Definition of "secularize" []

• To transfer from ecclesiastical or religious to civil or lay use or ownership. (verb-transitive)
• To draw away from religious orientation; make worldly. (verb-transitive)
• To lift the monastic restrictions from (a member of the clergy). (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Perhaps, ultimately, the question boils down to whether, when the explanatory function of the "religious sense" ceases to be plausible, the appropriate response is to "secularize" our understanding of the phenomenon in question, or to simply reinterpret the religious understanding thereof."
• "Subsequent to that, Falwell placed some of the blame for 9/11 squarely on a range of Americans -- civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals, abortion rights supporters -- who have tried to "secularize" America."
• "This includes all those who wish to make the Church of Jesus Christ into a purely humanitarian society, to rob her of her supernatural character, to secularize and desacralize her."