Atheism and Secularity

Atheism and Secularity
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Volume 1
Issues, Concepts, and Definitions
Edited by
PHIL ZUCKERMAN
Praeger Perspectives
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Copyright 2010 by Phil Zuckerman
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Atheism and secularity / Phil Zuckerman, editor.
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vol. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-35186-0 (ebook vol. 2) 1. Irreligion and
sociology. 2. Atheism. 3. Secularism. I. Zuckerman, Phil.
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Contents
Introduction: The Social Scientific Study of Atheism and Secularity

Phil Zuckerman vii
Chapter 1: What Is Atheism?
Jack David Eller 1
Chapter 2: Atheism, Secularity, the Family, and Children
Christel Manning 19
Chapter 3: A Portrait of Secular Group Affiliates
Frank L. Pasquale 43
Chapter 4: Sexuality and the Secular
Thomas J. Linneman and Margaret A. Clendenen 89
Chapter 5: Morality and Immorality among the Irreligious
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi 113
Chapter 6: The Evolution of Popular Religiosity and Secularism:
How First World Statistics Reveal Why Religion Exists,
Why It Has Been Popular, and Why the Most Successful
Democracies Are the Most Secular
Gregory S. Paul 149
Chapter 7: Atheism, Secularity, and Gender
Inger Furseth 209
Chapter 8: Freethinkers and Hell Raisers: The Brief History of
American Atheism and Secularism
Daniel Cady 229
vi Contents
Chapter 9: Defining Religion and Modifying Religious ‘‘Bodies’’:

Secularizing the Sacred and Sacralizing the Secular
Jay Demerath III 251
Index 271
About the Editor and Contributors 279
Introduction:
The Social Scientific Study
of Atheism and Secularity
Phil Zuckerman
In 1972, almost forty years ago, Colin Campbell, then a lecturer at the
University of York, published a book titled Toward a Sociology of Irreli-
gion.1 The inside jacket cover dubbed it ‘‘the first serious study of the
social phenomenon of the rejection of religion.’’ In this groundbreaking
treatise, Campbell observed that sociologists have ‘‘entirely ignored irreli-
gion.’’2 He sought to vigorously address this major lacuna by calling for a
new focus of study within sociology, that is, the study of people who live
their lives indifferent to, without, or in opposition to religion. Campbell
began his work by pondering why it is that sociologists have ignored sec-
ularity over the years, and he then went on to broach a variety of signifi-
cant topics ripe for inquiry and attention: the role antireligious and/or
humanist movements play in spreading secularization within society; the
various forms and definitions of irreligion; irreligion and morality; irreli-
gion and politics; the social functions of irreligion, and so on. Campbell’s
work remains significant for its insights, its thoughtfulness, and its incon-
trovertible prescience. But what is perhaps most striking about the work
is this: it fell on deaf ears. Campbell’s call for a widespread sociological
analysis of irreligion went largely unheeded.
The publication of this two-volume set seeks to redress that regretta-
ble outcome, to hear and to heed Campbell’s call, and to finally take
seriously the social scientific task of exploring, investigating, document-
ing, and analyzing various aspects of atheism and secularity. The
authors of the chapters contained in this collection have attempted to
viii Introduction
do just that and thereby offer studies of irreligiosity with the same
level of interest and rigor that social scientists have devoted to study-
ing the topic of religiosity for well over a century.
While bemoaning the dearth of scholarship on atheism, irreligion,
and secularity that has typified the social sciences,3 it must also be
acknowledged that a significant amount of academic writing and scholar-
ship has in fact been devoted to the topic of secularization—the historical
process whereby religion weakens, fades, or loses its hegemonic domi-
nance or public significance. A plethora of scholars have been aggres-
sively debating secularization for years.4 Despite the impressive amount
that has been published on secularization, nearly all of it—at least that I
am aware of—is generally theoretical, typological, or broadly historical in
nature, and doesn’t actually deal with secular life or atheism as they are
actually lived, expressed, or experienced by irreligious men and women
in the here and now. Nor does the cottage industry of scholarship on or
about secularization entail a direct focus on the social, anthropological,
and/or psychological particulars of how secularity actually manifests
itself or ‘‘plays itself out’’ in the contemporary world.
As with work on secularization, when it comes to the advocacy of
atheism—or the debunking of religion—there’s also a lot out there, to be
sure. Thousands of books, essays, and articles have been published since
the days of David Hume (1711–1776) and Baron D’Holbach (1723–1789),
which argue against theism, critique the Bible, deride religion, harangue
clergy, and/or promote naturalism, materialism, agnosticism, humanism,
freethought, and so on. Most recently, a spate of best sellers have been
published in this formidable vein, including The End of Faith: Religion,
Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004) by Sam Harris,5 God Is Not Great:
How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) by Christopher Hitchens,6 and The
God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins7—the last of which has sold over
1.5 million copies as of this writing. These books, however, are not studies
of atheists and/or secular people, per se. They are distinctly polemical
works with the expressed goal of convincing people that theism is false
and/or that religion is a bad or harmful thing. Such endeavors, however
thought provoking, are not social science. Nor are they meant to be. Lest
the reader be confused, this point bears stressing: the advocacy of atheism
and/or the urging of secularity are not to be mistaken for the social-
scientific study of atheism and secularity—just as one wouldn’t confuse
works that advocate faith and religion with those that seek to study,
explain, or analyze faith and religion. And as stated above, when it comes
to the advocacy of atheism and secularity, one finds a rich, diverse, and
undeniably copious corpus of work. But when it comes to the study and
analysis of atheism and secularity, one doesn’t find much. As William
Sims Bainbridge recently lamented, ‘‘we know surprisingly little about
Atheism from a social-scientific perspective.’’8
Introduction ix
That said, for one to suggest that absolutely no social science has
been undertaken devoted to the study of atheism or secularity since
Campbell’s call would be untrue. In fact, several years just prior to the
publication of Campbell’s book, N. J. Demerath wrote what may very
well be the first sociological investigations of irreligion ever published
in academic journals; one, coauthored with Victor Thiessen and pub-
lished in 1966, was an article on the Freie Gemeinde, a small free-
thought movement in Wisconsin and the other, published in 1969, was
an article on the Society for Ethical Culture and the American Rational-
ist Federation.9 Also in 1969, Armand Mauss published an article on reli-
gious defection among Mormons.10 And one year prior to the publication
of Campbell’s book, Rocco Caporale and Antonio Gumelli edited a vol-
ume titled The Culture of Unbelief, which was an assemblage of papers
delivered at a symposium held in Rome on the very topic of the lack of re-
ligious belief in the contemporary world. Most of the papers in this publi-
cation, however, tended to be highly tentative and/or speculative, for as
one contributor noted, there is an ‘‘appalling lack of empirical data on
unbelief’’ and ‘‘we do not know enough about the phenomenon of unbe-
lief to formulate even a minimum inventory of validated propositions
that may constitute the basis of further analysis.’’11 While a slew of stud-
ies emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with a focus on apostasy,12 aside from
these and a few additional disparate books and articles,13 in the words of
Talal Asad, ‘‘social scientists . . . have paid scarcely any attention to the
idea of the secular.’’14
That sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have largely
neglected the study of secularity is truly remarkable, especially given
the fact that secular, irreligious, nonreligious, and antireligious men
and women have always existed.15 Even Rodney Stark and Roger Finke
can admit that atheism is ‘‘probably as old as religion.’’16 Today, we know
that atheists and secular folk represent a large slice of humanity; one
recent (and conservative) estimate of nonbelievers in God places the num-
ber somewhere between 500 million and 750 million people worldwide.17
And if the category were to be widened to include those who self-identify
as simply ‘‘nonreligious’’ or ‘‘unreligious,’’ these numbers would no
doubt increase dramatically. The fact is, the portion of humans who reject,
have no interest in, or are indifferent to belief in God and/or religion is
not limited to some miniscule batch of angry deviants or disgruntled ‘‘vil-
lage atheists.’’ On the contrary, for if our estimates are correct, non-
believers in God as a worldwide group come in fourth place after
Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism in terms of the global ranking of com-
monly held belief systems. Put another way, there are 58 times as many
nonbelievers in God as there are Mormons, 35 times as many non-
believers in God as there are Sikhs, and twice as many nonbelievers in
God as there are Buddhists.
x Introduction
Granted, in most nations, the irreligious may represent but a small

minority.18 However, in many other nations—such as Sweden, the Czech
Republic, and Japan—the nonreligious or irreligious most likely consti-
tute a majority of the population.19 In the United States, over 15 percent of
Americans (approximately 35 million people) claim ‘‘None’’ as their reli-
gion when asked by pollsters; of those 35 million, one study reports that 4
percent self-identify as atheists and another 6 percent as agnostics, with
most of the remaining people simply saying that they have ‘‘no reli-
gion.’’20 Some estimates of irreligious Americans are even slightly higher;
according to the 2008 U.S Religious Landscape Survey carried out by the
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, more than 16 percent of Ameri-
cans identify as ‘‘unaffiliated.’’21 This is quite an increase in irreligiosity,
for back in the 1950s only 3 percent of Americans claimed ‘‘none’’ as their
religion.22 Thus, the percentage today (15 or 16 percent) represents a
quadrupling of ‘‘none’s’’ in one generation. And just to give readers some
perspective, these percentages mean that there are more unaffiliated or
‘‘none’s’’ in the United States than there are African Americans. When it
comes to God-belief specifically, a recent Harris poll from 2008 found that
10 percent of Americans do not believe in God, with an additional 9 per-
cent who said ‘‘not sure.’’23 That means that nearly one American in five
is either an atheist or possible agnostic. We’re talking about 60 million
Americans who are nontheists. These numbers and percentages render
any suggestion that secular folk are atypically unhappy, alienated, elitist,
or otherwise unwell or unnatural manifestly untenable, if not downright
quaint.
Whether atheists and secular folk represent a very small minority of
a nation’s population (as in the case of, say, Ghana or Zimbabwe), or a
very large percentage (as in the case of, say, the Netherlands or
France), the bottom line is that, in the succinct and understated words
of Darren Sherkat, ‘‘not everyone desires religious goods.’’24 Such irreli-
gious women and men—their identities, worldviews, associations, and
experiences—deserve to be studied. Of particular interest for social scien-
tists is how atheism, and/or secularity, intersects with, is influenced by,
and in turn influences other aspects of the social world.
Fortunately, it appears as though a new day is dawning for the
social-scientific study of atheism and secularity. In addition to the
founding in 2005 of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society
and Culture—the first of its kind to be established in North America—
a growing body of research and scholarship has begun to emerge that
focuses specifically on the irreligious. Some of the more noteworthy,
pioneering efforts include Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s
Nonbelievers by Hunsberger and Altemeyer,25 Secularism and Secularity:
Contemporary International Perspectives edited by Kosmin and Keysar,26
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism edited by Michael Martin,27 my own
Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about
Introduction xi
Contentment,28 and finally, this publication. The essays in this two-volume

set have been assembled and published in a concerted effort to not only
begin filling a major lacuna within the social sciences, but more hopefully,
to inspire further social-scientific research on irreligiosity in all its numer-
ous dimensions and varied manifestations.
NOTES
1. Colin Campbell, Toward a Sociology of Irreligion (New York: Heider and
Heider, 1972).
2. Ibid., 8.
3. In the words of Benjamin Beit-Hallhami: ‘‘Those who shaped the modern
human sciences have been preoccupied with explaining the phenomena of reli-
gion and religiosity. Accounting for the absence of religious faith has never
been of much concern to them.’’ Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, ‘‘Atheists: A Psycho-
logical Profile,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 300.
4. For some major works on secularization, see Karel Dobbelaere, Seculari-
zation: An Analysis at Three Levels (Bruxelles: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002); William
Swatos and Daniel Olson, The Secularization Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000); Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford,
UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2002); Peter Berger, ed., The Desecularization of the
World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1999); David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (New York:
Harper and Row, 1978); Peter Glasner, The Sociology of Secularization: A Critique
of a Concept. (London: Routledge of Kegan Paul, 1977); Peter Berger, The Sacred
Canopy (New York: Anchor, 1967).
5. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
(New York; W.W. Norton, 2004).
6. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
(New York: Twelve, 2007).
7. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
8. William Sims Bainbridge, ‘‘Atheism,’’ Interdisciplinary Journal of Research
on Religion 1 (2005): 3.
9. N. J. Demerath and Victor Theissen, ‘‘On Spitting against the Wind:
Organizational Precariousness and American Irreligion,’’ The American Journal
of Sociology 7, no. 6 (1966): 674–87; N. J. Demerath, ‘‘A-Religion, and the Rise of
the Religion-less Church: Two Case Studies in Organizational Convergence,’’
Sociological Analysis 30, no. 4 (Winter 1969): 191–203.
10. Armand Mauss, ‘‘Dimensions of Religious Defection,’’ Review of Religious
Research 10, no. 3 (1969): 128–35.
11. Rocco Carorale and Antonio Grumelli, eds., The Culture of Un-Belief
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971), 3–4.
12. Including David G. Bromley, ed., Falling From the Faith: The Causes and
Consequences of Religious Apostasy (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988);
David Caplovitz and Fred Sherrow, The Religious Drop-Outs: Apostasy among
College Graduates (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1977); Roger Louis
xii Introduction
Dudley, ‘‘Alienation from Religion in Adolescents from Fundamentalist Reli-

gious Homes,’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17, no. 4 (Dec. 1978):
389–98; Bruce Hunsberger, ‘‘Apostasy: A Social-Learning Perspective,’’ Review
of Religious Research 25 (1983): 21–38; Bruce Hunsberger, ‘‘A Re-examination of
the Antecedents of Apostasy,’’ Review of Religious Research 21 (1980): 158–70.
13. J. Russell Hale, The Unchurched (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row,
1980); W. Feigelman, B. S. Gorman, and J. A. Varacalli, ‘‘Americans Who Give
up Religion,’’ Sociology and Social Research 76 (1992): 138–44; Bon Altemeyer and
Bruce Hunsberger, Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others
Abandon Religion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997); Michael Hout and
Claude S. Fischer, ‘‘Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Poli-
tics and Generations,’’ American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 165–90.
14. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 17.
15. Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History (New York: Harper Collins,
2003); James Thrower, Western Atheism: A Short History (Amherst, NY: Prome-
theus Books, 2000).
16. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2000), 13.
17. Phil Zuckerman, ‘‘Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns,’’ in
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007).
18. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Poli-
tics Worldwide (New York: Cambrdige University Press, 2004).
20. http://www.trincoll.edu/secularisminstitute/.
21. http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations/.
22. C. Kirk Hadaway and Wade Clark Roof, ‘‘Apostasy in American
Churches: Evidence from National Survey Data,’’ in Falling From the Faith: The
Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy, ed. David G. Bromley (Newbury
Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988).
23. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=982/.
24. Darren E. Sherkat, ‘‘Beyond Belief: Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theistic
Certainty in the United States,’’ Sociological Spectrum 28 (2008), 438.
25. Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, Atheists: A Groundbreaking
Study of America’s Nonbelievers (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).
26. Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, eds., Secularism and Secularity: Con-
temporary International Perspectives (Hartford, CT: Institute for the Study of Secu-
larism in Society and Culture, 2007).
27. Michael Martin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
28. Phil Zuckerman, Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can
Tell Us about Contentment (New York: New York University Press, 2008).
Chapter 1
What Is Atheism?
Jack David Eller
More than a century after Nietzsche announced the death of God,

and more than twenty-four centuries after Socrates was sentenced to
death for impiety toward the gods, there is still confusion and contro-
versy over precisely what ‘‘atheism’’ is. Some of this confusion and
controversy is real, some of it manufactured by those who prefer to
dominate rather than describe, to undermine rather than to under-
stand—and this on both ‘‘sides’’ of the ‘‘controversy.’’ The fact that
both religion and atheism have emerged, or reemerged, in the twenty-
first century as vocal social forces has raised the profile, and the stakes,
for both.
At its core, atheism is a profoundly simple idea: derived from the
Greek a- for ‘‘no/without’’ and theos for ‘‘god,’’ it merely designates a
position (not a ‘‘belief’’; see below) that includes or asserts no god(s).
In practice—which for most of recorded history has meant in theist
practice—the term has been less a descriptive term and more a judg-
mental one, and a negative and relative judgment at that. For instance,
Christians, against whom modern Western atheism particularly strives,
were originally condemned as atheists in ancient Rome. The Romans
surely did not accuse the Christians of lacking a god-belief but rather
of lacking or flatly denying belief in the Roman gods, which were the
real and/or relevant gods. Muslims call nonbelievers ‘‘infidels’’ not
because non-Muslims are without god-beliefs (Hindus, for instance, are
clearly theists) but because non-Muslims are without belief in the
Muslim god, who is, according to them, the only true god. Indeed,
such is the common approach of the theist: if you do not believe in my
god(s), even if you believe in some other god(s), which are almost nec-
essarily false god(s), then you believe in no god(s) and are an a-theist.
2 Issues, Concepts, and Definitions
An atheist who avows the term for himself or herself, on the other
hand, is not merely an atheist ‘‘from some theist’s point of view,’’ that
is, a person who disbelieves in some god(s) while believing in some
other god(s). An atheist is one who possesses no belief in any god(s),
a person for whom ‘‘god’’ is a foreign and inert concept—and nothing
more than a concept, literally a word without a referent. By this
understanding—the understanding of the atheist him/herself and not
one imposed by theists—atheism is actually quite a common position,
even within religion.
ATHEISM, THEISM, AND A-THEISTIC RELIGIONS

