Concept
Secular religion
Overview
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 anarchism, communism, fascism, Nazism, Juche, Maoism, Religion of Humanity, the cults of personality, the Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In their political aspect, all these three kinds of religion have their defects. The third is so clearly bad, that it is waste of time to stop to prove it such. All that destroys social unity is worthless; all institutions that set man in contradiction to himself are worthless.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
The author is tied to Secular religion in the knowledge graph.
The circle of sacred objects cannot be determined, then, once for all. Its extent varies infinitely, according to the different religions. That is how Buddhism is a religion: in default of gods, it admits the existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the practices derived from them.[65]
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Secular religion is.
A world religion may lay claim to being such not merely on account of its wide acceptance, but also because of its ability to incorporate the elements of other religions. In a similar manner, and more particularly, a world religion is one that includes within itself elements representing past stages of its own development. Historically considered, religious elements are juxtaposed in such a manner that the religious…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Secular religion; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Belief
- Ritual
- History
- Fascism
- Anarchism
- Cult of Reason
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Modernity
- Civil religion
- Sociology
- Metaphysics
- Loyalty
- Marxism
- Eric Voegelin
- Materialism
- Nihilism
- Walter Benjamin
- Psychology
- Maximilien Robespierre
- Political science
- Myth
- Religion
- Soviet Union
- Spirituality
Place in the tradition
Part of Religious humanism.