Remarks by Professor David A. Hollinger at Trinity College

Inauguration of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

November 2, 2005

Across the Secular-Religious Line: Prospects for an Alliance?

Central to my perspective on the issues that bring us into conversation here is my sense that for all the variations on secular outlooks and on faith-based outlooks visible in the United States today, there is a great potential for a political and cultural alliance between secular liberals and religious liberals...
 
I wish more secularists would realize that most of the religious ideas actually espoused and defended by liberal Protestants and liberal Catholics have accommodated with the post-Enlightenment episteme still resisted by more conservative religious styles. And I wish more of the enlightened faithful would recognize that a vast proportion of secularists are operating under the same basic value structure that they, the religious liberals, operate under...

I favor a robust, open, critical discussion of such things as the epistemic status of the bible, the sorts of warrant we might develop for the idea of the atonement, etc.

Not all religious ideas are equally obscurantist. Many of the ideas of liberal Protestants and liberal Catholics can stand up to the same canons of evidence and reasoning that secularists use in their daily lives. An open discussion of religious ideas might reveal that religious liberals have a lot more in common with many secularists than they do with the bulk of evangelicals and fundamentalists…