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The term secularism is most commonly associated with the Age of Enlightenment in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. Secularism maintains that knowledge should be derived from the human capacity for reason rather than in revealed religion (i.e., scripture). Scientifically, secularism proposes the world is governed by natural processes and mechanical laws rather than the embodiment of divine meaning. Further, secular thought legitimizes the workings of the political system based on human decisions and reason rather than influenced by or dictated from divine right or clerical members. Hence, secular ism often is related to or equated with similar philosophies, including humanism, naturalism, and the separation of state and religion. Ironically, the term secular has early Christian roots, deriving from the Latin saeculum, meaning century or age. Originally, saeculum referred to the period of profane time between the biblical fall out of Eden and the second coming of Christ, focusing on those affairs specific to mundane, this-worldly existence, but understood in relation to a supramundane divine meaning.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, various theories of the secularization of society emerged in the work of European thinkers such as August Comte, Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and most importantly Max Weber. Weber argued that the development of the modern world was defined by the spread of capitalism and the new forms of rationalization and technology accompanying it. These new forms of technology gradually replaced religious and magical forms of thinking in economic, social, and political practices. Although some specifics of Weber’s secularization thesis were subject to criticism, the connection between modernity and secularism mirrored the declining influence of religion in economics and politics in the twentieth century.

Forms Of Secularism

Despite the common use of the term to describe some Western societies, secular ism has taken several different forms. Communist states, such as China or North Korea, commonly adopt secular policies, in which the government does not recognize an official religion, nor do they allow religion to interfere with state politics or differentiate their citizens based on religious identification. Aside from communism, many secular states, including Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico, or Turkey, do not formally acknowledge a state religion, but do not obstruct the practice of religion or advocate atheism. Populations within secular states can boast a majority religion or exhibit significant religious diversity.

In respect to Western societies, for example, although the United Kingdom has an official state religion, it is largely seen as a secular political system. On the other hand, the U.S. Constitution prohibits any religious test to hold office, but it is a country in which a substantial majority of citizens profess their religious beliefs and in which religious slogans often adorn public buildings. The form secularism takes in France is called laicite, meaning the exclusion of religious symbolism, including the display of religious articles by citizens, from the public sphere.

In his seminal work on secularism, Charles Taylor (2007) argues that we need to distinguish among three different meanings of secularity. The first refers to the idea that religion is largely absent, either withdrawn or expelled, from public spaces and spheres of common activity (e.g., politics, economics, professional, cultural, among others). This is a contrast to earlier centuries when religion permeated every aspect of common life. The second meaning refers to the declining numbers of people practicing religion or subscribing to religious belief in Western nations. The third, and most important, form of secularity refers to the belief that God is only one of a number of possibilities for understanding our moral, political, and spiritual situation. In this latter sense of the term, the very understanding of the world and the conditions of our common human experience are devoid of sacred or religious foundations. Taylor argues that it is this latter sense of secularity that best describes the modern world and provides the context for the postsecular age, one in which dialogue between theistic and nontheistic thinkers can take place.

Contemporary Secularism And Challenges

By the tur n of the century, a number of developments emerged to challenge the various versions of secularism and the secularization thesis. First, some Western nations, notably the United States, have seen a rise in fundamentalist religious movements become politically influential. In other Western nations, such as France and United Kingdom, the presence of immigrant religious communities from former colonies has challenged the practices of secular ism. Moreover, the number of people throughout the world practicing traditional religions, particularly in poor, developing countries, has continued to grow. This resilience and growth of religion poses new challenges to ideas about the relationship between modernization and religion.

Second, a number of people have argued that modern secular politics is itself rooted in or draws on the religious ideas and traditions in ways secularists do not fully recognize. This argument goes beyond the claim that the ideas of classical religious thinkers continue to be important. Rather, according to Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, the question that is raised is, “To what extent does modern secular thought and political practice depend upon religious tradition for its legitimization?” (2006).

A third line of argument, one sometimes related to the second, raises the question of the extent to which the seeds of disenchantment of the world and the rise of secularization are to be found in religion itself. Specifically, thinkers such as Marcel Gauchet (1997) argue that secularization is the fruit of a long, slow process begun in the Axial Age (800–200 BCE) with the movement of the sacred to other-worldly locations. Fourth, there has been an increased focus on the relationship between secularism as a defining quality of modernity and non-Western religions, specifically Hinduism and Islam.

Perhaps most importantly, several thinkers representing diverse perspectives have argued that the West is entering a postsecular age. In undermining the prospects of any single grand narrative concerning human society, including any single secular version, secularism has ironically opened up the possibility of what Gianni Vattimo and David Caputo (2007) refer to as the death of the death of God, or a return of religious searching or a dialogue between theists and nontheists.

Bibliography:

Asad,Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Bhargava, Rajeev, ed. Secularism and Its Critics. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Connolly,William E. Pluralism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.
Gauchet, Marcel. The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, translated by Oscar Burge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Joseph Ratzinger. The Dialectics of Secularization. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006.
Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and the Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Taylor, Charles. “Modes of Secularism.” In Secularism and Its Critics, edited by Rajeev Bhargava, 31–53. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Vattimo, Gianni, and David Caputo. After the Death of God, edited by Jeffrey Robbins. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

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