Word: secularism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Steinem: This society, Western culture in general, has devoted itself to externalizing everything, whether it's obeying the demands of the church to win rewards after death, or the secular heaven of consumerism that makes us feel insecure if we don't buy endless things -- all the vast array of external hierarchies that depend for their authority on weakening our authority -- especially women...
...Turkey's position is more important than before. A new window of opportunity has opened for us with the Turkic republics. They speak our language. ((Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan speak Turkic languages. In Tajikistan the language is akin to Iranian Farsi.)) We are urging them to remain secular and to switch to the Latin alphabet...
...majority, they will have enough votes to force constitutional changes and override presidential vetoes. Jean Leca, a leading French expert on Algeria, warns that in such an event, strict social control and dictatorship are likely to follow. Other analysts predict that the military, which is committed to a modernizing, secular state, will thwart such ambitions...
...traditional religious miracle -- an apparition of the Virgin, say -- occupies a problematic place in a technological world. Such a vision may not be the strongest card that divinity could play in the late 20th century, when the globe is overstimulated by its extravagant secular wonders...
Whose work are such miracles? Are they wonders divine or human? Traditional miracles -- for example, cures at Lourdes -- have a certain quaintness about them, a period quality. Unlike secular technological wonders, traditional religious miracles do not have to top themselves from one year to the next. Secular miracles become obsolete: the first silent movies were miraculous. Then the talkies were miraculous. Then television. When miracles can be superseded by new miracles, they have descended from the realm of the absolute. Miracles become mortal...