“If you live in Canada, it makes sense that you would keep your faith private in order to make space for the variety of other religious perspectives in the Canadian population.” This was said to me by one of the Ukrainian students. The underlying thought was: ‘Isn’t speaking about one’s faith publicly be tantamount to suppressing the listener’s religion, and thus be an infringement of basic life in a diverse, democratic society?”
I didn’t have time in the lesson to address this issue but let me start this article by admitting that my faith as a Christian cannot be privatized. My relationship with God is personal, but it isn’t private.
Secularism and Pluralism: Divergent Social Imaginaries
As I explored in “Performative Authenticity…”, I advocated that moving toward greater authenticity can help us to appear publicly in ways that affirm a unitary, consistent life that is more fulfilling – even if our public appearance may undergo contestable relationships. What may seem most obvious is that there are challenges in social co-existence in a kind of horizontal view of human relationships. In other words, how do we live with diverse others? Perhaps less obviously, the other concern is how do we still be true to ourselves in a set of problems that aren’t really horizontal per se, but make themselves evident in a “depth / surface” existence. i.e. vertically. Briefly, the point of my writings on authenticity have tried to show that the lifeworld that individual finds herself in creates a situated reality that cannot be discounted if we are to live fulfilling lives. Our lives are just too committed to be unbundled. Unbundling our lives into some religion-less public world is nothing but detrimental to long-term fulfillment of the unitary and consistent life of freedom of society’s members. On an academic level these tensions have been more generally (i.e. less individually) understood as being embodied in the relationships between Religion and State.
These days, the relationship between religion and the state remains one of the most pressing philosophical and political issues for democratic societies to negotiate. Modern democracies must balance freedom of conscience with social unity, and diversity of belief with civic equality. Two dominant frameworks attempt to manage this tension: secularism and pluralism. While secularism seeks to protect politics from religious domination through neutrality and institutional separation, pluralism emphasizes the coexistence of multiple worldviews in the public sphere through mutual recognition and dialogue. In Peter Berger’s book The Sacred Canopy – Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967), Berger defines secularization as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.” But this is the way secularism developed historically. It emerged as a shield against the dominating force of religion in the Western world. Clear examples of this “shielding” purpose of secularism have occurred in France and in Quebec’s recent debate of their own Bill 2. Pluralism, however, is a response to real demographic and social realities. While the demographic and social compositions of particular geographical localities vary widely, North America especially just has almost innumerable variety of people no matter how we classify them.
Pluralism and secularism are both committed to peace and fairness, they differ profoundly in their assumptions about religion’s public role and about how modern societies sustain cohesion amid deep diversity. Really, what is sought is some kind of “social glue” that can replace the monopolization of political power from one point of view. In other words, how can we connect the vertical relationship of surface and depth of the individual’s life with herself to the horizontal demands of living with diverse others?
I want to explore the conceptual and normative differences between secularism and pluralism through the work of three major theorists of religion and modernity: Charles Taylor, José Casanova, and Rajeev Bhargava. Taylor reinterprets secularism as an ethical and political ideal of fairness among belief systems rather than as the exclusion of religion from the public sphere. Casanova challenges the classical “privatization” thesis of secularization and instead highlights the resurgence of “public religions.” Bhargava, from a non-Western standpoint, proposes “principled distance” as a pluralist reinterpretation of secularism suitable for deeply religious and diverse societies like India. Taken together, these thinkers reveal that the difference between secularism and pluralism lies not merely in the location of religion, but in the moral logic by which modern societies negotiate diversity.
Secularism and Pluralism in Historical Context
Secularism, in its classical Western form, emerged from the historical experience of religious conflict in early modern Europe. The wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries prompted philosophers and statesmen—from Locke to Jefferson—to imagine a political order where religion would be privatized and the state would remain neutral between competing faiths. This arrangement promised peace by separating the domain of divine truth from that of public reason. Over time, secularism came to mean both the institutional separation of church and state and the cultural decline of religious authority. As Charles Taylor (2007) observes, this development is often narrated as a “subtraction story,” in which the advance of reason and science simply removes the so-called “superstitions of faith.”
Pluralism, by contrast, represents a more recent response to diversity, emerging in the late twentieth century as a corrective to secularism’s limitations. Rather than treating religious or cultural differences as problems to be managed through neutrality, pluralism views them as constitutive and enriching features of democratic life. As Taylor (1994) argued in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, the modern state must affirm the dignity of diverse identities through active recognition, not through blind indifference. In this sense, pluralism is less about separation than about coexistence; it presumes that shared institutions can accommodate deep differences if guided by mutual respect.
The tension between secularism and pluralism is thus a tension between two social imaginaries: the rationalist imaginary of neutrality and the dialogical imaginary of recognition. Secularism aspires to universal, religion-free public reason; pluralism accepts the coexistence of multiple rationalities and insists that public life is inevitably shaped by particular moral traditions. The following sections examine how Taylor, Casanova, and Bhargava each navigate this tension in their own theoretical frameworks.
Taylor, Recognition, and Balancing of State Control
Charles Taylor’s monumental A Secular Age (2007) redefines the very meaning of secularism. He distinguishes among three senses of “the secular.” The first refers to the institutional differentiation between political and religious authority. The second concerns the decline of religious belief and practice. The third—Taylor’s main focus—is a cultural condition in which belief in God is one option among many, and no longer the default assumption. In this third sense, secularism is not merely a decline of religion but the emergence of an “immanent frame,” a social space where both faith and unbelief are possible and contestable.
