Thomas Albert Howard, "Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)

Jan 9, 2026

Thomas Albert Howard, a professor at Valparaiso University and author of "Broken Altars," dives into the dark side of secularism in modern history. He argues that extreme forms of secularism have led to violence as severe as, or worse than, religious conflicts. Howard breaks down three types of secularism—passive, combative, and eliminationist—and explores their implications across various countries. He also emphasizes the need for legal protections for religious pluralism to safeguard against authoritarianism and advocates for a nuanced understanding of secularism's impact on society.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Secularism Isn't One Thing

The dominant narrative that secularism equals peace is over-simplified and Western-centered.
Thomas Albert Howard argues different secularisms (passive, combative, eliminationist) explain varying violence patterns.

INSIGHT

Three Types Of Secularism

Howard defines three secularisms: passive, combative, and eliminationist to classify state-religion relations.
Combative stems from Revolutionary France; eliminationist ties to Marxist-Leninist projects that aim to abolish religion.

INSIGHT

Marx's Prediction And Revolutionary Reaction

Marx predicted religion would fade with material progress but revolutionaries found religion resilient and sometimes obstructive.
Lenin and others pushed proactive suppression, producing severe anti-religious violence under Stalin.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

A sweeping history of the violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth century
A popular truism derived from the Enlightenment holds that violence is somehow inherent to religion, to which political secularism offers a liberating solution. But this assumption ignores a glaring modern reality: that putatively progressive regimes committed to secularism have possessed just as much and often a vastly greater capacity for violence as those tied to a religious identity. In Broken Altars, Thomas Albert Howard presents a powerful account of the misery, deaths, and destruction visited on religious communities by secularist regimes in the twentieth century.
Presenting three principal forms of modern secularism that have arisen since the Enlightenment—passive secularism, combative secularism, and eliminationist secularism—Howard argues that the latter two have been especially violence-prone. Westerners do not fully grasp this, however, because they often mistake the first form, passive secularism, for secularism as a whole. But a disconcertingly more complicated picture emerges with the adoption of a broader global vision. Admitting different species of secularism, greater historical perspective, and case studies drawn from the former Soviet Union, Turkey, Mexico, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Mongolia, and China, among other countries, Howard calls into question the conventional tale of modernity as the pacifying triumph of secularism over a benighted religious past.

Thomas Albert Howard is professor of humanities and history and holder of the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University. He is the author of many books, including The Faiths of Others: A History of Interreligious Dialogue.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science