On August 7, the Guttman Center at the Israel Democracy Institute, together with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC) at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, hosted a conference on secularism. A large number of researchers and intellectuals from various fields participated in the conference, and were asked to write essays on the subject. Prof. Asher Arian, scientific director of Guttman Center, chaired the meeting.
The first speaker, Prof. Barry Kosmin, director of the ISSSC of Trinity College, emphasized the importance of understanding secularism in contemporary society. Prof. Kosmin claimed that the field of secularism lacks analytical research due to a lack of suitable indices, and stressed the importance of constructing a universal system that would enable a comparative study of secularism across different societies.
The second speaker was Dr. Arye Carmon, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. Dr. Carmon pointed out the instability that characterizes Israeli politics, a result of an uncertain social identity. According to Carmon, the current political echelon lacks responsibility that is based on skepticism and rationalism, traits that have always been identified with secularism. According to Carmon, this type of responsibility is the greatest challenge that modern societies have faced since the period of the Enlightenment. In addition, Carmon claimed that indecisiveness and uncertainty are also fundamental to secularism, and therefore that secular life is destined to a never-ending struggle of self-inquiry.
The first session dealt with secularism in a universal context, while the second one focused on Israeli secularism. Participating in the first session were: Prof. Yaakov Malkin, Prof. Jonathan Fox, Dahlia Scheindlin, Giora Kaplan, Prof. Ariela Keysar, Prof. Emanuel Gutmann and Prof. Nissim Calderon.
Prof Malkin claimed that secularism stands at the heart of a cultural struggle between religion, which calls upon man to adhere to a higher law, and democracy, which sees man as free and self-governing. He claimed that 'way of life' is the main indicator of secularism, not self-definition, and that most people's way of life indicates secularism and not religion, regardless of how they define themselves
Prof. Fox presented the various indices, which have been used to measure levels of state secularism. The first group of indices referred to secularism as the negation of religion, whereas the second group of indices referred mainly to self-definition. These indicators, Fox claimed, have not yet been consolidated into a universal definition of secularism. One possible universal indicator might be the level of hostility towards religion, but this kind of measurement also has its disadvantages. Another suggestion was to gather a group of individuals that define themselves as secular, and to identify their common secular characteristics.
Dahlia Scheindlin compared secularism in the United States, France and Turkey, where religion plays a major role in public life but is not manifested in legislation. Scheindlin stressed the need to identify indicators of secularism that apply in the area between legislation and 'way of life', especially in countries that clearly separate between church and state.
Giora Kaplan presented the perspective of the health research field, which measures secularism levels according to self-definition. The categories currently u