Secularity

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Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin saeculum, "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself and fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. [1] In the medieval period there were even secular clergy. [2] [3] [4] Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally. [5] [6]

Contents

Today, anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negatively or positively, may be considered secular. [7] Secularity is best understood, not as being "anti-religious", but as being "religiously neutral" since many activities in religious bodies are secular themselves, and though there are multiple types of secularity or secularization, most do not lead to irreligiosity. [8] Linguistically, a process by which anything becomes secular is named secularization, though the term is mainly reserved for the secularization of society; and any concept or ideology promoting the secular may be termed secularism , a term generally applied to the ideology dictating no religious influence on the public sphere. Scholars recognize that secularity is structured by Protestant models of Christianity, shares a parallel language to religion, and intensifies Protestant features such as iconoclasm, skepticism towards rituals, and emphasizes beliefs. [9] In doing so, secularism perpetuates Christian traits under a different name. [9]

Most cultures around the world do not have tension or dichotomous views of religion and secularity. [10] Since religion and secular are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them. [11]

Definitions

Historically, the word secular was not related or linked to religion, but was a freestanding term in Latin that would relate to any mundane endeavour. [12] However, the term, saecula saeculorum (saeculōrum being the genitive plural of saeculum) as found in the New Testament in the Vulgate translation (c. 410) of the original Koine Greek phrase εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων (eis toùs aionas ton aiṓnōn), e.g. at Galatians 1:5, was used in the early Christian church (and is still used today), in the doxologies, to denote the coming and going of the ages, the grant of eternal life, and the long duration of created things from their beginning to forever and ever. [13] Secular and secularity derive from the Latin word saeculum which meant "of a generation, belonging to an age" or denoted a period of about one hundred years. [12] The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use secular to indicate separation from specifically religious affairs and involvement in temporal ones.[ citation needed ]

Modern and historical understandings of the term

"Secular" does not necessarily imply hostility or rejection of God or religion, though some use the term this way (see "secularism", below); Martin Luther used to speak of "secular work" as a vocation from God for most Christians.[ citation needed ] "Secular" has been a part of the Christian church's history, which even developed in the medieval period secular clergy , priests who were defined as the Church's geographically-delimited diocesan clergy and not a part of the diasporal monastic orders. This arrangement continues today. [14] [15] [4] The Waldensians advocated for secularity by separation of church and state. [16] According to cultural anthropologists such as Jack David Eller, secularity is best understood, not as being "anti-religious", but as being "religiously neutral" since many activities in religious bodies are secular themselves, and most versions of secularity do not lead to irreligiosity. [8]

The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the European Enlightenment. [17] Furthermore, since religion and secular are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them. [11]

One can regard eating and bathing as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, some religious traditions see both eating and bathing as sacraments, therefore making them religious activities within those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, performing corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and attending a religious seminary school or monastery are examples of religious (non-secular) activities.

In many cultures, there is little dichotomy between "natural" and "supernatural", "religious" and "not-religious", especially since people have beliefs in other supernatural or spiritual things irrespective of belief in God or gods. Other cultures stress practice of ritual rather than belief. [10] Conceptions of both "secular" and "religious", while sometimes having some parallels in local cultures, were generally imported along with Western worldviews, often in the context of colonialism. Attempts to define either the "secular" or the "religious" in non-Western societies, accompanying local modernization and Westernization processes, were often and still are fraught with tension. [18] Due to all these factors, "secular" as a general term of reference was much deprecated in social sciences, and is used carefully and with qualifications. [19]

Taylorian secularity

Philosopher Charles Taylor in his 2007 book A Secular Age understands and discusses the secularity of Western societies less in terms of how much of a role religion plays in public life (secularity 1), or how religious a society's individual members are (secularity 2), than as a "backdrop" or social context in which religious belief is no longer taken as a given (secularity 3). For Taylor, this third sense of secularity is the unique historical condition in which virtually all individuals – religious or not – have to contend with the fact that their values, morality, or sense of life's meaning are no longer underpinned by communally-accepted religious facts. All religious beliefs or irreligious philosophical positions are, in a secular society, held with an awareness that there are a wide range of other contradictory positions available to any individual; belief in general becomes a different type of experience when all particular beliefs are optional. A plethora of competing religious and irreligious worldviews open up, each rendering the other more "fragile". This condition in turn entails for Taylor that even clearly religious beliefs and practices are experienced in a qualitatively different way when they occur in a secular social context. In Taylor's sense of the term, a society could in theory be highly "secular" even if nearly all of its members believed in a deity or even subscribed to a particular religious creed; secularity here has to do with the conditions, not the prevalence, of belief, and these conditions are understood to be shared across a given society, irrespective of belief or lack thereof. [20]

Taylor's thorough account of secularity as a socio-historical condition, rather than the absence or diminished importance of religion, has been highly influential in subsequent philosophy of religion and sociology of religion, particularly as older sociological narratives about secularisation, desecularisation, and disenchantment have come under increased criticism. [21]

Related Research Articles

Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.

Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, rationalism, and secularism. These perspectives can vary, with individuals who identify as irreligious holding a diverse array of specific beliefs about religion or its role in their lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secularization</span> Societal transition away from religion

In sociology, secularization is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism, irreligion, nor are they automatically anti-thetical to religion. Secularization has different connotations such as implying differentiation of secular from religious domains, the marginalization of religion in those domains, or it may also entail the transformation of religion as a result of its recharacterization.

Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and non-religious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of gods and differs from atheism, or active disbelief in any gods. It has been used as an umbrella term for summarizing various distinct and even mutually exclusive positions, such as agnosticism, ignosticism, ietsism, skepticism, pantheism, pandeism, transtheism, atheism, and apatheism. It is in use in the fields of Christian apologetics and general liberal theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State atheism</span> Official promotion of atheism by a government

State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes. It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. To some extent, it is a religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism. State atheism may refer to a government's promotion of anti-clericalism, which opposes religious institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. In some instances, religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them. State atheism in these cases is considered as not being politically neutral toward religion, and therefore it is often considered non-secular.

Jewish atheism refers to the atheism of people who are ethnically and culturally Jewish. Contrary to popular belief, the term "Jewish atheism" is not a contradiction because Jewish identity encompasses not only religious components, but also ethnic and cultural ones. Jewish law's emphasis on descent through the mother means that even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish.

Criticism of atheism is criticism of the concepts, validity, or impact of atheism, including associated political and social implications. Criticisms include positions based on the history of science, philosophical and logical criticisms, findings in both the natural and social sciences, theistic apologetic arguments, arguments pertaining to ethics and morality, the effects of atheism on the individual, or the assumptions that underpin atheism.

Accurate demographics of atheism are difficult to obtain since conceptions of atheism vary considerably across different cultures and languages, ranging from an active concept to being unimportant or not developed. Also in some countries and regions atheism carries a strong stigma, making it harder to count atheists in these countries. In global studies, the number of people without a religion is usually higher than the number of people without a belief in a deity and the number of people who agree with statements on lacking a belief in a deity is usually higher than the number of people who self-identify as "atheists".

Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

Secularism—that is, the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.

Postsecularism refers to a range of theories regarding the persistence or resurgence of religious beliefs or practices in the present. The "post-" may refer to after the end of secularism or after the beginning of secularism.

Hiloni, plural hilonim, is a social category in Israel, designating the least religious segment among the Jewish public. The other three subgroups on the scale of Jewish-Israeli religiosity are the masortim, "traditional"; datiim, "religious"; and haredim, "ultra-religious" ("ultra-Orthodox"). In the 2018 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics' survey, 43.2% of Jews identified as hiloni.

Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies to atheism or secularism. It does not include formerly Christian-majority societies such as present-day region of Turkey and the Balkans that now follow other religions such as Islam.

Agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity and are agnostic because they claim that the existence of a divine entity or entities is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.

Secular Buddhism—sometimes also referred to as agnostic Buddhism, Buddhist agnosticism, ignostic Buddhism, atheistic Buddhism, pragmatic Buddhism, Buddhist atheism, or Buddhist secularism—is a broad term for a form of Buddhism based on humanist, skeptical, and agnostic values, valuing pragmatism and (often) naturalism, eschewing beliefs in the supernatural or paranormal. It can be described as the embrace of Buddhist rituals and philosophy for their secular benefits by people who are atheist or agnostic.

China has the world's largest irreligious population, and the Chinese government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are officially atheist. Despite limitations on certain forms of religious expression and assembly, religion is not banned, and religious freedom is nominally protected under the Chinese constitution. Among the general Chinese population, there are a wide variety of religious practices. The Chinese government's attitude to religion is one of skepticism and non-promotion.

Philip Joseph Zuckerman is a sociologist and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity and is the author of several books, including What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life (2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irreligion in Turkey</span>

Irreligion in Turkey refers to the extent of the lack, rejection of, or indifference towards religion in the Republic of Turkey. Based on surveys, Islam is the predominant religion and irreligious people form a minority in Turkey. Precise estimates of the share of Deists, atheists, agnostics, and other unaffiliated people in the population vary, though in the survey averages they make up more percentages than Christians and Jews in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desecularization</span> Proliferation or growth of religion

In sociology, desecularization is a resurgence or growth of religion after a period of secularization. The theory of desecularization is a reaction to the theory known as the secularization thesis, which posits a gradual decline in the importance of religion and of religious belief itself, as a universal feature of modern society. The term desecularization was coined by Peter L. Berger, a former proponent of the secularization thesis, in his 1999 book The Desecularization of the World.