Taylor’s key insight is that modern secular societies are not post-religious but post-monopoly: religion no longer holds a privileged epistemic or moral position, but it continues to exist alongside secular outlooks within a shared horizon. The state’s role, therefore, is not to exclude religion but to guarantee fairness among citizens of different faiths and none. In his essay “Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism” (2011), Taylor argues that secularism should be understood as a political ethic aimed at three goals: (1) protecting freedom of conscience, (2) ensuring equality among all religious and non-religious perspectives, and (3) preserving the neutrality of the state toward these perspectives. Neutrality, however, does not mean indifference or hostility toward religion; it means fairness in conditions of deep diversity.
This leads Taylor toward a pluralist reinterpretation of secularism. He suggests that a truly democratic society must not privatize difference but recognize it publicly. The challenge of modernity, then, is not to construct a space free of belief but to live together across diverse belief systems within shared civic institutions. For Taylor, the goal is reconciled diversity—a secularism grounded in pluralism rather than opposed to it.
Casanova and the challenge to “Privatization”
José Casanova’s Public Religions in the Modern World (1994) was a turning point in the sociology of religion, challenging the once-dominant theory of secularization. Classical secularization theorists, from Max Weber to Peter Berger, assumed that modernization leads to the decline and privatization of religion. Casanova, however, shows that the modern world has witnessed a striking de-privatization of religion, as faith-based movements re-entered the public sphere to demand justice, democracy, and moral reform—from the Solidarity movement in Poland to liberation theology in Latin America.
Casanova’s central claim is that secularization should not be understood as the disappearance of religion but as the functional differentiation of societal spheres. In modernity, religion, politics, and the economy become autonomous domains with their own logic. Yet this differentiation does not require religion’s withdrawal from public life. Instead, it creates the possibility for religion to participate in public debates on moral and social issues without monopolizing political power. In this sense, Casanova’s account transforms secularism from an exclusionary doctrine into a pluralist arrangement of differentiated spheres.
Casanova’s pluralism is both empirical and normative. Empirically, he demonstrates that the global resurgence of religion invalidates the Western narrative of inevitable secularization. Normatively, he argues that democratic societies should not fear religion’s public role, provided it respects pluralism and procedural equality. His view suggests that modern public life must be dialogical: secular and religious actors alike contribute to moral discourse through translation and negotiation (Casanova, 2006).
Casanova thus reorients secularism toward public pluralism. Whereas classical secularism envisions religion as private belief, Casanova’s framework envisions religion as a public interlocutor. He offers a model of coexistence where faith and reason cohabit the public sphere under democratic norms—a vision that aligns with Taylor’s ethics of recognition but expands it into the global and sociological domain.
Bhargava: Principled Distance and Indian Pluralism
Rajeev Bhargava, one of the most influential political theorists of postcolonial India, approaches secularism from a distinct non-Western context. In works such as Secularism and Its Critics (1998) and The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy (2010), he argues that the Western model of secularism—based on strict separation of church and state—arose from a uniquely Christian and European history and therefore cannot be universally applied. India’s religious diversity, Bhargava contends, demands a more flexible model: one that maintains the ethical aims of secularism while respecting the social embeddedness of religion.
Bhargava’s alternative is the doctrine of “principled distance.” Unlike Western secularism’s strict separation, principled distance allows the state to engage with or disengage from religion depending on context and moral purpose. The goal is fairness, not uniform detachment. For example, the Indian state may intervene to abolish caste discrimination or to support religious minorities when justice so requires, while refraining from interference in other matters. This approach treats religions not as private beliefs but as public communities embedded in historical injustices and moral traditions.
For Bhargava, Indian secularism is inherently pluralist. It is grounded in the recognition that multiple religious communities coexist as legitimate constituents of the political community. The state must navigate these differences through reciprocal respect and ethical reasoning rather than rigid neutrality. In this sense, Bhargava reconceives secularism as a context-sensitive pluralism—a mode of coexistence that balances freedom, equality, and social justice.
By situating secularism within a multicultural and postcolonial frame, Bhargava exposes the Eurocentrism of classical secular theory. He argues that secularism need not entail hostility to religion; rather, it can be a way of ethically mediating among religions. His model shows that pluralism and secularism are not opposites but can converge in a normative vision of contextual fairness.
Further Implications
The debates surrounding secularism and pluralism are not merely academic. In a world of rising religious nationalism and resurgent identity politics, they shape the moral imagination of global democracy. The works of Taylor, Casanova, and Bhargava collectively point toward a post-secular synthesis in which secularism and pluralism are not opposites but complements.
Taylor shows that secularism’s purpose is fairness, not exclusion. Casanova demonstrates that the public presence of religion can strengthen, rather than threaten, democratic life. Bhargava reveals that secularism must be interpreted contextually, not imposed as a Western abstraction. Together, they envision a form of coexistence rooted in equal dignity, dialogue, and mutual recognition.
The future of modern coexistence, therefore, lies not in defending secularism against pluralism, but in embracing a secularism of principled pluralism—a framework that secures individual freedoms while affirming the moral legitimacy of diversity. Such a vision offers not only a theoretical reconciliation of two modern ideals but also a practical path toward justice and peace in an interconnected, multi-faith world.
The diagram at the beginning of this article will be an illustration of draft attempt to envision a social space that can articulate some of the insights of both social imaginaries.
References
Berger, P. L. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Bhargava, R. (1998). Secularism and its critics. Oxford University Press.
Bhargava, R. (2010). The promise of India’s secular democracy. Oxford University Press.
Casanova, J. (1994). Public religions in the modern world. University of Chicago Press.
Casanova, J. (2006). Rethinking secularization: A global comparative perspective. The Hedgehog Review, 8(1/2), 7–22.
Taylor, C. (1994). Multiculturalism and ‘the politics of recognition.’ Princeton University Press.
Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. (2011). Why we need a radical redefinition of secularism. In E. Mendieta & J. VanAntwerpen (Eds.), The power of religion in the public sphere (pp. 34–59). Columbia University Press.
