Reading Time: 5 minutes This is our moment: this secular moment. The question of the moral and spiritual foundation of secular civilization is everywhere. You can see it in New York Times columnist David Brooks’s recent piece in The Atlantic: How America Got Mean. In the article, Brooks describes a 1950s, post-war America on firm moral/spiritual foundations in contrast […]
The Secular
Posted inEconomics
What should regulatory burdens look like in the secular world?
Reading Time: 11 minutes It’s a tale as old as Constantine: churches benefit from tax-exempt status. In medieval centuries, the church was often configured as an essential extension of monarchy: critical for upholding the myth of divine royalty, and key for delivering social welfare in societies with few other dedicated institutions. In Britain’s North American colonies, taxation itself became […]
Posted inEducation
Landmark High Court win for UK humanism
Reading Time: 4 minutes A recent High Court judgment recently found in favor of a humanist, and Kent County Council will not appeal the decision. This has been seen as a landmark ruling. The event might ignite discussions of whether or not humanism should be designated a religion. When looking at the definition for humanism as per the Humanists […]
Posted inThe Secular
Will bishops lose the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords?
Reading Time: 4 minutes There are only two nations on Earth where members of a religion are automatically given a seat in the state legislature: Iran, and the United Kingdom. All of the UK’s ‘Lords Spiritual’ are Anglican bishops, despite 53% of Britons identifying as nonreligious and only 12% as Anglican. Now a cross-party group of MPs has called for an end to the automatic right of bishops to seats in the House of Lords.
Posted inEducation
UK’s state-run CofE schools plan to ‘double number of children who are Christian disciples’
Reading Time: 3 minutes The UK education system is not secular, and the Church of England is looking to schools as a recruitment pool for new believers.
Posted inThe Secular
OnlySky announces partnership with American Atheists
Reading Time: 2 minutes OnlySky Media has merged with American Atheists, one of the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit groups focused on elevating the rights of atheists and other nonreligious people.
Posted inGen Z Rising
Gen Z is killing religion
Reading Time: 5 minutes Gen Z is the least Christian generation in American history, and as they come into their own, their influence is reshaping culture and politics. The era of the religious right is drawing to a close.
Posted inDeep Dive
How we create truth
Reading Time: 10 minutes White women have a storied history of fabricating assault at the hands of BIPOC men. On March 14, 22-year-old Eleanor Williams became part of a small subset of people to face legal consequences for false claims of abuse, which here sparked a season of hate crimes and drove three men to attempt suicide. Her elaborate […]
Posted inReligion
Interfaith work needs to include the nonreligious
Reading Time: 4 minutes New York mayor Eric Adams recently objected to the idea of the separation of church and state at an interfaith breakfast event at the New York Public Library. Library President and CEO Anthony Marx offered a welcome that celebrated libraries as places of inclusion, diversity, and freedom of thought. In his speech, the mayor acknowledged […]
Posted inHistory
‘I thought it over and believed it by myself’— Sharing doubts with the Inquisition
Reading Time: 11 minutes “The year of our Lord 1320, the 16th of July. Whereas it came to the attention of My Lord Jacques, bishop of Pamiers, that Guillemette said in front of diverse persons that the human soul is but blood, and that when the man dies, only wind comes out of the body; that after death, the human soul ceases to exist, and is neither good or evil in its merits or faults, but that it dies at the death of the body; whereas My Lord Bishop had received information on these points, he summoned her to his presence.”