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The term “sectarian violence” is in the news so often. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what the word “sectarian” means or what it derives from? Before all the strife in Iraq, I remember hearing the word used in the United States with a purely neutral connotation; however, the word carries a strongly negative connotation.

Both “sectarian” and “nonsectarian” share “sect” as their common root, which means, according to Webster’s Collegiate, “a dissenting or schismatic religious body, esp: one regarded as extreme or heretical.” According to Dictionary.com, the word dates from about 1300 to 1350. It comes from the Latin secta, meaning “something to follow, a pathway.” Dictionary.com confirms the word’s negative, extremist nature: “a group regarded as heretical or as deviating from a generally accepted religious tradition.”

Interestingly enough, the word “sectarian,” of or pertaining to sects, dates from between 1640 and 1650, which corresponds almost perfectly to the end of the 30 Years’ War in 1648, a war principally fought between Protestants and Catholics in Europe. I wonder if the weariness over religious warfare pervasive at the end of that war didn’t confirm the word’s negative meaning. That 30-year period was certainly filled with sectarian strife.

We have to wait until well after the Reformation and the Enlightenment ended, in fact, until the Industrial Age, before the word “nonsectarian” comes into usage between 1825 and 1835. Nonsectarian simply means “not affiliated with or limited to a specific religious denomination.”

Given the history of the word “sectarian,” using it to refer to the violence in Iraq is perfectly apt, don’t you agree?