Rice must embrace secular identity

3/13/13 7:00pm

 

Rice University is not a religiously affiliated university. Neither is it truly a secular university. In an op-ed that appeared in the March 8 issue of the Rice Thresher ("Spiritual wellness on campus undervalued and in need of respect"), Trent Navran, Dandan Liu and Lara Wik point out that the nondenominational Rice Memorial Chapel and the Joint Campus Ministers both pose problems for Rice's status as a secular institution because, to varying degrees, they favor Judeo-Christian faiths. The writers rightly challenge this on their path to arguing that Rice needs to provide more resources for spiritual life (where spiritual is to religious as intelligent design is to creationism). But the problem they identify can only be solved by going in the other direction - by eliminating Rice's involvement in religion entirely. 

The proposals put forward by Navran, Liu and Wik illustrate the inherent contradiction in the notion that a secular institution should - or even can - be inclusive of religious life. It is certainly a problem that Rice's purportedly nondenominational chapel is far more useful to followers of Judeo- Christian faiths than to followers of other faiths, for a truly nondenominational space would be equally useful for all faiths and for secular purposes. But the solution to this problem is not to create enough religiously oriented spaces on campus to adequately and equally support every denomination of every religion represented in the Rice community. Such a solution is both impossible and undesirable. 

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The impossibility lies largely in the multitude of religions and denominations within them plus the infinitude of conceivable faiths and parodies thereof. In 2005, Bobby Henderson sent a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education lampooning the "teach the controversy" strategy for introducing creationism into the classroom under the guise of intelligent design by arguing that teaching the controversy also meant allocating classroom time to teach the account of creation believed by worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It should be a glaring warning sign that bringing the Flying Spaghetti Monster to bear on the aforementioned proposal is similarly effective. To even begin to provide the suggested resources, Rice would need to bulldoze a sizable portion of Southampton Place to clear the way for the construction of places of worship to countless gods, goddesses, flying spaghetti monsters and invisible pink unicorns. From a standpoint of practicality, this is absurd. 

The concern with secular institutions adopting policies and appropriating resources in ways inclusive of religious life is a concern not only of practicality, but also of desirability. This is evident from a consideration of the narrower argument that the Rice administration should increase its support for spiritual (i.e., religious) life on campus by instituting an Office of Spiritual Life as an administrative department. While this would constitute a manageable investment of resources and therefore does not violate the principle of practicality, it would be undesirable for fundamentally the same reasons as an investment in physical spaces designed to support religious groups on campus. Despite the claim that "Enhancing spiritual life at Rice has nothing to do with challenging secularism," administration support and funding for "enhancement" of religious life on campus undermines the central principles behind secularism even if such support and funding is equally distributed among all denominations, a highly unlikely prospect. Rejecting secularism as important, though, will not avoid this issue because it is through secularism that Rice can best enhance religious life - and through secularism, Rice can do so while also enhancing nonreligious life and the overall quality of life. 

Secularism precludes providing support to any religion - even to all religions - because such support is contradictory to the fundamental ideas behind secularism. While definitions and interpretations of secularism vary, the common notion underlying all of them is that of a clear separation between religion and other parts of society. Claims grounded in religion can have no place in a secular discourse because religion is not a relevant concept to a secular institution; it exists but carries no meaning, no significance. In the same way, secular claims carry no meaning or significance in religious discourse unless they are relevant on religious grounds and rephrased accordingly. For secularism to function to truly protect diverse interests and the right both to believe and not to believe, which is essential to a society that protects fundamental human freedom and dignity, the separation between religion and other parts of society must be both practical and discursive. 

The solution to the problem of Rice's disproportional support of Judeo-Christian faiths over others is in the direction not of increasing support for religious life, but of eliminating that support. For Rice to truly be the secular institution it claims to and should be, it must handle religion as it does any other interest, belief or opinion. Interfaith conflicts and conflicts between religious and nonreligious interests are mitigated not by embracing all faiths, but by embracing secularism, for it is only through secularism that we can grant freedom and dignity to all persons, regardless of their beliefs or lack thereof. Secular institutions do not inhibit religious life; rather, they enhance it. In refusing to provide advantages and privileges to any religion or special interest over another, Rice leaves the flourishing of every religion and special interest in the hands of its followers and supporters and avoids inflicting harms on these interests' detractors. By fully embracing secularism, Rice would enhance the well-being of its community not just on a spiritual level, but also on a holistic level. Secularism is not about protecting the interests of the nonreligious; it is about improving the lives of every human being despite our differences in belief. 

Brian Baran is a Thresher copy editor and a Duncan College sophomore. 

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