April 26, 2012 – Punta Cana, Dominican Republic…Nigel Coke/IRLA
Neville Callam General Secretary of the World Baptist Alliance (WBA), told 7th World Congress attendees that “the resolution of the tension between religious liberty and secularism is more easily described than achieved.”
Speaking on the theme of the day-“How to Live Together”-he cited as a part of the problem, the increasingly pluralistic nature of society. Society is multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, with people who speak varying languages, and from different backgrounds and upbringings. All this, said Callam, makes it difficult to agree on a minimal core of what is acceptable to all.
Callam, who regards secularism as an ideology that sets forth a vision of the nature of the state and how it should be ordered viz-à-viz religion, further said, “It is also very hard to communicate the ideas around which we need to coalesce and it’s very difficult to gain that consensus and I believe, therefore, that it is easier to talk about than to secure the consensus.”
He further argued that, “In the coming decades, the extent to which a comprehensive and satisfactory answer to this dilemma is found will determine both the sustainability of people’s peaceful co-existence and the possibility of religious liberty remaining a human right to be respected by all. Hopefully, a conference like this will contribute to the resolution of this intractable dilemma.”
Reverend Callam also disclosed that there are contrasting attitudes in the worldwide Baptist Christian community. Various regions of its approximately 110 million-member family have adopted different approaches to the issue of religious liberty and the challenges posed by secularism.
The BWA is the organization that serves as an expression of the essential oneness of the global Baptist family, which resides in six designated regions-Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Caribbean, North America and Latin America. In each of these regions, Baptist Christians, like other Christians, face the challenge of secularism in one way or another, said Callam.
