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02 - The Term Secularism - The Principles of Secularism - George J Holyoake · Logic Library

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  Chapter two, the term secularism. The adoption of the term secularism is justified
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  by its including a large number of persons who are not atheists and uniting them
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  for action which has secularism for its object and not atheism. On this ground,
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  and because by the adoption of a new term a vast amount of impediment
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  from prejudice is got rid of, the use of the name secularism is found
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  advantageous. Harriet Martineau, Boston Liberator, letter to Lloyd Garrison, November eighteen
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  fifty three. Every one observant of public controversy in England is aware of its
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  improved tone of late years. This improved tone is part of a wider progress.
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  Increase of wealth has led to improvement of taste, and the diffusion of
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  knowledge to refinement of sentiment. The mass are better addressed, better mannered,
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  better spoken than formerly. A coffee room discussion conducted by mechanics is now a
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  more decorous exhibition than a debate in Parliament was in the days of Canning.
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  Boisterousness at the tables of the rich and insolence in the language of the poor
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  are fast disappearing. Good society is now that society in which people practice the
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  art of being genial without being familiar, and in which an invincible courtesy of
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  speech is no longer regarded as timidity or effeminacy, but rather as proof of
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  a disciplined spirit which chooses to avoid all offense, the better to maintain the
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  right peremptorily punishing wanton insult. Theologians more inveterate in speech than politicians, now
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  observe a respectfulness to opponents. Before unknown that diversity of opinion, once ascribed
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  to badness of heart, is now with more discrimination referred to defect or diversity
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  of understanding, a change which, discarding invective, recognizes instruction as the agent
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  of uniformity. Amid all this newness of conception, it must be obvious that
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  many old terms of theological controversy are obsolete. The idea of an atheist as
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  one warring against moral restraints, of an infidel as one treacherous to the truth,
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  of a freethinker as a loose thinker, arose in the darkness of past
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  times, when men fought by the flickering light of their hatreds, times which
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  tradition has peopled with monsters of divinity as well as of nature. But the
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  glaring colors in which the party names invented by past priests were died no longer
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  harmonized with the quieter taste of the present day. The more sober spirit of
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  modern controversy has therefore need of new terms. And if the term secularism was
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  merely a neutral substitute for freethinking, there would be reason for its adoption.
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  The centers might as well continue the designation of schismatics or political reformers that of
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  anarchists, as that the students of positive philosophy should continue the designation atheism,
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  infidelism, or any similar term by which their opponents have contrived to brand their
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  opinions. It is as though a merchant vessel should consent to carry a pirate
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  flag. Freethinker is, however, getting an acceptable term upon the platform.
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  Christian disputants frequently claim it and resent the exclusive assumption of it by others.
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  These new claimants say, we are as much freethinkers as yourselves, so that
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  it is necessary to define freethinking. It is fearless thinking based upon impartial inquiry,
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  searching on both sides, not regarding doubt as a crime or opposite conclusions
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  as a species of moral poison. Those who inquire with sinister prepossessions will never
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  inquire fairly. The freethinker fears not to follow a conclusion to the utmost limits
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  of truth, whether it coincides with the Bible or contradicts it. If therefore,
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  any pronounced the term secularism a concealment or a disguise, they can do
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  so legitimately only after detecting some false meaning it is intended to convey, and
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  not on the mere ground of its being a change of name, since nothing
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  can more completely conceal and disguise the purposes of free thought than the old names
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  imposed upon it by its adversaries, which associate with guilt its conscientious conclusions,
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  and impute to it as outrages its act of self defense. Besides the term
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  secularism, there was another term which seemed to promise also distinctiveness of meaning,
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  namely cosmism, under which adherents would have taken the designation of cosmists. But
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  this name scientific men would have understood in a purely physical sense, after the
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  great example of Humboldt, and the public would not all have understood it.
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  Besides, it was open to easy perversion in one of its declinations. Next
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  to this as a name stands that of realism intrinsically good. A society of
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  realists would have been intelligible, but many would have supposed it to be some
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  revival of the old realists. Moralism, a sound name in itself, is
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  under evangelical condemnation as mere morality. Naturalism would seem an obvious name, were
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  it not that we should be confounded with naturalists. To say no more,
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  some name must be taken, As was the case with the teophilanthropists of Paris.
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  Many of them would rather not have assumed any denomination, but they yielded
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  to the reasonable argument that if they did not choose one for themselves, the
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  public would bestow upon them one which would be less to their liking. Those
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  who took the name of philanthropes found it exposed them to a pun which greatly
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  damaged them. Philanthropes was turned into philu entropes. Historical characteristics, however,
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  seemed to point to a term which expressed the secular element in life, a
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  term deeply engrafted in literature of irreproachable associations, a term found and respected in
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  the dictionaries of opponents, and to which therefore they might dispute our right,
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  but which they could not damage. Instead, therefore, of finding ourselves self
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  branded or caricatured by this designation, we have found opponents claiming it and disputing
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  with us for its possession. End of Chapter two