Machar: the Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism

 Increasing Respect for Religious and Secular Humanistic Communities

Efforts to Increase respect for religious groups should not come at the expense of groups like Machar and the Society for Humanistic Judaism. The Washington Post recently focused on a report issued by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, entitled “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for US Foreign Policy.” The report was the work of a task force of 32 former government officials and religious leaders, some of whom are quite progressive. The headline of the article was “God Gap Impedes US Foreign Policy, Task Force Says.”

The task force made some important recommendations, such as improving the ability of American diplomats to understand the religious context of the countries in which they work and ensuring that they engage with religious groups. However, the report denigrated secularists and those promoting secular values. For example, it says, “pushing an
uncompromising secular alternative can have the unintended effect of feeding extremism.” The report states that the U.S. Government’s slowness in responding effectively to countries where religion plays a predominant role is due to “a fear of treading too far over a set of unclear domestic legal lines separating church and state, and what some observers view as a secular bias in U.S. foreign policy,” among other issues.

The Post article goes further in attacking secularists, quoting Chris Seiple, President of the Institute for Global Engagement, “The truth is the academy has been run by secular fundamentalists for a long time, people who believe religion is not a legitimate component of realpolitik.” 

What neither the task force nor the Post understand is that we secular humanists are committed to religious freedom and recognize the importance of engaging with religious groups.

We at Machar have demonstrated this recently by building a partnership with Muslims for Progressive Values. However, we insist that governmental policy affirm human-focused secular groups and religious movements in addition to the God-focused religious movements. It is unfortunate that a well meaning group advocating for constructive changes in our government’s approach to religious groups abroad is not careful enough to include secular humanists among the groups deserving increased respect.

Rick Gold
President, Machar