From the class After Religion · Spring 2022
In his remarks prepared for delivery at the Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, Attorney General William P. Barr states that
“[T]he secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor.”
This line brings into question how one can define religion and how that deifniton comes into play within this statement. Seemingly, the excerpt twists Barr’s traditional definition of religion by ascribing the level of conviction he associates with a religious individual to secularists and their alleged anti-religious actions.
To better understand the religious fervor and how Attorney General Barr is most likely defining the term religion in this statement about secularists it is beneficial to first examine how he views religion as a whole. Throughout the prepared remarks Attorney General Barr mentions religion in some form of the word or another just over sixty times. The following definition can be derived from his usage of the term alone.
Religion is an integral state of fervorous conviction that informs and maintains society’s informal rules of micro-morality, or the morality of an individual. It is taught in educational and familial spaces in an effort to generationally pass down traditional principles that have been compiled over the collective knowledge and experience of the ages. These traditional principles should be practiced freely and sincerely in order to form the basis of a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man-made law. In this way, religion helps teach, train, and habituate people to what is good. Those who do not adhere to its teachings may be subject to inquisition and excommunication by those who remain faithful.
Barr goes on to describe how the people who follow religion under this traditional definition are being attacked by the rising tides of secularism in the world. He believes that this secularism, in an effort of extinguishing religion is itself gaining many of the qualities of a religion, becoming what it is seeking to destroy. He goes on to provide three examples of the new secular religion taking over public perception and not allowing the religious pendulum to swing back to religious traditionalism. Firstly, is the combined assault on traditional values and religion by mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia. Secondly, he puts blame on the “State in the role of alleviator of bad consequences…[for]...personal misconduct and irresponsibility.” claiming this as a transition from individual to group morality. Lastly, he comments on the usage of law to antagonize religious adherents in several ways such as elimination of laws that reflect traditional moral norms, enforcement of laws onto those who religiously disagree with them, and an assault on religious liberty in the education of children. So, with all this in mind, we can define what Attorney General Barr means when he calls “the secular project” a religion.
Secularism as religion is a state of fervorous conviction that informs and maintains society’s informal rules of macro-morality, or the morality of a group. It is taught in educational and familial spaces in an effort to criticize principles that have been compiled over the collective knowledge and experience of the ages. It encourages these principles to be condemned and rejected in order to form the basis of a flawed moral relativism which is critical of all forms of law, but particularly and unfairly so, Judeo-Christian Religions. In this way, secularism as a religion serves to undermine, unroot, and censor people from the moral codes of religious culture. Those who remain traditionally faithful may be subject to inquisition and excommunication by today’s increasingly secular society.
Labeling all secularists in this way is dangerous and a large over-generalization just as it is to label all traditionally religious people with similar levels of conviction. Despite this, there are definitely secular people in the world that can fall under this definition. The two most obvious and very literal examples of secular-religions to me being Pastafarianism as outlined in the “The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” and Satanism of The Satanic Temple as portrayed in the 2019 documentary “Hail Satan?” by Penny Lane .Bobby Henderson created Pastafariansim in a satirical response to creationism being taught at public schools while The Satanic Temple has quite literally formed a non-theistic religion around the concept of being generally antagonistic. Pastafarianism was meant to satirize and blow out of proportion the idea of teaching infallible statements as truth in public schools in an effort to create what Henderson believed to be a better educational system. Pastafarianism acts as a relatively passive secular criticism on religious education. The Satanic Temple on the other hand can definitely come across as critical and condemning particularly to those who worship within Judeo-Christian belief systems as they have chosen to champion the largest Judeo-Christian antagonistic figure, Satan, as their symbolic figurehead. Though The Satanic Temple as an organization is in frequent opposition to majority religions it is not so much their intention to destroy or diminish these religions but rather to reduce their influence and introduce a more pluralistic and self-critical view of religion in society. They practice this secularly-antagonistic religion by holding rallies, outreach sessions, and intentionally shocking public displays in an effort to spread moral relativism and pluralism. A specific example of this is when a governmental building agreed to erect a monument to the biblical ten commandments, The Satanic Temple demanded that either a statue of their religious icon, the Baphomet be erected alongside the Ten Commandments or that neither monument be constructed. This ensued in a long legal battle with the goal of enforcing separation of church and state. The government can publicly endorse either no or all religions, to depict a monument to just a single religion would violate this separation.
Attorney General Barr seems to not believe in this separation of state and religion, obviously stating multiple times that traditional “religion promotes the moral discipline and virtue needed to support free government.” He goes on to support this with a quote from John Adams saying “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” In these statements Barr implicitly believes traditional religion to be not only different from, but superior to the new secular religion, or at least more compatible with the concept of governance. More pertinently it seems that the main difference that Barr wants to draw out between traditional religion and his newly coined secular religion is that the former believes in truth, in right and wrong, but the latter practices moral relativism in a sort of post-truth. Barr strictly believes that morals can not come from within but must be taught and enforced. He makes this abundantly clear through saying “to control willful human beings, with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s will – they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being.”
This final quote from Barr personally made me pause. I considered my own morals as I gutturally disagreed with the notion that one’s morality had to be drawn from a supreme being. While deliberating on this I slowly realized that in times of moral decision I turn to superhuman beings in fiction and how they handle situations to shed light on what may be a good path forward for me in real life. This is additionally relevant as I consider myself a secularist. It is interesting to note that before Barr either prescribed “religious fervor” to secularists or stated that morals must flow “from a transcendent Supreme Being” secularists had already very literally adopted the tools of religion and actually based moral systems on supreme beings while remaining secular such as in the above stated examples of The Satanic Temple and Pastafarianism.
Barr, William P. “Attorney General William Barr on Religious Liberty.” YouTube. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, October 21, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM87WMsrCWM.
Barr, William P. “Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks to the Law School and the De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.” The United States Department of Justice. The United States Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, October 21, 2019. https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-remarks-law-school-and-de-nicola-center-ethics.
Hail Satan? IMDB. Magnolia Pictures, 2019. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9358044/.
Henderson, Bobby. “Pastafarian.” Spaghetti Monster. spaghettimonster.com, 2013. http://spaghettimonster.com/pastafarianism/.
Henderson, Bobby. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. New York, NY: Villard Books, 2006.