On the Impossibility of Separating Religion from Politics

A Note on This Paper

This is the first academic philosophy paper I ever wrote, back in my senior year of high school. I'm sharing it because I find the topic genuinely fascinating. The relationship between religion and political authority is one of those questions that looks simple until you actually pull at it. The paper explores in depth the argument, proposed by religious scholar Timothy Fitzgerald, that the terms "religion" and "politics" are not well-defined enough to be used in a statement such as "Religion and politics should remain separate." The very first time I heard this argument, in a summer class at the University of British Columbia, I knew it was the topic I wanted to explore in this paper.

Looking back, this is definitely one of the weaker papers I've written and it would get torn to shreds in a college upper div. The thesis takes too long to land. The strongest counterarguments, particularly anything in the Rawlsian public reason tradition, go completely unaddressed. The sourcing leans too heavily on Harari, who is a great popular historian but a shaky foundation for a rigorous philosophical claim. And the conclusion pivots to "inductive theology" a little faster than the argument actually earns.

That said, I still think the core instinct is right. The Fitzgerald observation about Meiji Japan—that the Japanese had no words for "religion" or "politics" because the two were completely indistinguishable—was the kind of find that genuinely changed how I thought about the question. For a first paper, I'll take it.

Hope you find something worth thinking about in it.

On the Impossibility of Separating Religion from Politics

Religion is one of the defining forces of human civilization, threading through culture, governance, and social order across every era we have records of. Yet, over the last three hundred or so years the world has started to secularize. Specifically, we have seen a massive decline of the influence of major religions on government. Where once organized religions were synonymous with government, the Western world now heralds the separation of church and state—the ability to distinguish spiritual worship from rule of law—as among its greatest political achievements.

Yet conceptions of religion differ widely throughout both history and geography. One of the defining characteristics of a Western country is, among other factors, a secular government, and so in these countries religion is widely viewed as little more than a myth. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari attributes the rise of religion to a need for cooperation in societies larger than 150 people, reducing it to a "common myth." In groups under 150, he argues, cooperation can run on personal relationships and reputation. Past that threshold, no individual can know everyone, so larger mechanisms of shared belief fill the gap. This is a common view: religion as myth constructed to foster community (Harari 27). From this depiction, the common argument against religion from a Western standpoint is that while these stories or myths might have helped us rationalize our world and provide comfort as we evolved from earlier forms of human society, they have no place in the rational governments of the twenty-first century or any government in the future.

This reasoning is the foundation for the claim that religion must not interfere with government. In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution is often heralded as a pillar ensuring a clear boundary between religion and government. It forbids Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or impeding the free exercise thereof, language that has been interpreted as a guarantee of religious freedom and, by extension, a "wall of separation" between church and state. Yet relying on that principle assumes we already know what it means for religion and politics to occupy distinct spheres. Is it simply a prohibition on state-sponsored faith, or does it extend to the moral convictions that shape our legislation and policies? How, then, should we define the boundary that the First Amendment attempts to construct? Satisfying the claim that "religion and politics should be separate" implies a well-defined distinction between the two terms. It implies that we can aptly define the concept of "religion" in a way that then allows us to entirely remove it from our concept of politics.

This assumption does not hold. Historically, religion and governance have been indistinguishable. Philosophically, a truly secular government may be paradoxical. And there is no universal, workable definition of religion precise enough to ground the separation in the first place. For many, the idea and merits of a secular government are self-evident. But what does it mean for a government to be secular? How do we define the distinction between religion and politics?

