ABSTRACT
Secular humanism is a nontheistic belief system based on a faith in rationality, human autonomy, and democracy. Originating properly in the twentieth century, secular humanism finds its roots in earlier anticlerical and anti-Christian movements and is closely akin to a number of radical religious positions espoused during and after the Enlightenment. Its institutional embodiment varies from country to country, but Unitarianism and Ethical Culture have been particularly important in its history. Secular humanism has an ambiguous relationship to religion. On the one hand, it asserts that religion per se is an outmoded, antimodern way of relating human beings to the cosmos, but, on the other hand, its totalistic worldview makes it a functional equivalent of traditional religions.
