Abstract

The author defines the secularism of a modern state as a situation in which “political power is not only normatively conceptualized as being independent from religious actors but is in social reality in fact sufficiently free from such (formal or informal) influences”. He then divides the secularism of modern statehood into social secularism, constitutional secularism and secularism of legitimacy, also observing different reasons for the historical development of secularism as a whole. Among these main reasons he notes the sociology of religious power and the ideas of legal thinkers and philosophers.