When examining this distinction, a crucial starting point is to accurately define the term religion. Finding this definition is the first major hurdle toward defining a secular government, because there simply is no universal definition. There are hundreds of definitions of religion, spanning philosophy, law, psychology, and literature. In "What is Religion," Howerth defines it as "the effective desire to be in right relations to the power manifesting itself in the universe." In A Psychological Definition of Religion, Wright defines religion as "the endeavor to secure the conservation of socially recognized values." The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "belief in and reverence for a supernatural power recognized as the creator and governor of the universe; a particular integrated system of this expression; the spiritual or emotional attitude of one who recognizes the existence of a superhuman power or powers." In the Supreme Court case Employment Division v. Smith, the court considered religion not only as traditional doctrines but also as any system of personal beliefs that govern ethical and moral principles. These examples illustrate not just that definitions are multiple but also that they are field-specific in ways that make a single universal definition unworkable. A philosopher may be able to define religion as "the effective desire to be in right relations to the power manifesting itself in the universe" (Howerth), but that definition is useless for a court trying to determine whether "a state [can] deny unemployment benefits to a worker fired for using illegal drugs for religious purposes" (Employment Division v. Smith). The stakes are plain: if religion cannot be defined, the demand that government be free of it cannot be evaluated. A secular government presupposes a workable concept of religion. Without one, the demand for secularism is a slogan, not a policy.

Since no modern definition holds up, the next move is historical. Despite wide variation across definitions, there is enough conceptual overlap to trace religion back to its early origins and examine how it operated as a dynamic feature of human culture rather than a settled category. Neither religion, government, nor broader society suddenly appeared fully formed; rather, they gradually evolved along with the human race. By examining the historical trajectory of both religions and governments we can gain insight into how religious authority and doctrines have been reinterpreted across eras.

In early human societies, religion served two interconnected roles: a mechanism for social control and a source of collective meaning. These functions were inseparable—purpose was typically located in one's social role, and fulfilling that role was itself an act of participation in a shared cosmic order. As Ellwood observes, "Religion has historically been one of the most powerful tools for maintaining social order by universalizing and making absolute the values and norms of a society. These religious values, which are deeply embedded in the customs of a culture, help to regulate individual behavior for the greater good of the community" (Ellwood). These founding myths did not just generate religion — they generated every layer of social structure simultaneously.

Among religion's defining characteristics, perhaps the most consequential is its connection to supernatural beings or powers—the concept humans eventually named "God." God was, in essence, humanity's first attempt at rationalizing the world. Early hunter-gatherer communities, faced with unpredictable environments, associated natural phenomena such as storms, floods, abundant harvests, or disease with agency and intentionality, assuming that unseen forces must direct these events. Over time, these forces were personified and given narratives, evolving into complex pantheons or a singular, overarching deity (Guthrie).

As societies grew more complex, God evolved alongside them—shifting from a force explaining natural phenomena to an arbiter of moral authority whose reach extended beyond any human enforcer. This allowed rulers, elders, or religious specialists to claim divine sanction, effectively reinforcing communal norms and guiding ethical behavior. Such beliefs offered explanations for suffering, success, and misfortune, anchoring people's experiences in a larger cosmic order. Importantly, this alignment of divine agency with moral and social frameworks not only justified social hierarchies but also fostered cooperation among strangers by promoting shared symbols, rituals, and moral codes (Boyer).

One of religion's most consequential features is its claim to universality. A scientific argument holds force because it rests on rational deduction; religious and moral claims hold force because they position themselves as absolute. Religion is structurally resistant to scrutiny and to revision of its core claims. Questioning religious values from within a religious framework is structurally equivalent to questioning a scientific fact—both moves are treated, within their respective systems, as forms of irrationality.

This universality is found in practically every religion. In theistic religions like Islam, Christianity, or Judaism, this absolute quality is facilitated through God and his supposed teachings. But even nontheistic religions such as Buddhism maintain that same quality. Buddhism, at its core, does not hinge on a creator deity; instead, it focuses on personal enlightenment, ethical self-cultivation, and liberation from the cycle of suffering. Its core teachings, found in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, encourage meditation and moral living as pathways to transcendence (The Buddhist Society). If one wishes to minimize suffering, which it seems most people would, then Buddhism, as it claims to lead to a life without suffering, can only be perceived as universal. By contrast, ancient Roman religion revolved around a pantheon of deities, each governing different aspects of life and nature. Public rituals, sacrifices, and the maintenance of proper relations with the gods were central to Rome's civic life, intended to secure divine favor for the state (Bird). These two traditions differ profoundly in theology, practice, and ultimate aims. Yet both are categorized as religion. The likeliest reason is their shared structure of universality: each presents its framework as the framework, not one option among many.

