Quotes & Sayings About Secularism

Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that's wrong ... The answer to bad religion is better religion
prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology. — Jim Wallis

No man is such a legalist as the good Secularist. — G.K. Chesterton

The supposed "secular" values atheists hold dear are in fact borrowed Christian values. Our society is respectful of any creed, or lack thereof, not because it embraces an illusory, non-existent secular morality, but because it is rooted in Christian faith. Christopher Dawson noted that "we cannot understand the inner form of a society unless we understand its religion." Because moral values are always a religious product, and Western moral values are a product of Christianity. Our values, what we believe has a value beyond and above our self-interest, are grounded in religious faith or are not grounded at all. — Giorgio Roversi

secularism should be understood as the view that: government should not involve itself with religious matters; religious doctrine should play no role in shaping public policy or in the discourse about public policy; and religious institutions and beliefs should not enjoy a privileged position within society. — Ronald A. Lindsay

Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation. — Christopher Hitchens

There is no way to have a real relationship without becoming vulnerable to hurt. Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile. God became someone we could hurt. Why? To get us back ... No other religion-whethe r secularism, Greco-Roman paganism, Eastern religion, Judaism, or Islam-believes God became breakable or suffered or had a body. — Timothy Keller

It is a profound political reality that Christ now occupies the supreme seat of cosmic authority. The kings of this world and all secular governments may ignore this reality, but they cannot undo it. The universe is no democracy. It is a monarchy. God himself has appointed his beloved Son as the preeminent King. Jesus does not rule by referendum, but by divine right. In the future every knee will bow before him, either willingly or unwillingly. Those who refuse to do so will have their knees broken with a rod of iron. — R.C. Sproul

Unity and secularism will be the motto of the government. We can't afford divisive polity in India. — Manmohan Singh

But I decided that buying the gift was more for me than for her, anyhow. A commercial kind of substitute for prayer. — Joe Haldeman

Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we've always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism. — Greg Graffin

Praise God for those of you who do homeschool. I can't emphasize enough: Do what you can to get your kids out of public school. If you can't afford to put them in a private Christian school, homeschool. Because they're being poisoned in the public schools. They're being brainwashed in the public schools, with all this secularism, with all this immorality that is being immersed into them on a daily basis. — Rafael Cruz

Through the use of the dominator and partnership models of social organization for the analysis of both our present and our potential future, we can also begin to transcend the conventional polarities between right and left, capitalism and communism, religion and secularism, and even masculinism and feminism. — Riane Eisler

I guess I'm a spiritual secularist, if that's not an oxymoron. My paths of secularism and spirituality are the same: I try to do the appropriate thing at each moment. — Paul Krassner

Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean irreligiousness.It means profusion of religions. — Shashi Tharoor

The rejection of Western democracy derives from the same rejection of secularism but was further sharpened by the Saudi Arabian establishment's aversion to democracy's subversive streak and the threat it posed to the Saudi monarchy if unleashed. Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid consistently attacked democracy and the freedoms it flaunted as anti-Islamic. Mohammed Yusuf was heavily influenced by the writings of Saudi-based scholars such as Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Baaz (1910-99), and Sheikh Muhammad al-Amin ash Shanqiti (1907-73). As mentioned before, all of Yusuf's opponents side-stepped the issue of democracy being un-Islamic, thereby making the issue appear incontestable or settled. — Kyari Mohammed

But she wouldn't pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn't that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one's belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn't loading the dice. — Graham Greene

Secular humanists of every type may ridicule the Bible, but they cannot escape it; and in their obsession with change, calls for reform, doomsday warnings, and utopian visions, they continue to steal from it. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Far from being marginalized, as is presently the case, nineteenth-century freethought was a social movement at the core of our national life. — Fred Whitehead

Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

We can't be secular till there is politics because it is a religion that hates every other religion ... — Ranu Das

I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we have. I don't believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I don't believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that people's innermost thoughts are their own. — Marilynne Robinson

Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on. — David Berlinski

A democracy is not truly democratic unless it's secular. — Shawn Lawrence Otto

In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith. — John Taylor Gatto

It is no coincidence that every civilisation in human history has recognised at its foundation an element of sacredness, to which the civil authority is ultimately bound. The sacred is an awareness of moral boundaries that are not circumscribed by us, of an ultimate reason that cannot be found in us. It is the realisation that what binds us together as a society is something that lies beyond ourselves, and that human beings have an inherent value that cannot be arbitrarily limited or denied by political, economic or social power. — Giorgio Roversi

