Currently reading: Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George Marsden 📚

On the appeal of secularization in the 19th century U.S. context:

On the one hand, the push to secularize might come from nonreligious people, such as the agnostics, who were convinced that their positivism (using the term loosely) provided a better moral basis for civilization than did Christianity. On the other hand, secularization might be promoted simply as a methodology. That is, various activities might be removed from religious reference not because people sought to promote a non-Christian worldview, but simply because people were convinced that their positivism activities could be better carried out without the distractions of religious considerations, however valuable those considerations might be in other contexts. (p. 141-142)