Secularity is not the absence of religion, but a unique social condition of choice.

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: We often mistake secularity for the rejection of faith, but the term originally meant something entirely different. Rooted in the Latin word for an age or generation, it describes a neutral space. Today, it defines a modern context where belief is no longer the default, but one option among many.

The term secular derives from the Latin saeculum, which historically denoted a period of about one hundred years or the coming and going of ages. In the early Christian church, the word was used in doxologies to describe the long duration of created things. It was not inherently opposed to religion; in fact, medieval Western culture developed the concept of secular clergy—priests who served in dioceses rather than monastic orders—to distinguish their roles from those of religious orders. Even Martin Luther later viewed secular work as a divine vocation.

The modern dichotomy between the religious and the secular is largely a product of the European Enlightenment and Western Christian theology. Cultural anthropologists and scholars note that these concepts are not universal. In many non-Western cultures, the distinction between natural and supernatural or religious and non-religious is either absent or was only introduced through colonial processes. Even within Western traditions, the boundary is fluid; while eating or bathing might be considered secular, some religious worldviews elevate these same acts to sacraments.

Philosopher Charles Taylor, in his 2007 work A Secular Age, redefined secularity as a socio-historical condition rather than a measure of religious practice. He argues that in a secular society, religious belief is no longer a taken-for-granted fact. Instead, all worldviews—religious or irreligious—are held with the awareness that contradictory positions exist. This makes belief a different type of experience, as it becomes an optional choice rather than a communal certainty. In this sense, a society could remain highly secular even if its members are deeply religious, because the conditions under which they hold their beliefs have fundamentally shifted.

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