The attempt made in recent decades by secularist thinkers to disengage the moral principles of western civilization from their scripturally based religious context, in the assurance that they could live a life of their own as "humanistic" ethics, has resulted in our "cut flower culture." Cut flowers retain their original beauty and fragrance, but only so long as they retain the vitality that they have drawn from their now-severed roots; after that is exhausted, they wither and die. So with freedom, brotherhood, justice, and personal dignity - the values that form the moral foundation of our civilization. Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung, they possess neither meaning nor vitality. — Will Herberg

Brigham Young observed, "Man's machinery makes things alike" (JD 9:370), while God gives to seemingly like individuals pleasing differences. Secularism is no friend of righteous individuality. — Neal A. Maxwell

A truly free society protects all faiths, and true faith protects a free society. — Rick Warren

It's no secret that in New York during the last 30 years there has been a tragic exodus from the churches into materialism, secularism and humanism. — Billy Graham

When you open it up like that, you're effectively saying there is no right answer. And in the absence of a right answer, pluralism is the only option. And pluralism will lead to secularism, and to democracy, and to human rights. We must all focus on those values without worrying about whether atheism is the most intellectually pure approach. I genuinely believe that if we focus on the pluralistic nature of interpretation and on democracy, human rights, and secularism - on these values - we'll get to a time of peace and stability in Muslim-majority countries that then allows for conversations like this. Questioning whether God really exists would become a choice, open to all. — Sam Harris

The First Amendment ... does not say that in every respect there shall be a separation of Church and State ... Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other - hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly ... The state may not establish a 'religion of secularism' in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. — William O. Douglas

The world is getting too small for both an Us and a Them. Us and Them have become codependent, intertwined, fixed to one another. We have no separate fates, but are bound together in one. And our fear of one another is the only thing capable of our undoing. — Sam Killermann

Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality. — Steven Pinker

The Golden Age of Secularism has passed. — Jacques Berlinerblau

So long as the Constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and - lest I forget - so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive — Ramachandra Guha

Congress' dynastic politics has shattered the hopes & aspirations of people. Congress hides behind the veil of secularism whenever its governance falters and its misconduct is exposed. This will no longer go unchallenged. The younger generation will not accept these actions of Congress! — Narendra Modi

It is my opinion that education is a key component to peace and progress. Despite their arrogant claims to have all the answers, world religions cannot account for recent insights and discoveries about the natural world and human history. In this, the most tantalizing argument against religious faith comes forth in the way of science and reason. An ever-growing scientific consensus has resulted in the ever-shrinking populous of religious relevance. — Tommy Rodriguez

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith. — Maggie Gallagher

Truly barren is a secular education. It is always in labor, but never gives birth. — Gregory Of Nyssa

Toynbee emphasized the difference between technological-material progress and true progress, which he defined as spiritualization. He recognized that the Western world was indeed undergoing a crisis, which he attributed to the abandonment of religion for the cult of technology, nationalism, and militarism. For him this crisis had a name: secularism. If you know the cause of an illness, you can also find a cure: The religious heritage in all its forms had to be reintroduced, especially the "heritage of Western Christianity." Rather than a biologistic vision, he offered a voluntaristic one focused on the energy of creative minorities and exceptional individuals. — Pope Benedict XVI

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is 'Justice to all. Appeasement to none.' This is our secularism. — Narendra Modi

If that made him heavy company sometimes, so be it. Who decreed that life was to be one long rowdy masquerade (punctuated with those little pets of melancholy indulged by a crowd who made a religion of their feelings)? — Howard Jacobson

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is - marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity. — Joseph Conrad

The great American tradition is one of pluralism, not exclusive secularism. The strength of our country is reflected in the contributions that we all make to the common good. — Donald Wuerl

Secularism is a religion, a religion that is understood. It has no mysteries, no mumblings, no priests, no ceremonies, no falsehoods, no miracles, and no persecutions. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The best response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism. — Jim Wallis

If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern! — Mahatma Gandhi

The twentieth century will have taught us that no doctrine in itself is necessarily a liberating force: all of them may be perverted or take a wrong turning; all have blood on their hands - communism, liberalism, nationalism, each of the great religions, and even secularism. Nobody has a monopoly on humane values. — Amin Maalouf

The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no meed for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer four our sins and redeem us from guilt. — Thomas C. Oden

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all. — G.K. Chesterton

One of the challenges of secularism is that it's not something outside us. In too many instances, secularism has so permeated the church that sometimes it's the frame of reference even for very good people, people who have a strong allegiance to the church. — Donald Wuerl

