C (2:56)

Yeah, I. I teach, as you said, I, I teach history and humanities at Valparaiso University, which is in the United States, about an hour away from Chicago. My training was in modern European intellectual history at the University of Virginia, where I did my PhD and a lot of my work has dealt with kind of the intersection of religion and modernity and secularization and those types of, those types of questions, you know, primarily in the north, atl, Atlantic, West. But in this book I go a little farther afield. The idea for the book came to me actually. It was during the COVID crisis when many of us had more time on our hands and we were staying at home. And as maybe we'll get into. In the book I have three different categories of secularism, passive, combative and eliminationist. And I just wrote an essay thinking it would be nothing more than a sort of a speculative, provocative essay, given that so much has been written about religion and viol. This is a type of counterintuitive turn the table essay. But once I finished the essay and I sent it to a few people, I realized maybe this could be developed into a book. So that's the Origins began in the early 2000s and just came out this year, 2025.

B (4:19)

That's what I think. The idea of violence and secularism in our psyche, you know, in the public mind, there is this idea that secularism equals peace and prosperity. And this is such a strong narrative. But why is that narrative? Why is this so resilient among a lot of people, among the liberals, among Ellis? And why, what do you think the blind spots of this kind of narrative is that secularism equals peace?

C (4:54)

Yeah. You know, in some ways there, there is something to the narrative that secularism equals peace. And you know, you could go back in, you know, European history to the time of the, the Enlightenment when there was an established church and there were institutions like the Inquisition. And after the Protestant Reformation, there were certainly wars that had religion as an element. So there's something to the narrative, but I think it's kind of over determined and doesn't look sort of at the complete global picture in the 20th century and often assumes that the only form of secularism was What I call in the book passive secularism. But I developed these two other categories as mentioned, combative secularism and eliminationist secularism. And I think that provides a better lens to understand also types of violence, types of state suppression and persecution, persecution of religious communities done under an aegeus of sec. What I call secularist ideology.

B (6:00)

And let's talk about secularism. You differentiate between two types of secularism, passive from combative secularism in law and also in everyday life. What do you mean by passive secularism and combative secularism?

C (6:18)

Yeah, I mean those are just two, I mean important third word in the book is eliminationist secularism. Maybe I'll define all three of them.

B (6:26)

Yes, yes, please do.

C (6:28)

Passive secularism is, you know, I don't want to associate it only with the United States because many other, many other countries in Europe and western countries around the world where, where you are, New Zealand and Australia, but that's, you know, trying to keep some type of religious pluralism and where this, where there's not a dominant or a state supported church or particular religion and it allows religious actors a good bit of freedom in society. Combative secularism, as I define it in the book, stems from the French Revolution, especially its radical phases in the 1790s when there was essentially an all out assault on the Catholic Catholic Church. Many monasteries were looted, property was expropriated by the state. In the most radical phases, many clergy and bishops were killed, were guillotined. And that has a life of its own in the 19th century and in the 20th century. And then finally eliminationist secularism. This is more the Marxist and especially the Marxist linenness by variety that most educated people know. You know, Marx, Karl Marx famously talked about religion as the opium of the, of the masses. But he actually didn't write that much on religion per se. But as other theorists and late, more, even more radical theorists, some, some people really don't know, but most people know about Vladimir Lenin, you know, the, the key behind the Bolshevik Revolution. And they sort of radicalized this notion of elimination that for, you know, full progress to come, for the Bolshevik Revolution or for the proletariat revolution to succeed, you know, all feudal and bourgeois remnants, ideological remnants needed to be done away with. And certainly religion was an important, important obstacle to, to this type of ideologies.

B (8:40)

And you just touched upon Marx and there's this idea of Marx that you mentioned about religion which I guess a lot is also really misunderstood. But how do you think his ideas about religion, about religions, let's say withering away religions Declining influence shaped later policies when it comes to secularism.

