For instance, eating and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, both eating and bathing are regarded as sacraments in some religious traditions, and therefore would be religious activities in those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, and attending a religious school are examples of religious (non-secular) activities. Prayer and meditation are not necessarily non-secular, since the concept of spirituality and higher consciousness are not married solely to any religion but are practiced and arose independently across a continuum of cultures.
Most businesses and corporations, and some governments, are secular organizations. All of the state universities in the United States are secular organizations (especially because of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution) while some private universities are connected with the Christian or Jewish religions. Among many of these, some prominent examples are Baylor University, Brigham Young University, Boston College, Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, Duquesne University, Texas Christian University, Southern Methodist University, and Yeshiva College.
The public university systems of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan are also secular, although some government-funded primary and secondary schools may be religiously aligned in some countries.
Secular and secularity derive from the Latin word saecularis meaning of a generation, belonging to an age. 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. This meaning has been extended to mean separation from any religion, regardless of whether it has a similar doctrine.
This does not necessarily imply hostility to 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
Category:Religion and society Category:Secularism
ar:علمانية (صفة) bg:Секуларност fr:Laïc nn:sekulær uk:Світський zh:世俗This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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