The pattern repeats across civilizations with remarkable consistency. In medieval Europe, monarchs derived their authority from the "divine right of kings," a doctrine suggesting their power came directly from God rather than human consent (Figgis). Kings were addressed as "your grace," symbolically acknowledging divine favor rather than secular selection. Similarly, in ancient China, the legitimacy of emperors rested on the "Mandate of Heaven," an otherworldly approval that both justified their rule and established moral standards for governance (El Amine). In ancient Jewish society, religious and legal authority fused in the figure of the rabbi, who not only interpreted spiritual law but also settled communal disputes, serving as a central node of both religious belief and civic regulation (Neusner). Within Islamic civilization, the Caliph acted as both a temporal ruler and a religious guide, embodying an office that naturally integrated faith with political legitimacy (Crone and Hinds). Among various Indigenous societies in the Americas, tribal leaders often held spiritual significance, guiding their communities through rituals, oral traditions, and moral codes that served as both social glue and political framework (Johansen).

It is critical to note that terms like "religious" and "political" are modern categories. In historical context, the notion of a "religious" leader influencing "political" matters would have been nonsensical, as both realms were understood as part of a single, holistic order. In all these societies, it was not as though religion were deliberately influencing politics; the two could not be separated. The clearest illustration is the case of Meiji Japan. When the Japanese government was told by the United States and Great Britain that it needed a written constitution to be considered a civilized country, it faced an unexpected problem. There were no Japanese words for the terms "religion" or "politics." As far as the Japanese were concerned, religion meant Christianity. Up until that point, the Japanese had no reason to develop words for religion or politics, because they were completely indistinguishable (Fitzgerald).

An overlooked aspect of religion's societal impact is the way it was used to justify governmental authority. Religion's ability to operate unchallenged made it the perfect mechanism to legitimize power. Before the distinction between the religious and non-religious, the holistic idea of religion, government, and society operated as the primary device of control. Through laws, moral values, and broadly through narrative, religion allowed for rigid, undebatable systems of belief on a massive scale. It regulated not just personal salvation and a relationship with God but practically everything in society. Laws, customs, traditions, and rituals all fell under the scope of religion and government together. Whereas secular nations now derive their authority from their constituents, God—mediated through supposed dignitaries like kings, popes, or emperors—was the sole justification for the authority of a state and its rulers (Figgis). If a king, anointed by God as a priest would be, were to dictate a new law, it would simply be a reflection of the will of God. In theory, the will of God would be objective and absolute, making it almost irrational to test or disagree with it.

This was a problem foreseen by Enlightenment philosophers. How do we justify the authority of a government without God? Kurt Baier formalizes it as follows: "A government's claim to authority can be justified if and only if there is justification for saying that, simply by issuing decrees on certain matters, a government provides its subjects with adequate reasons to do what it requires of them, reasons which are, moreover, sufficient to justify the government in imposing coercive sanctions on those who refuse to obey. (ii) But it can provide such reasons if and only if it can, by promulgating such regulations, make it wrong for its subjects to do certain things that were not wrong prior to their promulgation. (iii) But no one, not even God, can do that. (iv) Hence, the use of coercive sanctions to back up the law amounts to forcing people to do what it would not be wrong for them not to do. (v) But this is a violation of their freedom, hence unjustifiable. (vi) Hence, there can be no legitimate governmental authority" (Baier).

