Editing Secularity (section)

==Modern and historical understandings of the term==

''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.{{Citation needed|date=March 2011}} ''Secular'' has been a part of the Christian church's history, which even developed in the medieval period ''[[secular clergy]]'', priests who were defined as the Church's geographically-delimited diocesan clergy and not a part of the diasporal monastic orders. This arrangement continues today.<ref name="sec cler">{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Hugh M. |title=The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 |date=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780198702566}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Eller |first1=Jack David |title=Introducing Anthropology of Religion : Culture to the Ultimate |date=2022 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781032023045 |page=282 |edition=Third}}</ref><ref name="brillRPP124156"/> The [[Waldensians]] advocated for secularity by separation of church and state.<ref name="Garnier 2022 p. 51">{{cite book | last=Garnier | first=T. | title=From God to Climate Change: The journey of Albert Garnier's 30-year mission in China to scientist son Ben's fight with the riddle of the world | publisher=Paragon Publishing | year=2022 | isbn=978-1-78222-969-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7--hEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 | access-date=2023-04-27 | page=51}}</ref> According to [[cultural anthropology|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.<ref name="Eller" /> 

The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the [[Age of Enlightenment|European Enlightenment]].{{sfn|Juergensmeyer|2017|pp=74–79}} 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.{{sfnm |1a1=Juergensmeyer |1y=2017 |2a1=Zuckerman |2a2=Galen |2a3=Pasquale |2y=2016 |2loc=ch.&nbsp;2|pp=78-79}}

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 view]]s. Saying a [[prayer]] derived from religious text or doctrine, [[worship]]ping through the context of a religion, performing corporal and spiritual [[works of mercy]], and attending a [[Seminary|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.{{sfn|Zuckerman|Galen|Pasquale|2016|p=31}} 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.<ref>See {{harvnb|Asad|2003|loc=esp. pp.&nbsp;205–210}}; {{harvnb|Walzer|2015|loc=esp. pp.&nbsp;ix–xiv, 65, 76}}.</ref> 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.{{sfn|Zuckerman|Galen|Pasquale|2016|pp=19, 51}}

===Taylorian secularity===

Philosopher [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]] in his 2007 book ''[[A Secular Age]]'' understands and discusses the secularity of Western societies less in terms of how much of a role religion plays in public life (''secularity 1''), or how religious a society's individual members are (''secularity 2''), than as a "backdrop" or social context in which religious belief is no longer taken as a given (''secularity 3''). For Taylor, this third sense of secularity is the unique historical condition in which virtually all individuals – religious or not – have to contend with the fact that their [[Value (ethics and social sciences)|values]], [[morality]], or [[meaning of life|sense of life's meaning]] are no longer underpinned by communally-accepted religious facts. All religious beliefs or irreligious philosophical positions are, in a secular society, held with an awareness that there are a wide range of other contradictory positions available to any individual; belief in general becomes a different type of experience when all particular beliefs are optional. A plethora of competing religious and irreligious worldviews open up, each rendering the other more "fragile". This condition in turn entails for Taylor that even clearly religious beliefs and practices are experienced in a qualitatively different way when they occur in a secular social context. In Taylor's sense of the term, a society could in theory be highly "secular" even if nearly all of its members believed in a deity or even subscribed to a particular religious creed; secularity here has to do with the conditions, not the prevalence, of belief, and these conditions are understood to be shared across a given society, irrespective of belief or lack thereof.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Taylor |first1=Charles |title=A Secular Age |date=2007 |publisher=Belknap Press |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=1–24}}</ref>

Taylor's thorough account of secularity as a socio-historical condition, rather than the absence or diminished importance of religion, has been highly influential in subsequent [[philosophy of religion]] and [[sociology of religion]], particularly as older sociological narratives about [[secularisation]], [[desecularisation]], and [[disenchantment]] have come under increased criticism.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Calhoun |first1=Craig |last2=Jeurgensmeyer |first2=Mark |last3=Van Antwerpen |first3=Jonathan |title=Rethinking Secularism |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford UP |location=Oxford |page=21}}</ref>