C (9:07)

Sure, yeah. Again, I would reiterate that, you know, Marx did not write that much about it, but the, but his, you know, the idea that religion is an opium of the masses, that, you know, once, you know, material success comes of prosperity and, you know, progress defined in purely imminent terms, you know, once that was brought about, Marx believed essentially religion would wither away or peter out. It would no longer be a force in human history. But what revolutionaries realized after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was that religious forces, especially the Orthodox Church in Russia, was a real power. That it, you know, people were very pious and they saw this as an obstacle to the type of revolution they wanted to achieve. So, you know, but there were debates. So, you know, there were some revolutionaries who said, just leave the religious sphere along and it'll take care of itself. Once the revolution succeeds, as Mark predicted, religion will pass away. But those like Lenin and Trotsky and others felt that you really needed to be more active about that. You had to be proactive, I suppose is the word in helping religion be ushered off the stage of history. And that's what led to the very extreme forms of violence and anti religious propaganda in the 1920s. But especially they most severely, you know, when Stalin came to power in the late 1920s and 1930s was when the, when the repression and persecution was, was the worst.

B (11:05)

And when I was reading the second chapter of your book where you talk about Mexico, Spain and Turkey, I was kind of reminded of my own country as well. I'm originally from Iran and I wasn't born during the time that, when Pahlavi dynasty came into power, which was the last monarchy in Iran before the Islamic revolution. And the guy, the founder, Reza Shah, who, when he came to power, he, he kind of took his lessons from Turkey that you discuss in the book. He forced a specific, he kind of modernized Iran, did lots of positive things and he was responsible for, let's say, pushing religion to the margin, but it didn't come without any violence. So he did suppress a lot of, you know, religious clerics, but he also modernized the country. But I guess the back, I mean, the, the unintended consequence in about 50 times was sort of the Islamic revolution as well. I'm not sure about the scale of his acts, his actions, whether they were as severe as the ones you discuss in the book, but he certainly did that. So his secular agenda also came with a lot of violence.

C (12:16)

Yeah, you know, I mentioned that only briefly in the book, but that could have been Something I developed more. But certainly I resonate with the fact that Kemal Ataturk, you know, both his secularism and his nationalist ideology was widely copied, you know, in other Muslim states in the 20th century. And this was a real learning experience, you know, for me because this is a little outside my feeling. But, you know, I was quite fascinated to read more about the, you know, the Kemalist revolution in the 1920s when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. And you know, as I, as I outlined in the book, it was quite authoritarian, quite a top down attempt to, you know, quite suddenly westernize and secularize Turkey, getting, you know, rid of the institutions of the, the caliphate and the Sufi orders. They were seen as perhaps subversive and getting rid of the fez and other hats that had long standing social and religious significance. So it did come with, to say nothing of just the extreme Turkish nationalism it came with as well, which, you know, other Kurds and Armenians and Greeks. So.

B (13:42)

Yeah, but I, yeah, another interesting part of this chapter was you do make the point that in these countries nationalism was accompanied by militant secularism. So there was this really ultra nationalist movement going on and they were anti religious. We, yeah, we had sort of a. Same thing, I guess, in the Arab world as well, with Arab nationalism. This is not maybe something that you directly discuss in the book. I'm curious to know your thoughts on what's happening today that the countries like maybe United States, where you have this sense of nationalism, but that's tied with, I'm talking about Christian nationalism or evangelicals. So there's this kind of the right thing or the alt right. They have this religious agenda or religious discourse as well. Discourse at least, even if they're not really religious, they do use their language. So nationalism is not, and they're very much critical of secularism. They think that the role of religion has been diminished. So what do you think about this newly, let's say emergent nationalism which is accompanied with religion rather than secularism?