Before we can proceed, it is critically important to realize that the
entire ‘‘debate’’ in Western civilization about atheism and religion has
been conducted in religious, and more specifically theistic, terms. Two
gross, and false, assumptions have driven this debate. The first is that
religion, and more specifically theism, is the default position: most peo-
ple are religious/theists, and atheism is the exception: something not
only to be explained but to be opposed. The second is that religion is
theism, and therefore atheism is ‘‘a-religion’’ and ‘‘anti-religion.’’
The second assumption is explicable, although not defensible, from
the utter hegemony that Christianity has had over the Western world
for two millennia. Through most of Western history people have only
known one religion (Christianity) or even only one variety of that reli-
gion (Catholicism), and of course the religious institution has aimed to
keep it that way. ‘‘The Church’’ sought, and for the majority of the
Christian era achieved, a monopoly of religion. People knew about
Judaism (also theistic) and occasionally about Islam (also theistic), so it
seemed to them—and was urged on them—that religion was theism
and that theism was religion. Even worse, religion was mono theism,
and mono theism was religion.
The intellectual and political value of equating the local religion
with religion itself is apparent enough. However, as European Christi-
ans began to encounter other societies with their own religions, the
claim simply became unsupportable. For one thing, not all theisms are
monotheisms. In fact, the vast majority of theisms in human history
have been polytheisms, pantheons, or systems of multiple gods, often
each with a particular power or portfolio (e.g., a god of thunder, a god
of war, and a god of the sea). Furthermore, not all of these gods had
the alleged qualities of the Christian god: immortality, omnipotence,
omniscience, ultimate creativity, and absolute moral goodness. Thus,
‘‘theism’’ is not a single religious position but a congeries of incompati-
ble and often contradictory god-claims.
Anthropology has discovered something yet more discomforting to
theism: not all religions have gods at all. Classical Christianity and the
What Is Atheism? 3
philosophies and social sciences based on it have presupposed that

god(s) are necessary and universal components of religion, the very
essence of religion. This presupposition is false. Theism is one ‘‘kind’’ or
component of religion but not a universal and not even the most com-
mon one. Other religions, especially the numerous small ‘‘tribal’’ or ‘‘tra-
ditional’’ religions, often lacked god-concepts in favor of other, equally
religious, concepts. For instance, a recurrent idea across religions is that
there exist ‘‘nature spirits,’’ such as those residing in and animating
plants and animals or physical locations like hills and streams or natural
phenomena like the sun and moon and wind and rain. Nature spirits (in
a system commonly referred to as ‘‘animism’’) cannot justifiably be
called gods, since they share few if any of the qualities ordinarily attrib-
uted to gods. Other religions focus on dead human ancestors, who con-
tinue to interact with and affect society; whereas some ancestors may
become gods (indicating an open boundary between humans and gods),
most are not gods, and ancestor-spirit belief (not properly called ‘‘ances-
tor worship,’’ since many societies did not worship their ancestors and
sometimes actually dreaded them) is not theism. Finally, still other reli-
gions posit supernatural forces that run through the world, like ‘‘mana’’
and ‘‘chi,’’ typically not ‘‘persons’’ and lacking attributes like mind or
will or intention, such forces cannot be regarded as gods; this notion is
designated animatism. Worst of all for theists, these various religious
conceptions can and do coexist: any one religion can include god(s)
along with nature spirits, dead ancestors, and impersonal forces.
These discoveries prove two things. First, theism is not only not the
essence of religion, it is not even a distinct ‘‘type’’ of religion; it is merely
one building block in religious systems. In other words, a theism can or
usually does include other, nontheistic elements too. Second, many,
perhaps most, religions are a-theisms in that they do not include a god-
concept at all. Surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone
the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion. Religions
based on nature spirits, dead ancestors, and supernatural forces do not
‘‘doubt’’ gods, nor ‘‘disbelieve in’’ gods, nor ‘‘argue against’’ gods. They
simply and unproblematically lack gods. They function fine without gods.
DEFAULT THEISM AND NATURAL ATHEISM

The cross-cultural comparison of religions therefore answers the first
assumption that we identified above, that theism is the natural and
default position. Theism—in the familiar sense of a religion that
focuses primarily or exclusively on one or a few gods—is in reality a
rare and recent development in religion and neither natural nor
default, although it is easy to see why theists might want to maintain
otherwise. If one accepts the ‘‘default theism’’ claim, then atheism has
a severe handicap, logically and socially. Logically, it appears to bear
the entire burden of proof, since theism is ‘‘true until proven false.’’
Socially, atheism can only exist, and thrive, by extricating itself from
the overwhelmingly ‘‘popular’’ (and highly institutionalized) theistic
system. As a minority position, it must necessarily be oppositional,
critical, defensive, and argumentative—trying to ‘‘disprove’’ what is
generally held to be true.
However, across religions it is simply not the case that theism is the
default position. Most religions do not advance theistic claims at all, or
it might be more accurate to say that most religions to not ‘‘talk about
god(s)’’ at all. There is no such word, no such concept, no such ‘‘belief.’’
It would be incorrect to say that these religions ‘‘disbelieve’’ in god(s)
and still more incorrect to say that they ‘‘oppose’’ or ‘‘criticize’’ or
‘‘argue against’’ god(s). Most of the time, they have never even heard
of such things as god(s).
In fact, where would one hear of such things as god(s)? God(s) is
(are) not obvious to the naked eye, as, say, sun and water are; the idea
of a spirit or mind or ‘‘person’’ in or of the sun or water is a small
step. Further, no child, from all we can tell, is born with a god-concept;
if they were, we would expect to find the god-concept everywhere,
which we do not. Rather, as the theist John Wesley, founder of
Methodism, realized:
After all that has been so plausibly written concerning ‘‘the innate idea
of God’’; after all that has been said of its being common to all men, in
all ages and nations; it does not appear, that man has naturally any more
idea of God than any beasts of the field; he has no knowledge of God at
all; no fear of God at all; neither is God in all his thoughts. Whatever
change may afterwards be wrought . . . he is, by nature, a mere Atheist.1
In other words, Wesley admitted that atheism, not theism, is the

default, the ‘‘natural,’’ stance. Of course, he considered this a thor-
oughly bad thing, but then he surely would. The point is that an hon-
est theist grasps that humans are not ‘‘natural theists’’; that is why it
takes so many years of teaching and indoctrination, so much institu-
tional weight, so much colonization of experience, to instill the concept
of theism. Humans are natural atheists—not in the sense of attacking
god(s) but in the sense of lacking god(s).
No newborn human has any ideas about, let alone any ‘‘beliefs in,’’
god(s)—or for that matter, any other religious entities. It is not that
humans lack god-beliefs at birth but possess nature-spirit or dead-
ancestor beliefs; they lack all such notions. There is a new and per-
suasive school of thought that humans may have innate tendencies to
attribute mind or intention or ‘‘agency’’ to the nonhuman world (as
when children think their toys have thoughts and feelings), but this is
not religion or any specific religious concept. It is rather the raw
What Is Atheism? 5
material out of which a religion may be constructed. This native and

intuitive ‘‘animism’’ must not only be coached and encouraged but
given concrete expression: humans may tend to ascribe mind to nonhu-
man phenomena, but they must be taught to identify that mind as nats
(nature spirits in Burmese village Buddhism), atua (spirits/gods in
Pacific islands), kwoth (divinity/spirits/god in African Nuer religion),
wakan (holy beings in Lakota religion), razana (ancestor spirits of
Madagascar Imerina), or God, Allah, Vishnu, Odin, Zeus, and so on.
What would happen if a child were never told a word about any of
these religious concepts? It is unlikely that he or she would spontane-
ously invent his or her own religious concepts, and astronomically
unlikely that he or she would reinvent Burmese village Buddhism or
Lakota religion or Christianity. No human is born a Burmese Buddhist or
a Lakota religionist or a Christian. No human is born a theist. Humans
are born without any god-concepts. Humans are natural atheists.
There are two fates that a natural atheist can follow. If she is never
exposed to the idea of god(s), never urged to ‘‘believe’’ in any god(s), she
will retain her natural atheism—even if it is tainted with other religious
but nontheistic notions. But under the pressures of a theistic milieu, the
great majority of natural atheists will have their natural atheism replaced
with an acquired theism, that is, they will be turned into or converted
into theists. Some of these learned-theists will, for various reasons, come
to question, ‘‘doubt,’’ and ultimately reject the theism thrust on them and
will ‘‘deconvert’’ into ‘‘recovered atheists.’’ Whether a recovered atheist is
quite the same species as a natural atheist is open to discussion: an anal-
ogy might be a person who has recovered from a viral infection as
opposed to a person who never contracted it in the first place or a person
who quite smoking as opposed to one who never started.
ATHEISM AND ITS VICISSITUDES

The most fundamental distinction within atheism, then, is between
what we might call ‘‘anthropological atheism’’ or the lack of any god-
concept in a culture or religion and ‘‘argumentative atheism’’ or the
rejection of the god-concept proffered by the theistic religion in one’s
culture. Because all of us live in a society informed by theism, argu-
mentative atheism is immediately relevant for us, in which we find
other real or putative diversity. One of the frequent assertions is that
two types of atheism, positive and negative or strong and weak, exist
and even compete. The distinction has been characterized as the differ-
ence between ‘‘not believing’’ and ‘‘believing not.’’ Negative/weak
atheism, on the one hand, is generally taken to designate the claim that
one does not believe in god(s), that one lacks such a belief that such an
entity exists; it does not, ostensibly, imply that no such entity actually
exists. As the term connotes, positive/strong atheism makes a stronger
assertion, that the belief in god(s) is unjustified and false. Thus, the
putative positive/strong atheist states, ‘‘I not only lack the belief in
god(s), I assert the non-existence of god(s).’’
On the surface this may seem like a valid distinction, but upon
closer inspection it is not. There are three sources of confusion on the
subject. The first is the false dichotomy between ‘‘not believing’’ and
‘‘believing not,’’ that is, not believing in god(s) and believing that there
is no such thing as god(s). Indisputably, someone who maintains that
there is no such thing as god(s) does not believe in them; to maintain
otherwise is to be incoherent. Indisputably, someone who believes in
god(s) maintains that there is such a thing; to maintain otherwise is
equally incoherent. But what other possibilities are there? Can one
maintain that there is no such thing as god(s) yet believe in them? Not
without contradicting oneself. Can one maintain that there is such a
thing as god(s) yet not believe in them? Not in any sensible way. So, it
emerges that there are only two consistent positions: either one claims
that there is such a thing as god(s) and believes in them, or one claims
that there is no such thing as god(s) and does not believe in them. The
dichotomy, then, is not between positive and negative atheism but
between theism and atheism.
The second and more pernicious source of error is the attribution of
‘‘belief’’ to atheists, sometimes literally the insistence that atheism is a
belief. Theists certainly, and atheists occasionally too, will say that athe-
ism is a belief—the belief that god(s) does (do) not exist. This is a famil-
iar and seductive way of thinking, since ‘‘belief’’ is such a ubiquitous
and powerful concept. Surely, Christians argue, belief is universal and
essential to religion; still more, religion is only one kind of belief. The-
ists often go so far as to call science a belief-system, to equate all knowl-
edge with belief. On this count they have an ally in philosophy, which
has frequently defined knowledge as ‘‘justified true belief.’’ But such a
definition cannot suffice, if only because the adjectives ‘‘justified’’ and
‘‘true’’ suggest that belief, unmodified with adjectives, is not justified or
true—a conclusion I suspect most believers would want to avoid. In
other words, if the existence of the Christian god is a belief and not
(yet) knowledge, then it is (so far) either unjustified or untrue or both.
I have argued the case for the radical distinction between knowledge
and belief elsewhere. The relevant point for current purposes is that
absence of a belief, even active rejection of a belief, is not itself a belief.
The animist who lacks any notion of god(s) whatsoever does not disbe-
lieve in god(s) and certainly cannot be said to have a belief in the non-
existence of gods. As a case in point, the Warlpiri of aboriginal
Australia have a religious term jukurrpa, sometimes translated as
‘‘dreaming’’ or ‘‘dreamtime.’’ It would be false and meaningless to say
that most Christians disbelieve in jukurrpa or believe in the nonexis-
tence of jukurrpa, if only and precisely because most Christians have
What Is Atheism? 7
never even heard of jukurrpa. Christians are, if you will, natural

a-jukurrpa-ists. They lack the very concept, having never been exposed
to and pressured into believing in it.
Natural atheists, including all members of religions that lack a god-
concept as well as people like myself who have never found any valid-
ity in the available god-concept, do not ‘‘believe’’ in the nonexistence
of god(s). They and we simply do not have the concept; it is a foreign
language to them and us. However, it might be presumed that recov-
ered atheists, those who have had to fight and argue their way out of
theism, have a belief, just a belief-not. Unhappily for theists, this analy-
sis is false. Imagine, for example, that a person is led to believe in
childhood that Santa Claus exists. Through personal effort or counter-
teaching, she learns or concludes that there is no Santa. Would you rea-
sonably now say that she ‘‘believes that there is no Santa Claus’’? Of
course not. The rejection of the Santa-belief is not the belief in no-Santa.
It is not a belief at all. It is the absence of a belief, the overthrow of a
belief, the freedom from a belief. To argue otherwise is equivalent to
saying that a person who kicks the habit of smoking now has the habit
of not-smoking, or that a person gives up the hobby of collecting
stamps now has the hobby of not-collecting stamps. In a word, the
absence of a belief is not another belief; if it were, then believers would
have more not-beliefs (i.e., in all the other religious entities across the
world) than beliefs.
The third and more subtle source of confusion is the failure to dis-
tinguish between the point and the tactics of atheism. Atheism says
one thing and one thing only: that there is no such thing as god(s).
However, there are two quite different strategies for arguing that point
in a world where the majority believe in god(s). Consider the analogy
of a courtroom, where the ‘‘case’’ concerns the existence of god(s).
Thus, the prosecution argues the case for god(s). The atheist represents
the defense, which has two non-mutually exclusive tactics at its dis-
posal. It can argue a ‘‘negative’’ case, demonstrating the inadequacy of
the prosecution’s evidence and logic, on the basis of the ‘‘burden of
proof.’’ Given the presumption of innocence, which amounts to the
presumption that the charge or claim is false, the atheist/defense can
simply punch holes in the prosecution’s case and prevail; in fact, the
atheist/defense has no obligation to make its own case at all, since if
the prosecution’s case is insufficient, the defense wins by default. As
we stated above, if we consider atheism, not theism, the default posi-
tion—if we, that is, start from the ‘‘presumption of atheism’’2—then a
negative atheist case, or no atheist case at all, carries the day.
The negative case, highlighting the flaws of theism or the reasons
not to accept a belief in god(s), is so-called ‘‘negative atheism.’’ How-
ever, if atheism as defense can mount its own case, offer its own evi-
dence and logic for why such a thing as god(s) cannot and do not
exist, then this constitutes ‘‘positive atheism.’’ In a word, positive athe-

ism not only demonstrates what is wrong with theism but what is right
with atheism. But the position of atheism is the same in both
approaches. It is only the argumentative strategy that differs.
ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM

There might be another way to conceive of variations in or alterna-
tives to atheism. One common tendency is to distinguish between athe-
ism and agnosticism. Quite literally, many people who do not avow an
active belief in god(s) eschew the term ‘‘atheist’’ and dub themselves
‘‘agnostics’’ instead. This is partly a tactical decision too: ‘‘atheist’’ still
has serious pejorative connotations in the Western theist world. But for
a large number of people, the choice to don the cloak of agnosticism is
more intentional—presumably to avoid the two ‘‘extremes’’ of theism
and atheism and to stake out a middle ground, to postpone or circum-
vent a stand on the question of god(s).
In a way, this attempt is understandable, but it is based on bogus
notions of atheism, of agnosticism, and of the nature of the god-
question. First, atheism is not an ‘‘extreme’’ position, any more than
theism is (most theists do not see themselves as extremists). Atheism is
actually a very humble claim, that there is no reason to conclude that
there is any such thing as god(s) and therefore that it is inadvisable
and impermissible to jump to such a conclusion. Atheism, as we have
established, is not a ‘‘belief’’ that there is no such thing as god(s) but a
default or a reasoned lack of any such belief.
While atheism is not a belief in any form, some people suggest that
it might be possible or necessary to place atheism and theism at oppo-
site ends of a belief spectrum—theism on the ‘‘have god-belief’’ pole
and atheism on the ‘‘do not have god-belief’’ pole. The standard notion
of agnosticism, then, that it is somewhere in between. But this is the
wrong understanding of agnosticism. The very word, a- for ‘‘not/with-
out’’ and gnosis for ‘‘knowledge,’’ indicates that agnosticism is referring
to something quite different. If we examine the original formulation of
the meaning of agnosticism, given by Thomas Huxley over a century
ago, the point becomes clearer:
Agnosticism is not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in the
vigorous application of a single principle. . . . Positively the principle
may be expressed as, in matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far
as it can carry you without other considerations. And negatively, in mat-
ters of the intellect, do not pretend the conclusions are certain that are
not demonstrated or demonstrable. It is wrong for a man to say he is cer-
tain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can produce evi-
dence which logically justifies that certainty.3
What Is Atheism? 9
Notice—and this is of critical importance—that agnosticism is explicitly

