Secularity and Non-Religion

Elisabeth Arweck, Stephen Bullivant, Lois Lee, Elisabeth Arweck, Stephen Bullivant, Lois Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134910656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The present collection brings together a set of essays which shed light on recent research into non-religion, secularity and atheism—topics which have been emerging as important areas of current research in a number of different disciplines. The essays cover a wide span—in terms of the various stances they discuss (secular, atheist, non-religious), the settings in which these topics are relevant (families, wider society, politics, demography) and the different perspectives which relate to socialisation and social relations (belief acquisition, discrimination). Written by authors from a variety of national settings and academic disciplines, the collection presents a range of methodologies, combining theoretical approaches with quantitative and qualitative research findings. The authors address issues related to an important academic field which had been neglected for some time, but which has been made relevant by the increasing percentage of people professing a non-religious stance. This collection represents a major contribution to this area of academic research, not only because it puts the themes of non-religion and secularity firmly on the academic map, but also because it offers a variety of different viewpoints and aims to bring clarity into the use of concepts and terminology. The authors make important contributions to the emerging body of research in this area and point out areas where further research is needed. The first essay provides a thorough introduction to this field, taking stock of the work done so far, highlighting the overarching issues, and embedding the essays in the wider context of existing literature.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Religion.

Interdisciplinary Studies of Non-religion and Secularity: The State of the Union

STEPHEN BULLIVANT & LOIS LEE

It has become something of a cliche to begin social-scientific studies of non-religion,¹ secularity, atheism, and related topics by bewailing the dearth of previous research (e.g. Bainbridge; Bogensberger; Bullivant; Cotter; Zuckerman). The general lament is perfectly understandable: these topics have indeed been neglected, as we shall show below. The frequency with which it is now encountered demonstrates, however, that is becoming—finally and increasingly—an inaccurate description of this field of research, certainly if one looks at its very recent history and contemporary activity. Since the start of the twenty-first century, and during the last five or six years in particular, a growing number of sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, and political scientists have switched their attention from secular phenomena—as residual and subsidiary categories of the study of religion(s)—to non-religious phenomena—understood as positive and concrete subjects in their own right.

This development has already produced a sizable body of exciting theoretical and empirical research, of which much is interdisciplinary and/or multi-disciplinary in nature. Such research explores what is in fact a large (and growing) multifarious part of contemporary society. After all, according to data from the 2009 British Social Attitudes Survey, 49.8% of Britons claim no religious affiliation;² ‘religious nones’ currently constitute 15% of the US adult population, an increase from 8.1% in 1990 (Kosmin et al.).

A small number of organisations are supporting this new research. Most notable among them are the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC), a research and teaching centre founded in 2005 by Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN), founded in late 2008 by four researchers, at the time based at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford (Lois Lee, Stacey Gutkowski, Nicholas Gibson, and Stephen Bullivant). Contributing to this set of resources, the present special issue of Journal of Contemporary Religion—the very first special issue in its 27-year history—showcases some of the new research emerging in this recently invigorated area.

All of the articles included in this issue derive from papers delivered at the NSRN’s inaugural conference, “Nonreligion and Secularity: New Empirical Perspectives”, held at Wolfson College, Oxford, in December 2009, although the research note emerged from discussions during that meeting. While this collection presents only a sample of the work currently underway, the selection is nonetheless broadly representative of both the international (with foci on Europe, North America, Asia) and multi-disciplinary (sociology, international relations, cognitive anthropology, religious studies) nature of the field as a whole. We hope that the articles will not only further research into contemporary secularities, but will shed—or reflect—light on this august journal’s raison d’être: contemporary religion. As William Sims Bainbridge pointed out in 2005, “Any wide-ranging theory of religion needs to be tested with evidence not only about religion itself, but also about its absence […] By learning more about the lack of faith, we can understand better the role of faith in modern society” (22). Or, as Colin Campbell had written much earlier, “The study of irreligious phenomena appears to offer a unique and untried vantage-point from which to gain a fresh grip on the slippery tangle of assumptions, hypotheses and predictions which constitute the sociology of religion” (14).

Gaining a ‘fresh grip’ on the sociology of religion’s ‘tangled assumptions, hypotheses, and predictions’ was, of course, the life work of Professor Peter Clarke, who was until his untimely death last June the founder and co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Religion. A collection of testimonials to Peter can be found in this issue. But having assumed some editorial role for this issue, we should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute ourselves. One of us (Stephen) was fortunate enough to count Peter as a mentor and friend. Significantly, it was Peter who encouraged and advised Stephen’s first foray into the sociology of contemporary atheism—a typical example of Peter’s way of advising and supporting the work of new scholars. This first attempt, once published as a research note in this journal, prompted Lois to get in touch with Stephen; indeed, it was after this meeting that we took the first steps to investigate whether there might be more as yet isolated researchers in this area, which gave rise, very quickly, to the formation of the NSRN. It is therefore fitting—and, for us, a conspicuous though sorrow-tinged honour—that the fruits of the NSRN’s first conference, held at the very college with which Peter was associated, should appear alongside tributes to him.

