Secularity

This article is about the condition of not being specifically religious. For other usages, see the Secularity (disambiguation) page.

Secularity (adjective form secular) is the state of being separate from religion. Despite occasional confusion, secularism is not necessarily synonymous with atheism nor agnosticism, it is instead the belief that religion and authority should be separate.

For instance, eating and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, both eating and bathing are regarded as sacraments in some religious traditions, and therefore would be religious activities in those worldviews. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, and attending a religious school are examples of religious (non-secular) activities. Prayer and meditation are not necessarily non-secular, since the concept of spirituality and higher consciousness are not married solely to any religion but are practiced and arose independently across a continuum of cultures, however it may be argued that these practices have arisen as a result of religious (non-secular) influence.

Most businesses and corporations, and some governments, are secular organizations. All state universities in the United States are secular organizations (due to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution) while some private universities are church-related; among many, six church-related examples are Brigham Young University, Boston College, University of Notre Dame, Baylor University, Mercer University, and The Catholic University of America.

The public university systems in the United Kingdom and Australia are also secular, although many public primary and secondary schools are religiously aligned.

Origin of term

This word derives from a Latin word meaning "of the age". The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use secular to indicate separation from religious affairs and involvement in worldly (or time-related) ones. This meaning has been extended to apply to separation from any religion, regardless of whether it has a similar doctrine. i DONT THINK THIS TRUE AT ALL....

Modern usage

Examples of secular used in this way include:

• Secular authority, which involves legal and military authority as opposed to clerical authority, or matters the church controls.
• Secular clergy in the Roman Catholic Church, who, traditionally, do not live the monastic lives of the regular clergy and are therefore, in a sense, less religious and more worldly. For a related Roman Catholic reference, see Secular institute.
• Secular education, schools that are not affiliated with churches or other religious organizations.
• Secular governments, which follow civil laws as opposed to religious authorities like the Islamic Shariah, Catholic Canon law, or Jewish Halakha, and which do not favor any particular religion.
• Secular Jewish culture, cultural manifestations of Jewishness that are not specifically religious.
• Secular music, composed for general use, as opposed to Sacred music which is composed for church use. Secular sonatas, in the 17th century, were those which were not composed to be used in church services.
• Secular Organizations for Sobriety, a secular alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, AA being a loosely religious organization although nondenominational.
• Secular society refers to aspects of society that are not (mosque, church, synagogue, temple)-affiliated.
• Secular spirituality, the pursuit of spirituality without a formal affiliation with a church, or other religious organization.
• Secular state, a nation that has a secular government.

Related concepts

• Laïcité is a French concept related to the separation of state and religion, sometimes rendered by the English cognate neologism laicity and also translated by the words secularity and secularization. The word laïcité is sometimes characterized as having no exact English equivalent; it is similar to the more moderate definition of secularism, but is not as ambiguous as that word.

• Secularism is an assertion or belief that religious issues should not be the basis of politics, a movement that promotes those ideas or (in the extreme) an ideology that holds that religion has no place in public life. Secularist organizations are distinguished from merely secular ones by their political advocacy of such positions.

• Laïcisme is the French word that most resembles secularism, especially in the latter's extreme definition, as it is understood by the Catholic Church, which sets laïcisme in opposition to the allegedly far milder concept of laïcité. The correspondent word laicism (also spelled laïcism) is sometimes used in English as a synonym for secularism.

See also

• Separation of church and state
• Anti-clericalism
• Secularism

External links

• Conference: Secularity and Religious Vitality
• Secular Student Alliance

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