not a ‘‘belief’’ at all but a method, a process, and one for evaluating
knowledge-claims and thus of avoiding ‘‘belief.’’
Thus, it is plain to see that agnosticism is not a ‘‘middle position’’
between theism and atheism because it is not a position at all. It is,
rather, a means of arriving at a position. We might be better served to
use the term in an adverbial sense, in the sense of thinking or judging
‘‘agnostically.’’ But when we make this shift, we see that ‘‘agnostic’’
means nothing more than ‘‘rational,’’ for to use reason is to follow the
facts and only the facts, to base conclusions only on what can be dem-
onstrated or detected in some way, and to refrain from ‘‘jumping to
conclusions’’ on the basis of personal preference, emotion, or ‘‘faith.’’
So agnosticism is not a third position on the theism/atheism spec-
trum, because it is not a position at all and therefore not a position
about belief, certainly not about religious belief in particular. One can—
and should—advance agnostically on all subjects. But if agnosticism is
neither a position nor a belief-related concept, then it cannot be an alter-
native to theism and atheism. In fact, if we accept agnosticism as a
method or process rather than as a position, then the only question is:
What is the outcome of applying that method to questions of god(s)?
The answer can only be, since we have no clear demonstrations of
god(s), no certain evidence of god(s), and no trustworthy way to detect
god(s), that we should reject any talk of god(s), affirm the presumption
of atheism, and conclude that there is no such thing as god(s).
For, despite the insincere attempt at humility inherent in conven-
tional agnosticism, the god-question only has two possible answers: yes
there is such a thing as god(s) or no there is no such thing as god(s).
Agnosticism notwithstanding, there is no third position; there is no
spectrum. Even if one were to come down on the affirmative side, there
would still be other vexing questions to answer, like how many gods
and with what specific qualities—questions that might still cause theism
to crash on the rocks of evidence and logic, not to mention other the-
isms. But to the fundamental question, the answer is either yes or no.
There might, indeed, be occasions, in religion as elsewhere, on which
one postpones calling the question—for want of evidence, for instance.
But, in religion as in law and science, if one does not explicitly conclude
yes, then one tentatively concludes no. No sensible jurist or researcher
would say, ‘‘We have no evidence that this defendant is guilty or that
this drug is safe and effective, but let’s put him in jail/prescribe it until
we do.’’ There is no third position between being in jail and not
being in jail, or between prescribing a medicine and not prescribing it.
Hesitating—often a wise course—is tentatively not doing. The conven-
tional agnostic may think that she is hesitating to decide between god(s)
and not-god(s), but in the meantime she is not believing in god(s). In
other words, agnosticism in the everyday sense is implicit or tacit or
tentative atheism. From the conventional descriptions of the Christian

god, he would not make the distinction.
ATHEISM, SECULARISM, AND OTHER ISMS

Atheism is also associated with another constellation of terms, such
as rationalism, materialism, skepticism, humanism, irreligion, and of
course secularism, a central topic in modern politics and society and in
the present volumes. In the small space available here it is impossible to
explore thoroughly these related but distinct concepts. Let it be said that
not all humanists are atheists (there are those who call themselves ‘‘reli-
gious’’ or ‘‘spiritual’’ humanists, although the sense of that identity
escapes me), but presumably all atheists are humanists, since what else
could they be? Skepticism (of the nonepistemological variety, epistemo-
logical skepticism positing that all knowledge is impossible) is merely
another name for agnosticism: being wary of claims on one’s credulity
unless evidence can be demonstrated. One could (and should) be
a skeptic about any and all subjects, and the ‘‘skeptic community’’
expends at least as much energy on pseudoscience as on religion.
Ideally, most if not all, atheists are rationalists and materialists, although
indisputably not all can give nuanced philosophical accounts of either.
However, some atheists call themselves ‘‘spiritual,’’ and as we have
shown above, atheism in its broadest sense does not preclude other reli-
gious concepts like nature spirits, dead ancestors, and supernatural
forces. Therefore, it would be inappropriate, except in the theist-
dominated Western context, to equate atheism with irreligion, since as
we now know, most religions have been a-theistic. However, I would
propose that a rationalist atheist would also dismiss claims about nature
spirits, ancestor spirits, and the entire line of ‘‘spiritual’’ thinking, as
nothing more than a metaphor run amok.
With little doubt, the most common and important idea in the social
and political struggle over religion/theism and atheism is ‘‘secular’’
and its permutations (e.g., secularism, secularization, and secularity).
To many observers, secular is tantamount to atheism: the eminent
scholar of religion Martin Marty actually regards secularism as a form
of ‘‘unbelief,’’ which he defines as ‘‘any kind of serious or permanent
departure from belief in God (as symbolized by the term ‘Trinity’) and
from the belief that God not only is but acts (as symbolized by the his-
toric reference ‘Incarnation’).’’4 The nonsensical and prejudicial nature
of this statement is self-evident: it is so Christian-centered, and even
more specifically Christian-trinitarian–centered, that not only Islam and
Hinduism and Buddhism would have to classified as secularism and
unbelief but so would Unitarianism and many if not most forms of
Protestant Christianity. The persistent and pernicious bias in favor of
Christianity in the theism/atheism and the secularism debates is
What Is Atheism? 11
apparent even in the work of David Martin, who confesses in his A

General Theory of Secularization that ‘‘by the term ‘religion’ in this con-
text I mean Christianity.’’5 But this can never under any circumstances
be acceptable.
Since secularism is the theme of the chapters to follow and is often
construed to be the equivalent of atheism if not a stealth version of
atheism, it is worth dwelling on the subject for a moment. In short,
‘‘secular’’ or its permutations is one of those concepts that needs to be
unpacked and relativized in its cross-cultural context. Let us begin with
the observation that, at least since the time of Durkheim and echoed in
other scholars like Eliade, it has been commonplace in social science to
propose a dichotomy between the spiritual/religious and the secular,
often in the form of ‘‘sacred’’ versus ‘‘profane.’’ Naturally, this habit is
once again an importation from conventional Christianity, which, from
its earliest days, has drawn a line between two irresolvable worlds
(‘‘My kingdom is not of this world,’’ Jesus is reported to have said).
Augustine gave the classic formulation, separating the ‘‘city of the
world’’ from the ‘‘city of God.’’ The division is not unique to Christian-
ity: Islam also distinguishes between the dar al-harb or the domain of
strife and nonbelief and the dar al-islam or the domain of peace and
true belief (that is, Islamic belief).
While it may be common to separate, or try to separate, the sacred
from the secular, it is by no means universal nor is it ultimately success-
ful. Even within Christianity, ‘‘secular’’ was not always the opposite or
absence of ‘‘sacred’’: a ‘‘secular priest’’ was still a religious figure, sim-
ply one who participated in the ordinary world versus one who took
monastic vows and secluded himself from the world (but still unavoid-
ably lived in it). Secular could even refer to the laity, who might be and
hopefully were quite religious. Worse for Christian thinking, not all reli-
gions entail the same dualistic and mutually exclusive, even hostile,
division of worlds. In many religions, the concerns of religion are not
(at least entirely) ‘‘otherworldly’’ at all, nor is ‘‘spirit’’ or ‘‘the sacred’’
cloistered in some remote inaccessible dimension. Buddhism and Confu-
cianism locate their primary interests and practices very much in this
world. Shinto is as social and political as a religion can be. In Hua
(Papua New Guinea) religion, the main concern is ingesting the correct
‘‘substance’’ (nu), which is regarded as both supernatural and natural
and ‘‘distinctly nonspiritual,’’ which ultimately takes the form of eating
the right foods prepared by the right persons.6 Finally, Driberg has
argued convincingly that ancestor spirit belief in Africa is essentially sec-
ular, since ‘‘The idea behind the whole [ancestor spirit] business is noth-
ing sacred, but a social recognition of the fact that the dead man has
acquired a new status and that . . . he is still one with [the community].’’7
In fact, with a little thought it is obvious that a religion cannot be
perfectly ‘‘spiritual’’ or ‘‘otherworldly,’’ no matter how hard it tries.
Humans, even the most stubborn fundamentalists, live in the real

world (although they may gripe that they are ‘‘not of the world’’). The
objects and symbols of religion—crosses, churches, bells, candles, stat-
ues, ‘‘holy’’ water, or what have you—are natural, physical things. The
concerns of religion are always closely tied to the mundane world—
health, long life, fertility, wealth, luck, and so on. And religion enters
into everyday life in myriad and almost unnoticed ways—the foods we
eat, the clothes we wear, the ways we groom our bodies, our social
institutions, our calendar systems, and the very space that we occupy
(e.g., with ‘‘sacred grounds’’ and religious buildings).
The point is that the sacred/secular dichotomy is, like most dichoto-
mies, false. ‘‘Secular’’ certainly does not mean ‘‘atheistic’’ or without
religion, definitely not anti-religion; in fact, as I illustrate in a chapter
in the second volume of this collection, there is a proud tradition of
‘‘Islamic secularism.’’ Despite the predictions of the ‘‘secularization theo-
rists’’ like Marx and Weber, ‘‘modern’’ or secular processes have not
meant the demise of religion and have actually proved to be quite com-
patible with religion—have even led, at least in the short term, to a sur-
prising revival of religion. The problem with earlier secularization
theories is that they presumed that secularization was a single, all-
encompassing, and unidirectional phenomenon. However, as Peter
Glasner has more recently shown, ‘‘secular’’ and ‘‘secularization’’ embrace
a variety of diverse processes and responses, not all of which—indeed, few
of which—are inherently antithetical to religion.8
Glasner identifies ten different versions of secularization, organized
in terms of whether their thrust is primarily institutional, normative, or
cognitive. They include
. Decline—the reduction in quantitative measures of religious identification

and participation, such as lower church attendance/membership or
decreased profession of belief
. Routinization—‘‘settling’’ or institutionalizing through integration into the
society and often compromise with the society, which tends to occur
when the religion becomes large and is therefore one mark of success as a
religion, although it is less intense and distinct than in its early formative
‘‘cultish’’ or new-religious-movement stage
. Differentiation—a redefined place or relation to society, perhaps accepting
its status as one religion in a plural religious field or morphing into a
more ‘‘generic’’ and therefore mass-appeal religion
. Disengagement—the detachment of certain facets of social life from
religion
. Transformation—change over time (Glasner cites Weber’s analysis of Prot-
estantism as a transformation of Christianity for a new social milieu)
. Generalization—a particular kind of change in which it becomes less spe-
cific, more abstract, and therefore more inclusive, like the supposed ‘‘civil
What Is Atheism? 13
religion’’ in the United States; it moderates its more controversial and

potentially divisive claims and practices
. Desacralization—the evacuation of ‘‘supernatural’’ beings and forces from
the material world, leaving culture and rationality to guide humans
instead
. Segmentation—the development of specialized religious institutions,
which take their place beside other specialized social institutions
. Secularization—the processes of urbanization, industrialization, rationali-
zation, bureaucratization, and cultural/religious pluralism through which
society moves away from the ‘‘sacred’’ and toward the ‘‘profane’’
. Secularism—the only form that leads to outright rejection of religion,
amounting to atheism
The upshot of this analysis is that secularism most assuredly does not
translate simply and directly into atheism. Many good theists support
the secularization of the American government in the form of the ‘‘sepa-
ration of church and state,’’ and all of them go about at least part of their
day without doing religion. ‘‘Secular’’ in this sense does not mean ‘‘anti-
religious’’ but rather ‘‘religiously neutral.’’ Despite the objections of some
critics, religious neutrality, even the absence of religion from certain
human phenomena, is not atheism. When people do their banking, or
play baseball, or go on vacation without references to their god(s), this is
hardly a rejection of their god(s). Religious people most assuredly may
and do bring their religion into nonspiritual activities and occasions, but
that merely proves the point that secularization can work in two entirely
opposite directions. It can mean, and more conventionally means, the
evacuation of religion from social territories it formerly occupied (like
disestablishing a state religion). But it can also mean the penetration of
religion into social territories it did not formerly occupy and which serve
no essential religious function, like forming a church basketball league.
In fact, religion is all too keen, and all too effective, at ‘‘secularizing’’ in
this latter sense: notice that the ‘‘mega-churches’’ in the United States
offer not only ‘‘spiritual’’ services but everything from child day care to
sports to movie nights to book clubs to foreign language classes. Wasn’t
it the Catholic church that discovered long ago the religious value of
‘‘secular’’ activities like bingo and potluck dinners?
THE ‘‘NEW ATHEISM’’ AND THE FUTURE OF ATHEISM

Atheism has been very much in the public eye in recent years, partly
due to the anti-religion backlash in response to the faith-based violence
and terrorism that has swept the world (not least in the September 11,
2001, attacks by fanatical Muslims) and partly due to the series of sur-
prisingly blunt and commercially successful books published since
2004. Actually, the current ‘‘push’’ of atheism can perhaps be dated to
two earlier books: George Smith’s 1989 Atheism: The Case against God9
and Dan Barker’s 1992 Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist.10
But atheism entered an unprecedented period of confidence and
enthusiasm with the publication of Sam Harris’ best-selling 2004 offer-
ing, The End of Faith.11 It was quickly followed by Daniel Dennett’s
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon and Richard Daw-
kins’ The God Delusion, and Harris’ follow-up Letter to a Christian
Nation, all published in 2006, not to mention Christopher Hitchens’
2007 contribution, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.12
More quietly, a small industry of atheist publishing has produced a
wave of activity, including two of my own books, Natural Atheism in
2004 and Atheism Advanced in 2008.13
It is especially noteworthy that the ‘‘big four’’ of Harris, Dennett,
Dawkins, and Hitchens have not only enjoyed significant market and
media success but that they obtained major publishers for their work;
one can imagine a time not so long ago when a prominent popular
press would not have touched such titles. Collectively, these writers
are regarded as the founders of the so-called ‘‘new atheism,’’ which is,
if nothing else, profitable and vociferous. However, precisely how new
is it, what does it add to the discussion of atheism/theism/religion,
and where does atheism go from here?
There is no doubt that the new atheism is unabashed, even aggres-
sive, and more than a little in-your-face. There is some debate within
the atheist community as to whether this is a good thing. Some go so
far as to disown the very moniker ‘‘atheist’’ in favor of other identities
like ‘‘humanist,’’ ‘‘freethinker,’’ ‘‘secularist,’’ ‘‘agnostic,’’ or such origi-
nal names as ‘‘bright’’ or ‘‘universist.’’ Others, on the contrary, con-
sider these concessions a kind of appeasement, a way of ‘‘passing’’ in a
society that is controlled by theists and in which ‘‘our kind’’ are as
unwelcome as blacks or gays used to be (and sometimes still are).
The political/identity issues inherent in the new atheism are one
thing. A greater concern, from my perspective, is the content. For the
most part, there is nothing particularly new offered at all; what is new
is mostly that their atheism is, as we might say, ‘‘loud and proud.’’ But
much of the new atheism is aimed in two well-worn and not entirely
wise directions. The first is the never-ending effort to ‘‘disprove
god(s)’’ or worse, ‘‘disprove God.’’ Many of these works, and their less
famous counterparts, tirelessly rehearse arguments against god(s), a
project to which no new ideas have been added in decades, if not gen-
erations or millennia. Quite frankly, everyone (including an honest the-
ist) recognizes that arguments in favor of god(s) fail, and if they did
succeed, they would not establish the existence of any particular god(s)
over all the others; that is to say, the tired old cosmological or ontologi-
cal or teleological arguments would defend Zeus or Odin or Vishnu as
effectively as Yahweh or Allah.
What Is Atheism? 15
There are two other problems with the new atheism. One is that
much of its rhetoric is targeted not at the falsity of theism but at the
danger of theism. Harris’ major book pounds away at religious terror-
ism, giving Islam in particular a sound thrashing. Hitchens insists that
religion ruins everything. Both essentially argue that religion is not so
much wrong as bad. And of course much of the criticism of religion is
directed, explicitly or implicitly, at religious fundamentalism (although
Harris uniquely and equally condemns ‘‘moderate religion’’ as an
excuse for and virtually a gateway drug to fundamentalism). No one,
it turns out, likes fundamentalism, except for the fundamentalists
themselves, and so the analysis of and attack on fundamentalism not
only fails to move us very far but mischaracterizes religion.
The objection to the religion-is-bad, or more pointedly the religion-is-
violent, argument is that not all religion is violent and, quite frankly, it is
irrelevant whether or not religion is bad or violent for determining if reli-
gion is true or false. It is not inconceivable that theism might be correct—
there really is such a thing as god(s)—and violent too: if a violent god, or
a god of war, or a mortal threat to the religious community exists, then
religious violence would be a natural and justifiable part of the picture.
Further, the supposed case against religion/theism is just an instance of
the famous but refuted ‘‘argument from benefit’’ in reverse: atheism has
insisted over the years that religion’s alleged benefits are not germane to
questions of truth, so it cannot now insist that religion’s alleged costs are
germane to those questions. In fact, in the end, this new strategy provides
an out for religion: if atheism is only against bad/violent theism, then it
might have to be for, or at least tolerate, good/peaceful theism. That is a
possible position, but it is not the position of atheism.
At the deepest level, the new atheism suffers from the same syn-
drome that virtually all atheism has suffered since the beginning of
theism—namely, taking the local theism as the essence of religion itself.
The new atheism, and all past argumentative atheism, is as much in
the theist universe as theism is; in fact, so far all atheism that argues
against Christianity has been as much in the Christian universe as
Christianity is: notice that the titles, and the contents, of the new athe-
ism offerings tilt with ‘‘God’’ over and over again (e.g., The God Delu-
sion, God is Not Great, and God: The Failed Hypothesis) and never with
Zeus or Odin or Vishnu, let alone nature spirits, dead ancestors, or
supernatural forces. The new atheism is trapped in the gravitational
pull of theism generally and Christianity specifically as surely and
securely as any Christian congregation. If recent psycholinguistics is
right, then arguing against god(s) is just as effective at perpetuating
god-concepts as arguing for god(s). No doubt, this is why theists love to
debate atheists: they can get atheists publicly talking about their god(s)!
If the purported new atheism is a worthwhile first step—it certainly
has atheists energized and self-congratulatory, it is only a first step.
What is the future for atheism, in a god-saturated world? There are

those who claim that it has no future; Alister McGrath already detects
the ‘‘twilight of atheism,’’ the ‘‘fall of disbelief in the modern world.’’14
That is as may be: just as secularization theorists prematurely predicted
the death of religion, so the likes of McGrath may be prematurely pre-
dicting the death of atheism.
A different point appears in John Haught’s recent criticism of the
new atheism, which he calls ‘‘amateur,’’ lacking profundity and
pathos.15 The real atheists—Marx and Nietzsche and Camus—knew
and felt the full weight of their rejection of god(s), or, as Nietzsche saw
it, their murder of god(s). Not for nothing was it a madman who
announced Nietzsche’s death of God:
What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is
it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are
we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all direc-
tions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an
infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not
become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while?16
What Nietzsche described is the classic condition of nihilism, and

