A Secular and Neutral State

Secular humanism affirms that the state should be secular and neutral among beliefs: neither establishing nor favouring any religion, and protecting the equal freedom of all citizens to hold and practise their convictions, religious or not. Humanists hold that government should rest on reason and the common good rather than on religious doctrine, and that the separation of religion and state safeguards liberty of conscience for believers and non-believers alike. A neutral state is seen as the fairest arrangement for a society of diverse and competing convictions.

The philosophical case for a neutral state has a long lineage, from John Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), though Locke's own argument notably excluded atheists, whom he judged incapable of trustworthy oaths, and Roman Catholics, whom he judged politically loyal to a foreign power, from the toleration he extended to Protestant dissenters. Its clearest modern constitutional embodiment is the Establishment Clause of the United States Bill of Rights (1791), which forbids Congress from establishing a religion, a provision American humanist and secularist organisations have consistently defended and litigated in court, while France's principle of laicite, formalised in its 1905 law separating church and state, represents a stronger and more actively secular constitutional model than the American approach.