Electromagnetic

     Secularism…has become an ideology that holds that there is nothing higher in the universe than we. Many of its victims have not only believed this, but have even felt it. Some, to the devastation also of their neighbours, have even begun to live in terms of it. In a milder version, even if one feels that there is more to human life and to the world than objectively appears, yet one is not allowed to think it. Especially, one is not allowed to think it publicly. Most people do feel it, except that growing number of the alienated and despairing, for whom the world and especially their own lives are bleak.
     This brings us to the secular-religion polarity. As remarked, ’secularism’ began as anti-religious, tacitly meaning anti-Christian and anti-Jewish. Thus we come to the ‘religious’ issue in our topic. Let us note first of all that it was the rise of the secular movement in the West that led to the development of the concept of a ‘religion’ and of the adjective ‘religious’. ‘Religion’ as the name of a particular system of ideas, practices, outlooks and institutions was not merely a Western term, and a recent one, but also a secularist one. The notion of secularism inherently presupposes something called ‘religion’ from which it advocates that we should be free. If there were no religion, there would and could be no concept ’secularism’. Similarly, however, though this fact has been less clearly noticed, if there were no secularism there would be and could be no concept ‘religion’. The term ‘religion’ was developed by secularists in order to belittle it.
     ‘Religion’ is a secular concept.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective. Edited by John W. Burbidge. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1997, pp. 72-73.