What secular, secularism and secularization mean

Program / Course 19: Modern Challenges / Lesson 1.1

What you will learn

• Distinguish the words secular, secularism and secularization, which are often used as if they meant the same thing.
• Describe the main ways scholars say a society can be secular.
• Explain why the claim that modern societies are becoming less religious is disputed.
• State what a Christian can accept and what a Christian must question in each sense of the word.

The big idea

The word secular is used in at least three different ways, and most arguments about it go wrong because the speakers do not notice the shift. A state can be secular without being hostile to religion. A person can live a secular life without holding a secular philosophy. A society can become less religious without becoming atheist. Before a Christian agrees or disagrees with secularism, the first task is to ask which of these meanings is in play. Careful definitions will make every later lesson in this course clearer.

Key terms

Secular

From the Latin word saeculum, meaning an age or the present world. In church language it first meant the ordinary world as opposed to the cloister. Today it can mean not religious, not controlled by religion, or concerned with this world.

Secularism

A position, often political, that public life and government should not be run by or favor any religion. Some writers use the word more strongly for a worldview that leaves God out of account altogether.

Secularization

A process: the decline of religious belief, practice or public influence in a society. Scholars dispute how far it has happened and why.

Secularization thesis

The theory, popular in the twentieth century, that modernization (science, industry, cities, education) inevitably makes societies less religious.

Laicite

The French form of state secularity, in which the state keeps religion out of public institutions. It is stricter than the American arrangement.

Disestablishment

Ending the official legal status of a state church. It is a political change and does not by itself mean the people stop believing.

Secular age

A phrase of the philosopher Charles Taylor. He means an age in which belief in God is one option among others, not the default assumption.

Background

The word secular began as a church word. In the Middle Ages a secular priest was one who lived in the world and served a parish, in contrast to a monk or friar who lived under a rule apart from it. The word did not mean godless. It meant belonging to the present age. So the first thing to notice is that the Christian tradition itself created the idea of a sphere that is ordinary and worldly, and it did not think that sphere was outside God’s care.

Over several centuries the meaning moved. After the wars of religion in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many thinkers argued that a state should not enforce one church’s teaching on everyone. This produced arrangements such as religious toleration and, later, the separation of church and state. Thinkers of the Enlightenment pushed further and asked whether reason alone, without revelation, could explain the world and guide life. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a few writers used secularism for a full philosophy that left God out.

Scholars today often use a three part scheme, associated with the sociologist Jose Casanova and widely discussed. Secular can mean a feature of public institutions (government, law and schools are not run by a church). It can mean a decline in belief and practice among the people. And it can mean the privatization of religion, the idea that faith belongs in the home and in the heart and not in public debate. These three can come apart. The United States has a secular state, yet many of its people are very religious. Parts of Europe have a modest state church, yet low attendance.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Separate the three words

Secular is an adjective that describes something as not religious or not run by religion. Secularism is a position or a program. Secularization is a process that is said to be happening. When a speaker says that the secular world is hostile to faith, ask which of the three he means.

A short test helps. If the claim is about law and government, it concerns secularism as a political arrangement. If it is about how many people pray or attend worship, it concerns secularization. If it is about whether God exists, it is no longer about secularity at all, but about a worldview, which the next lessons call naturalism and humanism.

Step 2: Three senses of a secular society

The first sense is institutional. The state is neutral, or at least it does not take its authority from a church. Many Christians accept this and some defend it. Baptists in the colonial period argued for religious liberty for the sake of the gospel. Catholic teaching at the Second Vatican Council, in the declaration Dignitatis Humanae, affirmed a right to religious freedom. Orthodox churches have lived under many arrangements, from the Byzantine ideal of cooperation between church and emperor to modern states that are neutral.

The second sense is statistical. A society is secular if fewer people believe and practice. The third sense is cultural. A society is secular if religious language is no longer assumed in public life and if believing is felt to be a choice.

Step 3: Is secularization inevitable?