The argument states that a government can only justify its authority if it provides its people with good reasons to follow its rules—reasons that also justify the use of force against those who do not obey. The government must be able to make actions morally wrong through its laws, even if those actions were not wrong before the laws existed. But coercive enforcement is only legitimate when the prohibited action is objectively and eternally wrong. No one can make something objectively wrong simply by declaring it so. Therefore, when the government uses force to enforce laws, it punishes people for doing things that were not necessarily wrong in the first place—and that is morally unjustifiable. This argument rests on an equivalence most people accept without realizing it: that "good" and "lawful" mean roughly the same thing. We would consider a criminal not necessarily a bad person but someone who has done bad things. We equate laws set in place by a government with supposedly universal moral values—values that could only be justified by a being such as God. Returning to the original claim that "religion and politics should be separate," a harder question emerges: does separating them require removing moral value from law altogether?

The argument implies that coercive enforcement is only legitimate when the prohibited action is objectively and eternally wrong. Yet no human can claim possession of objective truth. But just as no human can claim possession of objective truth, no human can credibly claim possession of God's decrees either. If there is a God, it is not rationally possible to expect anyone to communicate with him directly. There have been countless who have claimed to have spoken to God, and while they could have, there is no way to be certain. Therefore, there can exist no government that truly operates under the authority of God, as it is impossible to verify God's will.

John Locke's Social Contract holds that secular government is, at bottom, a bargain: people surrender certain freedoms in exchange for a better collective existence. The examples are mundane but clarifying — speed limits and zoning laws in exchange for roads, infrastructure, and collective defense. However, the counter to the social contract is that one never explicitly enters it. After all, we cannot choose when or where we are born. If we never choose to enter this contract, then how can it be a fair contract? John Stuart Mill argued that if one did not wish to live under the authority of government and was willing to sacrifice its benefits, they could simply move into the wilderness and remove themselves from society. This may have worked four hundred years ago, but now practically all of the land on earth is claimed by some government, and those governments insist that even when living off the land without using government services, one must still pay taxes. It is practically impossible for people in the twenty-first century to remove themselves from society in a way that frees them from the authority of any government.

The most common framework for separating religion from politics classifies political matters—laws, governance, the economy, and social interaction—as "worldly affairs" and religious matters as "otherworldly." Essentially, the whole machinery of social control that constitutes government operates through "law on the side of the external acts of the individual" and "religion and morality on the side of the internal motives and beliefs" (Ellwood).

We can trace this distinction back to Enlightenment philosophers, specifically John Locke and William Penn. What made their project revolutionary was that they invented the terms themselves. They defined religion as an inner, private, personal question of salvation—something that only occurred between an individual and God. They then severed this idea from what they called "the magistracy" and what we would call politics: the order of human relations in society as distinct from religion. They took what had previously been an entirely holistic concept and removed religion from it. They did not just separate religion—they created the idea of the "non-religious" (Fitzgerald). Before this distinction, the concept of the "non-religious" did not exist. Christianity was not a religion—it was simply the truth, at least to Christians. To disbelieve was not to be irreligious but to be a heretic: insane, or uncivilized, or both.

The distinction these thinkers were trying to make was between the worldly and the otherworldly. They argued that politics concerns itself with worldly affairs—the economy, basic human interaction, infrastructure, and so on. Religion, on the other hand, only concerned itself with the otherworldly: prayer, salvation, and morality. And this seems like a fair distinction. It is reasonable to separate the way we pray from the way we regulate our economy. The issue with this separation is the assumption that the worldly can operate in complete disregard of the otherworldly. If we give both equal weight, it is inevitable that they will encroach on each other. Consider France's ban on women under eighteen wearing the burqa. The rationale was that impressionable young people should not be forced into religious customs before they are old enough to make the decision consciously. Here the religious custom clashes with France's values of personal freedom. However, one could argue that wearing the burqa does not actually interfere with any worldly affairs—it does not disrupt the economy, basic laws, or normal human interaction. France's values of freedom are themselves otherworldly. A pillar of modern secular governments is freedom of religion, yet through the burqa ban, a secular government actually limits religious practice in a personal setting because it conflicts with its own otherworldly values. The argument for the ban, which 70 percent of France's population voted in favor of, holds that "it's not right [that] people [are] coming to school with religious symbols" and that "their faith is their business; it's nothing to do with the rest of us" (France 24). Yet the universality and absoluteness of a religion like Islam make any public/private boundary irrelevant to its adherents—for a practicing Muslim, there is no domain of life the faith does not govern.