Haught demands that atheists confront and perhaps dwell in their
nihilism as the ‘‘hard-core atheists’’ of the nineteenth century did. The
new, ‘‘soft-core atheists,’’ these trivializers of humanity’s greatest
achievement or crime (depending on your perspective), delusionally
imagine ‘‘that life will go on as usual once religion disappears.’’
Yet one wonders in the twenty-first century whether the (melo)drama
of nineteenth-century atheism is not more than a little overwrought. Per-
haps in Marx’s and Nietzsche’s time, when atheism was still compara-
tively strange and scary, it seemed that losing the Christian god actually
was like losing the sun, like losing all light and sense and direction. Pre-
sumably the Greeks and the Norse and the Egyptians felt the same:
without Zeus or Odin or Osiris there was nothing, only nothingness.
But when Zeus and Odin and Osiris, and countless other gods and non-
god supernatural beings passed into historical obscurity, the sun kept
shining. Even better, new light, new sense, and new direction appeared.
Two things are true: humans cannot live without sense, and humans
create their sense. For was it not also Nietzsche who wrote, in his grand
atheistic mythology Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that humans are camels who
bear the burden of someone else’s truths, someone else’s religion, some-
one else’s god(s)? When the burden becomes too great, humans throw
off and destroy these ancient tablets of good and evil, becoming lions,
nay-sayers, perhaps even nihilists, certainly egoists. This is the stage at
which atheism has lingered for centuries, at which the new atheism still
pauses or expires. But a really new atheism, an atheism of the future, an
What Is Atheism? 17
atheism that humans can live in, will come from Nietzsche’s third meta-
morphosis, the child, the yes-sayer and creator:
To create new values—that even the lion cannot do; but the creation of
freedom for oneself for new creation—that is within the power of the lion.
The creation of freedom—for that, my brothers, the lion is needed. To
assume the right to new values—that is the most terrifying assumption
for a reverent spirit that would bear much. . . . For the game of creation,
my brothers, a sacred ‘‘Yes’’ is needed: the spirit now wills his own will,
and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.17
What may be most interesting of all about twenty-first-century atheism

is that this challenge, this project, now sounds familiar, even welcome,
even easy.
The poorly named new atheism may actually prove to be the last
shots of the old atheism—the last arguments, the last struggles against
someone else’s god(s), the last nay-saying. The future of atheism is not
in disproving god(s) but, as with the nontheistic and pretheistic reli-
gions, in not talking about god(s) at all. It is in creating new institutions,
new practices, new habits, new celebrations, and new ways of life that
have nothing whatsoever to do with god(s). It is in reclaiming from the-
ism what theism usurped from humans in the first place—time, space,
nature, even our very bodies. Religion, theism or otherwise, creates little
or nothing: without religion, there would still be birth and death, love
and marriage, growth and the passage of time, norms and morals, and
occasions for joy and sorrow. Religion, theism or otherwise, barges into
these situations and demands a place among them; worse yet, it asserts
that it invented them, that these and all other natural and social things
depend on it. When Nietzsche’s madman killed the local god, birth and
death and love and time and morals and joy all survived—to many
people’s, including Professor Haught’s, surprise. Once, atheism meant
the opposition to, the resistance against, god(s). Now, it only means
freedom, to establish new norms and new institutions, and to tear them
down and establish new ones again. Like the day when smoking ends
once and for all and anti-smoking campaigns become extinct, so when
believing in god(s) ends atheism—as an anti-god(s) campaign—will
become extinct. But on that day, everyone will be a nonsmoker, just as
everyone will be a non-god-er, and both will have their health and their
freedom to do with what they will.
NOTES
1. John Wesley, Sermon 95: On the Education of Children, http://www.
godrules.net/library/wsermons/wsermons95.htm (accessed July 16, 2008).
2. Antony Flew, God, Freedom, and Immorality: A Critical Analysis (Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus Books, 1984).
3. Thomas Huxley, Agnosticism, http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/

thomas_huxley/huxley_wace/part_02.html (accessed July 16, 2008).
4. Martin E. Marty, Varieties of Unbelief (New York: Anchor Books, 1966
[1964]), 30.
5. David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (New York, Evanston, IL,
and San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978), 2.
6. Anna S. Meigs, Food, Sex, and Pollution: A New Guinea Religion (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984).
7. J. H. Driberg, ‘‘Supplement: The Secular Aspect of Ancestor-Worship in
Africa,’’ Journal of the Royal African Society 35 (1936): 7.
8. Peter E. Glasner, The Sociology of Secularisation: A Critique of a Concept
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
9. George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1989).
10. Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI:
Freedom from Religion Foundation, 1992).
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004).
12. Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
(New York: Viking, 2006); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston and
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006); Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
(New York: Knopf, 2006).
13. David Eller, Natural Atheism (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press,
2004); David Eller, Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker (Cranford,
NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008).
14. Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in
the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, 2004).
15. John F. Haught, ‘‘Amateur Atheists: Why the New Atheism Isn’t Serious,’’
Christian Century February 26, 2008.
16. Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche (Harmondsworth, U.K. and
New York: Penguin Books, 1977 [1954]), 95.
17. Ibid., 139.
Chapter 2
Atheism, Secularity,
the Family, and Children
Christel Manning
What is the impact of atheism and secularity on the family and chil-
dren? Specifically, how are atheist and/or secular families different
from religious ones, and how does a nonreligious upbringing affect
children? This is a difficult question to answer, not only because of defi-
nitional problems addressed elsewhere in this volume, but because the
topic carries such ideological baggage. The fact that we even ask this
question says a lot about the cultural significance of religion in America.
Although the number of people with no religious affiliation is growing,
there is a common perception that religion is good for family and chil-
dren and that atheism and secularism therefore weaken families and
put children at risk. That perception is supported not just by conserva-
tive religious pundits but by the supposedly liberal academic establish-
ment, resulting in guilt and worry among many secular parents.
I should say, at the onset, that I am one of those parents. I am secular
in the sense of not identifying or affiliating with religion in my adult life,
but I was raised in a family in which religion was a powerful presence.
Religion provided moral structure. My sisters and I could not watch tel-
evision or listen to rock music (considered a corrupting influence) and
we were made to kneel and pray in front of our beds before we went to
sleep. But religion also provided magic and mystery. I remember Christ-
mas at my German grandmother’s house, how she closed the door to
the living room while she decorated the tree, forbidding entry until
Christmas Eve when we would all file in while she played Silent Night
on the piano. There were real candles on the tree, the room smelled of
wax and pine needles, incense and cinnamon, and everything glittered
with light reflecting off the glass ornaments and tinsel and the brightly
wrapped boxes below. The entire family would sing, children would
recite poems, and adults would lead religious readings and prayers.
Eventually, the children were sent off to bed, dreaming of the presents
that awaited them in the morning, while the adults sat drinking and
talking until late into the night. My daughter, now seven, has none of
that. Although I cannot, with integrity, raise her with religion, I often
wish I could give her what I had. It is this quandary that led to my
research on unchurched parents, some of the results of which are pre-
sented here.
This chapter will argue that the impact of atheism and secularity on
family and children is complex and not necessarily negative. The litera-
ture suggests that secularism may impact families in at least two ways:
its effect on family structure and its effect on children. However, a
critical review of that literature reveals that the exact nature of that
impact remains disputed. The impact of secularism on family structure
is unclear because it is impossible to determine the exact causal role of
religion. The impact of secularism on children’s behavior and well-
being is unclear because existing studies do not adequately define secu-
larism or distinguish between different types of secularism. Preliminary
research that corrects for these problems suggests that children affili-
ated with secular organizations can get benefits similar to those pro-
vided by religious affiliation.
THE PERCEIVED CONNECTION BETWEEN RELIGION AND FAMILY

Paradoxically, even as secularism increases among American families,
the perception remains widespread that religion and family go together.
One reason is that many of those counted as secular really aren’t. Recent
surveys find the number of Americans indicating no religious preference
has almost doubled.1 But most of that increase comes from increases in
unchurched believers.2 Previous research3 has consistently shown the
majority of the unaffiliated to be religious, with most holding traditional
beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible and many engaging in regular
religious practice such as prayer or scripture reading. Even those who
reject traditional religion will often identify as spiritual and adhere to
beliefs and practices originating outside denominational religious insti-
tutions.4 The highest levels of secularism are found among the young,
but this may be a temporary phenomenon. Smith’s recent survey of
American teenagers found that many young people who are disengaged
from religion are not rejecting it, but see it as something they plan to
return to at a later stage in life when they marry and start a family.5
Secularism is perceived as an individual pursuit tied to the freedom and
exploration associated with youth—something we all must leave behind
when we settle down to adult commitments.
Atheism, Secularity, the Family, and Children 21
The identification of religion with family is also rooted in bias and

ignorance about atheism. Secularism may be rising, but atheism
remains a minority position, one that is perceived as deviant by many
Americans.6 According to a recent Pew survey, 63 percent of Ameri-
cans would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate if she or
he were atheist—more than might be influenced by the candidate being
Muslim (46 percent) or homosexual (46 percent).7 It should come as no
surprise, then, that divorced parents have had custody rights denied or
limited because of atheism8 and that seven in ten Americans would be
troubled if a member of their immediate family married an atheist.9
Most of what the public knows about atheist families comes from
media coverage about atheist parents fighting to protect their kids from
religious influence in public schools: prayer, pledge of allegiance, and
study of creationism. Such accounts are unrepresentative of most athe-
ist parents who are not political activists. Worse, we are left with the
impression of atheist parents as ideologues, using their children as
pawns to promote their own political agenda.
Religion is also tied to family because of political rhetoric. In the cul-
ture war over gender and sexual orientation that has divided this
nation for more than 30 years, religious conservatives have skillfully
appropriated the word ‘‘family’’ for political ends. Legislation discour-
aging abortion or women’s employment were labeled ‘‘profamily,’’ and
‘‘family values’’ became a code word for conservative Christian moral-
ity. The Family Channel is actually a major Christian television broad-
caster, and Focus on the Family is a conservative Christian lobby
group. The liberal use of individual-choice language (e.g., prochoice,
sexual preference) has reinforced the perceived link of religion and
family, and the media’s repeated use of family as codeword for reli-
gion has further cemented that meaning.10
However, it is not just religious conservatives who identify religion
with family—even many secularists do. Most contemporary secularists
are individuals who were themselves raised with religion, and what-
ever their misgivings or disinterest in religion as adults, they often
cherish the memories of childhood associated with religion: the excite-
ment and mystery of a first communion, the smells and sounds of fam-
ily gatherings at Christmas or Passover, the struggle to remain still
while kneeling in a hard wooden pew. Fay cites nostalgia and fantasy
to be an important reason why secular parents want religion for their
children, giving numerous examples of parents who insist on having
their children baptized or conducting a traditional religious circumci-
sion ceremony even though they themselves no longer believe in god.
She writes, ‘‘However relaxed parents might be about going it alone
metaphysically or morally, few I spoke to were sanguine about
what they perceived as the emotional and cultural loss to their children
of being raised without religion’s shaping and celebratory power,
without its stories and its poetry, without its web of symbols, and
its magic.’’11
Parent’s don’t want to deprive their kids of something that is widely
perceived as good—and religion is. Even liberal academics such as psy-
chologist Robert Coles assert that children are ‘‘naturally spiritual’’12
and for the last 50 years, numerous studies report that children who
grow up with religion do better on most measures of behavior and well-
being than those who don’t (this literature is further discussed below).
While most parents do not read scholarly journals, the conclusions are
picked up by the popular press. The result is that many secularists and
atheists worry about how their children will fare without religion and
often appear defensive in explaining their secular parenting choices.
Popular magazines and newspapers regularly run editorials (usually
around Christmas time) about the impact of atheism on children, both
in terms of the prejudice they face as a minority group, and in terms of
what they might lose (joy, comfort, and moral values) by lacking reli-
gion.13 In the early 1990s New York Times reporter Martha Fay, a lapsed
Catholic, published a book entitled, Do Children Need Religion?, in
which she reported on the growing number of secular parents and the
ways they raised their children. The parents Fay interviewed were
themselves disconnected from church, but saw religion as a source of
moral guidance and community, and worried about whether or not
their children could ‘‘become good and loving people’’ and ‘‘find a
place in the culture’’ without it. Secular parents receive little guidance
on answering these questions, compared to the vast literature of advice
books on Christian parenting. Fay’s was among the first in a small but
growing literature directed at secular parents that has more recently
included books about pagan, Buddhist, and atheist parenting.14 The
authors of these essays usually conclude that secular children will be
fine, but the very existence of these writings is testament to their need
to persuade themselves and the rest of the culture.
With all the hand-wringing, it is surprising that there has been no
systematic study of secular families and childrearing in the United
States. The literature suggests that secularization impacts family and
children in at least two ways: family structure and children’s well-
being, but there is little consensus about either subject.
Secularization and Family Structure

Secularization’s influence on family structure is closely tied to issues
of gender and sexuality that are discussed in detail elsewhere in this
volume, so I will present only a brief overview here. The issue has
been widely debated and carries considerable political baggage. Con-
servatives argue that secularization weakens family ties by legitimating
divorce, contraception, abortion, and sex outside of marriage, including
homosexual relationships. Liberals dispute those claims, emphasizing

the ways in which secularization has liberated oppressed groups from
patriarchal authority. While both arguments have merit, it is all but
impossible to sort out who is right.
The structure of the American family has changed significantly over
the last century. What is often termed the traditional family (male
breadwinner married to female homemaker with several children) is no
longer demographically typical. For the last 25 years, the majority of
women with children have worked outside the home, and National
Public Radio recently reported that for the first time in history the
majority of mothers under 30 were unmarried. The contemporary
family includes a diversity of models, including single-parent families,
blended families, and gay and lesbian families.
Secularization does seem to have played a role in that change. His-
torically, secularization has gone hand in hand with the decline in fam-
ily size and a weakening of parental authority. As modern societies
become more secular, people have fewer children, women go off to
work, the divorce rate rises, childrearing becomes more permissive,
and young people are less deferent to their elders. Demographic statis-
tics for the contemporary United States bear this out. Secularization is
associated with lower fertility rates and weaker marriage ties. Single
adults, especially males, are most likely to indicate no religious prefer-
ence; individuals with no religious preference have lower fertility rates.
Secularism is more common among people who are single, divorced,
or childless than among those who are married with children, and sin-
gle and unwed mothers are more likely to be secular.15
But it is not at all clear that religion or lack thereof plays a causal
role in determining family structure. There is an obvious logical connec-
tion as secular ideas challenge traditional theologies which legitimate
large families, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority. If prohibitions
of contraception or divorce or homosexual relationships are no longer
perceived as a mandated by god, it is easier to break them. But reli-
gious arguments can be made for small families and/or for women’s
liberation. Among Victorian Protestants, small families were encouraged
as a sign of sexual restraint, and by some accounts the feminist move-
ment had religious rather than secular origins.16
There are other causal factors that contributed to family change inde-
pendent of secularization, such as economics, education, reproductive
technology, and the sexual and gender liberation movements.17 The ris-
ing cost of having children, for example, has a significant impact on fer-
tility. In the farm based economy of colonial America, and the emergent
industrial economy of the nineteenth century, children contributed to
family income by working alongside their parents. But legislation man-
dating education and outlawing child labor meant that children became
a drain on the family pocketbook. The recent shift to a service and
technology based economy and the associated expectation that every

child must go to college has only aggravated that pattern, creating
strong incentives for all parents to reduce family size, regardless of reli-
gion. The causal relationship between secularization and family struc-
ture may also be reversed. The education and employment of women,
for example, made them more independent and thus more likely to
challenge male authority, which may contribute to the weakening of
religious authority. Self selection also plays a role. Divorced and never-
married mothers, for example, are more likely to be secular, but that
doesn’t mean that secularism made them get a divorce or prevented
them from getting married. Rather, such individuals probably became
secular because so many religions groups condemn unwed motherhood.
Some historians dispute the significance of the changes in family
structure, asserting that the so-called traditional family was never typi-
cal of America. As Stephanie Coontz’s influential study points out,
‘‘today’s diversity of family forms, rates of premarital pregnancy, pro-
ductive labor of wives, and prevalence of blended families, for exam-
ple, would all look much more familiar to colonial Americans than
would 1950s patterns.’’18 Other researchers such as Finke and Stark
have questioned whether America really is more secular than it was a
century ago.19 Changes in family structure have occurred in both the
religious and secular population, and although many religious institu-
tions resisted that change, others have supported them.20 In short, all
we can say for sure is that secularization legitimates and may therefore
accelerate changes in family structure that have a variety of causes.
Secularization and Children

A clearer picture seems to emerge from the literature on secularism
and children. For more than half a century, research reports have stat-
istically linked childhood religious affiliation to positive outcomes.21
While many of these studies were small, they are confirmed by
Christian Smith’s groundbreaking study of teens and religion. Smith’s
research, drawing on nationwide surveys and follow-up interviews
with hundreds of teens found that religious involvement is signifi-
cantly associated with positive life outcomes. Religious teens were sig-
nificantly less likely than secular teens to engage in high-risk behavior
such as smoking, drinking, or drug use, and they were less likely to
drop out of school or be sexually active. They expressed higher levels
of emotional well-being and more meaningful relational ties to parents
and other adults. They placed higher values on honesty, expressed
more compassion for the less fortunate, and were more actively
engaged in their community. These findings held even when Smith
controlled for gender, age, race, region, parental marital status, parental
education, and family income.
The association of secularism and childhood risk factors is far more

disturbing that the link, if any, between secularism and changes in fam-
ily structure. The public is deeply divided over the desirability of
changes in family structure, but nobody wants their kids to drop out of
school, use drugs, or be depressed. It is essential therefore to evaluate
whether secularity, and atheism in particular, pose a risk for children.
A critical analysis of the available evidence suggests that it does not.
THE CAUSAL LINK BETWEEN RELIGION AND POSITIVE

