Word: secularize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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True enough. But it also extends beyond religious lines. What the endless media chatter about the Koresh phenomenon misses completely is that millennial thinking is hardly the property of the religious. Indeed, the most widespread and historically significant outbreaks of millenarianism in our time have been secular...
...apocalypse recedes. Yet its fascination endures. It is fine to look down one's nose at Waco. But Bible-thumping psychopaths hold no monopoly on belief in the End. Before casting stones at the easy targets, a secular society might reflect on its own ample appetite for apocalypse...
Maybe we should note here that secular ideology, which prides itself on humanitarianism, has not gone so far. A look at the destruction caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be enough to remind us of this Neither of these cities were military targets, but were used to prove a point and crush the spirit of the people. No consideration was given to the fact that almost all of them were noncombatants, innocent from any guilt. Yet practically was favored over their lives. According to Islam law, a Muslim leader who ordered such an act would not only be impeached...
...change or even question the world. June's conversion fascinates her son-in-law. He begins to compose a memoir of her life, hinging on June's encounter with the two black dogs who rode roughshod over her idealism, tearing forth visions of good and evil, overshadowing her past secular convictions. While he composes his account of these events, the narrator is confronted by his own fears in witnessing the passions aroused by the unification of Germany...
...world is becoming both more religious and more secular simultaneously. In the U.S., for example, respect for religion in areas of popular culture like music, books and television is as low as it has ever been (see Madonna, or Gore Vidal's elaborately blasphemous novel called LIVE from Golgotha). At the same time, both religious observance and the press of religious issues (questions of uncertainty, faith, anguish) are rising. Church leaders repeatedly condemn violence done in the name of religious tribalism -- as Orthodox churchmen speak against "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia and as some Muslim leaders criticize the bombing...