Secularism

Secularism may indicate a nonreligious world-view, an ideology, a political doctrine, a form of political governance, a type of moral philosophy, or a belief that the scientific method is solely sufficient to understand the world in which we live. While George Jacob Holyoke introduced the term secularism only in 1851, the structural reality of secularism has a longer history and has always embraced a spectrum of ideas: the emphasis on what is moral as opposed to what is miraculous in religion (Immanuel Kant); the view that the church is the caretaker of souls and ought to be separated from the state that is concerned with worldly matters (John Locke); the anticipation (often inseparable from advocacy) of a radical transformation of religions with progress (Thomas Jefferson); ...