C (14:57)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think nationalism is, you know, one of the most powerful forces in the modern world when they trace it all the way back to the, you know, the 18th, the 18th century. And so, you know, I think certainly in this country there are legitimate worries about Christian nationalism. And you know, you know, sadly, you know, many, many believers kind of claim desire political power more than they want to live out the ideals of their own faith. So I wouldn't deny it can have religious dimensions as well. In the 20th century, like the Franco regime in Spain, that was a type of Catholic, Catholic oriented nationalism and you know, the, you know, long standing tensions and Ireland and, and Britain have, you know, there's a religious dimension to, to that as well. So I, well, I do want to point out that, you know, secularism has often been wedded to nationalism. In the case in Turkey and the case, I mean one of the most extreme cases is the little country of Albania which had a, you know, very fierce Albanian nationalism in an attempt to eliminate the religious institutions in the, in the society. But I, I would readily concede that, you know, nationalism can be deployed on the left and the right and then the religious and the, and, and the secular.

B (16:34)

And, and another topic that I'm interested in is the most Muslim countries, countries in the Middle east parts of Africa. And you do discuss like about the impact of abolishing that caliphate and what it meant to them in terms of what European style secularism means. But how did they view European style secularism?

C (16:59)

Yeah. Could you clarify what you mean by they?

B (17:03)

I mean Muslim globally. I don't have any specific countries in mind. Yeah.

C (17:11)

Well, I'll say briefly that with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empire had allied itself on the losing side of World War I. And it was one of several empires that World War I brought to an end, including the German Empire, the Austrian Hungary, the Russian Empire. And most important for the, for the Muslim world, the Middle east is the Ottoman Empire. Dimal Ataturk was the main leader in Turkey after the Ottoman Empire and he realized that Islam was important for nationalist purposes. But he was quite irreligious himself and referred to, just speaking, satya voce on the side, spoke of Islam as a putrefied cor. And at the time he abolished the Sultanate, the more political office he said that he and his other Young Turk supporters that the caliphate would remain. But he ended the caliphate. As you and many of your listeners know, this is an office that goes all the way back to means the successor Abu Bakr after Muhammad had passed away. It's not, you know, accurate necessarily to compare it to like the Catholic Pope, but it's something like a very important symbol. And so when that was taken away, there were strong movements throughout the Muslim world, especially in, in India and Pakistan, but elsewhere that saw this as a very worrisome thing, you know, very. And I think, you know, one argument I make in the book is that sometimes extreme secularism has engendered its opposite. You know, in this case sort of Islam ideologies, whether more pacific or more militant, that wanted to resurrect that and saw that as a pivotal and very bad turning point in modern history when Ataturk did that. So in that case, maybe just to reiterate, it's not just the type of coercive authoritarian violence that the abolition of the caliphate brought about by Torque, but in some ways it engendered, you know, equally militant movements as well. That makes sense.

B (19:50)

And another question that I have, do you think this secularist agenda, and again, I'm talking broadly about secularism, I know that it might take different meanings in different countries, but this secularist universalism, can it be in, let's say, in unison, or does, does it not contradict cultural plurality when it comes to religions? Because there are all these campaigns against religions, be it Judaism, Christianity or Islam, from the atheist side, I mean, and they some or sometimes from the liberals who might push for a more secular, more secularism. But how does it meet the other liberal ideal, which is a cultural plurality of multiculturalism, a part of it, an element of which is also religion.

C (20:42)