CHILDHOOD OUTCOME REMAINS DISPUTED
It is difficult to establish the causal process in studies linking religious
involvement with positive childhood outcomes. As Smith himself
acknowledges, the ‘‘association is most likely the result of a combination
of complex social processes’’ including both religious and nonreligious
factors such as personality selection (risk averse or joiner personalities
are more likely to be religious), reverse causation (some teenagers who
get in trouble drop out of religious involvement), and indirect religious
effects (e.g., religion supports strong families, which reduces the risk of
teen delinquency).22 It is hard to dispute his conclusion, however, that
such factors cannot explain away the religious influence entirely.
Religious affiliation provides many social benefits that children need.
Smith describes these benefits as falling into three broad categories.
The first is the provision of a moral order. Religion provides not only
moral directives grounded in the authority of tradition, but an organi-
zational context for spiritual experiences that help solidify moral com-
mitments, and adult and peer group role models for moral behavior. A
second benefit of religious affiliation is that youth can acquire learned
competencies including life and leadership skills, coping skills, and cul-
tural capital such as biblical literacy. A third benefit is the social and
organizational ties that go with religious affiliation: religion provides
one of few institutional contexts that are not age-stratified, providing
youth with access to caring adults outside their family as well as net-
working opportunities to other organizations.23 A close look at all of
these benefits, however, shows they are tied to the organizational
aspects of religion, the fact that church or synagogue is a community
of caring adults that guides children and provides support for a shared
moral order. This suggests that those benefits could also be had from
affiliation with a secular organization.
WE LACK GOOD DATA ABOUT ATHEIST AND SECULAR FAMILIES

Unfortunately, the information available about such families is lim-
ited, and what is available is often biased and/or marred by conflicting
and inaccurate definitions of secularism. While there is a large body of
research about the impact of religion on raising children, there has

been no systematic study of atheist or secular parenting in the United
States. Large-scale national studies of youth and religion often ignore
atheist and other secular denominations altogether because the num-
bers are so small. And, as noted in Pasquale’s chapter in this volume,
we have no studies that account for the variations in the secular popu-
lation, which has significant implications for the impact on children.
What we do know about the subject comes from studies on religion
that treat atheism and secularism as the absence of religion, rather than
an alternative worldview that has many diverse variations with possi-
bly distinct outcomes. Such an approach tends to presume the a priori
value of religion, simply assuming that children who lack religion have
‘‘nothing,’’ without investigating the differences that may exist between
different types of secular families. The American Religious Identifica-
tion Survey, for example, asked only couples in mixed marriages about
their children’s religious education.24 The study authors seem to simply
assume that parents with no religious affiliation would not provide
any worldview education for their children, thus ignoring many athe-
ists and humanists who raise their children as Humanists or Unitar-
ians. It is significant that the risks associated with secularism in
Smith’s and other studies focus on individuals who are weak or lack-
ing in religious commitment. What these studies do not address is
what happens when individuals are committed to something else.
A major source of these biases is the lack of clear definitions. Athe-
ism and secularity are defined in opposition to religion, with atheism
(the rejection of theism) often perceived as an extreme form of secular-
ism (the decline of religious influence over society). But atheism is a
narrow term referring to a specific belief (that there is no god), whereas
secularism has various meanings, including a range of attitudes (such
as religious indifference, doubt, agnosticism, and atheism) as well as
behaviors (such as lack of regular church attendance or disregard for
traditional religious morality). Yet the literature on family and children
often does not clearly articulate which of those many meanings is
in use and usually does not differentiate between atheism and secular-
ism. In many studies, atheist families are subsumed under the category
of ‘‘none’’ or ‘‘no religious preference,’’ which includes agnostics,
pagans, and others who are in fact religious. By the same token, those
who do claim religious affiliation include many who are functionally
secular.25
SECULAR FAMILIES VARY CONSIDERABLY

Secularism, like religion, comes in many flavors. Nobody would ever
assume that being raised in a fundamentalist Mormon household
would have the same impact on kids as a liberal Protestant upbringing,
but that is, in essence, how many people look at secularism. As more
recent studies are beginning to demonstrate, secularism is every bit as
diverse as religion and should therefore be expected to have diverse
impact on children.
My own research on secularism confirms the variations discussed
elsewhere in this volume. Over the last three years I interviewed 46
family members who claimed ‘‘no religious preference’’ and ‘‘no reli-
gious affiliation’’ about the upbringing of their children. Previous
research26 has shown significant regional differences in religious disaf-
filiation: the lowest rates are in the South or states where Evangelical
Christianity dominates the culture; the highest rates are in the West and
the urban Northeast (depending on whether affiliation is measured by
attendance or identification). So my respondents were selected to reflect
these differences: from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California
where ‘‘nones’’ are more numerous and from Colorado Springs and
Jacksonville, Florida, where they are less common. Previous research
has shown higher rates of secularism in single-parent households,27 so
an effort was made to include both married and unmarried respond-
ents. Respondents ranged in age from 23 to 55. There were 16 men and
30 women: all were white and had completed at least some college, and
all were employed or supported by someone who was employed (I did
not ask questions about income). Almost all respondents had them-
selves been raised with religion; their religious background included
Catholic, mainline Protestant, conservative Protestant, Jewish, Mormon,
Unitarian, and Bahai. Interviews were conducted in person, using a
semi-structured format, and usually lasted about an hour. This was a
qualitative study which included many respondents who were in fact
religious, so the numbers of actual secularists were small. Nonetheless,
the findings provide concrete illustrations of the diversity among secu-
lar families, providing valuable pointers for future research.
The analysis of my interview data, which is still ongoing, suggests
that there is considerable variation among secular families that is likely
to impact the ways in which they raise their children. One source of
variation is their worldview, that is, the set of beliefs and values that
gives meaning and order to their lives. Another is whether or not they
affiliate with a community that shares and supports that worldview.
VARIETY IN WORLDVIEW
The respondents to my study were selected because they had no
religious affiliation and did not identify as religious. Many of them,
however, turned out to be not secular in the sense of rejecting theism
or supernatural beliefs or basic Judeo-Christian values, and those
who did varied considerably in what kinds of worldviews they
adopted instead.
Pure Secularism
I will define as pure secularists those respondents who were commit-
ted to a nontheistic, materialist worldview, one that is characterized by
questioning rather than accepting particular assertions about the world.
Such individuals identified themselves by a variety of labels such as
atheist, humanist, or skeptic, but were united by their ‘‘faith’’ in rational
empiricism. The meaning of our existence, to these respondents, lies not
in god but in the pursuit of truth. That pursuit requires the opposite of
religious faith, a default position of skepticism, which subjects every
assertion about the world to rational, empirical testing. Thus pure secu-
larists saw the scientific method as the only honest path to truth.
Pure secularists often dismissed religion as irrational and misleading.
David, a married father of three young children, identifies as an ethical
humanist. He does not believe in god or a higher power. ‘‘As a way or
truth to this existence, it [theism] doesn’t hold much truth. I am very
grounded in trying to find out what is real . . . we are what we are
today and then you’re done, and so I try to live life as if this is all I
have, because I think that’s probably true.’’ Raised Presbyterian, David’s
father was a minister, but he became ‘‘alienated from traditional church
teachings from a scientific perspective . . . my undergraduate degree is
in theoretical mathematics, and so the whole notion of any real under-
standing of something beyond the concrete is doubtful.’’ Bob, divorced
father of two teenagers, identifies as an atheist. He too rejects religion
on logical grounds. Like David, he was raised Protestant and actually
intended to become a minister. It was in seminary that he became alien-
ated from religion. ‘‘The first problem was actually the problem of any
one religion’s claim to being true, it seemed like the competing claims
of the religions just negated them.’’ If Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism
all claim divine revelation, and ‘‘those religions have conflicting views
of the world, then all you can do is stand in a room and shout at one
another, I’ve got revelation, no, I’ve got a revelation . . . obviously that’s
ridiculous. And the basis for these claims cannot be established other-
wise, empirically. . . . The second big problem was the age old problem
of evil, how do I maintain traditional Christian theism in the face of all
the evil and suffering in the world, there’s a tsunami, 160,000 people
killed, it doesn’t make any sense.’’ If Bob’s ultimate purpose is finding
truth, then the logical conclusion is that religion must be rejected.
Others see religions not only as false but dangerous, legitimating
oppression, intolerance, and violence. Rosemary, married with two chil-
dren in college and one still at home, jokingly calls herself a ‘‘Pastafarian.
You know, the flying spaghetti monster.’’ She says she is ‘‘neither spir-
itual nor religious, does not believe in god or higher power or spirit
or energy. Nothing.’’ Rosemary has done her share of seeking, study-
ing the ancient scriptures, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Gnostics. But she
ultimately rejected religion ‘‘because I find that, and no matter how

pure the intentions, religion is used to justify what we do, and I reject
that entirely.’’ Religion to Rosemary is too often a tool of self-
deception, allowing us to deny the true motives or our actions.
If pure secularism’s source of meaning is the pursuit of truth, moral-
ity is grounded in the human responsibility to be rational rather than
indulge our often selfish and childlike emotions. Pure secularist
respondents often resonated with best-selling atheist author Sam
Harris, who describes evil as rooted in irrationality and blames religion
for rejecting reason in favor of faith, thus contributing to much cruelty
and violence. To pure secularist respondents, right action is not ‘‘some
rule you blindly follow’’ but the result of critical reflection to determine
‘‘what is best for humanity.’’ That isn’t easy, human nature being
prone to self-deception, but it is something we can learn and practice,
and pure secularist parents actively encouraged such practice in their
children. The importance of teaching children to ‘‘question everything’’
was a recurrent theme in my interviews. According to Rosemary, ‘‘one
of the things that I have stressed with the kids for a long time is to
understand that a word does not mean the same thing for everybody,
and that being called to service does not mean for instance joining the
Marines, you need to question how the word is used and for what pur-
pose, and what it supports.’’ However, pure secularist ethics is more
than just skepticism of other people’s morals; it is also a substantive
ethical system. Children learn that ‘‘there is only our natural world.
There are no gods, no devils, no heavens or hell. By careful thinking
and by using science we can try to understand our world, and we can
try to solve our problems. We are all citizens of the same world, and
all people should work together to make a better world where all peo-
ple can live together peacefully. And we want to protect the Earth both
for ourselves and for all people in the future.’’28 Contrary to the popu-
lar notion that science is value free, pure secularist respondents argued
that rational, scientific thinking can provide a basis for morality that
transcends individual subjectivity. As Rosemary put it: ‘‘we are all par-
ticles in the universe when we are alive, our actions speak, and we can
never know where on the wave we are on a massive wave of history,
and we could be the person that turns the way, and so it will force us
to be ethical and even kind because kind is good.’’ Pure secularism,
then, is not just the rejection of religion, but a positive embrace of a
meaningful moral order that parents actively convey to their children.
Naturalism
I define as naturalist those respondents who expressed an earth-
centered worldview, characterized by the belief that nature is sacred,
deserving respect as much as humans do. Like pure secularist
respondents, naturalists rejected theism, but unlike pure secularists they

drew on Buddhist or Pagan ideas. They often described a force or energy
that animates the universe but were quite adamant that this is not god
and should not be worshipped. Tansy, married mother of three, was
raised a Southern Baptist, but rejected the religion of her childhood
because it made no sense to her intellectually. Instead, she came to ‘‘. . .
believe in a force, very Jedi-ish,’’ and laughs, ‘‘I’m not kidding, people
may laugh at me, but I believe that there’s probably a force that connects
us together, it’s a not a sentient being, I wouldn’t call it a god so I
wouldn’t worship him, it’s an energy out there that that keeps people to-
gether, probably a natural thing.’’ Similarly, Ella, a young woman in her
twenties, who was raised Unitarian, says: ‘‘I believe in an energy or
force, would probably be the best way to describe it, we have a spiritual
connection to the rest of the planet, I believe that there is a force that
connects everyone and that when we die we become a part of that, and
the energy becomes reincarnated, not the person.’’
To these respondents, the meaning of our existence lies in our con-
nection to the natural world. As Barbara, a middle-aged, formerly
Methodist woman, put it, ‘‘I think God is a construct that we humans
have created to explain things that we don’t understand, so that word
doesn’t resonate with me, I don’t like to meditate, I don’t like quiet.
However, I do love going to the mountains, and walking in nature,
and if ever there was a time that I felt spiritual that would be the time
that I felt that way.’’ Naturalists seem less enchanted than pure secula-
rists with the power of rationality, which the former often blame for
environmental degradation and the mechanization of human life.
Nature is where we reconnect with what makes us essentially human,
our bodies and our senses, and reflect on our purpose, which is to
enjoy this planet and make it a better place to live.
To naturalists, morality is grounded in our responsibility to the
planet. Evil is rooted not so much in irrationality as in human arrogance
and greed, our habit of seeking to control this planet for our own selfish
purposes. They point out that most of the major problems in this
world—war, crime, poverty—are not just human but ecological prob-
lems. Fred, for example, is a married man with two grown children who
is an active environmentalist. ‘‘Look at how the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have caused environmental degradation, they bombed the
oil fields, burned down forests, wipe out people’s crops, there is no
water, and that breeds poverty and crime and terrorism, and then we
get new rounds of warfare.’’ To be a good person means to live sustain-
ably on this earth, but that isn’t easy, especially if you live in the United
States and have become accustomed to a lifestyle that carries a huge
environmental footprint. Many naturalists will assign some of the blame
for that footprint to the influence of Judeo-Christian religion that
has ‘‘encouraged man to dominate and exploit this planet.’’ Instead
naturalists often look to Native American culture as an ethical model.

Vicky, for example, was raised Baptist in Arkansas, but left in her teens.
Now a young mother of a preschool age child, she says we must learn
to live in balance, to ‘‘take only what we need, and fix what we have
broken, and to pay respect to nature, like the Native Americans did, I
really resonate with that.’’ She and other naturalists talk about the ethi-
cal challenge of making daily small decisions that support sustainability.
‘‘It’s like every time I go to the supermarket, the organic veggies are
more expensive, sometimes two dollars more per pound, same with fair
trade coffee, or toys made in the United States rather than in China,
actually they are almost impossible to find . . . but then I remind myself,
this is what will help the earth, the small farmers, the workers in poor
countries, this is the right thing to do.’’ Vicky and other naturalist
parents engage their children in these moral challenges. ‘‘I’ve explained
to her about how hot water uses energy, and how making energy pol-
lutes the air and how that hurts people and the planet. She understands
pretty well.’’ Perhaps too well, as Vicky’s daughter now nags her about
taking long showers. A sustainability ethic, then, provides a coherent
moral order for naturalists to live by and raise their children in.
Pluralism
The majority of my respondents did not reject religion, but were
unaffiliated because they refused to commit themselves to one of them.
These pluralists, as I call them, see the world’s religions as different
paths to the same place, though they often find one or two they are
most at home in. Their conceptions of the divine varied: many were
agnostic, some believed in a personal god and others in pantheism, but
they are united in their conviction that ‘‘ultimately, it doesn’t matter.’’
Anne, married mother of a 9-year-old boy, was raised Greek Ortho-
dox, and began studying other religions in college. ‘‘I saw how similar
people who were called masters or saints are, like there are masters in
the Buddhist tradition and there are Christian monks . . . the Sufi mas-
ters, their divine encounters or mystical experiences were so similar, I
started thinking about it.’’ Anne eventually became a devotee of a
Hindu guru, but she rejects all labels. ‘‘I do not feel that any of these
traditions is mine, I feel like they all are, but I don’t feel like I have to
belong to one of them.’’ Now living in California, Anne may seem like
the stereotypical hippie seeker, but there are many pluralists who are
not. Susan, raised as a conservative Jew and living in Connecticut, says:
‘‘I’m a pluralist, I believe all religions are valid and true, so the question
for me is which ritual system speaks most to my heart, and makes most
sense to me intellectually and personally, I guess I would choose Juda-
ism, but it’s hard to be Jewish, there are a lot of rituals you’re supposed
to keep . . . that at this point I’m thinking I’m not going to do, and is it
ok for me to simply go to synagogue but not be kosher and not hold

