Secular morality removes revelation from the source of moral authority, then has to rebuild authority from reason, welfare, sentiment, agreement, or nature.
Secular morality is not simply morality without religious vocabulary. It is a family of attempts to explain how moral claims can bind human beings when divine revelation is excluded from the source of public justification. Its answers may appeal to rational consistency, human flourishing, consequences, autonomy, social agreement, or the sentiments that make cooperation possible.
That makes secular morality a category, not a single theory. Ethics is the wider study of how to live and act well. Utilitarian ethics is one secular answer, judging actions by their consequences for happiness or harm. Relativism is another possible answer, treating moral truth or justification as relative to a culture, group, or standpoint. Neither term names secular morality as a whole.
The word secular also does more work than simply describing the absence of religion. In modern public reasoning, the secular often presents itself as neutral while establishing a boundary between religious conviction and supposedly objective public knowledge. That boundary is historically produced, and it is not philosophically cost-free. Materialism can narrow the field further by treating reality as ultimately physical, while Divine Command Theory rejects the secular premise that moral authority can be detached from God’s command.
A religious alternative need not reject reason or moral feeling. Reason and Revelation treats rational inquiry and revealed truth as potentially convergent, while Moral Sentiment explains moral perception through sympathy and the impartial spectator. The decisive question is therefore not whether morality uses reason or feeling. It is what ultimately authorises them, and whether that authority can survive disagreement, power, and changing social preference.
Source: Julia Driver, “Moral Theory,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022; Chris Gowans, “Moral Relativism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantive revision 2026; Helen De Cruz, “Religion and Science,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022.