Yeah, that's. I mean, one of the first things you said. I would just reiterate the importance of it again, to not think in terms of a single secularism or a single secular universalism that, you know, different types of secularism reflect their origins in different countries. Although I do, as I argue in the book, think that in the west, these three dominant forms have been most influential, passive, combative, and eliminationist. I would argue that the passive version is, you know, the better respecter of pluralism. It, you know, sees the state taking a passive role vis a vis religious communities and giving them a large breadth not just to worship, but also just to, to have their faith influence social services or youth organizations. And it sees that type of cultural pluralism as a positive good so long as religious communities are not advocating violence toward one another. The combative and especially the eliminationist secularism. The book, you might almost compare that to a type of religious ideology itself, although I, you know, I have some reservations about that, but it has a more, I wouldn't maybe use the word universalizing, but I would say homogenizing. It sees that the state should provide all the values, all the social service organizations, and it should be a more uniform ideology. And I think what, you know, some of the secularist reformers that I talk about in the book encountered was that, you know, these religious communities were, you know, quite stubborn. They enjoyed being themselves. They enjoyed imparting values to the youth and, you know, the role they played in education and those types of things. So, you know, they, they saw them more as a Threat to the state, a more statist ideology, and, you know, the type of secularism. And, you know, some, some of the states have, you know, that I look at, you know, have single dominant religions and some have many, you know, the Soviet Union, given its size, there were Buddhist communities, Muslim communities, Jewish communities, Orthodox, Catholic, and that can be said about a number of other states that I profile in the book. So if I could summarize all that, I would say that's the passive secularism historically, and I think ideologically has been the greater respecter of pluralism, where these other two forms, combative and eliminationist secularism, have seen religious communities as a threat to, a threat to the state and a breeding gown for political dissent. And that has been a real worry. Maybe one thing I'd add to that is worries too about ethnic separatism as well. You know, we see this in China today, say against the Uyghur community or against Buddhist in Tibet, and, you know, against some Christian communities as well.

B (24:01)

Secularism is also sometimes equated, wrongly equated with atheism. That's not something that you do would directly discuss in the book, but in the chapter that has to do with Soviet, with Soviet Union, also Eastern Europe, you talk about scientific atheism. What did it mean in the context of Eastern Europe? I'm interested in that. And do you think it's more or less synonymous with secularism?

C (24:37)

Yeah. No, I think that is an important distinction between atheism and secularism that you, that you make. One could be quite devout in one's religious views, but have a belief that the state shouldn't really trespass into religion and vice versa. The single religion shouldn't dominate the state. That would be more of the passive secularism model that I talk about, but maybe not so in the elimination of secularism. But one, you know, one could, you know, be religious in some capacity, but worry about that, you know, the church or certain church institutions have too much power in public life. But when you refer to scientific atheism, I mean, that's especially associated with Marxism, Leninism, and kind of a whole body of scholarship and knowledge that comes into being from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that, you know, maybe one embodiment of it would be the great Soviet encyclopedia produced in the middle decades of the 20th, 20th century. And I wouldn't say all the scholarship that comes out of that, you know, is like wrong or misdirected. You know, sometimes there's lots of good science and, you know, history and those type of things. But there's certainly an ideological edge and an ideological view of history as passing from the religious to the non religious, from the feudal through the bourgeois to the proletariat. So there's certain kind of dogmatic presuppositions that were baked into scientific atheism. So you know, when scholars look back at some of the work done, you know, within that ideology, it often has a fairly short shelf life because it has such a strong slant, if that makes sense.

B (26:46)

Yeah. What about Eastern European countries? Which mechanisms in those countries, let's say, were successful in subordinating religion and which went. If not, what were some of the consequences of not being able to subordinate the world religion in Eastern Europe?

C (27:10)

Yeah, now that's a great question. I have a whole chapter in the book dedicated to Eastern Europe and especially after 1945 with the erection of the so called Iron Curtain and when these countries came under Soviet influence. And I try to make the, the case that you need to be careful about generalizing. I think overall there was the assumption that these governments should be socialist and atheist and reflecting the values of the Soviet Union. But they're important differences that you allude to in your question. And maybe the best way I could come at this question was profile two, Poland in Albania, which I've mentioned before. Poland, you have very strong tradition of Catholicism. And that became. It really backfired. That would be a case where the imposition of Soviet rule and Marxist Leninist ideology really encouraged something of a Catholic revival and was often connected to Polish nationalism. Of course, the very important pope in the 20th century, John Paul II, comes out of this type of culture of, of anti Soviet Catholicism. So that might be a case where you could argue that it backfired and engendered some of the same forces that eventually led to the revolutions of 1989 and the big changes that came about there. And then later with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Albania is a case where it was such an extreme scorched earth secularism that it really, really kind of broke religious communities. Albania is small, but it has three major faiths. Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Catholic Christianity. But the dictator there in the 20th century, Inverhoxa, went to such extremes that in 1967 an edict was passed that essentially criminalized religion that you really just could not be a believer. And that coincided with the destruction of every mosque, church in the country, or if not the destruction, repurposing it for other use. So gymnasiums and military barracks and those type of things, you know, churches were Used for. So you know, that was such a severe repression. There wasn't really a kind of a backlash or a backfiring the way it was in Poland. I mean eventually that regime collapses in the early 1990s. But just the decades when religion was illegal had the anti religious indoctrination in schools really just sort of severed people's cultural memory. Religious memory.

