secular: of or concerned with temporal worldly matters rather than religion; not belonging to a religious order; not under the control of a religious body.

secularism: the belief that religious influence should be restricted, and in particular that education, morality, the state, etc. should be independent of religion.

Those definitions were taken from Webster's Dictionary.

What is religious and what isn't, however, is a matter of opinion. I think CarolC's statement about Capitalism and Money was very apt. They are in truth the dominating religion and religious objects of present day American society (and much of the rest of the World). They are not normally thought of as a religion, but they command the sort of power, blind allegiance, and total faith that most religions only WISH they had! :-)

The main reason we have had a lot of historical attention on the secular/non-secular issue is that we have fairly recently emerged from a church-dominated society in Europe. The first cracks in that church-dominated society occured with the Protestant Reformation and the terrible religious wars that followed. Then the divine right of kings was challenged by republicanism in the form of the French Revolution and the American Revolutionary War and other such movements. Then the traditional churches themselves were challenged by the rise of communist and socialist movements (although all socialists are not necessarily anti-church). And so it goes.

My opinion is that all societies are deeply religious, but not necessarily in the sense that they are run by a "church" or an official religious order. Communists (like the Chinese) are religious about Communism...they imagine that their own set of rather bizarre ideas will in time result in the most perfectly organized and beneficent society. (Ha! I laugh.)

American capitalists are similarly deluded, but upon a somewhat different set of assumptions. Curiously enough, they and the Chinese are busy sharing the capitalist marketing pie with great gusto, despite the fact that the Chinese are supposedly Communist. (I laugh again.)

The real religion of both of them is Materialism. It is the pursuit of worldly wealth, power, and resources.

As such, it is essentially anti-spiritual in nature in both cases.

However, student, for the purposes of your essay you had best stick to the conventional definitions of secular and non-secular. For those, look to the Webster's definitions above and to Joe Offer's post.