Passover one year . . . but I also really love Buddhism, it absolutely
makes sense to me, it’s about human nature and meditation practice
keeps me grounded and peaceful. So I enjoy Judaism and Buddhism
for very different reasons, I like the practice of Buddhism but Judaism
has a tradition based on my past and my family and also has god at its
center, which I do want in a religious tradition, so I don’t think I’ll
choose one or the other, I’m figuring out how to make the two work for
me.’’ Susan, married to a Jewish man, has considered joining a syna-
gogue, for her son’s sake, but she can’t find one that ‘‘fits my needs.’’
To pluralists, meaning is rooted in their own personal experience.
What matters is not an over-arching principle such as truth or sustain-
ability, but as Anne puts it, what ‘‘I feel.’’ As Susan phrases it, a world-
view must ‘‘speak to the heart’’ and it must ‘‘work for you.’’ The
pluralist moral order is similarly subjective, often in reaction to respon-
dents’ own experience of religion as associated with dogmatic and rigid
morality. Thus Ken, a young married man who does not yet have chil-
dren, says: ‘‘my biggest fear about religion, and this is probably from
having grown up in Colorado Springs, is the attitude that this is right
and this is wrong, this is good and this is bad, it’s so black and white
for a lot of people who don’t think.’’ He says he ‘‘would be nervous if I
ended up indoctrinating my child with any sort of dogma about this is
right and this is wrong. Of course there are certain things like murder
or—but even then there are certain situations where killing may be
right.’’ If the pluralist morality is rooted in anything, it would be the
primacy of personal choice. Traditional Hindu morality, for example, is
rooted in the concept of karma, which Anne interprets in terms of per-
sonal choice. ‘‘It does not mean you do something bad and then you
have to pay for it. Karma means self-awareness of choosing the right
thing rather than the easy thing. And a lot of times the question is what
is the right thing. . . the right thing in general is to do the least amount
of damage, not because its sinful, but if you have a choice, and you live
in a society where there are so many choices.’’ Thus she has explained
to her son why they are vegetarians, ‘‘because that does the least
amount of damage,’’ but ultimately, it is up to him, ‘‘he must make his
own choices, and whatever he decides that’s ok too.’’ Anne’s expression
of discomfort with making moral judgments about others is typical of
pluralists who seem to view intolerance as the root of all evil. Moral rel-
ativism, so often blamed on secularism, turned out to be far more com-
mon among pluralists, the most religious among my respondents.
Religious Indifference
A small group of my respondents were those who were religiously
indifferent. Unlike atheists, they do not so much reject religion as
ignore it. Some, like Peter, hold vaguely Christian beliefs. ‘‘The idea that
Jesus was a spiritual being who came to earth and died, I suppose I
believe that, but I do not consciously following any Christian dogma or
ethics and we don’t go to church.’’ Yet his disaffiliation is not rooted in
any kind of resentment against organized religion. ‘‘I mean I don’t know
why I don’t [attend church], I don’t have that in my life, it’s more like
why would I? Rather than why don’t I?’’ He and his wife had their three
children baptized, but when asked if he had considered sending them to
Sunday school, he responded: ‘‘Fleetingly.’’ And what happened? ‘‘I let
the thoughts pass out of my head.’’ Peter might be called an indifferent
Christian. Others, like Tom, are atheist. He does not believe in god or a
higher power and does not identify as spiritual or religious. ‘‘Spiritual to
me is more of an inner thing, when someone is interested in and think-
ing about spiritual matters,’’ whereas religious means commitment to
organized religion. ‘‘I’m neither.’’ Yet Tom has no animus against reli-
gion; he remembers the church he grew up in with fondness and claims
that he and his wife talked about joining a church, but ‘‘we’re out of
town at the ski condo two to three Sundays per month, and Sundays
we’re here we still don’t go.’’ He does not see any inconsistency in join-
ing without belief because religion just isn’t important to him.
Both Peter and Tom were raised Protestant. Like most Indifferents,
they left the religion of their childhood not because they disagree with
it, but because they are too busy with other things to be bothered.
When asked if there was some other philosophy or worldview that
gave meaning to their life, the Indifferent’s answer was usually a long
silence, followed by, ‘‘I really haven’t thought much about that.’’ Yet
Christianity was often named as a source of morality: respect your
parents, don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, treat others the way you want
to be treated. As Peter puts it, ‘‘I think that my behavior . . . fits into,
like, basic Christian values.’’ Given that the religiously indifferent have
never actually rejected religion, this should not be surprising. Religion
to them is a social resource that is sometimes useful, but mostly not.
Pure Secularists, Naturalists, Pluralists, and the religiously indiffer-
ent are just four of many types of secularists that are out there. They
illustrate the difficulties in defining secularism discussed earlier in this
chapter. All of these respondents are secular in the sense that they do
not identify or affiliate with any religion, but most are committed to
alternative worldviews that could be considered equivalent to religion
in the sense of providing a coherent system of meaning and values.
Moreover, the differences between these worldviews have significant
implications for how respondents raise their children. One such differ-
ence was in the way that parents use their worldview to provide moral
guidance. Religion has historically functioned as a powerful provider
of moral order. All major religions warn against the inherent human
inclination to seek ‘‘more, more, more for me, me, me’’ and to ignore
the harm we inflict on others and the world. Thus perhaps the most
damaging critique of secularism is its perceived materialism, selfish-
ness, and moral relativism. Smith’s study confirms this critique, show-
ing that secular teens were more likely than religious teens to view
right and wrong purely in terms of pleasure and personal benefit. But
Smith’s study does not differentiate between different kinds of secular-
ism, some of which reject the consumerism and hedonism of contem-
porary society as much as religions do. It is noteworthy that many
religiously ‘‘disengaged’’ teens were no more materialistic or relativis-
tic than religiously ‘‘devoted’’ teens: 39 percent of the former rejected
relativism, 60 percent would not ‘‘choose to do whatever made them
happy,’’ 84 percent would not ‘‘choose to do whatever helped them
get ahead,’’ 33 percent care very much about the needs of the poor,
and 39 percent care about racial equality.29 One must wonder whether
the difference in value orientation comes not from a family’s religious
affiliation but from their commitment to a meaningful moral order that
grounds the individual in something greater than themselves.
Among my respondents it was pluralists, the most religious group,
who most embraced a subjectivist and relativist moral order, and pure
secularists who most rejected it. As described above, pluralists sought to
teach their children tolerance, a term they interpreted to mean
acceptance of all religions as equally valid. Pure secularists, by contrast,
saw all religions as equally false. Although pure secularists asserted
intellectual support for religious tolerance, they tended to judge one
worldview—skepticism—as superior to all others. Both pure secularist
and pluralist parents had enrolled their kids in religious education pro-
grams so that they might better understand other people. Pluralists
hoped that providing such choices would help their child ‘‘choose the
religion that’s right for them.’’ For pure secularists the purpose of under-
standing others is not to accept all religions as valid, but to question any
worldview you encounter. As Rosemary puts it, ‘‘the most important
thing that I hope I’ve taught my kids is that there is nothing else that
you can be sure of other than what you have now, you live your life,
you live it in the best, the fullest, and the most complete way that you
can in any moment, you develop your skills, whether they be thinking
skills or ice-skating, and you don’t live in isolation, but you were here. If
anybody tries to sell you anything beyond what you have here, you need to
question their motives.’’ For Rosemary, Bob, and David, a this-worldly
worldview is true in an absolute sense because it can be empirically
supported. All other worldviews are suspect.
In their passionate commitment to objective truth and suspicion of
‘‘false’’ worldviews, pure secularist parents resemble Evangelical Chris-
tians and other religious conservatives. Just as Evangelicals resist the
secularism of mainstream America, pure secularist parents often see
themselves as embattled, seeking to protect their kids from the
religious majority. David and his wife, for example, joined a Humanist
community because ‘‘it is really hard being unchurched when you live
on the edge of the Bible Belt. We feel different enough anyway, to be
ethical humanists in this society that dumps on people trying to exer-
cise their right to be free from religion, it’s very hard to be atheist in
America.’’ And it is even harder in Jacksonville ‘‘because everybody is
affiliated with the church, and the first thing people ask when you
move here is, what church do you belong to? Or, have you found a
congregation yet? They all want to recruit you.’’ Such recruitment
begins in school. ‘‘Kids here, they will ask, have you been saved? And,
why don’t you go to church? So if my son can say he belongs to a
church, they are more likely to leave him alone.’’ David and other pure
secularists such as Rosemary educate their children about the princi-
ples of Humanism as well as about traditional religions ‘‘so that they
can have ammunition’’ to fight a wider culture that they see as satu-
rated with religion. Pure secularist parents also resemble Evangelicals
in taking their worldview public, fighting lawsuits over school curricu-
lum or prayer at children’s camps and ballgames. That willingness to
fight publicly for what they believe is true sends a powerful moral
message to the children of pure secularist parents: that truth is not just
what feels good to each individual and that we can objectively deter-
mine what is right and what is wrong.
VARIETY IN AFFILIATION
A second source of variation among people who claim no religious
identification or affiliation is whether or not they affiliate with an alter-
native organization that supports and enacts their secular worldview.
Affiliation matters because most of the benefits that children suppos-
edly get from religion are tied to organizational membership. It is
therefore significant that the majority of my respondents were organi-
zationally affiliated. Although Indifferents showed little interest in join-
ing a community, Pure Secularists, Naturalists, and Pluralists often do
belong to an organization of like-minded individuals. Some of these
organizations were intentionally created to provide an alternative to
religion: what I call free-thinking denominations. Others have political
purposes such as environmental or peace activism.
Freethinker Denominations
A growing number of secularists are affiliating with free-thinker
denominations that closely resemble churches in structure and activ-
ities. There are national secularist organizations such as the American
Humanist Association that have chapters in many states. There are also
independent secular churches such as the North Texas Church of Free
Thought or the First Humanist Society of New York. Just as some peo-
ple who claim to belong to a church but never attend, some secular
individuals affiliate in name only. Many others, however, gather
weekly and on special occasions for sermons, readings, and rituals.
Depending on size, some secular associations meet independently in
people’s homes; others are large enough to have their own facility.
Some organizations serve a particular secularist population such as
atheists or humanists, and others provide a home to a variety of both
secular and religious families.
The Humanist Community of Silicon Valley (HCSV), California, is an
example of a community serving a particular secular population, those
who identify as humanist. Serving San Jose, Silicon Valley, Stanford,
and the Peninsula since 1962, HCSV offers regular Sunday Forums and
children’s programs and celebrates weddings and funerals, as well as
holidays significant to the atheist community such as Darwin Day or
Martin Luther King Day. In other locations where they are less numer-
ous or not as well funded, secularists may pool their resources with
other free-thinkers. In many states, Unitarian Universalist societies pro-
vide a home not only for liberal religious folk but for various types of
secularists, including atheists. A recent survey of the Unitarian Univer-
salist Society in New Haven (UUNH), Connecticut, for example, found
that 28 percent identify as atheist or humanist. Unitarian Universalism
is a nondoctrinal community, sharing commitment to a set of ethical
principles rather than a supernatural belief and celebrating a variety of
religious holidays to mark the diversity of their community. UUNH has
served the greater New Haven area since 1951. They offer two services
each Sunday, life cycle rituals, a religious education program, and small
groups and are deeply involved in social activism particularly on issues
such as opposing the Iraq war and supporting gay rights.
It is not surprising to find secular organizations in urban areas on
the east and west coasts, given the liberal reputation of these locations.
But I found vibrant secular communities in more conservative regions
such as Colorado Springs or Jacksonville as well. Colorado Springs, for
example, is a medium-sized city where you can find an Evangelical
church on almost every corner, as well as the headquarters of Focus on
the Family, but it also boasts two Unitarian Universalist churches that
provide a home for many secularists for whom belonging to a commu-
nity of like-minded individuals is a significant source of support in
raising their children.
Secularists seem aware of children’s need for affiliation with a moral
community. Thus some free-thinker organizations offer worldview
education and youth programming that replicates much of what
churches provide in terms of moral values, learning opportunities, and
social networking. The ‘‘dogma free Sunday school’’ of HCSV was
established in 2004 in response to an expressed need by community
members for ‘‘children who are used to hearing their classmates talk
about god to have a safe refuge to explore all the alternatives.’’ Held
parallel to the adult Sunday meetings, the children’s program focuses
on thinking and asking questions (rather than learning a particular
doctrine) and emphasizes human (rather than supernatural) answers
for how to live in a human world. Unitarian Universalist children’s
programs have been in existence longer and are therefore more com-
prehensive. They are actually called ‘‘religious education,’’ but they too
are nondogmatic, teaching children about Unitarian Universalist princi-
ples and presenting the teachings of world religions as well as human-
ism as equally valid alternatives. The curriculum has several levels
geared to different age groups, as well as providing opportunities for
youth to engage in the wider community. The Highland Park Unitarian
Universalist Congregation in Colorado Springs, for example, sends
teenagers on a trip to a Indian reservation where they engage in cul-
tural exchange and social outreach activities. In all Unitarian Universal-
ist congregations, children are encouraged to interact with adults, for
example, by conducting annual membership surveys and by participat-
ing in the first 15 minutes of the religious service.
In addition to alternative Sunday school programs, secularists have
also established children’s summer camps. The first atheist summer
camp, Camp Quest, was established in 1996 in northern Kentucky to pro-
vide children in the greater Cincinnati area with a secular alternative to
religiously based summer camps such as Boy Scouts and summer Bible
camps. The camp, which first met in a Baptist facility, provided much of
what religious camps offer: roasting marshmallows and telling stories at
campfires, sleeping in cabins with other kids, swimming, hiking, and arts
and crafts, as well as educational activities such as learning about lake
ecology or astronomy. But other activities reflect the camp’s secular iden-
tity: morning tai chi, a field trip to endangered wetlands, and—instead of
Bible school—instruction in secular humanism. The success of Camp
Quest, which continues going strong, soon spawned branches in Ohio
and other states such as Quest West in Sacramento, California.30
Clearly, the organizational resources are available to provide children
secular equivalents of the ‘‘benefits’’ associated with religious affiliation.
As described above, free-thinking organizations can provide a moral
order grounded in a larger intellectual tradition—the Humanist and the
Unitarian Universalist traditions, for example, are both more than a cen-
tury old and are associated with a vast body of learned literature. In
their Sunday schools, camps, trips, and volunteer activities, secular
organizations provide children and youth with opportunities to learn
life, leadership, and coping skills as well as acquire cultural capital such
as religious literacy and ethics. Perhaps most importantly, free-thinker
organizations engage kids with other caring adults as well as with the
wider community.
Socio-political Organizations
Not all secularists belong to organizations that are religion equiva-
lents. It could be argued, however, that some unaffiliated secularists
may have some other community involvement that provides similar
benefits. Parents who are deeply involved in social activism, perhaps for
peace or the environment, illustrate this pattern. The membership of the
Environmental Justice Network (EJN) in New Haven where I live is an
example. There are several parents who regularly bring their children to
monthly EJN meetings; when working on a particular crisis issue, the
meetings may be more frequent. The children play while the adults talk,
but the children are also involved in both the values and actions of the
organization. Parents explain to children what is at stake (the proposed
reopening of a diesel fueled power plant or the construction of a trash
incinerator in a poor urban neighborhood), and children learn about
right and wrong, truth and justice. Children and youth participate in
activism with their parents, attending public hearings, picketing, and
riding a bus on a ‘‘toxic tour’’ of polluted areas in the inner city. Some
children have literally grown up in this organization, as their parents
have been members for five or ten years. Like children who grow up in
a church, EJN kids are provided with a moral order and an organiza-
tional context that supports that order; they learn life and leadership
skills that are particularly valuable in becoming active citizens, and they
have access to caring adults beyond their own family as well as net-
working opportunities to other organizations. It seems reasonable to
expect that children growing up in this environment would experience
similarly positive outcomes as those raised in religious communities.
CONCLUSION
It is clear that we need more and better research investigating the
impact of atheism and secularity on the family and children. Although
the literature suggesting a positive association between religious affilia-
tion and childhood well-being is compelling, it does not follow that
children raised in secular environments are at risk, especially if families
are committed to positive alternative worldviews and communities that
may offer the same benefits as religion. It is not my intention to sug-
gest that such benefits can be derived from just any organization; that
would be reductionist. The religious environment surely does matter in
the sense that it provides a meaningful moral order that transcends the
individual’s subjective experience and a community that shares and
supports that order. I am simply arguing that such an order and com-
munity need not be theist or supernatural in character. Until research
on religious affiliation and identification recognizes that secularism can
be more than just the absence of religion and takes into account the
variety of secular worldviews, our findings will only confirm existing

