Someone who is not recognised as a saint, but is considered to have lived a particularly noble life
Monument to José Tomás de Sousa Martins, 19th-century Portuguese physician, in Lisbon. After his death, a popular secular cult arose around his figure: ex-votos thanking him for miraculous cures and a rack for votive candles can be found around the base of the statue.
The term secular saint has no strict definition, but generally refers to someone venerated and respected for contributions to a noble cause, but not recognized as a canonical saint by any particular religion. The ranks of secular saints, like those of religious ones, are often filled by martyrs.
George Orwell began his "Reflections on Gandhi": "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent…" Orwell concluded his essay with an attack on the idea of sainthood but praise for Gandhi:
One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi's basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind! [1]
The term has also been applied to the incel community, which has been observed referring to mass-killer Elliot Rodger as "Saint Elliot" within the online spaces and discourses of the community and celebrating the anniversary of the 2014 Isla Vista killings as "Saint Elliot Day". Some academics, such as Taisto Witt, have suggested that, while the incel community is apparently nonreligious, their treatment of Rodger suggests that he has been appointed to a position that functionally operates as that of a saint within the community.[2]Thelema is a philosophical movement with a list of saints including individuals such as Roger Bacon.[3]
↑ "Reflections on Gandhi". Partisan Review, Volume XVI, No. 1, January 1949 p 85 - 92.
↑ ‘If i cannot have it, i will do everything i can to destroy it.' the canonization of Elliot Rodger: ‘Incel’ masculinities, secular sainthood, and justifications of ideological violence, Witt, T. (2020) Social Identities
Witt, T. (30 June 2020). "'If i cannot have it, i will do everything i can to destroy it.' the canonization of Elliot Rodger: 'Incel' masculinities, secular sainthood, and justifications of ideological violence". Social Identities. 26 (5): 675–689. doi:10.1080/13504630.2020.1787132.
Related Research Articles
Misogyny is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practised for thousands of years. It is reflected in art, literature, human societal structure, historical events, mythology, philosophy, and religion worldwide.
In Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term saint depends on the context and denomination. In Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox, and Lutheran doctrine, all of their faithful deceased in Heaven are considered to be saints, but some are considered worthy of greater honor or emulation. Official ecclesiastical recognition, and consequently a public cult of veneration, is conferred on some denominational saints through the process of canonization in the Catholic Church or glorification in the Eastern Orthodox Church after their approval.
Anarcho-pacifism, also referred to as anarchist pacifism and pacifist anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates for the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. Anarcho-pacifism rejects the principle of violence which is seen as a form of power and therefore as contradictory to key anarchist ideals such as the rejection of hierarchy and dominance. Many anarcho-pacifists are also Christian anarchists, who reject war and the use of violence.
Christian anarchism is a Christian movement in political theology that claims anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the Gospels. It is grounded in the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable—the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus. It therefore rejects the idea that human governments have ultimate authority over human societies. Christian anarchists denounce the state, believing it is violent, deceitful and idolatrous.
Glorification may have several meanings in Christianity. From the Catholic canonization to the similar sainthood of the Eastern Orthodox Church to salvation in Christianity in Protestant beliefs, the glorification of the human condition can be a long and arduous process.
Hypermasculinity is a psychological and sociological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and human male sexuality. In the field of clinical psychology, this term has been used ever since the publication of research by Donald L. Mosher and Mark Sirkin in 1984. Mosher and Sirkin operationally define hypermasculinity or the "macho personality" as consisting of three variables:
Secular spirituality is the adherence to a spiritual philosophy without adherence to a religion. Secular spirituality emphasizes the inner peace of the individual, rather than a relationship with the divine. Secular spirituality is made up of the search for meaning outside of a religious institution; it considers one's relationship with the self, others, nature, and whatever else one considers to be the ultimate. Often, the goal of secular spirituality is living happily and/or helping others.
In gender studies, hegemonic masculinity is part of R. W. Connell's gender order theory, which recognizes multiple masculinities that vary across time, society, culture, and the individual. Hegemonic masculinity is defined as a practice that legitimizes men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of the common male population and women, and other marginalized ways of being a man. Conceptually, hegemonic masculinity proposes to explain how and why men maintain dominant social roles over women, and other gender identities, which are perceived as "feminine" in a given society.
Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins is a work of critical theory that discusses the way that race, class and gender intersect to affect the lives of African American men and women in many different ways, but with similar results. The book explores the way that new forms of racism can work to oppress black people, while filling them with messages of liberation.
Anarchism in India first emerged within the Indian independence movement, gaining particularly notoriety for its influence on Mohandas Gandhi's theory of Sarvodaya and his practice of nonviolent resistance. Anarchism was also an influence on the revolutionary movement, inspiring the works of Har Dayal, M. P. T. Acharya and Bhagat Singh, among others.
A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly, or material, entities. Among systems that have been characterized as secular religions are liberalism, anarchism, communism, nazism, fascism, egoism, jacobinism, Juche, Maoism, Religion of Humanity, the cults of personality, the Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being.
The canonization process of Pope Pius XII dates to shortly after his death in 1958. He was declared a servant of God in 1990 and venerable in 2009. Father Peter Gumpel was the relator of Pius XII's cause for canonization. The potential beatification of Pius XII has raised concern, especially by Jewish organisations, because of his controversial record during the Holocaust. The objections especially arise because of the refusal by the Vatican to allow independent access to the Vatican's archives for the period of Pius XII's papacy.
The 2014 Isla Vista killings were two misogynistic terror attacks in Isla Vista, California. On the evening of Friday, May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ramming near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), before fatally shooting himself.
The manosphere is a diverse collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists, incels, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry, or hatred of men. Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill", a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.
Alpha male and beta male are pseudoscientific terms for men derived from the designations of alpha and beta animals in ethology. They may also be used with other genders, such as women, or additionally use other letters of the Greek alphabet. The popularization of these terms to describe humans has been widely criticized by scientists.
Incel is a term closely associated with an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. Originally coined as "invcel" around 1997 by a queer Canadian female student known as Alana, the spelling had shifted to "incel" by 1999, and the term later rose to prominence in the 2010s, following the influence of Elliot Rodger.
Men Going Their Own Way is an anti-feminist, misogynistic, mostly online community advocating for men to separate themselves from women and a society which they believe has been corrupted by feminism. The community is a part of the manosphere, a collection of anti-feminist websites and online communities that also includes the men's rights movement, incels, and pickup artists.
Misogynist terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by the desire to punish women. It is an extreme form of misogyny—the policing of women's compliance to patriarchal gender expectations. Misogynist terrorism uses mass indiscriminate violence in an attempt to avenge nonconformity with those expectations or to reinforce the perceived superiority of men.
"Reflections on Gandhi" is an essay by George Orwell, first published in 1949, which responds to Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. The essay, which appeared in the American magazine Partisan Review, discusses the autobiography and offers both praise and criticism to Gandhi, focusing in particular on the effectiveness of Gandhian nonviolence and the tension between Gandhi's spiritual worldview and his political activities. One of a number of essays written by Orwell and published between Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), "Reflections on Gandhi" was the last of Orwell's essays to be published in his lifetime and was not republished until after his death.
TFW No GF is a 2020 direct-to-streaming documentary directed by Alex Lee Moyer, about the incel and Frogtwitter subcultures in the United States. The title is an Internet-slang abbreviation for "that feeling when no girlfriend".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
