Secular State

A secular state is a concept of secularism, whereby a state or country purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion nor irreligion. A secular state also claims to treat all its citizens equally regardless of religion, and claims to avoid preferential treatment for a citizen from a particular religion/nonreligion over other religions/nonreligion. Secular states do not have a state religion or equivalent, although the absence of a state religion does not guarantee that a state is secular. A minority of secular, communist or dictatorial nations have historically enforced the extreme of the concept, state atheism, on their populations by way of religious censorship and persecution.

Secular states become secular either upon establishment of the state (e.g. United States of America or India) or upon secularization of the state (e.g. France or Nepal). Movements for laïcité in France and for the separation of church and state in the United States defined modern concepts of secularism. Historically, the process of secularising states typically involves granting religious freedom, disestablishing state religions, stopping public funds to be used for a religion, freeing the legal system from religious control, freeing up the education system, tolerating citizens who change religion or abstain from religion, and allowing political leadership to come to power regardless of religious beliefs.

Not all legally secular states are completely secular in practice.

• In France for example, many Christian holy days are official holidays for the public administration, and teachers in Catholic schools are salaried by the state. In some European states where secularism confronts monoculturalist philanthropy some of the main Christian sects and sects of other religions depend on the state for some of the financial resources for their religious charities. It is common in Corporate law and Charity law to prohibit them from using those funds to organise religious worship in a separate place of worship or for conversion; the religious body itself must provide the religious content, educated clergy and lay-persons to exercise its own functions and may choose to afford part of their time to the separate charities. To that effect some of those charities establish secular organisations that manage part of or all of the donations from the main religion(s). Religious and atheist organisations can apply for equivalent funding from the government and receive subsidies either based on assessed social results where there is indirect religious state funding, sometimes that assessment is simply the number of beneficiaries of those organisations. This resembles Charitable choice in the United States. Overt direct state funding of religions is on the whole doubtfully in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights though it would not yet appear to have been decided at supranational level in ECtHR case law stemming from the rights in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which mandates non-discrimination in affording its co-listed basic social rights; specifically, funding certain services would not accord with non-discriminatory state action.

• In India, the government gives a subsidy in airfare for Muslims going on Haj pilgrimage (See Haj subsidy). In 2007, the government had to spend Rs. 47,454 per passenger. After considerable pressure from Muslim groups and the Ministry of Minority Affairs, the Congress government in 2010 decided to begin phasing out the Haj subsidy that had been in operation since 1993. The Central Haj Committee of India will work through the Ministry of External Affairs to restructure the air fares so that the richer Hajis will pay a premium for the poorer pilgrims. The entire restructuring is expected to take about seven years and be completed by 2017.

Many states that nowadays are secular in practice may have legal vestiges of an earlier established religion. Secularism also has various guises which may coincide with some degree of official religiosity. Thus, in the Commonwealth Realms, the head of state is required to take the 1688-enacted Coronation Oath swearing to defend the Anglican faith. The United Kingdom also maintains positions in its advisory revising chamber for 26 senior clergymen of the established Church of England known as the Lords Spiritual, spiritual peers or Bishops in the House of Lords. While Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, its Christianity has since the Reformation been too divided to have an established church, and has no religious parliamentary representation.

The reverse progression can also occur, a state can go from being secular to a religious state as in the case of Iran where the secularized state of the Pahlavi dynasts was replaced by the Islamic Republic (list below). Over the last 250 years, there has been a trend towards secularism.