prejudices.
We are beginning to see some hopeful signs that secular worldviews
are being recognized as religious equivalents. In Great Britain, for
example, the National Framework for Religious Education now sug-
gests that the teaching of secular philosophies such as atheism and
humanism be included in the curriculum of state schools. Such a policy
reflects a recognition that children ‘‘can learn from atheism as well as
about it; in other words, that atheism could offer opportunity for spirit-
ual development.’’31 The weakness of secular worldviews, if any, lies
in their resistance to organization. There is an inherent strain of indi-
vidualism in many secular worldviews, perhaps because secularists are
resisting what they perceive as the rigid and intrusive character of
organized religion. As one of my respondents put it, ‘‘church is a place
where you are forced to believe a certain way and they are always ask-
ing you for money.’’ But, as this chapter has illustrated, some secular
parents are beginning see the value of a moral community and to build
their own alternatives.
Although studies such as Smith’s are often cited to prove that secu-
larism is bad for children, what it really shows is that a moral order is
meaningful only if it actually is lived out in a community. It is telling
that many of today’s secularists are people who were themselves raised
with religion but turned away because of the perceived hypocrisy of
its practitioners. Thus, what matters is not whether children learn reli-
gious or secular values, but whether or not those values are put into
practice. As Fay put it, ‘‘what parents do, how they themselves behave,
what they expect of their children remain the critical factors in the for-
mation of moral perspective, whether the parents conviction is
expressed in weekly church attendance or in dragging one’s child to a
peace march when she would rather go to a friend’s birthday party.’’32
In short, it may be the integrity of a family’s commitment to something
greater than themselves that is most important to moral development
and emotional well-being in children.
NOTES
1. Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, Religion in a Free Market: Religious and
Non-religious Americans (New York: Paramount Publishing, 2006).
2. Michael Hout and Claude Fisher, ‘‘Why More Americans Have No Reli-
gious Preference: Politics and Generations.’’ American Sociological Review 67
(2002): 165–190.
3. Gallup conducted two national surveys, The Unchurched American (1978)
and The Unchurched American—10 Years Later (1988), both available from Princeton
Religion Research Center. For unchurched Protestants, see Dean Hoge, Benton
Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens, Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline
Protestant Baby Boomers (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994).
4. Robert Fuller, Spiritual, But Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
5. Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Ameri-
can Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
6. Richard Jenks, ‘‘Perception of Two Deviant and Two Non-deviant
Groups,’’ Journal of Social Psychology 126 (1986): 783.
7. Michael Luo, ‘‘God ’08: Whose, and How Much, Will Voters Accept?’’
New York Times Week in Review, July 22, 2007.
8. Eugene Volokh, ‘‘Parent-Child Speech and Child Custody Speed Restric-
tions,’’ New York University Law Review 81 (2006): 631–733.
9. Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, ‘‘Atheists Still Remain
Black Sheep of Families,’’ Free Inquiry 21, no. 4 (2001): 29.
10. James D. Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Control the Family, Art,
Education, Law, and Politics in America (New York: Basic Books, 1992); George
Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green
Publications, 2004).
11. Martha Fay, Do Children Need Religion? How Parents Today Are Talking
about the Big Questions (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993): 124.
12. Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
13. See, for example, Lawrence Kutner, ‘‘Parent & Child,’’ New York Times,
Dec. 20, 1990, 7; Patricia Pearson, ‘‘Mommy, Is Santa Jesus’s Uncle?’’ Maclean’s
(Dec. 22, 2003): 20–25; Dana Tierney, ‘‘Coveting Luke’s Faith,’’ New York Times
Magazine, Jan. 11, 2004, 66; Tayari Jones, ‘‘Among the Believers,’’ New York
Times, July 10, 2005: OP 13; Paul Asay, ‘‘Who Is God? Even Kids Raised with-
out Religion Need Spiritual Questions Answered,’’ Colorado Springs Gazette,
Aug. 26, 2006, LS 1; Nica Lalli, ‘‘Am I Raising Atheist Children?’’ USA Today,
March 17, 2008.
14. For example, Kristin Madden, Pagan Parenting: Spiritual, Magical, and
Emotional Development of the Child (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications,
2000); Greg Holden, Karma Kids: Answering Everyday Questions with Buddhist
Wisdom (Berkley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2004); Dale McGowan, ed., Parenting
Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids without Religion (New York:
Amacom, 2007).
15. Kosmin and Keysar, 94–97.
16. Nancy Hardesty, Women Called to Witness: Evangelical Feminism in the
19th Century (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1984).
17. J. A. Banks, Victorian Values: Secularism and the Size of Families (Boston:
Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1981); Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were:
American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Susan
M. Ross, ed., American Families Past and Present: Social Perspectives on Transfor-
mations (Princeton, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006).
18. Coontz, 183.
19. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Win-
ners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (Princeton, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 2005).
20. Christel Manning, God Gave Us the Right: Conservative Catholic, Evangelical
Protestant, and Orthodox Jewish Women Grapple with Feminism (Princeton, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1999).
21. For an excellent survey of this literature, see Smith, 330–31; see also
Kenneth Hyde, Religion in Childhood and Adolescence: A Comprehensive Review of
the Research (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1990).
22. Smith, 234.
23. Smith, 240–51.
24. For extended discussion of ARIS results, see Kosmin and Keysar.
25. Martin Ashley, ‘‘The Spiritual, the Cultural, and the Religious: What Can
We Learn from a Study of Boy Choristers?’’ International Journal of Children’s
Spirituality 7 (2002): 257–272; Penny Long Marler and Kirk Hadaway, ‘‘Being
Religious or Being Spiritual in America: A Zero Sum Proposition?’’ Journal for
the Scientific Study of Religion 41 (2002): 289–300.
26. Christian Smith, David Sikkink, and Jason Bailey, ‘‘Devotion in Dixie
and Beyond: A Test of the ‘Shibley Thesis’ on the Effects of Regional Origin
and Migration on Individual Religiosity,’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Reli-
gion 37 (1998): 494–506; Roger Stump, ‘‘Regional Variations in the Determinants
of Religious Participation.’’ Review of Religious Research 27 (1986): 208–225.
27. Kosmin and Keysar, 94–97.
28. Vern Uchtman, ‘‘Camp Quest 96,’’ Free Inquiry 17 (Winter 1996/97): 27.
29. Smith, 227–228.
30. Cathy Lynn Grossman, ‘‘Camps Sign Up Freethinkers,’’ USA Today, July
17, 2006.
31. Jaqueline Watson, ‘‘Can Children and Young People Learn from Atheism
for Spiritual Development? A Response to the National Framework for Reli-
gious Education,’’ British Journal of Religious Education 30 (2008): 49–58.
32. Fay, 99.
Chapter 3
A Portrait of Secular
Group Affiliates
Frank L. Pasquale
‘‘Atheism’’ and ‘‘secularity’’ are windows into a complex domain in

human ideas and affairs. The former is comparatively narrow (at least
semantically, if not always as used); the latter is somewhat broader.
There are other windows into this domain, each with a distinctive
slant, such as irreligion, religious doubt, unbelief or nonbelief, free-
thought, agnosticism, (secular) humanism, rationalism, materialism,
philosophical naturalism, and (religious) skepticism, among others.
What these terms have in common—from a negative vantage and to
varying degrees—is nonaffirmation, rejection, or doubt concerning the-
istic, supernatural, or (ontologically) transcendental ideas and phenom-
ena or something called ‘‘religion.’’ From a positive vantage, and to
varying degrees, they reflect what intellectual historian James Thrower
has called an ‘‘alternative tradition’’1 in human thought about the
nature of what exists (and probably or definitely does not exist)—call
this ‘‘naturalistic’’ or ‘‘this-worldly.’’
There have been countless historical, philosophical, polemic, and
apologetic treatments of these subjects, but social scientific research
that focuses directly on them has been limited and sporadic.2 There are
recent signs of increasing interest in secularism, atheism, irreligion, and
related subjects.3 But as observed nearly forty years ago, there remains
‘‘an appalling lack of empirical data on unbelief.’’4 Although there
have been notable exceptions along the way,5 secular group affiliates
and their organizations have been largely neglected.
Whether attributable to the lack of detailed knowledge or attention,
or a culturally reflexive tendency to narrowly frame these phenomena
within a dichotomy between something-called-religion and its absence,

‘‘seculars’’ or the ‘‘nonreligious’’ or ‘‘atheists’’ are habitually treated as
though ‘‘they were one homogeneous category.’’6 More than thirty
years ago, Paul Pruyser confronted this habit, noting ‘‘the complexity
of unbelief’’ and suggesting that ‘‘unbelief is at least as diversified as
religious belief.’’7 As he observed,
Irreligion is not merely the absence of something, and certainly not sim-
ply the missing of something good, desirable, or pleasant. It is much
closer to adopting an active stance or posture, involving the act of
excluding another posture which, despite its popularity or naturalness, is
deemed to be a poor fit in an acquired life style. Irreligion, like religion,
can be zealous, militant, declarative, dogmatic, or [persuasive]. Like reli-
gion, it can be the product of training, existential decision-making, or
drifting. And all too often it can be the product of religious instruction!8
Pruyser suggested that the ‘‘study of belief and unbelief must come
down from the height of global generalities to the untidy details of con-
crete experience in order to produce that as yet unwritten tome: The
Varieties of Experiencing Irreligion.’’9 His challenge prompted the research
to be described here. The aim has been to cast a net wide enough in
scope, but fine enough in weave, to identify both shared and distinctive
characteristics among those who describe themselves as substantially or
affirmatively nonreligious, philosophically naturalistic, or secular.
SAMPLE AND METHODS

Secular individuals are an elusive research target. The vast majority
tends not to associate, at least formally or institutionally, on the basis
of their secularity.10 In order to produce a detailed portrait, several
methods were used to gather data over an extended period:
1. Participant observation (2001–2006) in local and regional secularist groups

in the Pacific Northwest (primarily secular humanist, Jewish Humanist,
and atheist), together with attendance at national organizational meetings
(humanist, secular humanist, skeptic, and atheist), and monitoring of web-
sites, e-mail exchanges, and printed material (for local, regional, and
national ‘‘atheist,’’ ‘‘freethought,’’ ‘‘humanist,’’ ‘‘secular humanist,’’ ‘‘Jew-
ish Humanist,’’ ‘‘rationalist,’’ ‘‘secular,’’ ‘‘skeptic,’’ and similar groups).
2. Semi-structured interviews (fall, 2006) lasting 1.5 to 3 hours with 50 indi-
viduals, of whom 25 were male and 25, female; 25 were members of sec-
ularist groups and 25 were not; ranging in age from 18 to 87, with a
mean of 62.4 years. All described themselves as ‘‘nonreligious’’ or ‘‘secu-
lar’’ and reported no religious identification or affiliation. The interview
protocol focused on individuals’ ways of describing and speaking about
their existential or metaphysical worldviews, family background and
A Portrait of Secular Group Affiliates 45
upbringing, the development of their ways of thinking over time, atti-

tudes toward or about ‘‘religion,’’ moral and ethical point of view, poli-
tics, and everyday life (family and social life, work, hobbies and
avocations, community activity, and voluntarism or philanthropic sup-
port of preferred social causes).
3. A survey of affiliates of groups that explicitly embrace secular world-
views in the Pacific Northwest (winter, 2006–2007). Hard-copy-by-mail
was used rather than on-line survey methods because the latter would
likely have underrepresented less Internet-savvy members of a popula-
tion known to have an older age skew. The process itself was instructive.
An effort was made to identify all free-standing secularist groups in

Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia.11 This included
groups that describe themselves as ‘‘secular,’’ ‘‘humanist’’ (secular,
Jewish, or Unitarian), ‘‘atheist,’’ ‘‘freethought,’’ ‘‘rationalist,’’ and/or
‘‘skeptic.’’ Questionnaires were distributed by postal mail or by hand
to 1,638 individuals on the mailing lists of 22 such groups from
September of 2006 through January of 2007. These were distributed in
manila envelopes containing a cover letter, the questionnaire, and a
self-addressed, post-paid return envelope addressed to a post office
box in Portland, Oregon. The cover letter requested group members’
participation in a study of people in the Pacific Northwest whose ways
of thinking are substantially secular, nonreligious, skeptical, nonsuper-
natural, or naturalistic. Anonymity was assured and it was indicated
that ‘‘survey findings will not be reported for any particular group or
organization by name.’’ The letter was signed by the investigator as a
research associate with the Institute for the Study of Secularism, Trinity
College, Hartford, Connecticut.
Forty-one questionnaires were returned by the postal service as
undeliverable. Questionnaires were returned by 951 individuals, but
because of membership in multiple groups some individuals received
more than one copy. To avoid data duplication (i.e., more than one
completed survey from anyone), recipients were asked to complete a
cover sheet for each duplicate questionnaire received, indicating the
group for which they had already completed and returned the survey,
and the group(s) from which they received the duplicate(s). Twenty-
eight respondents did so, yielding 922 completed surveys for analysis,
or an effective response rate of 58.76 percent (of a nonduplicative dis-
tribution of 1,569). Ten questionnaires were partially completed, but
because they provided usable data in some sections, they were not
excluded from the sample for analysis.
Anecdotal reports (as well as written notes on completed forms) indi-
cated that some of those receiving more than one survey did not return
duplicate surveys with completed cover sheets, as requested. Another
indication of multiple group membership (and so, likely receipt of more
than one questionnaire) was provided by a survey item on respondent

membership in local religious, philosophical, or nonreligious groups.
Sixty-six respondents indicated affiliation with two or more of the tar-
geted groups. The resulting response rate is thus a conservative esti-
mate, since the actual (net) number of individuals in the distribution
sample was likely closer to 1,500 than 1,600. It is reasonable to conclude
that a response rate of roughly 60 percent was achieved.12
A commitment was made to all participating groups that data would
not be reported for any individual group by name, but rather, for dis-
tinguishable group or philosophical types based on self-descriptions (in
group names, in materials or Web sites, and by group members and
representatives). Assignment of groups to categories was straightfor-
ward in most cases, based on self-descriptive distinctions made by the
groups themselves. Groups were assigned to the Unitarian Humanist
category on the basis of an indicated relationship with a Unitarian
church or fellowship, substantial numbers of Unitarian church/fellow-
ship members among respondents, and/or explicit self-description as
Unitarian Humanists.13 Seven respondents each who were affiliated
with Ethical Culture and ‘‘Brights’’14 groups, who described themselves
as ‘‘atheist(ic)’’ and/or indicated dual membership in a regional atheist
group, were included in the Atheist group category. Comparatively low
response variability for the Atheist group category on many items rein-
forced confidence in the appropriateness of this allocation.
One small group (n ¼ 11) that labeled itself ‘‘freethought’’ was
excluded from the analyses presented here. Analysis of responses sug-
gested that its members were markedly and consistently different from
all other groups in the distribution sample. Most indicated profoundly
‘‘religious,’’ ‘‘spiritual,’’ supernatural, and/or ‘‘mystical’’ views. Aggrega-
tion with affiliates of other freethought groups yielded results with high
response variability that did not fairly represent either of two apparently
very different ‘‘takes’’ on ‘‘freethought.’’ This points up an apparent dis-
tinction in popular use and meaning of ‘‘freethought’’ and ‘‘freethinker.’’
One widely cited dictionary definition of freethought/freethinker
refers to ‘‘one who forms opinions on the basis of reason independently
of authority; especially one who doubts or denies religious dogma.’’
Two of three groups in the distribution sample use these terms in what
may be called the (majority or standard) ‘‘rationalist’’ sense.15 Here,
emphasis is on reason (or rigorous application of logic and empirical
evidence to the evaluation of truth claims) and denial of religious doc-
trine or supernatural ideas. The response patterns of the outlier group,
however, suggested a very different interpretation. Here, thinking may
be set free from the perceived constraints of ‘‘traditional’’ or institutional
religious adherence, belief, or doctrine, but also from those of rational-
ism, skepticism, naturalism, or nontranscendentalism. (This might best
be called an ‘‘unfettered’’ sense of ‘‘freethought’’/ ‘‘freethinker.’’) Such
variation in usage is not restricted to the groups sampled here. A check

of the World Wide Web indicates that although the rationalist usage
seems most common, there are those (such as a ‘‘Freethought Church’’)
for whom these terms mean freedom from either religious or rationalist/
empiricist discipline (with consequent inclusion of pagan, gnostic, mysti-
cal, magical, ‘‘neo-pagan polytheistic,’’ and ‘‘bohemian’’ references).
Following these adjustments, the final sample for analysis included
911 respondents in six categories:
Oregon/ British
Group/type Washington* Columbia* Total respondents
Humanist/Secular16 4 (256) 3 (129) 385 (42.3)

Humanist/Jewish 2 (110) 110 (12.1)
Humanist/Unitarian 3 (129) 129 (14.2)
Atheist 2 (104) 104 (11.4)
Skeptic, rationalist 3 (153) 153 (16.8)
Freethought17 2 (30) 30 (3.3)
Totals 16 (782) 3 (129) 911 (100.1)
*Values are number of groups, with number of individuals in parentheses.

Values are number of respondents, with percentage of total in parentheses (total percent-
age is greater than 100% due to rounding error).
The focus on one region enabled the use of both intensive and exten-
sive methods on a limited budget.18 This said, given the mobility of
North Americans, the sample reflects a wide range of geographical
backgrounds. Among the U.S. affiliates, 26 percent were Northwest
born and bred. Roughly 15 percent each were raised in the West, Mid-
west, or Northeast; 8 percent were from central or southern states,
12 percent were raised in multiple locations, and 8 percent were raised
internationally. This, in fact, broadly reflects the regional distribution
of seculars throughout the United States.19
WHO ARE THEY?

The secularist group affiliates tend to be older, middle-class ‘‘white’’
Euro-Americans, generally more often male than female, and over-
whelmingly the product of religious upbringings. Most are well edu-
cated, long-term seculars who are socially and politically liberal, but
notably modest with regard to their lifestyles.
Age
The average age of the group affiliates was 62.68 and median age
was 64, with a range of 15 to 92 years of age. This is consistent with
available evidence on age distribution in secular humanist organiza-

tions, for example. McTaggart20 reported mean age of 57 and median
age of 60 among Canadian secular humanists. At the Council for Secu-
lar Humanism there is a similar skew among the readership of their
flagship publication, Free Inquiry, which provides a fair indication of
membership (with 50.8 percent over 60, 73.4 percent over 50, and only
1.9 percent between 18 and 30 years of age).21 Hunsberger and Alte-
meyer22 found that the median age of atheist and humanist group
affiliates in the San Francisco Bay area was 60.
This said, there were notable differences among the Pacific North-
west groups (Table 3.1). The younger age profile of Atheist affiliates in
this sample is attributable to one of the constituent groups that grew
out of a local ‘‘atheist meet-up’’ (n ¼ 45; mean age ¼ 43.6). Meet-up.
com is ‘‘an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group
meetings in various localities around the world. Meet-up allows mem-
bers to find and join groups unified by a common interest. . . .’’23 As
such, participation skews toward a younger, Internet-savvy audience.
More recently, I observed the coalescence of another atheist meet-up
(also with a younger membership profile) that chose to become a chap-
ter of the Center for Inquiry (the parent organization of the Council for
Secular Humanism and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). The Internet
has clearly become a medium for the formation of new secularist
groups and recruitment into existing organizations, particularly
because there is an overrepresentation of young ‘‘nones’’ (no religious
preference) among Internet users.24
By contrast, the Unitarian Humanists consist largely of long-time
Unitarian affiliates who have reacted critically to a decades-long swing
in Unitarian Universalism away from a nonsupernatural or nontran-
scendental (‘‘humanist’’) orientation toward ‘‘God-talk,’’ ‘‘New Age’’
beliefs, and spiritualism.25 Some continue to participate in UU
Table 3.1
Age distribution among secularist groups
Group type/ Mean Standard

affiliation (years) N deviation Median
Secular Humanist 65.61 377 13.582 67.00

Jewish Humanist 59.38 107 13.105 56.00
Unitarian Humanist 70.96 129 9.842 72.00
Atheist 50.83 103 16.863 50.00
Skeptic, rationalist 58.76 153 13.618 59.00
Freethought 62.60 30 11.944 62.50
Total 62.68 899 14.597 64.00
N = number of respondents.
fellowships; some, who have tired of trying to hold a secular line

within their fellowships, have migrated to explicitly secular (humanist)
organizations, which have also struggled with aging World War II and
Baby Boom memberships and ways of attracting younger members.26
The comparatively younger skew among Jewish Humanist affiliates is
attributable, at least in part, to a strong focus on the transmission of
Jewish culture (sans supernaturalism) to the next generation. As such,
more members are family-establishment age. Consonant with this
family focus, membership is typically recorded in families/households
rather than individuals.
Gender
Overall, roughly 56 percent of respondents were male and 44 percent
were female (Table 3.2). Again, this is consistent with substantial prior
indications that females tend, in general, to be more (or males less) reli-
gious with regard to belief, identification, affiliation, or behavior. Differ-
ences in gender distribution among group types or philosophies are
also consistent with this general tendency. Men are more strongly rep-
resented in groups with a more analytical or critical focus (e.g., Skeptic,
Atheist) and women in groups that tend to be more focused on cultural
values and transmission (Jewish and Unitarian Humanist).27
Table 3.2
Gender distribution by group type
Gender
Group type/affiliation Male Female Totals
Secular Humanist 210 (55.4) 169 (44.6) 379 (100.0)

