Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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| an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance. |
| a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare. |
- The split between legal secularism and values evangelicalism was not born in a day.
- Central to this resurgence of religious partisanship was the call for the faith-based values that secularism had displaced.
- Lurking behind the defence of secularism is a clutch of other motives, some more honourable than others.
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secularism
any movement in society directed away from otherworldliness to life on earth. In the European Middle Ages there was a strong tendency for religious persons to despise human affairs and to meditate on God and the afterlife. As a reaction to this medieval tendency, secularism, at the time of the Renaissance, exhibited itself in the development of humanism, when people began to show more interest in human cultural achievements and the possibilities of their fulfillment in this world. The movement toward secularism has been in progress during the entire course of modern history and has often been viewed as being anti-Christian and antireligious. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, some theologians began advocating secular Christianity. They suggested that Christianity should not be concerned only with the sacred and the otherworldly, but that people should find in the world the opportunity to promote Christian values. These theologians maintain that the real meaning of the message of Jesus can be discovered and fulfilled in the everyday affairs of secular urban living
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