The First Amendment is ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Disestablishment and free exercise together become the American form of the secular settlement.
Tagged: Secular and Non-Theistic Secularism
The Event
- Date
- 1791 (exact)
- Era
- The Enlightenment Settlement; Standard periodization of secular and non-religious history
- Location
- New York and Philadelphia; today United States
- Traditions
- Secular
- Streams
- Secularism
Primary Sources
- The Bill of Rights, as ratified 1791.
Secondary Sources
- Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. New York: Liveright, 2016.
- Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
- Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
- Zuckerman, Phil, ed. Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.
Provenance: HIST-1310; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.
Related on This Site
No image; the post explains why
Art Entry
AI-Generated Religious Art
Image generators now produce Christs, Buddhas, and temple scenes on demand. The traditions are answering; some with welcome, some with prohibitions that reach the new medium directly. This page shows no generated image, because any single example would misrepresent the argument.
Art Tradition
Non-Theistic and Secular
Art without transcendence: humanist meaning-making, museums as secular temples, and protest art.
Artist
Doris Salcedo
The Colombian sculptor of political violence's traces; her Fragmentos floor in Bogotá is a counter-monument hammered from surrendered weapons by women victims of the conflict.
Artist
Käthe Kollwitz
The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war; a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.
History Event
Encyclopédie
1751-1772
History Event
French Revolution
1789
History Event
National Secular Society founded
1866
History Event
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
1670
Art Tradition
Non-Theistic and Secular
Art without transcendence: humanist meaning-making, museums as secular temples, and protest art.
Artist
Doris Salcedo
The Colombian sculptor of political violence's traces; her Fragmentos floor in Bogotá is a counter-monument hammered from surrendered weapons by women victims of the conflict.
Artist
Käthe Kollwitz
The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war; a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.
History Event
Encyclopédie
1751-1772
History Event
French Revolution
1789
History Event
National Secular Society founded
1866
History Event
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
1670