Secularism is an increasingly hot topic in public, political, and religious debate across the globe. With discussions on secular schools, secular hospitals, and the move away from religion in modern society in the news, it’s important to know about secularism’s history and how it affects our lives.
Here are five facts about secularism:
1) The term was coined by George Holyoake in 1851. It originally denoted a system which sought to order and interpret life on principles taken solely from this world.
2) Some religious practices have been secularized and made so popular that the associations with religion are not always discussed. Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness are all promoted as secular programs despite their religious roots.
3) Usually secularism focuses on religion however it also demarcates the secular from other phenomena including superstition, the sacred, and the metaphysical.
4) Some perceive the religious decline of our modern world as religion’s role in society changing shape. More individualistic capitalist societies could just be changing the way we engage with belief systems, making them less recognizably religious.
5) Secularism is very different to atheism. A secular society is not necessarily a society in which there is little or no public manifestation of religious belief, it could in fact be the opposite. A secular society is simply one in which the state itself takes a neutral view with respect to religion, and protects the freedom of individuals to believe, or not to believe, to worship, or not to worship.
More on this topic:http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191816819.001.0001/acref-9780191816819-e-137
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