The Chilean Military after Antuco: Shortcomings of a Post-Secular Discourse

Cristobal Bellolio

doi:10.3390/rel11030146

Abstract

In their two hundred years of existence, the Chilean armed forces have had a close relationship with the Catholic faith, especially with a local version of the Virgin Mary (Virgen del Carmen), who is held as the patroness of the military. After its greatest tragedy in peacetime, when 44 soldiers—half of them Christian evangelicals—died buried in the snows of the Antuco volcano, the army and other branches of the military felt compelled to add Protestant chaplaincies to their repertoire of religious assistance, hitherto reserved for Catholics. This has been understood as a move towards a more egalitarian and inclusive understanding of religious freedom, but also as opposing exclusivist versions of liberal neutrality, in which the state fulfils its duty by taking religion out of the public sphere altogether. According to the times’ intellectual climate, the Chilean authorities have been framing these developments—not only in the military, but elsewhere—as the embodiment of a post-secular strategy, in which religion (all religion) should be welcomed back into public life and state institutions. This article presents five concerns with this chosen strategy: (a) whether inclusive secularism is a practical impossibility, since there is no way to accommodate all religious and non-religious expressions; (b) whether a post-secular narrative is adequate for states that that have not gone through the previous (secular) phase; (c) whether post-secular institutional arrangements—which entail welcoming religion in the public sphere—are adequate in countries without religious pluralism; (d) whether post-secular institutional arrangements—which entail welcoming religion in the public sphere—are not actually disparaging for non-religious people; (e) whether sponsored religious expressions and practices within public institutions put undue pressure on dissenters. This way, I offer the case of the Chilean armed forces as a proxy to illuminate the normative problems that an incipient process of growing religious pluralism and a move towards religious egalitarianism, framed as a post-secular discourse, faces in hegemonically Catholic countries.

Highlights

In their two hundred years of existence, the Chilean armed forces have had a close relationship with the Catholic faith, especially with a local version of the Virgin Mary (Virgen del Carmen), who is held as the patroness of the military
The paper presents five concerns with the former strategy, chosen by the Chilean military: (a) whether inclusive secularism is a practical impossibility since there is no way to accommodate all religious and non-religious expressions; (b) whether a post-secular narrative is adequate for states that that have not gone through the previous phase; (c) whether post-secular institutional arrangements—which entail welcoming religion into the public sphere—are adequate in countries without religious pluralism; (d) whether post-secular institutional arrangements—which entail welcoming religion in the public sphere—are not disparaging for non-religious people; (e) whether sponsored religious expressions and practices within public institutions put undue pressure on dissenters
With hegemonically Catholic Latin American countries in mind, Rudas has proposed a similar “alternative proposal”, that he calls “laicity as anticlericalism”, which is “characterized by the establishment of an institutional arrangement that strictly separates and excludes religious contents from state institutions” (Rudas 2017, p. 82)

Summary

Catholicism in the Chilean Military

A few weeks after the Antuco tragedy, visibly moved, the () Commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, Juan Emilio Cheyre, told the press: “I dressed the first dead body that we found, I put my socks on him, my underpants, my shirt . . . I made upon him the Holy Cross with my medal of the Virgen del Carmen” (quoted in Zapata 2009, p. 30) Translation is mine. As understood here, is closer to Audi’s principle of neutrality: in order to show respect to non-religious people, the only way to remain neutral is to exclude religious expressions from the public sphere In light of these conceptual categories, the case of the Chilean military is best represented by the inclusive view. A detailed treatment of the post-secular thesis is beyond the scope of this paper For its purposes, this broad-strokes conceptualization is useful to frame the discourse of the Chilean authorities and the historically situated way in which they justify strategies of inclusive laicism and neutrality within public institutions, which range from hosting a diversity of religious festivities in public buildings to the inauguration of non-Catholic chaplaincies in the military and elsewhere. Having said that policies of inclusive laicism can be legitimate from the standpoint of political liberalism, the question that remains is whether these policies and strategies, covered in a post-secular narrative, are the best way to show all citizens—including members of the armed forces—equal respect, regardless of their religious beliefs

Shortcomings of the Post-Secular in the Case of the Chilean Military

Findings

Conclusions