Word: secularation
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...terms of mainstream student values then, Wellesley today is every bit as much Mona Lisa Smile-puritan as it is secular, Sapphic fantasyland. And there are, of course, numerous students that fall between these two spheres...
...Reason Magazine, puts it, “40 percent of Americans do not belong to a church and do not consider religion a very important part of their lives.” Even more strikingly, a 2001 comprehensive poll of over 50,000 Americans found that the number of secular Americans has more than doubled to 29.4 million since 1990, and now exceeds the number of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Buddhists combined. In fact, nonreligious or secular Americans outnumber adherents of every religion but Christianity. And the number of Christians is falling: Even in the midst of this much ballyhooed...
...rise of secularism isn’t remarked upon in the mainstream media, which prefers mega-church scaremongering (evangelicals are coming to get you!), or condescending articles on virginity balls and the like. So why does the growing secular minority feel besieged by the shrinking religious majority...
...being secularists’ bête noir, is not the firebrand he’s made out to be. Bush may talk to god, and use religiously-charged language in public speeches, but his presidency has been far from a “tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic,” as the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. hysterically claimed. In fact, Bush has offered little more than rhetorical support to right-wing causes. Opening government funding to faith-based charities—probably Bush’s most dramatic pro-religion action—hardly marks...
Ultimately, although students tend to view our ivory tower as one of a few lonely secular outposts in a vast wilderness of religious ignorance, this indulgent, self-laudatory narrative is mistaken. Likewise, modish militant atheism (Richard Dawkins and the like) misses the mark; shrill, self-righteous atheism may be sexy—oh so radical, sure to infuriate the parents—but it’s like kicking a dying horse. In retrospect, talk of a new 20th-century great awakening will be seen as the last gasp of a bygone era, as the Americans catch up with...