Tradition
Secularity
Overview
Secularity or secularness (from Latin sæculum, 'worldly' or 'of a generation' or 'century') is the state of being unrelated to or neutral in regard to religion.
The origins of secularity as a concept can be traced to the Bible, and it was fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. Since the Middle Ages, there have been clergy not pertaining to a religious order called "secular clergy". Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally.
"Secular", like "religion", is a modern Western term and concept that is not universal across cultures, languages, or time. In western cultures, things not connected with religion may be considered secular, in other words, neutral to religion. Secularity does not mean 'anti-religious', but 'unrelated to religion'. Many activities in religious bodies are secular, and though there are multiple types of secularity or secularization, most do not lead to irreligiosity. Linguistically, a process by which anything becomes secular is named secularization, though the term is mainly reserved for the secularization of society; 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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
From this usage it has also come to pass that God Himself is called pious,[369] in which sense the Greeks never use εὐσεβεῖν, though εὐσέβεια is applied to works of charity by their common people also.
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
States what Secularity is.
The other has spiritual beings as its object, spirits, souls, geniuses, demons, divinities properly so-called, animated and conscious agents like man, but distinguished from him, nevertheless, by the nature of their powers and especially by the peculiar characteristic that they do not affect the senses in the same way: ordinarily they are not visible to human eyes. This religion of spirits is called _animism_. Now…
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Secularity is.
The whole of the polity and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary, from the feudal institutions which must be considered as an emanation from that custumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into system and discipline by the Roman law. From hence arose the several orders, with or without a monarch (which are…
Edmund Burke, Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
States what Secularity is.
Philosophers who discussed Secularity
- Netherlands
- Christopher Hitchens
- Peter Singer
- Sam Harris
- Richard Dawkins
- Michel Weber
- Giacomo Leopardi
- Ernst Cassirer
- Jacques Maritain
- Strato of Lampsacus
- Abdolkarim Soroush
- Wang Chong
- Hans Blumenberg
- David ben Judah Messer Leon
- Gilles Lipovetsky
Related ideas
- Waldensians
- Latin
- Middle Ages
- Meaning of life
- Western culture
- Worldview
- New Testament
- Eternity
- Philosophy of religion
- Prayer
- Religion
- Secularism
- Sociology of religion
- Charles Taylor (philosopher)
- Age of Enlightenment
- Secularization
- Koine Greek
- Bible
- Value (ethics)
- Disenchantment
- Morality
- Modern era
- Christianity
- Cultural anthropology
Place in the tradition
Part of Christian humanism.