Secular Confirmations
Several secular, mainly Humanist, organizations direct civil confirmations for older children, as a statement of their life stance that is an alternative to traditional religious ceremonies for children of that age.
Some secular regimes have as a matter of policy fostered the replacement of Christian rituals such as confirmation with non-religious ones. In the historically Protestant German Democratic Republic (East Germany), for example, "the Jugendweihe (youth dedication) gradually supplanted the Christian practice of Confirmation." A concept that first appeared in 1852, the Jugendweihe is described as "a solemn initiation marking the transition from youth to adulthood that was developed in opposition to Protestant and Catholic Churches' Confirmation."
Read more about this topic: Confirmed
Famous quotes containing the word secular:
“Psychologists have set about describing the true nature of women with a certainty and a sense of their own infallibility rarely found in the secular world.”
—Naomi Weisstein, U.S. psychologist, feminist, and author. Psychology Constructs the Female (1969)