This reveals a deeper problem. A government that claims to govern only worldly affairs cannot avoid making otherworldly commitments. Any metaphysical value held by a government — a belief in personal liberties, for example — is otherworldly and therefore falls under what we have been calling religion.

Fundamentally, every government is predicated on otherworldly or metaphysical beliefs. While secularism attempts to establish a framework where religion holds no authority over political life, it assumes that governance can operate independently of metaphysical or moral values. However, these values inevitably shape laws, norms, and cultural practices, whether or not they are explicitly religious. Even the most secular governments embed moral assumptions within their laws and institutions. These moral assumptions are unprovable. They often reflect ethical frameworks originating in religious traditions, repackaged in secular language (Asad). Concepts like human rights, freedom, and equality — the foundation of most democratic societies — can trace their lineage to religious ideas about the inherent worth of individuals. While such principles are now articulated in secular terms, they did not emerge in a vacuum; they have been adapted and reframed from older religious moral codes. Even purportedly neutral legal standards carry echoes of religious thought, recast into a modern, non-theological vocabulary.

Furthermore, the laws that guide secular governments often regulate behavior in ways that echo moral codes found in religious doctrines, suggesting that secular societies may not fully escape religious influence but rather reframe it. In this way, the claim of a purely secular society becomes paradoxical: while rejecting religious governance, secular states unwittingly perpetuate values rooted in religious or metaphysical traditions. As Asad argues, "The secular should not be thought of as the space in which real human life gradually emancipates itself from the controlling power of religion and thus achieves the latter's relocation.... Secularism does not simply insist that religious practice and belief be confined to a space where they cannot threaten political stability or the liberties of free-thinking citizens. Secularism builds on a particular conception of the world" (Asad). Rather than representing a neutral or liberated zone free from religious entanglements, the so-called secular domain actively defines and conditions both the religious and the political. By characterizing religion as something that must be contained, managed, or confined to the private sphere, the secular perspective imposes its own worldview—one that draws on underlying conceptions of morality and authority that were once explicitly religious. Secularism, on this reading, is not the absence of religion. It is religion's successor—performing the same work of moral organization under a different name.

Consider 9/11 — widely described as religiously motivated. Al-Qaeda's objectives were to provoke the United States on the global stage, weaken its influence, symbolize the destruction of Western ideologies, and push the United States out of the Middle East. These are all political objectives. Replace al-Qaeda with Iran; the objectives are identical, and the act becomes political. The only variable is whether the perpetrator is coded as "religious." That is precisely the definitional problem.

While the worldly/otherworldly argument is a crucial starting point, it still falls short of effectively separating religion from government. The idea of religion is broad to the point where it blends seamlessly into the fabric of our society, especially our government. But while the terms are broad and ill-defined, the ideas behind them are not. The argument that religion and politics are not terminologically distinct does not necessarily entail that the two are inseparable. If we can clarify our definitions, it is certainly possible to construct arguments for the separation of the two or for why they should be kept together. But here we encounter the original problem: what, definitively, is religion?

If we want to argue for the separation of religion and government, what definition should we abide by? We can use a broad philosophical definition like "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things"—but then how do we define "sacred"? In its most basic form, "sacred" literally means "not secular," or something with a connection to God or religion and therefore deserving of veneration (Oxford). This makes the philosophical definition circular. The definition reduces to "religion is what is not secular, and secular is what is not religious." The terms define each other in a closed loop.

