secularist vs exponent

secularist and exponent both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
secularist	Yes	No	No	No
exponent	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, exponent is a hypernym of secularist; that is, exponent is a word with a broader meaning than secularist:

secularist: an advocate of secularism; someone who believes that religion should be excluded from government and education
exponent: a person who pleads for a cause or propounds an idea

Other hypernyms of secularist include advocate, advocator, proponent.

secularist (noun)	exponent (noun)
an advocate of secularism; someone who believes that religion should be excluded from government and education	a mathematical notation indicating the number of times a quantity is multiplied by itself
	a person who pleads for a cause or propounds an idea
	someone who expounds and interprets or explains