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In the Andes, the pastoral visitation of Indian parishes usually evokes the idea of a strongly oppositional relationship between the Church and local society. This vision, lacking in nuance, has been widely disseminated both within the academy and outside it. Although it derives from a serious academic interest in discovering and analyzing the common thread of the Church's evangelization policy in Peru, this stance, centered on the problem of the “extirpation of idolatry,” has been progressively emptied of content and today tends to serve as the standard means of filling gaps in the understanding of the history of Andean peoples during the colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Quebec society has repeatedly been described as unique in its radical emancipation from religious institutions in the wake of the Quiet Revolution (1960-1970). Notwithstanding the question of Quebecers' sustained spiritual beliefs, how can historians account for the spectacular marginalization of the Roman Catholic Church during the Quiet Revolution? This paper hypothesises that an increase of worldly rewards and a decrease of otherworldly rewards has fuelled the decline of the Church. In the 1960s, the Church found itself in competition with a rapidly developing consumer and state-controlled society. Adhesion to the Church became a personal affair that had to be weighed against other interests, desires, aspirations, and needs. To an increasing number of Quebecers, religious "jobs" were no longer prestigious and did not hold unique spiritual incentives. The disenchantment of religious beliefs and rites accompanied the fall of the Church's organizational prominence in the development of French Canada. Catholic may have been what Quebecers still wanted to "be." It was, however, no longer what they wanted to "do." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the concept of the "secular," in contrast to the religious or sacred. Contrasting and overlapping roles posited for religious and secular institutions (church and state) are discussed in the thought of Christian theologian St. Augustine and through the Middle Ages and Reformation to early modern political writers like John Locke and James Madison. The rise of secularism as a distinct ideology in the late 19th century is then discussed, as is the idea of the separation of church and state in the United States up to the election of President Barack Obama.