But I wonder: How many of the more aggressively secular ever find themselves lapsing into God-talk — musing, for example, about how everything happens for a reason? Or how a painful event or act of suffering was “meant to be”?

These quite common statements of divine providentialism need not be rooted in any historic religious tradition. But they are undeniably forms of religious thinking.

Some of the people who speak and think this way can be described as Moralistic Therapeutic Deists. That’s the term coined by sociologist Christian Smith to describe the vague spirituality and moral certainties that prevail today in a lot of ostensibly Christian churches and in American culture more generally, even among the superficially secular.

Others who find themselves lapsing into providential speaking and thinking may not be this kind of functional deist. They might actually believe and repeatedly insist that they reject all forms of faith in God or gods.