The Case for Secular Liturgies: A Shared Spiritual Language

 Since 2019, I’ve been the chaplain of a high-fee independent school which has historically been ‘non-denominational’. But what does that even mean in 21st century practice, especially when the school community is reflective of the wider culture’s religious affiliations? 2/3 of the school’s enrolments claim no religious affiliation, and 1/3 claim nearly every religious affiliation on earth.

So what should its chapel services look like? How do you create cohesive spiritual experiences in this context? My answer has been to offer secular liturgies. That is--language, texts, and music that are not explicitly of any particular religious tradition. This approach to spiritual development creates a truly inclusive spiritual awareness, and has become a key point of difference from other independent schools.

To clarify this, think of a how a hospital works:

Imagine doctor going into a hospital to operate. Let’s say this doctor is religious, specifically Jewish, say—an observant Jew who has been raised that in that faith, reads the sacred texts, and regularly goes to temple. While he is operating on a patient, a particularly apt prayer for divine healing from, say, the Talmud, comes to his mind. Now should he, as an observant Jew, pause the operation to offer that prayer to the God he worships? If your child were the patient, and you knew the doctor paused operating on them to be prayerfully observant, would you appreciate that? And if your child’s surgery went wrong, would you applaud the doctor’s piety? Or sue him?

Regardless of his religion, this doctor operates in a secular context

Of course, that imaginary hospital scenario never happens. Because any religious doctor--Jewish or Hindu or Muslim—knows it’s for them to treat the patient in that context. The doctor operates for that hour etsi Deus non daretur, ‘as if God were not a given’. Does that make the doctor a religious hypocrite? Does it make the doctor a bad Jew if he suspends his Jewish practices for the time he operates? No, it does no such thing. The world we live in is not as simple as that.

It’s complex: the world is becoming BOTH more religious or less so. In some parts of the world, religious sects and their followers are increasing in numbers. In places like Australia though, religious affiliation is in steady decline overall. Both things are true—the world is getting both more religious in total numbers, and also less religious in certain places like ours. So there’s this big split, and institutions like hospitals have to accommodate that split. Hospitals have BOTH doctors AND chaplains. They have BOTH operating rooms AND prayer rooms. The institution of the Hospital operates in BOTH ‘secular’ terms AND in religious terms. BOTH. Which means the reality is not ‘either you’re one or the other’; the reality is you can be both—folks can and do ‘operate’ in both religious and secular terms interchangeably. But for the time he operates, the good doctor suspends his religion and makes his religious beliefs and practices strictly irrelevant for that time. However, in his life more generally, the doctor operates in both frameworks, switching depending on whether he’s at temple or at hospital.

Modernity means choice

Like a hospital, an independent school is an institution that must serve the needs of all who come there. Our school, our country, and indeed the whole world is increasingly religiously plural—meaning there are many different religious flavours to choose from. At the same time, secular developments in science and technology are discovering and creating realities that religions never dreamt of, things like biomechanics, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence. A world containing both religious pluralism and non-religious secularism is how things are, and have been for some time.  Embracing that reality and learning how to work with it in schools, is only just beginning. In effect, I have placed the school at the vanguard of this emerging awareness.

2020’s attempts to offer chapel via Zoom have reminded us that we humans crave live gatherings where we seriously consider meaning and purpose together. And if we see the benefit of such gatherings, HOW should they be expressed in a multicultural, multifaith community? What language can we all share in them, when we meet as one institution to worship together?

Well, our students have been living in the answer for the past couple years. They will have noticed that chapels have not exactly Bible-bashed, nor indeed bashed any particular book. Nor have chapels used especially churchy language. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, particularly, in its place. After all, religion is the most continuous human experience, secular society is young by comparison. We could just pick one or two religions and unpack them. But once you focus on a select few, you automatically exclude other stories which also have great truth, beauty, and goodness. And we can’t do justice to them all. We could just have focussed on Christianity, say, since it’s dominant in our colonial culture, and our mid-century chapel already fairly bristles with Cx crosses. But to submit to what’s dominant because it’s dominant, is not about theology or meaning, but about power. ‘Cultural might makes right’ is the ethic of slaves and the mark of fascism. Besides, since when has dominance guaranteed worth? No, choosing what’s dominant because it’s dominant is a choice based on fear. To make a choice based on the opposite of fear, a religious choice, a choice based on love, would be to use language that can bring all together on equal terms, and exclude no one.

Love includes, fear divides

So our chapel worship services are, in effect, secular liturgies, using secular language and music, the same language which BOTH doctors and chaplains (whatever their religion) use to function together in their institution day to day. Secular language alone is the shared language through which all in our institution can connect TOGETHER as a School community. If this were a church community, we’d probably be using different language. Using this secular language common to people of all faiths and none, is thus an intentional and loving act of inclusion, rather than an act of division, of privileging one faith over others. Doesn’t the hospital include all patients in treatment, not just the religious ones? Shouldn’t we as a school, try to include all our students in worship, not just a few?

Don’t misunderstand: this is not anti-religion. Religious language can be rich and moving and wise. Religious texts can be models of beauty, clarity, and insight. But religious language does not have a monopoly on such things. Secular language has poetry with deeply felt and timeless spiritual wisdom–English teachers could provide abundant examples. Secular language has moral power—read the Uluhru Statement from the Heart or, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And your CD collection has secular music that lifts your spirit just as sacred music can.

Both are real; one offers a common language

Secular language, secular texts, and secular music is the language we all CAN share in chapel, because it’s the language we all DO share in school every day anyway, whatever our flavour of religion and whatever our flavour of no religion. And if we happen to put a family’s chosen faith aside—like the doctor puts his--for the time school is ‘operating’, we don’t deny their religion, nor do we make religious hypocrites of their students by worshipping in a language that brings us all together as one school. What religion does not seek the fullest possible bringing together of all God’s children?

If you get sick, you can certainly pray for healing and use whichever of the many religious languages you choose. But I hope you will ALSO go to a hospital. If you seek an education, you may choose a single book of wisdom as a foundation. But you’ll ALSO go to an institution called a school, where students read and draw wisdom from many books. Like a doctor going to operate in a hospital, a teacher going into a school may believe with all their heart that there is an invisible world beyond this one, a world populated with intelligent beings we can communicate with, if we use a special language of words, behaviours, rituals. But that invisible world is not on the school curriculum. Learning about this one is challenging enough. During the hours the teacher is operating, their professionalism bids them operate, like the doctor, ‘etsi Deus non daretur’. And like the doctor, they do not betray their own religion by using our common language, rather than the language of their faith alone.

Now, more than ever, in our shrinking world of many faiths and many of none, we need to find ways to come together, rather than endlessly split into ever-multiplying factions, we need to seek meaning and purpose together, to celebrate living together. If we want our world to come together in mutual respect and tolerance, small worlds like schools have to come together in mutual respect and tolerance. In a world of endless choices and great uncertainties, our chapel services aim to bring together all our students, that they may feel the spiritual power that comes from connectedness rather than division. May they feel there is indeed strength in such unity.