Secular religion

A secular religion is a nontheistic communal belief system. Among systems that have been chararterized as secular religions are capitalism,communism, Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity, and the Cult of Reason that developed after the French Revolution.

In 1936 a Protestant priest referred explicitly to communism as a new secular religion. A couple of years later, on the eve of World War II, F. A. Voigt characterised both Marxism and National Socialism as secular religions, akin at a fundamental level in their authoritarianism and messianic beliefs – as well as in their eschatological view of human History. Both, he considered, were waging religious war against the liberal enquiring mind of the European heritage.

After the war, the social philosopher Raymond Aron would expand on the exploration of communism in terms of a secular religion; while A. J. P. Taylor, for example, would characterise it as "a great secular religion....the Communist Manifesto must be counted as a holy book in the same class as the Bible".

The term secular religion is often applied today to communal belief systems – as, for example, with the view of love as our postmodern secular religion.Paul Vitz applied the term to modern psychology, in as much as it fosters a cult of the self, explicitly calling "the self-theory ethic ... this secular religion". Sport has also been considered as a new secular religion, particularly with respect to Olympism. For Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, belief in them as a new secular religion was explicit and lifelong.

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