Quotes About Secularism

Especially in a very secular world, we should always stress what is common in the Christian religion.

My family is not only not religious, but my parents are both - they're secularists. My father is actually an atheist and feels very strongly about it.

Our freedom fighters have struggled to oust imperial forces and establish a secular nation. It cannot be broken by the Sangh Parivar and Modi easily.

We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.

The public schools shall be free from sectarian influences and, above all, free from any attitude of hostility to the adherents of any particular creed.

Qutb argued that the modern world had fallen back into the period of pre-Islamic ignorance and barbarism that had existed prior to the Prophet. Secular Muslims, or even Muslims who did not abide by strict sanctions, were subject to takfir, excommunication, and thus were fair game to be killed.

The secular state becomes almost automatically totalitarian, so that no room is left for man's spiritual freedom.

If we look at the world today in isolation from the past and the future, the forces of secularism may seem triumphant. This, however, is but a moment in the life of humanity, and it does not possess the promise of stability and permanence.

It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.

Secularism will not work in Egypt any more than theocracy. What will work is governance that is guided by the Islamic values of the majority with protection of the minority rights.

The co-existence of religious values in the lives of individuals and secular rules in the governance of the state should be clearly defined.

All theory of modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory we can realize that this is wrong: atheism is only one belief system among many.

Contrary to secularist myth, science in practice is innately and irrepressibly religious: it serves either God or idolatry. But one of the features of idolatry is deceit. In this case, idolatry conceals from itself that it is idolatry.

Secularism teaches us that we ought to look to this world. Christianity teaches us that the best way to prepare for this world is to be fully prepared for the next.

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.

Is the Judeo-Christian heritage of America a reality or an interloper aimed at suppressing the secularism of the founders? Or, is it the other way around? Are today's secularists trying to recreate the faith of our founding father into the unbelief of a Deist in order to rid our nation of Washington's holy flame of faith?

The rise of the stricter forms of Protestantism had not yet inhibited the lavish materialism that seems to characterize Elizabethan society. This might be described as the first secular age.

secular people don't believe in life after death, but rather, they believe in life before death.

But the fact that highly secular nations and states fare so well compared to religious nations and states, and the fact that many nations have seen violent crime and other social pathologies decrease over time as secularity has simultaneously increased, does prove that morality clearly doesn't hinge upon the existence of God, or require belief in God.

secular parents are far from amoral. They may not raise their children religiously, but that does not mean that they raise them without values or ethical precepts. Some common, consistent moral principles secular parents impart to their children include valuing and obeying the Golden Rule, being environmentally conscious, developing empathy, cultivating independent thinking, and relying upon rational problem solving.

humanist principles—especially those that emphasize human worth and dignity, the imperative to respect human rights, reverence for life, and the intrinsic ability of humans to be caring and just—provide the foundations of secular moral orientations.

Phil Zuckerman, "Is Faith Good for Us?" Free Inquiry 26, 5 (2006): 35–38; Gregory S. Paul, "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies," Journal of Religion and Society 7, 1 (2005):

millennialist thought was a cluster of religious and secular ideas forged into a kind of national creed. In its more hopeful mode, it held that Christ would have a Second Coming in the "new Israel" of America, or at least that the country possessed a mission as a "redeemer nation" destined to perform a special role in history. Millennialism was an outlook on history, a disposition about

Religion cannot be the agenda of any government.