Download or read book Encountering the Secular written by J. Heath Atchley and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2009-01-12 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author challenges the breach between the secular and the religious, rendering that breach ambiguous. Such ambiguity, the author affirms, is relevant to a time when rigid and simplistic notions of religion and secularity are used to justify thoughtlessness and even violence. All too often the secular is thought of either as a triumph in "overcoming" the presumed irrationality and oppression of religion, or as lament in "losing" the meaning religion is thought once to have offered. Atchley suggests a view of the secular as an opportunity to experience an immanent value that is neither controlled by the human self nor conferred by a divine entity.