B (30:21)

And there's another, the chapter called Red Asia in your book. I really enjoyed that one. And when it came to the Republic of the People's Republic of China, there is a section where you discuss the establishment of a bureau. I forgot the name of the bureau. I think religious. The first bureau if I'm not mistaken. And they had these five patriotic associations for different religions. Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. There can you talk about. Because it's a communist regime but at the same time, you know, it has a lot of different religions in there and they are more now there's even a capitalist country in many ways, economically speaking. But can you talk about the role of these patriotic associations and how were these different religious beliefs tolerated or monitored? I don't know what the right term is. I'll leave it to you to discuss.

C (31:27)

Yeah, no, briefly just to give an overview of China. You know, anti religious actions and propaganda go all the way back to the first revolution that ended the imperial China in 1911 and 1912. Some of the reformers that were involved in that, you know, saw religion as an enemy, saw teachings of Confucianism as just backward. If China was ever going to modernize and to a degree westernized. The communist revolution of 1949, you know, brought more anti religious ideology. Missionaries were kicked out, churches were taken over. And the most extreme, and this is comparable to Albania was the, the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong. That was just an all out attack against religious communities of all of all sorts to you know, there were four different olds that Mao Zedong and his accomplish and the Red Guards who implemented this from 1966 to 1976, that was the type of scorched earth and just so many monuments and temples and religious art were destroyed as well as people's lives and livelihoods during the Cultural Revolution. But I think what you're talking about with the patriotic associations, this goes back to a more moderate measure made after Mao Zedong had passed from the scene in the 1980s, particularly in China. And this still governs Chinese religious policy today that recognizes the five religions that you mentioned earlier, but they have to be patriotic. So there is still in China today You have to be registered with the government, you have to be very proud Chinese policies, both internally and in foreign policy. So you really can't have a political role and those are allowed to exist. But kind of the document, this document 19 of 1982, it essentially says that you try to control religion now and monitor it, but according to Marxist Leninist ideologies, eventually it will become extinct in human history. But it's counterproductive to two and enthusiastically try to eliminate it. So it's more of a toleration of these communities. But there are others that are not registered. They're so called underground churches. Actually some are recently in the news, I had an op ed in the Wall Street Journal that recently this pastor of a Zion church was in prison. And there's long standing repression against, you know, the, the Uyghur Muslims and China and Buddhists, Judas as well in Tibet especially, which has, you know, been a real sore spot from the Chinese government. And you know, like today it's illegal to, you know, to have pictures of the Dalai Lama who was chased out of China in 1959 and lives in India today. So maybe, I know I'm sort of rambling on here now, but the patriot associations are an attempt to kind of corral religion, not do direct repression, make these bodies be overseen by the government. But there's still, you know, quite a bit of anti religious repression and of China to this.

B (35:11)

And as you mentioned, even we've explained it up to this point, secularism is usually associated with some sort of violence. But if there's a preferable mode of secularism, which might be passive secularism in your case, what do you think, what sorts of institutions in a society we might need in order to safeguard it against its moving into the direction of violence and coercion?

C (35:44)

Yeah, I mean, this might connect with the earlier question you asked about pluralism, but I think just trying to policymakers and academics and anyone with influence and try to recognize the value of cultural pluralism and that religious communities often bring very good things to the table in terms of their teachings, of terms of social service, helping the poor, helping the needy. And those things should be strengthened and advocated throughout society. Also there's a role for politics too, for maybe the judiciary especially to uphold laws that allow both majority, but especially minority faiths to live in peace, live out their convictions. So I think there's maybe both a role for education, broadly understood, but also a role for policy and for this law, law and justice.

