- This article concerns secularism, the exclusion of religion and supernatural beliefs. For other forms of being secular, and perspective on the terminology underlying the word "secularism", see secularity.
Secularism means:
- in philosophy, the belief that one's own life can be best lived, and the universe best understood, with little or no reference to a god or gods or other supernatural concepts.
- in society, any of a range of situations where a society less automatically assumes religious beliefs to be either widely shared or a basis for conflict in various forms, than in recent generations of the same society.
- in government, a policy of avoiding entanglement between government and religion (ranging from reducing ties to a state church to promoting secularism in society), of non-discrimination among religions (providing they don't deny primacy of civil laws), and of guaranteeing human rights of all citizens, regardless of the creed (and, if conflicting with certain religous rules, by imposing priority of the universal human rights).
Secularism can also mean the practice of working to promote any of those three forms of secularism.
In studies of religion, modern Western societies are generally recognized as secular:
- There is near-complete freedom of religion (one may believe in any religion or none at all, with little legal or social sanction);
- Religion does not dictate political decisions, though the moral views originating in religious traditions remain important in political debate in some countries, such as the United States; in some others, such as France (see Laïcité), religious references are considered out-of-place in mainstream politics.
- Religious influence is minimized in the public sphere.
- Religion is not as important in most people's lives as it once was.
Proponents of secularism have long held a general rise of secularism in all the senses enumerated above, and corresponding general decline of religion in so called 'secularized' countries, to be the inevitable result of the Enlightenment, as people turn towards science and rationalism and away from religion and superstition.
Nowadays, most major religions accept the primacy of the rules of secular, democratic society, except for certain islamic tendencies which fiercely reject secularism.
Modern sociology, born of a crisis of legitimation resulting from challenges to traditional Western religious authority, has since Durkheim often been preoccupied with the problem of authority in secularized societies and with secularization as a sociological or historical process. Twentieth-century scholars whose work has contributed to the understanding of these matters are Max Weber, Carl L. Becker, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, M.H. Abrams, Peter L. Berger, and Paul Bénichou, among others.
See also
- When secularism is claimed in theory but not in practice
- Ideas that are considered forms of secularism include
- Organizations that advocate it include
- Contrary trends include
- Other related topics include
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