Secularity

This article is about secularity in the sense of being unrelated to religion. For clergy who are not monks, see Secular clergy. For the legal status of countries in relation to religion, see Secular state.

Secularity or secularness (from Latin sæculum, 'worldly' or 'of a generation' or 'century') is the state of being unrelated to, or neutral in regard to, religion.

The origins of secularity as a concept can be traced to the Bible, and it was fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. Since the Middle Ages, there have been clergy not pertaining to a religious order called "secular clergy". Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally. The word secular has a meaning very similar to profane as used in a religious context.

Today, anything that is not directly connected with religion may be considered secular, in other words, neutral to religion. Secularity does not mean 'anti-religious', but 'unrelated to religion'. Many activities in religious bodies are secular, and though there are multiple types of secularity or secularization, most do not lead to irreligiosity. Linguistically, a process by which anything becomes secular is named secularization, though the term is mainly reserved for the secularization of society; any concept or ideology promoting the secular may be termed secularism, a term generally applied to the ideology dictating no religious influence on the public sphere.

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