In order to understand the traditions that the contributions to this special issue take up, we sketch a brief history of earlier social-scientific engagements with non-religion, secularity, and atheism. While the overall picture may indeed be one of neglect, it is not uniformly so. Further, the general neglect, as well as the moments of fleeting and—as we hope the contemporary situation can be described—more enduring attention, can be explained in sociological terms that are, themselves, of interest. It is in this context that the value of the range of studies that the authors to this issue have contributed can be fully appreciated.

A Brief History

Many of the social sciences’ early pioneers—Comte, Marx, Durkheim, Freud—themselves avowedly non-religious, were fascinated by religion as the great explicandum: how can so many people believe in something so absurd? (Campbell 8–9; Stark and Finke 40–1; Stark). But in trying to answer this question, and thereby establishing the social-scientific study of religion, they arguably failed to recognize that their own lack of belief might itself be amenable to similar research. As Campbell has put it, “it appears that irreligion was assumed to be self-explanatory; as the natural state of mature civilised men […] it hardly required any discussion, let alone explanation” (9). Something of this proclivity may have carried over into subsequent generations: after all, social scientists consistently rank among the most unbelieving of academics (Bruce 110; Gross and Simmons). Yet plausible as this picture is in explaining, at least in part, the subject’s neglect, more prosaic factors are also accountable. For example, until fairly recently, and outside of certain (post-)Communist countries, the identifiably non-religious have normally made up only relatively small, and diffuse, proportions of a given population. Further, unlike other minority groups studied by social scientists, the non-religious do not tend to join, not even nominally, specifically non-religious organisations.

Nevertheless, the initial hypothesis—that the social science of non-religion has suffered precisely because of the non-religiosity of social scientists—gains credence from the field’s belated invigoration by those for whom, on the contrary, atheism was considered ‘problematic’. Tellingly, perhaps the first Anglophone study of the psychology of atheism, Vetter and Green’s “Personality and Group Factors in the Making of Atheists”, was published in an issue of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, dating from 1932. In its opening paragraphs, the American scholars range atheists alongside “Single Taxers, Fundamentalists, [and] Communists” as possessing “[e]xtremes of social, political and religious outlook” (179). Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in France was taking seriously the declining levels of religious practice and (orthodox) belief among the newly industrialised working classes. It commissioned a number of large-scale quantitative and qualitative studies which were to investigate what was widely regarded as the specifically “social character not only of present unbelief, but of its causes and its origins” (Congar 14). The most well-known of these was a report, undertaken by two priests in early 1943, which declared much of France to be a pays de mission or missionary territory (Godin and Daniel). The interests of Catholic social scientists in what they perceived to be anomalous—and thus, of course, to be a conspicuous explicandum—continued into the 1950s and 1960s, in France and elsewhere (e.g. Lepp; Steeman). In 1960, the ‘Institute for Higher Studies on Atheism’ was opened at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome. Most notably, in March 1969, following the Second Vatican Council’s request for a “more thorough treatment” of the causes and nature of contemporary atheism, the Vatican convened an international social-scientific conference—almost certainly the very first of its kind—on “the culture of unbelief” (Caporale and Grumelli).

This landmark event came at an opportune time. Most notably, in the years preceding it, the study of atheism and non-religion had begun to interest social scientists who happened not to be Catholic priests. The pioneering and still cited article by Glenn Vernon, “Religious Nones: A Neglected Category”, had been published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion the previous autumn, the first in a series of important studies which focused on people who did not claim a religious affiliation, which has continued to the present day (e.g. Hadaway and Roof; Hout and Fischer; Kosmin et al.). It is perhaps to this time that we may date the beginnings of a focus on the non-religious, which is motivated not by their allegedly ‘problematic’ nature (i.e. relative to a given worldview), but by the recognition that they are a significant, ‘normal’, and potentially normative sector of society. Further, attendance at the Vatican conference was not only strikingly high, with 3,000 present at the first session (Martin), but also strikingly high quality, including—among many others—Charles Glock, Robert Bellah, David Martin, Bryan Wilson, Harvey Cox, and Peter Berger. In the latter’s assessment:

The first observation, obvious yet essential, is that the symposium had the character of an historic occasion. I think it is fair to say that this was felt by most of the participants. The feeling was reinforced by the rather amazing interest the symposium attracted, not only within the ecclesiastical and scholarly Roman ambience, but on the part of the mass media. […] To my knowledge, this was the first time that an international group of social scientists gathered to discuss this particular subject. (Berger vii–viii)

The time seemed finally ripe for the beginnings of a concerted international and interdisciplinary focus on atheism, non-religion, and secularity in all their varied aspects and manifestations. An even more hopeful sign appeared in 1971, with the publication of Campbell’s Toward a Sociology of Irreligion. The introduction to this wide-ranging and sophisticated monograph, a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the empirical and theoretical dimensions of the subject, states: “No tradition for the sociological study of irreligion as yet exists and this book has been written in the hope that it will help to stimulate the development of just such a tradition” (vii).

