Key People:
William Rogers
Charles Taylor
Related Topics:
atheism
social movement

secularism, any movement in society directed away from otherworldliness to life on earth. In the Middle Ages in Europe there was a strong tendency for religious persons to despise human affairs and to meditate on God and the afterlife. As a reaction to this medieval tendency, secularism, at the time of the Renaissance, exhibited itself in the development of humanism, when people began to show more interest in human cultural achievements and the possibilities of their fulfillment in this world. The movement toward secularism has been in progress during the entire course of modern history and has often been viewed ...(100 of 173 words)