#secular

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

#secularism #faith

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

#russia #secularism #education

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 Atatürk

#religion #secularism #men

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

#secularization #nature

Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#secular #separation-of-church-and-state #teacher

Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#against #around #funeral #high #humanists

Back in the days when the market was a kind of secular god and all the world thrilled to behold the amazing powers of private capital, the idea of privatizing highways and airports and other bits of our transportation infrastructure made a certain kind of sense. ↗

— Thomas Frank

#back #behold #bits #capital #certain

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

#believers #engage #establish #faith #imply

There are moral religious people and moral secular people, immoral religious people and immoral secular people. ↗

— Leon Wieseltier

#moral #people #religious #religious people #secular

If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#because #color #crow #deny #gay