Secularism as the Common Religion of a Free Society

Abstract

NOT so long ago, the clergy of all cults and denominations tended to write or speak the word Secularism in a manner eloquent of discomfort or anxiety or anger or hatred. There was nothing in dictionary definitions of the word to account for the emotional disturbance. Webster, for instance, identifies the secular as belonging to the State as distinguished from the Church and again non-ecclesiatical, not religious in character nor devoted to religious ends or uses. The secular is thus the concern of the laity as against the clergy, and Secularism is the lay frame of mind. Since the clerical vocation depends for its social role and status on its relationships with the laity, the passions stirred by the word secularism would seem to have another object than the laity as laity. Clerics anxious or angry or hateful toward Secularism must needs conceive what it signifies not only as a concern of the souls in their cure, but also as an infidel way of life and thought tending to atrophy the clerical function in society and ultimately to dispense altogether with the priestly vocation and its many and diverse occupational organizations I Because the latter, severally and jointly, identify themselves with religion, they charge that Secularism is necessarily inimical to religion, although as a rule religion means to them their own particular creed and code and no other.' If they include