Introduction

The theory referred to in sociology as the ‘secularization thesis’ (Nash, 2004, p 302) hypothesises that religion has gradually waned in cultural and social importance because Western modernity has secured a non-religious and secular foundation for liberal democracy. Secularism, however, does not necessarily imply secularisation as some religions, such as Christianity, can exercise a cultural power in ‘Western’ nations even as liberal secularism requires a separation of church and state. However, the idea of secularisation contributes to a framing of secularism as universal in its operation and diminishes the particularity of how secularisms and religions operate in specific cultural contexts.

The focus of this chapter is to interrogate the implications of liberal secular theories that conceptualise religion as outside of politics, and therefore institutional forms of power, by examining constitutional and legal understandings of secularism in Australia. Drawing on the critical insights on secularism in the work of anthropologist Talal Asad, it will be argued that secularism does more than represent politics as separate from religion; it functions to produce particular understandings of religion. The separation of religion from politics by secularism underpins the constitutional and legal frameworks that treat secularism as ‘neutral’ rather than implicated in the symbolic and political terms through which religion is understood in Australian culture.

The first section of the chapter gives a short overview of liberal secularism in order to contextualise representations of secularism in Australia's Constitution. From this vantage point I examine section 116 of the Australian Constitution, which outlines the relationship of religion to the state. Section 116 explains that:

Section 116 approximates a secular separation of church and state by protecting religious freedom from government intervention and prohibiting the official establishment of any one religion by the Commonwealth. The legal literature on section 116 and the cases concerning its applications qualify this separation by theorising a relationship between church and state in Australia as neutral rather than strictly demarcated. That is, the government neither prohibits nor establishes a specific religion.