Secularism in the Christian world was an attempt to resolve the long and destructive struggle of church and state. Separation, adopted in the American and French Revolutions and elsewhere after that, was designed to prevent two things: the use of religion by the state to reinforce and extend its authority; and the use of the state power by the clergy to impose their doctrines and rules on others. This is a problem long seen as purely Christian, not relevant to Muslims or for that matter to Jews, for whom a similar problem has arisen in Israel. Looking at the contemporary Middle East, both Muslim and Jewish, one must ask whether this is still true
or whether Muslims and Jews may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy. — Bernard Lewis

I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism. — Francois Hollande

My definition of secularism is very clear. The sole religion of the Government is Nation First, the holy book is the Constitution. — Narendra Modi

Perhaps enlightenment, technology and secularism haven't cleared Europe of the oldest science of all - the occult. — Adam Nevill

It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else's meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from responsibility. — George Friedman

American culture really has two souls. And it's not a question of whether the culture becomes secularized. The culture never becomes one thing or the other. The culture is always two. The culture is always William Bradford and Jonathan Edwards. The culture is always Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. America was born just in time to have two mentalities. We're like Jacob and Esau struggling in the womb. Secular people want to believe that we are a nation of the Enlightenment, and because of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution that secularism will supersede religion. Religious people want to believe that through the revival religion will supersede secularism. And both are wrong. "What's going to happen," he said, "is that there will continue to be a constant dynamic and tension between the two, running side by side.And they're going to keep on being about that for as long as there's an American identity worth talking about. — Bruce Feiler

Admittedly, I do have several bones, whole war fields full of bones, in fact to pick with organised religion of whatever stripe. This should be seen as a critique of purely temporal agencies who have, to my mind, erected more obstacles between whatever notion of spirituality and Godhead one subscribes to than they have opened doors. To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker ... although that conjures images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all. — Alan Moore

If we allow our Christian faith to be adulterated with materialism, watered down by secularism, and intermingled with a bland humanism, we cannot stand up to a system that has vowed to bury us. — Billy Graham

Secularism is not only indifferent to alternative religious systems, but as a religious ideology it is opposed to any other religious systems. It is therefore a closed system. — Harvey Cox

But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter's forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The existence or non-existence of an undefined 'god' are quite pointless.
[From 'Why I am a Secular Humanist'] — Herman Bondi

It will be found that every attack upon religion, or upon characteristic ideas inherited from religion, when its assumptions are laid bare, turns out to be an attack upon mind. — Richard M. Weaver

Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions. — Joseph Epstein

I solemnly declare that this spiritual kingdom of faith will move forward with or without each of us individually. No unhallowed hand can stay the growth of the Church nor prevent fulfillment of its mission. Any of us can be left behind, drawn away by the seductive voices of secularism and materialism. — James E. Faust

But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam. — Abu Bakar Bashir

When your claim to be victims of secularism rests on Wal-Mart greeters wishing shoppers Happy Holidays, you are clearly a bunch of great big babies. — Katha Pollitt

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game. — Orhan Pamuk

And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink — Vikram Seth

If Christians continue to rely on emotion and ignore evidence, they will continue to lose their children to secularism. As Ravi Zacharias points out, a tepid Christianity cannot withstand a rabid secularism. And make no mistake-secularism is rabid. The world isn't neutral out there. Today's culture is becoming increasingly anti-Christian. — Frank Turek

My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Secularism and Religion are both all about your personal performance. The Gospel is the performance of another applied to you. — Timothy Keller

Better for them to deny the mind
and with it rationality, truth, and science itself
than to admit the soul. Once again, the secularist manifests the very dogmatism of which he accuses the religious believer, and in rationalizing it is willing to contemplate absurdities of which no religious believer has ever dreamed. — Edward Feser

It is indeed one of th e grave errors of religious anti-secularism that it does not see that secularism is made up of verites chretiennes devenues folies, of Christian truths that "went mad," and that in simply rejecting secularism , it in fact rejects with it certain fundamentally Christian aspirations and hopes. — Alexander Schmemann

Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher ... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more ... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism? — Phil Donahue

The person with a secular mentality feels himself to be the center of the universe. Yet he is likely to suffer from a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance because he knows he's but one human among five billion others - all feeling themselves to be the center of things - scratching out an existence on the surface of a medium-sized planet circling a small star among countless stars in a galaxy lost among countless galaxies. The person with the sacred mentality, on the other hand, does not feel herself to be the center of the universe. She considers the Center to be elsewhere and other. Yet she is unlikely to feel lost or insignificant precisely because she draws her significance and meaning from her relationship, her connection, with that center, that Other. — M. Scott Peck

Death, the real simile for disease - for when we are ill, do we not always feel like we are dying, even if it's only a little? - remains, despite our secularism, the most metaphoricised phenomenon of all. — Will Self

