Secular religion

A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly entities.

Among systems that have been characterized as secular religions include capitalism, nationalism, internationalism, National Socialism, fascism, feminism, communism, Maoism, Juche, progressivism, futurism, transhumanism, Religion of Humanity, Jacobinism, and other nontheistic communal belief systems such as the Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being that developed after the French Revolution.

Communism as a secular religion

In 1936, a Protestant priest referred explicitly to communism as a new secular religion. A couple of years later, on the eve of World War II, F. A. Voigt characterised both Marxism and National Socialism as secular religions, akin at a fundamental level in their authoritarianism and messianic beliefs – as well as in their eschatological view of human History. Both, he considered, were waging religious war against the liberal enquiring mind of the European heritage.

After the war, the social philosopher Raymond Aron would expand on the exploration of communism in terms of a secular religion; while A. J. P. Taylor, for example, would characterise it as "a great secular religion....the Communist Manifesto must be counted as a holy book in the same class as the Bible".

Contemporary characterizations

The term secular religion is often applied today to communal belief systems – as, for example, with the view of love as our postmodern secular religion. Paul Vitz applied the term to modern psychology, in as much as it fosters a cult of the self, explicitly calling "the self-theory ethic ... this secular religion". Sport has also been considered as a new secular religion, particularly with respect to Olympism. For Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, belief in them as a new secular religion was explicit and lifelong.

In more recent times, global warming has been referred to as a secular religion by political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Richard Lindzen.

Anti-racism is often considered to be a major, if not the main, secular religion in the Western world. However, discussing this assertion can be problematic, as anti-racism is often considered to be self-evidently correct, and not open for interpretation like a religion.

The "Great Awokening" is a name given to the ongoing left-wing political evolution in the Western world, which, in itself, is often claimed to be a secular religion in its own right. Anti-racism is one of the main practices of people seen as associated with wokeness.

See also

• Daoism
• Epicureanism
• Nontheistic religions
• Postsecularism
• Secular ethics
• Separation of church and state
• Spiritual but not religious

Further reading

• A. Bergesen, The Sacred and the Subversive (1984)
• E. B. Koenker, Secular Salvations (1965)