secular society
Religion-free public sphere
A secular society is one where government and public institutions operate independently of religious authority.
Laws, education, and civic life are based on nonreligious principles, though individuals remain free to practice their faiths privately.
France prides itself on being a secular society.
The term often arises in debates about the proper boundary between church and state.
- atheismRejection of deities
- rationalismReason as knowledge source
- humanismPhilosophy prioritizing earthly reason
- agnosticismDoubt about divine existence
- free inquiryUnrestrained pursuit of knowledge
liberalism · pluralism · civil rights · civic discourse · materialism · public education · constitutionalism · disestablishment · church and state · human rights advocacy · empiricism · freedom of speech · public square · legal equality · separation of church and state · neutral state · modernity · scientific progress
- secularizationdechristianization, disaffiliation, church closures, church-state separation, nones
- religionChristianity, Islam, beliefs, Judaism, Hinduism
secular societytheocracy
Rule by religious authority
caliphate · hierocracy · Islamic State · ecclesiocracy · Vatican City
secular societyreligious society
Organized group sharing beliefs
religious community · faith-based community · Amish community · monastic community
secular, society, secularly, secularity, secularism, secularist, secularize, secularization, societies