The secularizing 'values' and events that have been predicted would happen in the Muslim world have now begun to unfold with increasing momentum and persistence due still to the Muslims' lack of understanding of the true nature and implications of secularization as a philosophical program. — Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

If Christianity is to be discounted as wishful thinking because it removes fear of meaninglessness and annihilation, then secularism should be open to the same charge, since it removes the hated ideas of an absolute superior and of real responsibility. — Richard L. Purtill

Perhaps more than ever before, there is that aggressive secularism and there are those who would indeed try to destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square. Religion must not be taken from the public square. — Keith O'Brien

There are two principal approaches to secularism, focusing respectively on (1) neutrality between different religions, and (2) prohibition of religious associations in state activities. — Amartya Sen

The need of our times is to revive the Nehruvian notion of secularism. — Khushwant Singh

When it comes to the culture, there's no such thing as peaceful coexistence. If we're not defending truth, fighting for Christian values in all of life, the truth will be sacrificed on the altar of mainstream secularism. — Charles Colson

What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society. — David Berlinski

Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists. — Dennis Prager

There are two kinds of comprehensive doctrines, religious and secular. Those of religious faith will say I give a veiled argument for secularism, and the latter will say I give a veiled argument for religion. I deny both. Each side presumes the basic ideas of constitutional democracy, so my suggestion is that we can make our political arguments in terms of public reason. Then we stand on common ground. That's how we can understand each other and cooperate. — John Rawls

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect. — James A. Haught

There is no longer a Christian mind." -Blamires
What did Blamires mean? To say that there is no Christian mind means that believers may be highly educated in terms of technical proficiency, and yet have no biblical worldview for interpreting the subject matter of their field.
"We speak of the 'modern mind', and of the 'scientific mind', using that word 'mind' of a collectively accepted set of notions and attitudes," Blamires explains.
But we have lost the Christian mind. There is now no shared, biblically based set of assumptions on subjects like law, education, economics, politics, science, or the arts. As a moral being, the Christian follows the biblical ethic. As a spiritual being, he prays and attends worship services. But as a thinking Christian, he has succumbed to secularism. — Nancy Pearcey

Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumamism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be post-European. — Mark Steyn

Catholics and evangelicals need to remain allied, and in solidarity, against the increasingly aggressive secularism of our age. — Gary Bauer

The author compares rationalism and much of organized religion do a dictator who paves over natural springs in order to dispense water in a more organized fashion. The pushback of the world hungry for wonder may be compared to the break out of those springs from their constraints. Not everything they produce is healthy, but the overreaction of eliminating them is worse. — N. T. Wright

I would take my beloved Najma to my country so that she would taste secularism and true freedom. How wrong I was! How wrong we all were! Unfortunately, you truly miss what you have had all along and taken for granted (in this case the spirit of secularism and true freedom) only once you actually lose it. — Vivek Pereira

It is now established by verifiable evidence that religion stultifies the brain and is the great obstacle in the path of intellectual progress.
The more religious a person is, the more he is steeped in ignorance and superstition, the less is his sense of moral responsibility. The more intelligent a person, the less religious he is. There is an old saying that 'where there are three scientists, there are two atheists.'
The countries whose governments are dominated by religion and religious institutions are the most backward. By the same token, the countries whose people are the most enlightened, and whose governments are based upon the principle of secularism - the separation of church and state - are the most progressive.
And let me tell you: When man is intellectually free, the progress he will make is beyond calculation. — Joseph Lewis

Terrorism has no religion, but secularism has one and only one. — Satyendra Singh 'Shyamal'

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion. — Alain De Botton

The Obamacare contraception mandate was never about freedom. It was always about pitting secularism against religion, and using the power of government to sponsor secularism. — Ben Shapiro

I believe that secularism is not the enemy of spirituality. Our spirits are in fact secular and free. But the enemy of your spirit is materialism which produces legalism. People scramble for the "perfect law" in order fix everything, while failing to see that law only points towards what is material. And so, people find themselves going around in a circle that will never end. The key is to break away from that circle. You have to begin focusing your attention onto what is inside you and what is inside everybody else. This will in turn produce common sense, intuition, and understanding. Then comes strength. — C. JoyBell C.

Secularism denounces supernaturalism and promotes a nonreligious or antireligious basis of social organization and morality. — Carl F. H. Henry

The values we rightly associate with the modern age - the "liberty, equality, and fraternity" of the French revolution - are all endangered today not by the dead hand of tradition but by modernity itself, and they can be salvaged only by moving beyond it. — Harvey Cox

They (theological liberals)seemed to know what the answer was supposed to be and weren't much concerned with how to get there. They knew only that whatever answers the Fundamentalists came up with must be wrong. — Eric Metaxas