Word: seculare
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...late '50s. "Nearly every night of the week she went to Arthur Murray's dancing classes. A framed, autographed portrait of Murray and his wife hung over her bed. It would be florid to say it hung there like a religious icon, but certainly the two secular persons filled Miss Lavore's heart with gratitude." The waltz, Miss Lavore had been known to say, is not as easy as it looks. There are other women--Josette, a fading Boston Brahmin, or Juanita, the daughter of a Lexington trainman and his hardworking wife, who for no apparent reason became a prostitute...
...filthy Siberian prison cell. Three days later, dressed in a dark blue suit issued to him by the Soviet government, he sat in the First Baptist Church of Washington while his host, the President of the United States, conducted a Sunday School class on I Kings 21. Even to secular eyes, this turn of events might seem miraculous; to the Rev. Georgi Vins, 50, it is quite literally...
...baptism, which earned it the hostility of both Catholics and established Protestant churches. Devout and pacifist, the Mennonites repeatedly had to flee persecution; some groups from Germany and The Netherlands ultimately migrated to Russia and then to the New World. This time, however, the reasons for moving were more secular. The Canadian Mennonites were tired of the long, cold winters, while members of an offshoot colony in Chihuahua complained of being harassed by their Mexican neighbors...
...Islam is incompatible with technological advance or industrial development. In the days of the caliphs, Islam led the world in scientific and intellectual discoveries. What Muslims object to are the evils associated with modernization: the breakdown of the family structure, the lowering of moral standards, the appeal of easygoing secular lifestyles. At the same time, Muslims are demanding the best of the West: schools, hospitals, technology, agricultural and water development techniques. Harvesting the fruits of modernization without absorbing some of its side-effects may prove to be impossible. But Sheik Mahmoud Abu Obayed of Cairo's Al Azhar University says...
Turkey. Islam is still a potent force in secular Turkey, and religious violence between the dominant Sunni Muslims and the Alevis, a Shi'ite sect, has recently injected a dangerous new element into the country's chronic political instability. Ancient rivalries between the two groups are being exploited by both right-and left-wing extremists. Last December Sunni gangs massacred a hundred Alevis in the southern Turkish town of Maras. But unlike the Shah's Iran, Turkey has a functioning democratic system, and no single issue or popular figure unites the opposition. The government is fearful, however, that "political opportunists...