WHAT IT MEANS TO BE SECULAR IN 2026.

Please join us when we host Phil Zuckerman. He most recently participated in a debate with Ross Douthat discussing “Should Everyone Be Religious” at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics where they discussed the nature of belief. He is a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is also a regular affiliated professor at Claremont Graduate University, and he has been a guest professor for two years at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Phil Zuckerman is a prolific author including “Living the Secular Life” and “What it Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life.” About Phil, David Brooks of the NY Times wrote ““As secularism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insistently argued that secularism should not be seen as an absence — as a lack of faith — but rather as a positive moral creed. Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer College sociologist, makes this case as fluidly and pleasurably as anybody in his book, Living the Secular Life.”

In 2011, Phil founded the first Secular Studies department in the nation. Secular Studies is an interdisciplinary program focusing on manifestations of the secular in societies and cultures, past and present. Secular Studies entails the study of non-religious people, groups, thought, and cultural expressions. Emphasis is placed upon the meanings, forms, relevance, and impact of political/constitutional secularism, philosophical skepticism, and personal and public secularity.

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