religion" (Watters 2018: 372). an order of horizontal power sharing with passive secularism that allows more space for various lifestyles is recommended for free societies (Taylor 2007;Böckenförde 1967;Topal 2012;kuru 2008).…”