Secular state

religious decline over the past fifteen years has been twice as much as the decline in the 1960s and 1970s. Religious value has dropped tremendously in the past sixty years. Only forty percent of Americans are religious according to the survey, “The State of States.” In today’s society most families are not as religious as the families of the past. During the post-war, baby-booming 1950s, there was a rejuvenation of religion. They were known as being more “Spiritual.” Then the societal changes…

Constitution forbids Congress, and, by the Fourteenth Amendment, states, from making any “law respecting an establishment of religion.” The tension between this vague Constitutional limitation and the inseparability of religion from American society has generated countless court cases. Since Everson v. Board of Education (1947)—in which Justice Black famously asserted that the First Amendment has built a “wall of separation between church and state… [which is] high and impregnable”—the Supreme…

Great Depression in America caused people to lose faith in their liberal government. in 1907, Reza Khan, a Persian officer and then future ruler, tried to modernize the country by turning to Western methods, as well as making Persia an independent state. In 1925, Jiang Jieshi tired to remove the Chinese communists and warlords from China. A form of political nationalism took place in Latin America. The Great Depression of 1929 in America, triggered political changes to the government in…

The Israelites, upon their exodus from Egypt, were chosen by God because of their weakened physical state. They had no identity, home, or religious bodies to look towards. Because of this, God believed the Israelites would be the perfect fit to start a new religion as they would be in need of an identity and a figure to put their faith into. However, Jindrich…

The Pahlavi dynasty ruled Iran from 1925 until 1979, when the monarchy was overthrown as a result of the Iranian revolution. The Pahlavi dynasty was founded by Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1925, a former Brigadier-General of the Persian Cossack Brigade. The elder Pahlavi reigned until 1941. He was succeeded by his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Following the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russians no longer considered Iran as a prized territory. This left the British…

Ataturk has been called the cement of the Turkish nation by Sener Eruygur, a former Turkish Gendarmerie Forces Commander. He left in his wake a Turkey that remained secular for the entirety of the twentieth century. The ending of Caliphate which had ruled for hundreds of years is also part Ataiturk’s legacy. Nasser’s legacy is more ambiguous. He helped rid Egypt of the last vestiges of British rule. He facilitated Egypt’s…

You might have heard of “The War Between the States,” a name for the Civil War some Southerners use instead of the more antiquated “War of Northern Aggression”. The fight over whether or not to legalize same-sex marriage is a different kind of war between the states. This fight is between the states and the national government over who should have the authority to decide if same sex marriages are allowed or banned. When our founding fathers decided to make federalism a founding principle of…

Before the introduction of sovereignty, man withered in the state of nature. Sovereignty, enabling the authority of the state to govern itself, did not mirror the times of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hobbes living in a time of a civil war in England and Rousseau in the mists of the French Revolution wrote novels, The Leviathan and On the Social Contract, entailing the creation of a sovereign state from their times of distress. Though a century apart, these theorists did not…

the number recorded in a 2016 Ipsos poll), the inexorable march towards a non-believing majority will then be undeniable. Evidently, neither school chaplaincy and the increasingly evangelical Bible classes in state schools, are arresting the freefall in Christian beliefs. Soon classes in Secular Humanism and Rationalism will appear in Victorian schools. As part of the curriculum in “Learning about world views and religions”, these classes will seek to educate, rather than evangelise. … But what…

“One of the major reasons that gay marriage is currently illegal is due to the religious interpretation that ‘homosexual are sinners.’ Such a religious perspective should have no place in federal, legal matters in the US. We live a secular society that maintains secular views. The Ten Commandments do not define our legal system.” Therefore, this argument is not accurate and is one of the unfair reasons same-sex marriage is neglected. Another reason a lot of people would use against…