Word: seculare
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Entertainers elicit an extraordinary range of responses from their audiences-admiration, love, even secular idolatry. They ought to be praised and analyzed for the gifts that cause such reactions. But these days it is not enough for performers to be gifted or versatile. As a new wave of show-biz biographies gloomily illustrates, stars must now be pumped up into symbols of their profession or indictments of their society. It was in just this spirit of distorted inflation that Albert Goldman last year took Lenny Bruce from shlepper to counterculture shaman in 13 uneasy chapters...
Christianity and Gnosticism both flourished during the unraveling of the Roman Empire, but dealt with this era of upheaval in different ways. The more optimistic Christians came to terms with the secular world; they embraced the belief that God had become incarnate on earth in the person of Jesus Christ, as well as the Jewish idea of a "good" creation. It was the world-hating Gnostics, says Robinson, who "expressed most clearly the mood of defeatism and despair that swept the ancient world...
...converted by the deep-throated roar of a motorcycle. Many middle-aged men take up cycling -as Hess did in 1965. Mostly what they get is kidney trouble, pavement burns and a chance to act out a few fantasies. As Hess tells it in Dear America, he got secular religion. The need to repair the machines he wrecked led him to welding and, finally, to working as a welder of trucks and construction equipment. "It was there, under trucks, inside buckets, working hard," he writes, "that I faced the final contradictions, the ones that ended any hope of anything...
...intelligentsia continues to serve as a secular priesthood performing functions for the powerful," Noam Chomsky, professor of Linguistics at MIT, said at the panel, which was sponsored by the magazine Science for the People. He was opposing what he called the liberal theory of a post-industrial society where power is associated with knowledge...
Safety Valve. The Encounter weekend is exhausting and so unnerving that couples with severe marital difficulties are urged not to attend but to go to a marriage counselor instead. Unlike those who attend secular encounter groups, participants do not discuss their own problems in group sessions, but listen to the leaders as they relate theirs. Another difference is the impact of Catholic belief in marriage as a sacramental commitment. The presence of the priest reminds couples of the dignity with which their marriage began. By being available all night to talk or hear confessions, the priest also functions...