For several decades, Campbell’s hopes seemed to have been in vain, with renewed interest only emerging in the later first decade of the twenty-first century. Without denying the valuable work which had appeared in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, not only in sociology but also in other disciplines, one could, however, hardly speak of a ‘tradition’. By the mid-2000s, however, a spate of significant studies had begun to emerge (e.g. Tomka; Bainbridge; Edgell, Gerteis and Hartman; Hunsberger and Altemeyer; Zuckerman). Further, in different disciplines and countries, a significant number of post-graduate students (each, of course, congratulating themselves on their originality) had begun work on different aspects of the field. Quite why there has been this upsurge of interest it is hard and, no doubt, too early to say. It might relate to the rise in visible forms of non-religion, such as the New Atheism, or to the rise of visible forms of religion, which many societies might feel as an encroachment on what are possibly, for the first time, powerful non-religious or secular investments and normativities. But these are only two possible explanations for an issue that scholars in the new field will want to address. In any case, there is substantial evidence that the study of non-religion, secularity, and atheism is establishing itself as a field of study with long-term prospects—that Campbell’s sociology is coming to life. Frozen in time, Campbell’s book still provides an important foreground to research in this area, with many of the scholars involved—sociologists, social anthropologists, cognitive anthropologists, psychologists—regarding it as a primary inspiration and touchstone. (Indeed, all those interested in the empirical and theoretical dimensions of this subject will be heartened to hear that the book, long out of print, is scheduled to be re-released later this year.) In the light of the growing numbers of both established and emerging social scientists, united in subject interests but divided by discipline and nation, the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network was founded. A mere 40 years since the Vatican symposium, Campbell was fittingly among the keynote speakers at the second international gathering of social scientists to consider this topic.

The Articles in this Issue

The sub-title of the NSRN conference in December 2009 was ‘new empirical perspectives’ and one of the challenges for researchers of non-religion and secularity has been to find ‘ways into’ this largely uncharted field. Many of the conference participants discussed their responses to the enormous methodological challenges that a vast, yet under-researched and under-theorised subject matter necessarily presents. As a result, such work makes an important contribution to the field in its own right. Of those who had made further progress in their investigations and had empirical findings to share, the striking feature—apart from their quality, which is itself significant, given the pioneering nature of this work—was their diversity. Those working in the field will be familiar with others trying to understand the nature of our work by turning their thoughts to refer to more visible forms of non-religion, such as the New Atheism, organised Humanism, and civil ceremonies and ritual. Of course, all these are demonstrably socially, culturally, and psychologically significant phenomena and count as fundamental subject matters for researchers who seek to contribute to understandings of the field in general. What this conference showcased was the possible and sometimes surprising reaches of this field—the number of individual lives that some form of non-religion and secularity might touch, the range of practices they might manifest in, and the macro-processes on which they might have an impact. The originality and range are part of what we particularly wanted to emphasise in this collection.

All the contributors approach the subject matter in fresh ways, providing the new empirical perspectives that our conference called for, but the nature of their originality and innovation differs. The innovation of the first article, “Three Puzzles of Non-religion in Britain”, is to ask more probing questions of existing data and, in so doing, to unsettle some long-held assumptions about non-religious and secular populations. David Voas and Siobhan McAndrew examine three demographic features of the non-religious population in Britain which have been taken for granted: that the non-religious are more likely to be male (the converse of the general finding that women are more likely to be religious), more educated, and more affluent. They do not find that any of these claims are false, to put it in crude terms, but their findings show that all these assumptions are woefully insufficient for understanding what they reveal to be a much more nuanced set of correlations and relationships. While providing a focused and concise empirical study, Voas and McAndrew also make a wider contribution to the social-scientific study of non-religion in revealing how, in contrast to our confidence that we know everything that needs to be known about non-religion, limited in fact our knowledge is and that our understandings are somewhat naïve. In establishing this, Voas and McAndrew’s article sets the scene not only for their own empirical intervention but also for the others who follow—in this collection and outside it.

The first of these is Jonathan A. Lanman’s cognitive anthropological approach to questions of non-religion and secularisation. The burgeoning area of cognitive anthropology and psychology has often been accused of reduction, but Lanman’s work shows how this accusation may be better trained to its arguments, such as they currently are, rather than to its general method or approach. In “The Importance of Religious Displays for Belief Acquisition and Secularization”, Lanman begins with the concept of religion, but is emphatic that an exclusive focus on religion is one of the major problems of existing cognitive approaches. In showing how the human brain may be pre-...