B (36:58)

And is it important, I think part of the book, the whole If I can summarize the whole concept of the book is that to show I could be very reductive here. So my apologies. It is to show that secularism does with violence. It's sort of a debunking project in a way. Well, why is it important for us to understand the violence of secularism? And how can different societies, especially more liberal democracies, reckon with this, with this legacy of secularism?

C (37:32)

Yeah, well, maybe I'd go back to the question you asked me at the very beginning of how did this book come about? And again, I don't say at all that religion has not been part of violence. It certainly has. But it seemed like in the wake of 9, 11, as horrific as that event was, and certainly there was a religious dimension to that, there just sort of became this whole industry of religion and violence and people were talking about it all the time, journals, conferences, all kinds of things. And so what I wanted to do is say, well, but if you look at the big picture, the 20th century, yes, there's been elements of religious violence, but really one of the most calamitous and destructive forms of violence has come out of secularist ideologies, especially, I mean, not only. But especially the Marxist Leninist ones that one could trace to the Soviet Union, to China, to Cambodia. I have a section on Cambodia in the book. To North Korea and other places. So what I hope the book accomplishes is to say it's too simplistic just to say that religion encourages violence and secularism is the solution. You have to qualify what kind of secularism? And that kind of glib thinking I wanted to challenge. But yeah, I mean, I think that's. I'm a historian, so I think, I believe if you get history, you're sometimes you're condemned to repeat it. And that's what this book was trying to accomplish.

B (39:13)

And as a final question, do you. How do you think. And it's a kind of a. I'm trying to bring it all together with a final question that also relates it to what's happening today. You know, with all the political turbulent time we live in when it comes to religious, to liberty, social liberties and also religion, how do you think these two in a modern state and society can live coexist together? Religious liberty and pluralism in this case?

C (39:47)

Yeah, well, I would see them as two sides of the same coin that you. I mean, to have pluralism, you have to have liberty of expression, liberty of conscience, freedom of assembly. In the United States, these things are codified. And the first First Amendment And I wouldn't say at all this is just an American thing. Many countries throughout the world and the United nations declarations of human rights drafted in 1948 has this type of language. So I think you just have to be vigilant and promoting it. And this is a role for educators, especially to recognize the social goods that come out of that come out of pluralism, that religions can contribute to society. And you need to be vigilant against authoritarian movements, whether they're secularist or whether they have a religious component, which certainly some do today.

B (41:01)

And you recently published this book. Is there any other book project you have in mind or anything else you're working on that we might be able to speak to soon, maybe on your Books Network?

C (41:14)

Yeah, I'm beginning a project. It's titled Right Now. It won't come out in book form to a number of years called Missionaries and Modernity. They'll just look at the role of Western missionaries, especially Christian missionaries, in different parts of the world during colonialism and after after decolonization in the 20th century, and how some of the language and rhetoric of Christian missions and missionaries change and just the complex, very difficult educational process. But that's a book I'm working on, but I should have out with Princeton University Press, and it's finished in manuscript form, a book entitled Modern Christian Theology and Intellectual History that tries to provide an overview of some of the dominant theological movements in both Protestantism and Catholicism in the west since roughly the topic of the Enlightenment and French Revolution.

B (42:22)

Well, hopefully we should be able to speak to you soon about that book on New Books Network as well. I do like to take the time to thank you for taking the time to speak with us on New Books Network about your book. And the good thing about this book is that you have lots of examples from different parts of the world, which we have just scratched the surface. But there's a lot for people, and I'm sure no matter where you come from, there's something in the book that can interest you. And it's a very accessible book. Unlike many academic books, this is quite accessible for the public audience as well. So thank you very much, Dr. Thomas Albert Howard, for talking to us about your book. The book we just discussed was Broken Secularist Violence in Modern History, published by Yale University Press.

C (43:10)

Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I enjoyed the conversation.