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Berlinerblau, Jacques (2022). Secularism: The Basics. Routledge. ISBN   9780367691585. In the first part of this book we will chart the slow, unsteady development of political secularism (Set 2) across time and space. You might be surprised to see that we'll trace its origins to the Bible. From there we will watch how secularism's core principles emerged, in dribs and drabs, during the Christian Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, and the Enlightenment. Secularism, some might be surprised to learn, has a religious genealogy.
  2. ↑ Thomas, Hugh M. (2014). The Secular Clergy in England, 1066-1216. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780198702566.
  3. ↑ Eller, Jack David (2022). Introducing Anthropology of Religion : Culture to the Ultimate (Third ed.). Routledge. p. 282. ISBN   9781032023045.
  4. 1 2 "Secular Priest". Religion Past and Present Online. Brill. April 2011. doi:10.1163/1877-5888_rpp_SIM_124156. Archived from the original on December 28, 2019.
  5. ↑ Tierney, Brian (1988). The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 : With Selected Documents. Toronto: Published by University of Toronto Press in association with the Medieval Academy of America. ISBN   9780802067012.
  6. ↑ Strayer, Joseph R. (2016). On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN   9780691169330.
  7. ↑ Lee 2015, pp. 31–37.
  8. 1 2 Eller, Jack (2010). "What is Atheism?". In Zuckerman, Phil (ed.). Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. pp. 12–13. ISBN   9780313351839. The point is that the sacred/secular dichotomy is, like most dichotomies, false. "Secular" certainly does not mean "atheistic" or without religion, definitely not anti-religion; in fact, as I illustrate in a chapter in the second volume of this collection, there is a proud tradition of "Islamic secularism." Despite the predictions of the "secularization theorists" like Marx and Weber, "modern" or secular processes have not meant the demise of religion and have actually proved to be quite compatible with religion—have even led, at least in the short term, to a surprising revival of religion. The problem with earlier secularization theories is that they presumed that secularization was a single, all-encompassing, and unidirectional phenomenon. However, as Peter Glasner has more recently shown, "secular" and "secularization" embrace a variety of diverse processes and responses, not all of which—indeed, few of which—are inherently antithetical to religion, Glasner identifies ten different versions of secularization, organized in terms of whether their thrust is primarily institutional, nonnative, or cognitive... The upshot of this analysis is that secularism most assuredly does not translate simply and directly into atheism. Many good theists support the secularization of the American government in the form of the "separation of church and state," and all of them go about at least part of their day without doing religion.
  9. 1 2 Blankholm, Joseph (2022). The Secular Paradox : On the Religiosity of the Not Religious. New York: New York University Press. p. 8. ISBN   9781479809509.
  10. 1 2 Zuckerman, Galen & Pasquale 2016, p. 31.
  11. 1 2 Juergensmeyer 2017; Zuckerman, Galen & Pasquale 2016, ch. 2.
  12. 1 2 Zuckerman & Shook 2017, pp. 4–5.
  13. ↑ "CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, II.34.3 (St. Irenaeus)". New Advent, Fathers of the Church. 1885. Archived from the original on Apr 3, 2024.
  14. ↑ Thomas, Hugh M. (2014). The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780198702566.
  15. ↑ Eller, Jack David (2022). Introducing Anthropology of Religion : Culture to the Ultimate (Third ed.). Routledge. p. 282. ISBN   9781032023045.
  16. ↑ Garnier, T. (2022). From God to Climate Change: The journey of Albert Garnier's 30-year mission in China to scientist son Ben's fight with the riddle of the world. Paragon Publishing. p. 51. ISBN   978-1-78222-969-8 . Retrieved 2023-04-27.
  17. ↑ Juergensmeyer 2017, pp. 74–79.
  18. ↑ See Asad 2003 , esp. pp. 205–210; Walzer 2015 , esp. pp. ix–xiv, 65, 76.
  19. ↑ Zuckerman, Galen & Pasquale 2016, pp. 19, 51.
  20. ↑ Taylor, Charles (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. pp. 1–24.
  21. ↑ Calhoun, Craig; Jeurgensmeyer, Mark; Van Antwerpen, Jonathan (2011). Rethinking Secularism. Oxford: Oxford UP. p. 21.

Bibliography

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