Everything about Secularity totally explained
Secularity (
adjective form
secular) is the state of being separate from
religion. For instance, eating and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there's 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 derived from religous text or doctrine,
worshipping through the context of religon, and attending
Sunday School are examples of religious (non-secular) activities. However prayer and meditation are not necessarily non-secular being that the concept of spirituality and higher consiousness are not married solely to any religion but are practiced and arose indepedently across a continuum of cultures.
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, four church-related examples are
Brigham Young University,
University of Notre Dame,
Baylor University, and
The Catholic University of America. The public university system in the United Kingdom is also secular, although many primary and secondary schools are religiously aligned.
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 isn't synonymous with
atheism.
Origin of term
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, regardless of whether 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, don't 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 don't 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)-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's similar to the more moderate definition of secularism, but isn't as ambiguous as that word.
Secularism is an assertion or belief that religious issues shouldn't 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's 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.Further Information
Get more info on 'Secularity'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://secularity.totallyexplained.com">Secularity Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
