Secularism in much of the Western world was never the abstract, universal principle it is often assumed to be. It emerged from a very specific historical confrontation between the Christian church and the modernising state, where institutional disentanglement was the primary goal. Over time, this struggle produced a public sphere that appeared “neutral”, but only in relation to Christianity. The cultural norms, civic rituals, legal assumptions, and political vocabulary of secular neutrality grew out of a society whose dominant religious reference point was already established....