Word: secularize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...establishment of a state church." For this reason, in a decision widely regarded as a bellwether, the court earlier this year allowed Pawtucket, R.I., to use public funds to erect a nativity scene as part of a downtown Christmas display. The court has upheld laws that have a "secular purpose," like promoting education, but advance religion as a side effect. Many court watchers expect the Justices this term to uphold a "time-sharing" program in Grand Rapids that sends public-school teachers into parochial schools for remedial programs...
...Catholic view is based on a general respect for all human life, but it does not depend exclusively on the belief that a separate human being appears at the instant of conception. The teaching is that precisely because no one knows when the soul enters the body (or in secular terms, when the fetus becomes a person), the baby-to-be should be given the benefit of the doubt and be fully protected. One blunt analogy: no one would think it morally correct to heave a grenade into a room that is probably empty but just might have a human...
...Charlotte, N.C., was filled with more than 3,300 well-groomed parishioners and visitors. At the lectern, Republican Senator Jesse Helms, avatar of the Moral Majority, gazed out approvingly at the congregation. These were Helms' kind of people: religious, conservative, white. "We live in a time when secular humanism is demanding that our nation divest itself of religion," intoned Helms. "There is a cacophony of voices-political, news media, television, movies-mocking the very moral and spiritual base from which America came to be a great nation." The speech was typical of Helms' campaign style: short and calculated...
...long been his custom, the Pope had strong words to offer on secular issues. At Ste. Anne de Beaupré, he declared that "every people should fashion its own economic and social development," tacit encouragement for activist native groups haggling with the Canadian government in Ottawa. At a wildly enthusiastic youth rally in Montreal's Olympic Stadium, hundreds of dancers arrayed themselves before the Pope in the form of a dove. He urged the festive audience, "Have the courage to resist the dealers in deception who make you pay dearly for a moment of 'artificial paradise...
...homosexuality derive then-views from religious teaching; but many who believe that the state should ban, say, racial discrimination derive their views from religious teaching too. Are they illegitimately imposing their religious views on others? Should they, as opposed to those who derive their opposition to discrimination from secular sources, be barred on First Amendment grounds from influencing public policy? It is not where a belief comes from that marks it as "religious" and thus outside the political arena, but what its content...