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Secularity (adjective form secular) is the state of being separate from religion. For instance, walking and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there is nothing inherently religious about them. (Note, however, that both eating and bathing are regarded as sacraments by some religious organizations, and therefore would be religious activities in their worldview.) Saying a prayer, worshipping, and attending Sunday School are examples of religious (non-secular) activities.
Most businesses and corporations are secular organizations. All state universities in the United States are secular organizations, while some private universities are church-related; among many, three church-related examples are Brigham Young University, University of Notre Dame, and Texas Christian University. The public university system in the United Kingdom is also secular.
One approximate synonym for secular is worldly; another could be phrased as neutral in religious matters. Approximate antonyms for secular are religious and devout.
Despite occasional confusion, secularity is not synonymous with atheism.
Origin of term
This word derives from a Latin word meaning "of the age." The Christian doctrine that God exists outside of 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, whether or not it has a similar doctrine.
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 church-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. 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 ideology that holds that religious issues should not be the basis of politics, or (in the extreme) that religion has no place in public life. Secularist organizations are distinguished from merely secular ones by their political advocacy of such positions.