But whether we speak of America as a religious nation or secular one depends, of course, on what we mean by secular. As Oxford’s John Finnis noted in a 2003 address at Princeton University, the word “secular” was coined by Latin Christians to describe those things which “are not divine, sacred, or ecclesiastical”, and that its resonances were not always negative. Finnis then pointed out that Christian faith actually encourages “secularisation” in so far as this means the extension of human understanding and control over fields of life previously inaccessible to human science and technology, precisely because Christian faith insists on both God’s transcendence and the intelligibility of his creation through science.
There is a world of difference, however, between this understanding of the secular and what Princeton’s Robert P. George describes as “orthodox secularism”. By this, George means “a sectarian doctrine with its own metaphysical and moral presuppositions and foundations, with its own myths, and, one might even argue, its own rituals”. Implicitly atheistic, deeply utilitarian in its mode of reasoning, and profoundly influenced by David Hume’s philosophical scepticism, orthodox secularism, as portrayed by George and other American scholars, has two effects upon public debate.
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