Initials n°266: Secularism and religion – June 2022.
Are you a believer? We hardly dare to answer this question today!
Many consider it to be our private life and that it concerns only us. Many are afraid to say their faith or wear a religious sign. For college and high school students it is often even more difficult. Word secularism comes back like a leitmotif, a tune that runs through our heads without us really knowing the song. Yet the secularism aims to welcome all religions and we live in a plural world. So how do you reconcile all of this?
Joëlle Eluard’s editorial
To dare. To dare to call oneself Christian, Catholic, to wear a cross, a medal, a tattoo of Jesus or a biblical phrase, to relay the pope’s messages, to take a stand on controversial subjects in the name of one’s faith: all this seems difficult today, especially for teenagers.
Why ? Too afraid of being accused, of not being fashionable or – worse – afraid of proselytizing, fear of “not having the right”! Even the rites to which we were accustomed and which seemed immutable to us are transformed into secular ceremonies. So silence sometimes seems preferable, even between oneself, to be quiet. Yet our faith invites us to announce, proclaim and live what Christ taught us, and not only in the so-called private sphere.
The debate is old. Already at the time of Peter’s first letter (1 P 2, 11-17) the question arose of living by his Christian faith in the face of Roman institutions. The 1905 law in France put an end to a period of great instability and tension, but the subject was not closed for all that. Regularly, and until today with the law called “separatism”, the question of secularism and religions is debated. Most of the time, the lack of knowledge of what the secularism provokes questioning, extremists from all sides camped on untenable positions for those who want to live their faith without provocation.
Because that is what it is all about: living from one’s baptism here and today. Each of us adults, each teenager must find his place to grow while being well in his faith! Our assignment is to help the teenagers we accompany to take their share of responsibility and commitment to their measure, so that they can be artisans of unity and peace. The pope reminds them: “It is not possible to start again without you, dear young people. To rise again, the world needs your strength, your enthusiasm, your passion.”1 “Get up ! [dit Jésus à Paul] I bear you witness to what you have seen” (cf. Acts 26:16).
Joëlle Eluard, Editor-in-chief of Initiales
1. Pope Francis, message for the 36th World Youth Day on September 21, 2021
Believing in my city
Are you a believer? We hardly dare to answer this question today! Many think we live in a secular republic that excludes religions. However, if we take the time to fully understand the secularism, it welcomes all beliefs. It is up to us to listen to a vocabulary that resonates in our ears: respect, equality, fraternity, freedom, in order to be baptized in the service of others, like Christ the King, and to dare express the love of this God who loves us and saves us.
Step 1: Signs of faith in a secular republic
Our Christian religion has not disappeared from our societies, many signs tell of the faith of men and women of all times. And this even if, faced with a secular republic whose secularism is often misunderstood, they no longer always dare to affirm what they believe in.
Objective :
Enable young people to identify signs around them that speak to them of our religion and to give its meaning. Then try
to define the word secularism.
A CHOICE
The words of teenagers
Say, what do you see?
The secularisma society without religion?
A faith that shows
AND CHOICE
The secularism : quesako?
A quiz on secularism
A treasure hunt on the secularism
Step 2: Did you say king?
Strange to speak of Jesus as our king in a republican country that has cut off his own! Yet talking about the kingdom of God, already here and to come, is commonplace for us Christians. This royal function that biblical kings inhabit, Jesus will continue to color it, not fulfilling it in a political way in the strict sense of the term, but by making us discover that the real power is the service of others.
Objective :
Allow young people to discover, from the biblical stories, what it means to be a king and what it means to be a king in the manner of Christ.
PREAMBLE
A king’s oath
A CHOICE
A king who sings to God
Step 3: Citizens and baptized
Through our baptism, we are called to live out this role of king ourselves, to be artisans of peace. This invites us to no longer think of our faith as being in a “private” or hidden sphere, as we can often hear, but rather to deploy our vocation baptism in all areas of our “public” life, daring to speak out as Christians.
Objective :
To allow young people to discover that to be baptized is to dare to make commitments in society without needing to hide their Christian identity.