At this point in history, perhaps more than separating religion from the State, it would be necessary to separate religion from identity.
You have to claim your belongings, and all of them. I apologize for socializing some of my belongings, but they are the ones I know best. I am mestizo and, by virtue of that, a large number of the religions of my ancestors also come together in me. I would add that I was raised as a Catholic but living with Pentecostal relatives, with a heart close to Methodists and Mennonites, a scholar of Judaism from the 1st century, moved by the maleku belief of deifying those relatives who died a good death (due to natural causes) until they became in intercessors between their relatives and God (tocu), with Buddhist and Bahai neighbors, in conversation with agnostics suspicious of religion, with a deep respect for the Muslim and Jewish philosophy that gave so much to the West since the Middle Ages. And I say this sincerely: if I were asked to apostatize from any of those belongings, I would not do it because I cannot save myself if I do not save my belongings. I am many in one. (Do the mental exercise in other areas and you will discover that belongings are also multiple, for example, in gastronomy: I am a lover of Nicaraguan baho, Colombian ajiaco, Tico tamales, Peruvian ceviche, Arab shawarma, dying dreaming Dominican, Indian curry, etc., etc.) We are many in one.
Let’s say it clearly: belonging to a tribe (ethnicity or skin color, or also religious) can easily turn militants into implacable executioners of those who do not belong to the reduced mentality of their tribe, find pleasure in torturing enemies, commit unimaginable outrages , not knowing decorum and victimizing others under the pretext of the most foolish superstitions. Any narrow and simplistic way of belonging must be avoided.
Membership in a group can cause a sense of identity, but also a tendency to divide. The pandemic has taught us that alone we are nothing, and that we need networks of solidarity, family, neighborhood or fraternity that go far beyond political groups, ethnic groups or religious militancy. The goal of humanity has to do with free human beings associated with each other on equal terms (N. Chomsky).
Deep down, the only belonging that matters is respecting others for their biography, accepting them simply for their belonging to the human race, and not giving them a second category as a human being, without packaging them. Likewise, religious traditions are respectable only if they assume the fundamental rights of women and men, not if they discriminate because discrimination is incompatible with human dignity. It is unacceptable to besiege anyone under the pretext of preserving a faith or a religious tradition, and even less to impose faith using democratic structures, although what matters to those who do that is to impose themselves politically when their truths of faith are not enough (! nor will they ever reach!) levels of argument above other religious beliefs with the same horizontality and rights.
A world, a Costa Rica not without religion, but without a spirituality associated with the idea of political belonging; a Costa Rica with beliefs, but without the need to enroll in a cohort of fanatics; a Costa Rica in which human beings are citizens of the world and not of a planetary (religious) tribe.
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