Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...same thing. We wouldn’t—well, at least my roommate wouldn’t—drink Guinness, unless spurred to do so by a vague feeling of celebration. There is a deeply human compulsion to gather and to celebrate; in our more or less secular society, it has insufficient outlet. At Harvard, where we are frequently trapped by our self-involvement, the problem is particularly acute. Good parties and concerts sometimes crystallize into a sort of communal joy, but the phenomenon is rare. On St. Patrick’s Day, though, the various greens brightening...
...factions of the independence-minded people of the three northern provinces, won 75 Assembly seats, making it the natural coalition ally for the UIA because between them, the two lists account for 75 percent of the seats, making further alliances unnecessary. The chief rival to the Shiite list, the secular Iraqi list of U.S.-appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi finished a distant third at the polls, winning 40 seats in the Assembly. Allawi had initially hoped to team up with the Kurds and persuade more secular-inclined members of the Shiite list to break away in order to return...
...speech last week to the White House Faith-Based and Community-Based Initiatives Leadership Conference, the President tried to evade this objection by lumping together his support of religiously affiliated and secular community initiatives. But community-based initiatives have none of the inherent problems of faith-based initiatives and should receive full government support. They are not connected in any way to religious organizations, their methods and ideology are purely secular, and their hiring practices are nondiscriminatory. Faith-based initiatives are another story...
Bush claims that the people that these organizations seek to help—recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, and the poor, among others—are free to choose between religiously affiliated or secular programs. But often, these people will enroll in the most vocal or the best financed organizations. It is hard to imagine a homeless person who is offered help by a group refusing it just because of the group’s religious affiliation. Other times, those most in need of help by these charitable groups have no choice at all. For example, the only vocational training available...
...Although secular, nothing in Tomorrows is likely to offend Kingsbury's regular readers. The story of a male bull rider and a female rodeo rider bears the hallmarks of all Kingsbury's narratives: sympathetic characters facing overwhelming obstacles. "When I first wrote it, [Center Street] called and said, 'We need 80% of the Christian content to come out of it,'" recalls Kingsbury. "Because it's about love, I was O.K. with that. It's really about love that doesn't fail, and that's a I Corinthians 13 message." A message that can be embraced by devotees of the Bible...