Secularism: Difference between revisions

'''Secularism''' is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on secular, naturalistic considerations. Secularism is most commonly defined as the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state, and may be broadened to a similar position seeking to remove or to minimize the role of religion in any public sphere. The term "secularism has a broad range of meanings, and in the most schematic, may encapsulate any stance that promotes the secular in any given context. Secularism is opposed to both state atheism and theocratic rule, since it regards people's rights to practice their religious beliefs freely, both of these governmental systems are opposed to secularism since they try to force beliefs onto people.

Secularism in the Anglo-American sense finds it's roots within the Colonial era of America where in 1636 Roger Williams established a Settlement in Rhode Island which permitted total religious freedom. This along with the later enlightenment philosopher's such as John Locke would go on to heavily influence the founding father of the United States.

As a result the founding fathers would later would later enshrine within the first amendment of the constitution the foundations of American secularism with what is known as the establishment clause which states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

This established the primary purpose of American Secularism which was not the total exclusion of religion from government as in French secularism but rather the inclusion of all religion's in government. In order to ensure that no one religion is discriminated against and no one religion is given too much power.

===French Secularism/Laicism===

Laicism, also called Laïcité or French Secularism, is a stance regarding institutional religion which believes that religion and society shouldn't mix and faith should be left as a purely personal matter. Although laicism is commonly used interchangeably with secularism, it differs from the Anglo-American interpretation of secularism in the regard that the latter does not seek to make religion a purely personal matter just one which is free from the state.

Introduced in 1905, secularism originally represented the victory of anti-clerical republicanism, which, ever since the 1789 French Revolution, had stigmatised the Roman Catholic Church as a bastion of reaction, ignorance and superstition. In concrete terms, the 1905 law dramatically limited the power of the Church by enshrining three key principles: strict separation of Church and State, freedom of conscience and freedom to exercise any faith.

In contemporary France, however, the conflict with the Roman Catholic Church is long dead, with the result that secularism has come to stand for something else: managing ethnic difference in society that is diametrically opposed to the community based approach advocated in the English-speaking world. According to this modern schema, secularism is about avoiding Anglo-Saxon style ghettos; coming together as citizens; and transcending narrow religious differences.

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