To hold a nuanced view on religion’s place in public life is, I have found, to stand in a liminal space — one often mistrusted by both ends of the spectrum. In a time when ideological polarisation rewards absolutes, I choose, perhaps stubbornly, to occupy a middle ground: advocating for secular politics, while upholding the right to religious belief and expression; resisting superstition and theological authoritarianism, while defending the dignity of believers; supporting reform, yet resisting erasure. This position is not without cost. In truth, it is a precarious posture — a balancing act on what Antonio Gramsci might have called a “terrain of hegemony,” where culture, ideology, and power are constantly negotiated.
What makes this position so fraught is that it threatens to unsettle comfortable binaries. The devout often see it as betrayal; the secularist may dismiss it as complicity. The former accuse me of heresy; the latter, of harbouring reactionary sentiment. Both are perhaps responding not so much to my argument as to the discomfort of ambiguity itself.
But let me be clear: my defence of secularism is not a rejection of religion per se, but a recognition of the political necessity for institutional neutrality in plural societies. Charles Taylor, in his exploration of secularism, describes the modern democratic state as one that should “ensure that no one is excluded from full participation in political life by virtue of their religious belief or absence thereof.” I would add: the state must be impartial, but society can never be value-free — and values, for better or worse, often emerge from cultural matrices steeped in religious heritage.
At the same time, I insist that the right to believe must include the right not to believe — and that agnostics, atheists, and freethinkers must be afforded equal protection, social legitimacy, and dignity. Belief and non-belief must be held in equipoise under the law and in public ethics. This, I believe, is not merely liberal tolerance but democratic integrity.
There is, however, another layer that complicates this further: the political economy of religiosity. In societies like mine — marked by uneven modernisation, deep economic insecurity, and fragile civic institutions — religion is not merely a matter of doctrine. It is also a site of social mobility, psychological comfort, and communal belonging. Émile Durkheim’s insight that religion functions not only to express belief in the divine but to sustain social cohesion feels particularly salient here. For many, entry into religious culture is less an act of piety than a rite of passage into a community that acknowledges them — a rare currency in stratified societies.
Consider the day labourer who has little time for ritual, though he may harbour a strong metaphysical belief. When his economic condition improves — when his existence is not haunted daily by hunger — he seeks more than bread; he seeks meaning, status, and solidarity. Religion steps in, not just as a theology, but as a culture, a rhythm, a language of belonging. It offers what Pierre Bourdieu might call “symbolic capital”: respect, purpose, identity. Religion, here, does not merely reflect faith; it creates a habitus — a way of being in the world.
Can secular culture offer an equivalent? Sometimes, yes. But often, in the absence of strong civic institutions or robust artistic infrastructures, religious culture fills a void left by a retreating state and fragmented civil society. To ask someone to abandon that without providing an alternative is, frankly, an elitist fantasy.
Progressive critics frequently point out that religious culture, as practised, may promote insularity, moral superiority, or even intolerance. These concerns are not baseless. But I would urge my progressive friends to ask: is this pathology inherent to religion, or is it the result of religion becoming the only available moral vocabulary for the socially ascendant? As Raymond Williams reminds us, culture is never static; it is contested, lived, emergent. If we fail to provide other cultural resources — inclusive, imaginative, meaningful ones — we leave the field open to those who will use religion for narrow, exclusionary ends.
This is why I resist the dismissive attitude toward popular religious expression, even when it offends elite aesthetic sensibilities. The disdain some exhibit toward the expressive practices of ordinary believers — their songs, their rituals, their spaces — strikes me as both politically counterproductive and ethically suspect. It is, as Gayatri Spivak might say, a refusal to “listen to the subaltern,” to hear the cultural grammar through which they speak their dignity into being.
Let us be honest. Many of the so-called “higher” cultural forms we revere — classical music, literature, philosophy — are structurally inaccessible to those without the time, leisure, and literacy to engage with them. When we fault the poor for not appreciating what we ourselves were schooled into over decades, we forget the gatekeeping embedded in our cultural hierarchies. And when we scorn their folk religiosity or moral sentimentalism as “low taste,” we mirror the same snobbery we claim to fight in the political domain.
What, then, is the political responsibility of the progressive? Surely not to condemn, but to engage. To work toward cultural deepening, not cultural erasure. To offer richer vocabularies, not to mock existing ones. To recognise that the evolution of taste, like the evolution of consciousness, is not a matter of decree, but of dialogue, exposure, patience.
As someone who moves between belief and doubt, culture and politics, I try — however imperfectly — to remain faithful to this commitment. To defend the believer without endorsing bigotry. To challenge religious authority without humiliating the faithful. To work toward pluralism not by flattening difference, but by building bridges across it.
It is a lonely position, at times. But perhaps it is in these borderlands — between faith and scepticism, tradition and change — that the most honest political work can be done. Not in shouting across the divide, but in dwelling within it.