I would like to comment on the confusion over the term 'secularism'. The word 'secular', which refers to the non-religious or temporal (as opposed to eternal) is a neutral term. A person's secular activities, such as getting married or buying insurance, may or may not be governed by religious principles.

However, the word 'secularism' may or may not be neutral. When you add an -ism to a word the result can be drastically different. For instance, the word 'race' is a neutral term. But 'racism' means something offensive.

The question now is, how does the -ism affect the meaning of the word 'secular'. There are at least two ways, resulting in the confusion. One common meaning of secularism is the ideology that the secular is all that exists or all that matters. That means religious and spiritual realities either do not exist or do not matter. This meaning is anti-religious.

Whether a 'secular book', like a biology textbook, is secularist (the adjective of secularism) or not depends on whether the author assumes and applies the secularist worldview in the book. In the same way, a 'secular government' may actually be secularist (anti-religious).

This leads us to the non-ideological meaning of 'secularism'. In this latter case the -ism does not create an ideology as in the case of 'racism' (the non-ideological counterpart of which is racialism). As in the case of 'nudism', which is the practice of going nude (especially in mixed gatherings), 'secularism' can also mean the practice of 'going secular' without denying the existence of the spiritual and eternal.

Most relevant to the discussion is the practice of having a government that is truly secular (adjective to non-ideological secularism) but not secularist. The people in this kind of government may be religious, but they do not govern according to the beliefs or tenets of any organised religion.

Or they may be secularist in belief but they do not govern according to the implications of 'secularism' (ideological meaning). But we have described an ideal situation. A 'secular government', a 'secular university', or a 'secular media', especially in the West, is more likely a secularist (anti-religious) government, university or media.

The distinctions above should clear up most of the confusion. But there is still one more cause for debate. Even a genuinely secular government must govern according to a moral order, no matter how implicitly.

Secularists have tried to argue (but unconvincingly, even to many fellow secularists) that there exists a normative moral order without any reference to God. So unless religious people can be convinced that there can be absolute morality without God, they would still argue that even the most secular government must implicitly assume a Law Giver, which ideological secularism denies.