Secularism: a very short introduction

Description

Until the modern period the integration of church (or other religion) and state (or political life) had been taken for granted. The political order was always tied to an official religion in Christian Europe, pre-Christian Europe, and in the Arabic world. But from the eighteenth century onwards, some European states began to set up their political order on a different basis. Not religion, but the rule of law through non-religious values embedded in constitutions became the foundation of some states - a movement we now call secularism. In others, a de facto secularism emerged as political values and civil and criminal law altered their professed foundation from a shared religion to a non-religious basis. 1: What is secularism? 2: Secularism in Western societies 3: Secularism diversifies 4: The case for secularism 5: The case against secularism 6: Conceptions of secularism 7: Hard questions and new conflicts Afterword: The future of secularismReferences and Further ReadingIndex