Setting the definitional problem aside, what is the substantive argument against religious influence in government? Religion has been prone to extreme acts because it takes subjective human claims and gives them objective validity. Traditional religious doctrines, viewed as having the absolute backing of God, were actually written by people and can be used to justify anything, including atrocities and acts that are, in theory, contrary to the values of the religion itself. The colonization and atrocities perpetrated by European powers were justified through the spread of Christianity. The enslavement of Africans was also justified through Christianity. Christians were once brutally persecuted for their faith by the Romans. Religion can be inherently destructive, especially when questioned or undermined. When a universal system of belief is undermined by a contradictory system, the only defensible response within the framework seems to be that the second belief system is utterly false—because the alternative, that one's own beliefs are false, is unconscionable to most and goes against the fundamental nature of religion.

One real distinction between religion and politics, as these terms are now used, is in their relationship to rationality. Political systems founded on constitutions and social contract theory are, in principle, revisable—their authority derives from argument, not revelation. Traditional religious doctrines, by contrast, ground their authority in God. Books like the Bible and the Quran teach the values and profess the teachings of the prophets of their respective religions. Here lies a critical difference. Traditional religious doctrines are, by modern standards, rationally unsupported. They hinge entirely on God as the justification for their teachings, and without universal belief in God and irrefutable evidence for his existence, religious beliefs and ideas built on them cannot be rationally defended. However, one could argue that beliefs created through a written constitution exist on the same metaphysical plane as religious ones. If there is no God to objectively dictate the correct belief system, then both sets of ideas are fundamentally unprovable. Nowhere in the natural universe can we point to anything that establishes the Constitution as a better rule book than the Bible. But the fact that both are unprovable does not mean we cannot argue that one is more rational or more fit for purpose.

The Bible makes decrees such as non-virgin women should be stoned to death or animals with hooves should not be eaten—commands that may have served some purpose at the time. In theory, if the Bible undoubtedly had the backing of God, these would be completely rational, since they would come straight from God. But by modern standards, they would be considered barbaric. When we try to transport the moral teachings of a doctrine like the Bible across time, we inevitably carry other, more worldly, teachings with them. Creating a law against same-sex marriage by appeal to biblical morality is like drafting traffic legislation for ox-drawn carts. The problem is not just anachronism—it is that the authority justifying the decree, God's word as mediated through ancient human writers, cannot be verified. Without that authority, we are governing a modern society that is infinitely more complicated than the one those writers inhabited, based on predictions and beliefs formed in that earlier world. In the pursuit of a government that seeks to effectively protect the personal liberties of its citizens, religious doctrines from the past should be kept entirely separate from policy.

The more defensible separation is not between religion and politics but between constitutions and doctrines. Laws derived from religious doctrine, stripped of God's authority as their backing, rest on nothing more than the opinions of ancient writers. By modern standards of a government whose purpose is to protect individual freedom, they are insufficient. Religious doctrines, supposedly the word of God, were written by humans. And these humans operated and reasoned within the time period where they were from.

While constitutions and doctrines may be similar on a metaphysical level, there is a fundamental difference between a government that aims to control its citizens and one that aims to protect their natural rights. The great change created by the discourses between Locke and Penn, when religion was first described as a concept separate from politics, was not to secularize government but to alter its role. For all of history, the holistic idea of government, religion, and morality was used to contextualize existence for the masses and regulate people by placing them into seemingly objective systems of belief.

In Two Treatises of Government, Locke articulates that "Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defense of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good" (Locke). The role of government, politics, and policy is to protect the public good rather than to regulate moral and religious convictions. By separating out the personal search for meaning, the role of government shifted from regulating people to protecting their freedoms. Instead of telling people how to live, the government's job became to protect an individual's ability to choose how to live. This does not mean unlimited freedom — laws remain, and they bind everyone. But their purpose has changed. Where the laws of the pre-secular order aimed to regulate belief and moral life, modern secular law aims to maintain a functional society. In theory, with a clear baseline objective, we can use inductive reasoning to construct rational means of achieving it. Religion, by its structural necessity to be absolute, cannot update its premises through inductive reasoning. Politics, at least in principle, can.

