What Does Secularism Mean?

Abstract

This article analyses what secularism could mean for the modern democratic society. It claims that secularism should pursuit three main goals: freedom (no one must be forced in the domain of religion, or basic belief); equality (there must be equality between people of different faiths or basic belief); fraternity (all spiritual families must be heard and included in the ongoing process of determining what the society is about). Besides, secularism should mean our attempts to maintain relations of harmony and comity between the supporters of different religions and Weltanshauungen. The author critically analyzes what he calls «fixation on religion» among theorists of secularism: this fixation leads to the reduction of secularism to the problem of separation between state and religious institutions.