Word: secularized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Images are an imperfect route to knowledge. They crowd the senses; they can simplify; they can yell. But they make an impact that sets in motion the deeper operations of judgment. The secular faith of the 20th century insists that history is progress, that time's arrow points the human race towards an ever brighter future. Then the world dissolves again into tribal bloodletting, and we wonder whether history is cyclical, always orbiting through the same thickets of hope and misfortune. When we look at news photographs, we bring to them the questions that history forces upon us: What should...
...sounds of conch shells and clashing cymbals, a mob of Hindu fanatics wielding pickaxes, crowbars and bare hands descended upon the Babri mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya and razed it. Never mind that the Supreme Court of India, eager to preserve the nation as a secular state in which all religions are respected, had ordered that the mosque be left alone. The existence of the mosque, built by a nobleman of a Mughal Emperor in 1528 on the spot where the Hindu god Rama is said to have been born thousands of years earlier, was deemed an insult...
...India's political fabric. What was challenged at the mosque was not merely a Muslim presence on a piece of ground held sacred by two religions, but the notion that India, a Third World superpower, can remain what its 20th century founders intended it to be: a tolerant, secular state of many ethnic identities, religions and languages...
...time to wake up and smell the eggnog. We're celebrating Christmas. And for all practical purposes, it's a secular occasion, even though it does commemorate the birth of Jesus. In case anyone didn't notice, it's a national holiday. And the fat white guy with the hardened arteries in the red suit looks too much like Karl Marx to have any connection with the kid in the manger...
...then there's the tree thing. Every year a few people bitch and moan about the presence of this religious artifact in house dining halls and JCRs. I say, bullfeathers. These erstwhile evergreens are about as secular as it gets, unless they're bedecked with a cross or an angel or Donny and Marie Osmond paraphernalia...