Word: secularity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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KUNDERA IS A CAPABLE narrator but a puzzling novelist; it seems his sensibility is more mature than his technique. For a novel which takes as its theme vicissitude and secular vanity. Kundera uses surprisingly little imagery of change, transformation, and decay. The narrator is highly intelligent; but his intelligence is not fully lent to any of the characters. Their dialogue is not as witty or engaging as the narrator's, we are never told how everyone in the novel became conscious of lightness. Unreasonably, no one who makes religious or metaphysical assumptions is allowed on stage; one gets the feeling...
...people had an illogical, medieval notion of a university--that secular authority should not be allowed in no matter what," says Martin H. Peretz, a Social Studies lecturer who considered himself part of the "middle left faction" of the Faculty...
...some good will in the symbols rather than governmental sponsorship of a religion? The majority opinion contends that "The display engenders a friendly community spirit of good will in keeping with the season." But good will at what price? As the dissent points out, Pawtucket may have a valid "secular reason" (good will and increased retail sales) for setting up the display, but are life-sized figures of Jesus. Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, kings and animals the only way to encourage such secular motives? Equally effective would have been the merry Santa scene without the religious accoutrements. The city...
...does the majority's implication that surrounding the creche with other, strictly secular, symbols negates the endorsement ring true. It's like saying if the city put a cross on the lawn of its City Hall and surrounded it with candy canes, reindeer and polar bears, the cross would no longer signify any real religious endorsement. What if the symbol had been a Star of David or a Koran...
...white banner adorned with four crucifixes loomed over the crowd at the Church of the Transfiguration in Garwolin, a rural community 40 miles southeast of Warsaw. THERE WAS NO PLACE FOR YOU, CHRIST, AT OUR SCHOOL, the banner said. In any other modern secular country, that message might simply have been a routine protest against the separation of church and state. But in Poland, where approximately 90% of the population is Roman Catholic, and the church is the only institution powerful enough to challenge the state, a battle over crucifixes in the classroom last week sparked one of the most...