For much of the twentieth century many sociologists predicted that religion would fade as societies modernized. Max Weber wrote of the disenchantment of the world, meaning that explanations by spirits and wonders were being replaced by explanations by calculation. Later evidence did not fit the prediction neatly. Religion has grown in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The United States remained far more religious than Western Europe. The sociologist Peter Berger, who had helped defend the thesis, later said that the world was as furiously religious as ever, with exceptions such as Western Europe.

Other scholars reply that in many wealthy countries the decline is real and recent. Surveys in Britain, Canada, Scandinavia and increasingly the United States show a rising number of people who say they have no religion. The honest summary is that secularization is a real trend in some places, is not a law of history, and has several competing explanations.

Step 4: Charles Taylor and the shift in what is believable

Taylor, a Canadian Catholic philosopher, argued in A Secular Age that the central change is not that people discovered a fact that disproves God. It is that belief moved from being the assumed background to being one option among several. Even a devout person today knows that others live well without faith, and this changes what faith feels like. Taylor’s picture is widely discussed because it is not simply a story of reason defeating religion.

This is a description and not a verdict. It leaves open whether the change is a loss, a gain or a mixture.

1. In this sentence, is secular being used of the state, of the people, or of a philosophy?
2. Does the claim concern what the law should do, or what individuals believe?
3. Is there evidence for the decline mentioned, and for which country and period?
4. Would a religious person who supports religious liberty also support this kind of secularism?
5. Does the speaker assume that secular must mean opposed to religion?
6. What would count as evidence that this claim is wrong?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching distinguishes a legitimate autonomy of earthly affairs from a false autonomy that denies God. The Second Vatican Council taught in Gaudium et Spes that created things have their own laws and values, which the human person must respect, while denying that this means creation can do without the Creator. The Council also affirmed the right to religious freedom. Catholic authors disagree about whether modern secularism is mainly friend or foe.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers such as Alexander Schmemann argued that the real trouble with the secular is not that it talks of this world but that it denies that the world is a gift to be received with thanks. In his book For the Life of the World he describes the world as sacramental, meant to be offered back to God. For him, secularism as a worldview is a rejection of that, while the ordinary world itself is good.

Protestant

Many Protestants teach that the church and the state have different tasks. Luther spoke of two kingdoms, and Calvin of two governments. Baptists and others argued for the separation of church and state to protect conscience. Other Protestants, especially in the Reformed tradition, hold that all areas of life, including politics and learning, belong to Christ, and they resist a division that confines faith to private life.

Secular and scholarly views

Many secular citizens support a neutral state precisely because they want every belief, including religious belief, to be free, and they reject the claim that secularism is hostile. Others hold that public reasoning should rely only on arguments that anyone can accept. Scholars such as Taylor and Casanova reply that this ideal has never been neutral and that religious voices have long contributed to public life.

Why it matters

Almost every modern challenge to Christianity is wrapped in one of these three meanings. A student who cannot tell them apart will either defend what no one has attacked or concede what no one has proved. Clear definitions also help in conversation with neighbors, who often mean something quite mild when they call themselves secular.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. When you hear someone called secular, which of the three meanings do you usually assume?
2. What in your own life is secular in the older sense of belonging to the present world, and does that conflict with your faith?
3. Does the idea that belief is now one option among many describe your own experience?
4. Which kind of secularism, if any, would you defend, and why?

Independent assignment

Sorting the senses

In your own notebook, collect five sentences from news, social media or conversation that use the word secular, secularism or secularization. For each, decide which of the meanings in this lesson is in play and whether the speaker moves between them. Write 300 to 400 words on the two most confused examples, and say what each speaker might have said more clearly. Do not post this anywhere.

Further study

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Religion and Science Read the opening sections to see how a philosophical reference work frames the broader debate.
• Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World Read the first chapter for an Orthodox account of the world as a gift.
• Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 volumes) Use as a background resource on how Christian thought has related to the surrounding culture.
• Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Read the chapters on the Reformation and the wars of religion for the origin of toleration.
• Matthew 22:21 Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.
• Psalm 24:1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.
• Acts 17:28 Paul speaks to a pluralist city by quoting its own poets.