Russell Blackford's Secularist Religion

This took me all afternoon to write.  On ABC religion site you will find Australian atheist Russell Blackford's "Why the secular state has no moral mandate".  American political theologian William Cavanaugh answered a major justification of Blackford's argument with "The 'Wars of Religion' and other fairy tales".  This generated a reply from Blackford called "Don't mention the war! A response to Cavanaugh".  This is an intervention on Blackford's second contribution.  My perception was that Blackford was attempting to build an argument for the exclusion of religous arguments from modern political debate.  Further, I think Cavanaugh had nailed the problems with Blackford's argument.  (Note I have edited it)

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Russell, I cannot agree that the William Cavanaugh in “The “Wars of Religions” and other fairy tales” got you wrong.  You have over simply history while Cavanaugh historiography is subtle and well argued. You want to establishment of a religion or world view for the modern Australia and need to a myth to justify this new religion.  You falsely call that 'religion 'secularism'.  Its doctrine is to exclude other religious reasoning from the public debate, there by establishing a religious test and, hence, destroying secularism!

True secularism lacks a religious or world view test for citizenship, pubic office or public debate.

You base your ideology on the myth that there were wars of religion.  You use two devises.  The first is repetition. In your opening paragraph of “Why the secular state has no moral mandate” you repeat the idea of religious wars three times.  Cavanaugh replies that prior to 1700 the distinctions between religion, state, political philosophy, society and so on did not exist.  He names a number of political alliances between those of different religious views.  He point to his own and others work to reinforce his argument.  Cavanaugh then concludes, “If "religion" cannot be separated out as the cause of these wars, then the idea that peace was made by the secular state setting religion aside into a private realm becomes suspect.”

That brings us to your other devise, you ignore the historical context.  The first is the use of the term ‘religion’.  You use it in a modern sense.  As mention above, that sense of the term did not exist prior to 1700.  The other is your comments of Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). Even though I have never read the essay, I feel I have a better understanding of Locke’s discrimination against Catholicism than you.  It appears to us moderns as that era's confusion between religion and politics.  About the same time, Britain excluded Catholics from the throne.  Thank you, Guy Fawkes!

Your real objection seems to be the use of theological reasoning in modern political discourse.  You over simply ‘political’ theology and ignore it depth.  Cavanaugh reflects my frustration with atheists’ pretence of neutrality.  Like the communists of old, they claim to have a scientific reasoning on their side, ignoring all the assumptions they take for granted.  There is none of the humility of political theology.  A great example is the recent address to the German Parliament by Pope Benedict XVI.  He claimed that the modern basis of the law came from the Romans and the Greeks, a point on which I agree.  Christian ethics is never complete; it simply has a vision for humanity. 

At the same time, in the period we have been discussing and without the language, Christians made the first pleas for religious freedom, established the first governments without religious tests and, hence, invented secularism.  This Christian, with my meagre intellectual resources, will defend secularism against anyone, like yourself, who wishes to pervert it and make it a religious test!

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Please, tell me if I have nailed it.