I’ve been thinking about semantics lately, and the words
“secularist” and “religious”. I’ve been
wondering if I am living in some sort of dichotomy or false dichotomy. Can I be
religious and secularist (or is it just secular?) at the same time? Yes, of course I can, but how do I explain
that, especially when I think most people equate the word “secular” with
“non-religious”?
Secular doesn’t just refer to non-religious. The AmericanHeritage Dictionary offers the deifinition, “Relating to or advocating secularism”. Secularism, in turn, defined by the same source is “The view
that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public
education.”
UUs
definitively support secularism. We even have a statement on the matter (of
course)-
Religion and State
The
Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has long expressed our support of the
separation of church and state in relation to public education, partisan
politics, free exercise and religious pluralism. For this reason, the UUA works
to ensure that federal dollars are not used to fund religious discrimination,
to combat government endorsement of religious beliefs, and to ensure freedom of
religious expression.
Tim Minchin (somewhat) recently tweeted a couple videos
about secularism and humanism. He is in the humanism one. The secularism one
has a lot relating to British government, but I love that within the first
minute, there is a thorough explanation of secularism as we UUs use it, AND it
then clarifies that it benefits both the religious and non-religious and should
be supported by atheists and believers alike, showing these various terms-
I love seeing the term “religious atheist” there. I
recently changed my blog description to describe myself that way, and I worried
I was making up some crazy term that no one would understand.
If you are interested in understanding more about
secularism and humanism, these videos are good introductions or good summaries
to share. Mary- the Universalist Unitarian Secular Humanist Religious Atheist
Secularism-Humanism (with Tim Minchin)-
We have that issue with homeschooling too. so many homeschooling groups are religious based (even requiring a statement of faith to join) so when you state your group is a "secular" homeschool group so many people don't get that it just means the group is about education, not religion, but that the members can be any religion (or not) that they like.
ReplyDeleteOur current group uses the term "inclusive" instead of secular which people seem to understand. But there are many cases -- government being one of them in which secular is the proper word and people need to understand the definition.
Thanks for linking to the videos.