Secular Action Center

Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negatively or positively, may be considered secular. Linguistically, a process by which anything becomes secular is named ''secularization'', though the term is mainly reserved for the secularization of society; and 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.

Definitions

Historically, the word ''secular'' was not related or linked to religion, but was a freestanding term in Latin which would relate to any mundane endeavour. However, the term, saecula saeculorum
saeculōrum
being the genitive plural of saeculum) as found in the New Testament in the Vulgate translation (circa 410) of the original Koine Greek phrase (''eis toùs aionas ton aiṓnōn''), e.g. a
Galatians 1:5
was used in the early Christian church (and is still used today), in the doxologies, to denote the coming and going of the ages, the grant of eternal life, and the long duration of created things from their beginning to ''forever and ever''. ''Secular'' and ''secularity'' derive from the Latin word ''saeculum'' which meant "of a generation, belonging to an age" or denoted a period of about one hundred years. The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use ''secular'' to indicate separation from specifically religious affairs and involvement in temporal ones.

"Secular" does not necessarily imply hostility or rejection of God or religion, though some use the term this way (see "secularism", below); Martin Luther used to speak of "secular work" as a vocation from God for most Christians. According to cultural anthropologists such as Jack David Eller, secularity is best understood, not as being "anti-religious", but as being "religiously neutral" since many activities in religious bodies are secular themselves and most versions of secularity do not lead to irreligiosity.

The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the European Enlightenment. Furthermore, since ''religion'' and ''secular'' are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them.

One can regard eating and bathing as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, some religious traditions see both eating and bathing as sacraments, therefore making them religious activities within those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, performing corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and attending a religious seminary school or monastery are examples of religious (non-secular) activities.

In many cultures, there is little dichotomy between "natural" and "supernatural", "religious" and "not-religious", especially since people have beliefs in other supernatural or spiritual things irrespective of belief in God or gods. Other cultures stress practice of ritual rather than belief. Conceptions of both "secular" and "religious", while sometimes having some parallels in local cultures, were generally imported along with Western worldviews, often in the context of colonialism. Attempts to define either the "secular" or the "religious" in non-Western societies, accompanying local modernization and Westernization processes, were often and still are fraught with tension.See ; . Due to all these factors, "secular" as a general term of reference was much deprecated in social sciences, and is used carefully and with qualifications.

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{{Use British English Oxford spelling, date=September 2018

Religion and society
Social concepts