However, the influence of religious doctrines on politics is different from the influence of religion in general. As the role of government becomes increasingly to protect personal freedom, the need for universal belief systems to give people personal meaning becomes more pressing, not less. As a society we have seen a massive shift toward people in secular countries cultivating an individual sense of purpose. Unlike any other time in history, people have the autonomy to choose how they want to find meaning in their lives and how that meaning affects their decisions. But this shift has not been absolute or universal. Most of the world, while living under secular governments, subscribes to some form of traditional religion, and in many places there has been a resurgence in religious belief. Post-Soviet Russia has witnessed a revival of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose growing influence runs parallel to a state that remains formally secular. Similarly, Turkey, once a model for secularized democracy, has seen a more prominent public role for Islam under the Justice and Development Party, blurring the lines between religious identity and state authority. There are many reasons for this persistence of religion, but arguably it comes down to a fundamental truth. The scientific and inductive logic that governs modern law is well-suited to describing how the world works. It cannot answer why. We can use science to ask how the sun rises, how lightning strikes, or how birds fly. But science cannot answer questions like "Why do I exist?" or "What should I do?" Above all else, religion is comfort. It provides a deeply personal meaning to the lives of individuals on a massive scale. Modern secular governments offer unprecedented personal autonomy. But autonomy does not provide purpose. People still need an answer to the question of what to do with their freedom. Religion does not just provide comfort through acts of worship or creation myths but also through its moral framework. The maximization of personal liberties, while allowing for a vast new set of human beliefs, cultures, traditions, and worldviews, stands in contrast to the strict moral teachings of doctrines like the Bible or Quran. People are naturally resistant to change, and when confronted with the rapid progression of modern secular societies, many find it necessary to take refuge in the moral teachings of religion.

If religion meets a need that secular government cannot—the need for personal meaning—then the question is not whether religion has a role, but what kind of religion is compatible with secular governance. That question falls within what Watson calls "inductive theology" (Watson). Just as inductive reasoning builds general principles from specific observations, inductive theology would reinterpret religious teachings to align with contemporary values and scientific understandings, constructing a purpose-driven framework rooted in personal relevance rather than rigid doctrines. This form of religion would no longer rely on outdated, absolutist mandates but could instead provide individuals with a flexible, personalized ethical compass. The religions of the future should be centered around the idea of natural human rights. In the same way that secular governments have shifted from systems of control to systems that protect individual freedom, so can our religions. The reason we see such violent clashes between religious extremists and secular institutions is arguably because the two are irreconcilable on a fundamental level—one demands absolute authority, the other demands the right to refuse it. By supporting personal autonomy and inner exploration, religion could coexist with secular governance, providing meaning without imposing authority. In this way, rather than resisting secularism, religion could offer guidance for those seeking purpose while respecting the freedom to find individual meaning in a diverse and pluralistic world.

A purely secular government is a category error. Every government encodes metaphysical commitments—about the worth of persons, the source of authority, and the purpose of collective life. These are, structurally, religious questions, even when religion is never named. There will likely never be a government that does not resemble or at least integrate the fundamental principles of religion. What we call "secularism" might be better understood as yet another evolution of the same forces that have forever shaped human societies: the need for shared meaning, the quest for authority, and the codification of moral truths. But these forces are undoubtedly evolving. The challenge is not to isolate religion from politics but to understand that both arise from the same human impulse: the need for shared meaning and a justifiable moral order. A rigid separation was always a fiction. What is needed instead is an honest account of how that impulse operates—and the institutional wisdom to govern it well.

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