You look at a surgeon as you would a secular priest, almost, if it's your child, if it's your sister on the operating table. That was an idea that very much has interested me and I've wanted to explore for some time.
In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.
Sam Cooke had a huge influence on me. He left the gospel field at one point and went into the secular, and he had this huge hit, 'You Send Me.' Irma, my older sister, and I heard 'You Send Me' on the radio while we were driving through the South one night. We had to stop the car. We got out and danced around the car out on the highway.
The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's traditionalist-nationalist rhetoric, which blames secularism, diversity and internationalism for the weakening of Western democracies, gives voice to the grievances that American hate groups have felt for so long.
If India is not secular, then India is not India at all.
Let no one challenge India's secularism.
India was secular even when Muslims hadn't come here and Christians hadn't set foot on this soil. It is not as if India became secular after they came. They came with their own modes of worship, and they, too, were given a place of honor and respect. They had the freedom to worship God as per their wish and inclination.
If there is a national, secular religion in the United States, it is the belief that America is the Land of Opportunity, that we are a meritocracy, that any kid, no matter who they are, or where they come from, can work hard and move up in the world: that their effort matters.
Whether you're an opera singer, a legislator or customer service operator, there is a way that we can find common ground with our audience - be they young or old, Democrats or Republicans, rich or poor, religious or secular.
