Short answers, pulled from the story.
Secular Buddhism began as a quiet revolution in Western meditation centers in 1992. This movement rejects rebirth, supernatural powers, gods, ghosts, and cosmic cycles to focus on full human flourishing within this life alone.
No single person founded Secular Buddhism but Stephen Batchelor and Winton Higgins describe its core principles while Jack Kornfield established the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts in 1976. Other key figures include Harold Edward Musson who became the monk Nanavira Thera in 1950 and Bhim Rao Ambedkar who lived between 1891 and 1956.
Secular Buddhism questions implicit pre-ontological assumptions about culture and development stages by rejecting monasticism as a metahistorical authority. Traditional Theravada Buddhism gives exclusive monastic status to male monks whereas secular approaches avoid issues like the status of the monastic norm and incompatibility with Western eudaimonic values.
The period between 1800 and 1960 saw the mobilization of religious institutions alongside the individuation of conscience. The 1960s drastically altered the cultural landscape by sacralizing individual authenticity at the expense of communal integration which allowed spiritual seekers to choose from many options rather than accepting one true faith.
Critics argue that standard meditation practices become technical and formulaic tools for mental hygiene that suppress symptoms rather than examining subjectivity fully. Magid and Siff question notions of spiritual progress based on standardized prescriptions while Higgins claims actual meditative experience falls outside templates designed for rejection.