[58.5%] [41.5%]
Jewish Humanist 33 (30.6) 75 (69.4) 108 (100.0)
[40.5%] [59.5%]
Unitarian Humanist 63 (48.8) 66 (51.2) 129 (100.0)
[48.0%] [52.0%]
Atheist 69 (67.0) 34 (33.0) 103 (100.0)
[69.3%] [30.7%]
Skeptic, rationalist 113 (74.3) 39 (25.7) 152 (100.0)
[70.0%] [30.0%]
Freethought 18 (60.0) 12 (40.0) 30 (100.0)
[N/A] [N/A]
Total respondents 506 (56.2) 399 (43.8) 901 (100.0)
Values are number of respondents, with percentage of total respondents in parentheses
and estimated actual percentage of male and female group affiliates (based on member-
ship and mailing lists) in brackets. N/A, not available.
Education, Vocation, and Socioeconomic Status

Again, consistent with prior data on secular affiliates, ‘‘nones,’’ or
the nonreligious,28 this is a well-educated group, with more than three-
quarters holding college degrees and nearly half holding advanced
degrees, far higher than among all U.S. citizens 25 years of age or older
(Table 3.3).
Work and careers run the gamut, from accountant to zoologist, with
a white-collar skew. Secularist affiliates have done their neighbors’
taxes, prepared their wills, built their houses, taught their children,
groomed their pets, shipped their goods, and diagnosed their ailments.
One intriguing vocational fact was a strong concentration of educators—
something that has been observed before among secularist affiliates.
Colin Campbell, for example, found that among members of the British
Humanist Association in the 1960s ‘‘by far the most significant individ-
ual occupation engaged in by the respondents [was] that of teaching.
Approximately 1 in 5 of all respondents indicated that they were
(or had been, if retired) teachers other than university teachers.’’29
Among the Northwest group affiliates 31.4 percent indicated that they
had been educators at some point in their lives at the elementary level
(7.9 percent), junior high or high school (7.2), community college or
university (11.2), or at multiple levels (4.8). One hundred eighty
respondents (19.5 percent) indicated teaching as their primary or cur-
rent profession. A number of factors may be involved.
There is some evidence of a relationship between education and
nonreligiosity.30 Educators are themselves better educated than the
general population. Some have suggested that higher (liberal arts)
Table 3.3
Group affiliates’ educational attainment
Total U.S. U.S.

sample (%) sample (%)a population (%)b
High school only 4.4 3.4 31.7

Some college, no degree 16.0 15.5 17.0
Specialist/associate degree 5.1 4.2 8.7
Baccalaureate 28.8 30.3 18.3
Master’s degree 28.2 28.7 6.8
Doctoral degree/professional 17.4 17.7 2.9
(J.D., M.D., Ph.D.)
Values are percentage of respondents (or census data for U. S. population).
a
Excluding British Columbia groups.
b
Among individuals 25 years of age and older (=191,884,000).
Source: U.S. Census, 2006 at http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/
cps2006/tab01-01.xls/.
education fosters increased critical thinking, and so, religious skepti-

cism. Others have suggested a selection factor involved in the pursuit
of higher education: those with a drive to question may be motivated
or encouraged to pursue advanced education, particularly in the sci-
ences. Those who are drawn to teaching may tend to be driven to
explain the nature of things, prompting them to question religious
tenets, as well. It may also be that those who have had teaching careers
miss the intellectual discourse in retirement that secularist groups tend
to provide. Fully 54 percent of the group affiliates are retired (or
‘‘semi-retired’’), and the most frequently cited reason for affiliating was
intellectual stimulation and information exchange. The most prominent
activity among such groups consists of lectures, book groups, and dis-
cussion groups on a wide range of topics (such as science and world
affairs, as well as religion and secularity).
In keeping with education levels and careers, the majority of affiliates
are middle class. Sixty percent of the U.S. affiliates report annual incomes
of $40,000 or more and 50 percent reported $60,000 or more. This said, by
no means all are ‘‘well-heeled’’: 8.7 percent reported incomes of $20,000
or less. Most of these (61 percent) are retirees. Annual incomes thus tend
to underrepresent economic condition. Eighty percent (of the U.S. group
affiliates) reported net household assets of $100,000 or more; 43.8 percent,
$500,000 or more; and 21 percent, $1 million or more.
Cultural Background
The group affiliates are overwhelmingly white and of European
descent. Among 899 individuals supplying this information, 79.8 percent
described themselves as ‘‘Euro-Caucasian,’’ with another 16.4 percent
‘‘Jewish’’ or ‘‘Jewish’’þ‘‘Euro-Caucasian’’ and 3.8 percent as other
(including [East] Asian descent, Indian [South Asian], Middle Eastern
[Persian, Iraqi], African American, and Native American).
Those of Jewish descent are overrepresented among group affiliates.
Among the U.S.-based groups (n ¼ 782), 17.5 percent indicated Jewish
backgrounds. Excluding the two Jewish Humanist groups, 7.1 percent
of respondents indicated Jewish backgrounds among the remaining
groups. This compares with an estimated 2.2 percent in the U.S. popu-
lation and 0.7 percent in Oregon and Washington.31
By contrast, Asian, African, and Latin Americans are noticeably
underrepresented. Only ten group affiliates (or 1.1 percent) indicated
East Asian or Asian þ Euro descent, and two indicated South Asian/
Indian descent (or 0.2 percent). Based on 2006 census data (East and
South), Asian Americans make up 4.4 percent of the U.S. population
and 5.5 percent of the population of Oregon and Washington. Only
seven affiliates indicated African American or African þ Euro descent
(or 0.78 percent). This compares with 12.8 percent in the United States
and 3.0 percent in Oregon and Washington. Only one individual

(0.1 percent) indicated Hispanic/Latino descent, whereas there are an
estimated 14.8 percent in the United States and 9.4 percent in Oregon
and Washington.32 These data are reinforced by observation and dis-
cussion at annual and regional meetings of several national secularist
organizations (atheist, secular humanist, skeptic, and freedom from
religion). Organized secularity tends to be an activity of (non-Latino)
Euro-Americans, most of whom have had Christian or Jewish upbring-
ings. This is not new: in their 1932 survey of Atheist affiliates, Vetter and
Green reported that only two of 350 respondents were not ‘‘white.’’33
The underrepresentation of African Americans and Latin Americans
is consistent with more recent data on religious (non)affiliation in the
general population, but the underrepresentation of those of Asian
descent is not. In prior survey data on religious nonaffiliates or ‘‘nones’’
(no named religious preference), Asian Americans have been dispropor-
tionately represented. In the Pew Forum’s ‘‘U.S. Religious Landscape
Survey 2008,’’34 for example, the percentage of religious nonaffiliates
(atheist, agnostic, or secular) was highest among Asian Americans com-
pared with other major cultural/ethnic groups (Table 3.4).
Why does organized secularity seem to be a substantially (non-
Latino) Euro-American activity? One explanation for this enduring fact
may be cultural—specifically the character and role of religious identity
and affiliation in these subcultures. Religion has been, and continues to
be, significant in the African American experience, and despite recent
signs of religious disaffiliation among Hispanics, religion (specifically
Catholic) remains a significant force.35 The Pew data affirm this con-
tinuing role, because African Americans and Latin Americans were
least likely to describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or secular.
Other Pew data indicate that religious Asian Americans predictably
identify more often with various Asian religio-philosophical traditions
compared with other cultural and ethnic groups. Monotheistic traditions
(Judaic, Christian, and Islamic) tend to be more exclusive (with
Table 3.4
Religiosity of cultural/ethnic groups in the United States
White Black Asian Other Latino Total
Atheist 2 <0.5 3 1 1 2
Agnostic 3 1 4 3 1 2
Secular unaffiliated 7 3 11 7 4 6
Religious unaffiliated 5 8 5 9 8 6
Total 17 12 23 20 14 16
Values are percentage of Pew survey respondents.
Source: Pew Forum. ‘‘U.S. Religious Landscape Survey 2008.’’ http://religions.pewforum.org/.
expectations for devotion to a single doctrine or ‘‘identity,’’ metaphysi-

cally comprehensive and definitive, and more highly institutionalized)
than Asian traditions (such as Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, Hindu,
and native or ancestral traditions). The comparatively ‘‘tighter’’ or
more stringent and all-encompassing demands for adherence among
the former may elicit more vehement critical reactions than the latter.
(To this point, aggressively nontranscendental or anti-‘‘religious’’
schools of thought have been comparatively rare in Asian intellectual
history.) Although data gathered in the research reported here do not
afford a direct test of this observation, data on the strictness of reli-
gious/philosophical upbringing among the secularist group affiliates
offer relevant insights.
UPBRINGING AND WORLDVIEW DEVELOPMENT

When asked when they ‘‘realized they were nonreligious,’’ as has
been typically been found in prior research36 the majority indicated
that this was early in life (most notably during adolescence or very
early adulthood; Figure 3.1). To some extent this may be a personal
construction developed later in life. More detailed questions about
shifts in religious or philosophical views through life, together with
prior research with adolescents whose worldviews had recently
changed, suggest that the adoption of ‘‘nonreligious’’ worldviews is a
process of questioning over time rather than an instantaneous
25.0%
20.0%
15.0%
24.7%
10.0%
17.4% 17.9%
5.0% 10.1%
9.5%
8.7%
4.8% 4.4%
1.8% 0.3% 0.1% 0.3%

0.0%
0-9 10-13 14-18 19-22 23-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99
years
of age
Figure 3.1. Age respondent realized s/he was nonreligious

25.0%
20.0%
15.0%
23.0%
10.0% 19.1%
18.5%
10.9% 10.5%
5.0% 9.0%
5.0%
4.0%
0.0%
<10 10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70+
Figure 3.2. Number of years nonreligious (Current age minus age at

realization)
decision.37 Nonetheless, these responses reflect a point in life when

individuals recall that religious uncertainty, doubt, or rejection became
conscious or explicit in their lives. Few reported ‘‘religious relapses’’
once the process of religious questioning began. (Those who reclaimed
a religious identity following earlier abandonment do not, of course,
appear in this sample.) Both affiliates and interviewees tended to
describe their secularity as unidirectional and stable over time rather
than transient or ‘‘developmental,’’ with a majority having been nonre-
ligious for many years (Figure 3.2).
Religious/Philosophical Upbringing
Differences in the reported nature of respondents’ religious or philo-
sophical backgrounds offer some insight into the stances they adopted.
McTaggart referred to members of Canadian humanist groups as ‘‘re-
affiliates,’’ because the majority affiliated on the basis of their world-
views after having abandoned religious upbringing, but this time on
the basis of irreligiosity.38 The same is true of the Pacific Northwest
affiliates (Table 3.5). About 79 percent indicated religious backgrounds
(both parents religious and some family religious participation), 12 percent
indicated secular or nonreligious backgrounds, and 9 percent indicated
mixed religious and/or nonreligious backgrounds.
Table 3.5
Secularist group affiliates’ religious/philosophical backgrounds
Religious/philosophical background Total
Protestant/Christian parents, education 461 (51.5)

Roman Catholic parents, education 129 (14.4)
Religiously Jewish/Judaic parents, education 115 (12.8)
None/nonreligious, secular humanist, agnostic, atheist parents 104 (11.6)
Nonreligious þ religious parents 50 (5.6)
Spiritual(ist), Deist, Unitarian Universalist, religious humanist 20 (2.2)
parents
Other/mixed religious parents, education 16 (1.8)
Total respondents 895 (100.0)
Values are number of respondents, with percentage in parentheses.
Religious strictness
Roman Catholic None at all; none +

parents/education lax/voluntary
(n = 129)
Lax or voluntary;
occasional/special
Protestant/Christian services
parents/education Weekly services;
(n = 455) weekly + occasional/
Background
Jewish/Judaic pecial services

parents/education Strict/strong; weekly
(n = 115) services + strict/strong
One non-religious &

religious parent
(n = 49)
None/non-religious,
secular humanist, agnostic,
atheist parents (n = 103)
0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%
Figure 3.3. Reported strictness of religious/philosophical backgrounds
Reported (or recalled) strictness varied considerably among reli-

gious/philosophical family backgrounds (Figure 3.3). Those raised
Roman Catholic were most likely to describe their religious upbring-
ings as strict/strong or disciplined (attending weekly services and/or
multiyear parochial schooling). As one respondent (a former Catholic
priest) wrote in a survey response, ‘‘I still have lots of anger about
what Catholic school training did to me during the 1930s and 1940s.’’
Another attributed his irreligiosity to ‘‘negative reactions to oppressive
Catholic upbringing.’’ Those raised in Protestant/Christian family con-
texts generally characterized their upbringings as less strict, on average,
than Catholics.39 By contrast, those with Jewish/Judaic backgrounds
viewed their religious upbringings as lax or voluntary—more similar to
those with Secular or mixed (religious and nonreligious parental) back-
grounds than to those raised Catholic or Protestant.
The attitudes of Catholic-raised respondents about ‘‘religion’’ tended
to be comparatively more severe, those raised Jewish/Judaic were less
severe, and those with Secular, Protestant, or mixed backgrounds, mid-
dling. For example, those raised Catholic were most likely to describe
themselves as ‘‘antireligious’’ (Table 3.6). Fewer with Jewish/Judaic
backgrounds did so. Those raised Catholic indicated greater anger, on
average, compared with respondents raised Protestant, Jewish/Judaic,
and Secular (Table 3.7). Those raised Jewish/Judaic were less likely, on
average, to indicate that a reason for group affiliation was to ‘‘counter-
act religion’’ (Table 3.8; 1-5 response scale used for this item). Lastly,
those raised Catholic were somewhat more likely to indicate conflict
about religion (with parents, with siblings, and at work).40 Those raised
Jewish/Judaic generally indicated less conflict, as did those with Secu-
lar backgrounds (except with friends; Table 3.9).
The strongest critical reaction to something-called-religion, then, was
evident among those raised Catholic, who also rated their religious
upbringings most strict, on average. By comparison, those with Jewish
or secular backgrounds reported both less strictness in their religious/
philosophical upbringings and less severity in their attitudes about
‘‘religion.’’
Intolerance for Inconsistencies; Tolerance for Uncertainty

Many factors have been proposed to explain the adoption of per-
sonal secularity or irreligion (particularly for those who abandon
religious backgrounds) including education, personal or social malad-
justment, familial problems, rebellion against parents or authority, and
childhood trauma or parental loss, among others. Each may conceiv-
ably play a part in various individuals’ development, but evidence for
them is highly variable.41
One theme that was pervasive throughout my observations, inter-
views, and survey results was sensitivity to inconsistencies or contra-
dictions. These may be internal logical inconsistencies among ideas
(such as religious tenets or texts), external contradictions with ‘‘com-
mon sense’’ or empirical evidence, inconsistencies between espoused
principles and exhibited behavior, or inconsistency over time (contrary
to asserted universal or eternal truths). Personal explanations for the
Table 3.6
Choice of ‘‘anti-religious’’ as a self-description
None, secular, One religious

Protestant/ Roman Jewish/ nonreligious, 1 one nonreli- Other/mixed
Christian Catholic Judaic humanist, gious parent; religious
parents/ parents/ parents/ agnostic/ varied parents/
upbringing upbringing upbringing athiest parents upbringing upbringing Total
Chose ‘‘antireligious’’ as 130 (28.3) 53 (41.4) 25 (21.9) 29 (27.9) 17 (34.0) 7 (19.4) 261 (29.3)
self-description
Total respondents 460 128 114 104 50 36 892
Values are number of respondents, with percentage of category in parentheses.
Table 3.7
Religious background and anger about religion

Protestant/ Roman Jewish/ nonreligious, 1 one nonreli- Other/mixed
parents/ parents/ parents/ agnostic/athe- varied parents/
upbringing upbringing upbringing ist parents upbringing upbringing Total
58
Anger about religion 5.46 5.89 5.42 5.26 5.63 5.75 5.51
(Scale: 1 = not at all;
7 = very)
Standard deviation 1.68 1.54 1.60 1.87 1.78 1.46 1.68
Number of respondents 450 123 112 101 46 36 868
Table 3.8
Religious background and motivation to affiliate with group (to counteract religion)

Protestant/ Roman Jewish/ nonreligious, þ one nonreli- Other/mixed
59
Reason for parents/ parents/ parents/ agnostic/athe- varied parents/

affiliating upbringing upbringing upbringing ist parents upbringing upbringing Total
To counteract religiona 3.81 3.85 3.26 3.68 3.94 3.81 3.74

Standard deviation 1.28 1.30 1.44 1.44 1.24 1.22 1.33
Number of respondents 401 115 100 88 47 31 782
a
Values are means. Scale: 1 = not at all, 5 = very.
Table 3.9
Reported conflict involving religion
Conflict reported with

Background Parents Siblings Children Spouse Friends Coworkers
Roman Catholic 37.5 20.3 6.3 8.6 25.8 23.4

(n = 128)
Protestant 24.3 14.3 6.0 10.0 24.9 10.9
(n = 469)
Jewish/Judaic 18.3 5.2 3.5 9.6 10.4 10.4
(n = 115)
Secular 2.9 3.8 1.9 10.5 20.0 13.3
(n = 105)
Values are percentage of respondents reporting conflict. n = total number of respondents.
emergence of religious doubt or rejection offered by survey respon-

dents make this clear:
. ‘‘Absurdity of religious teachings. (Never believed in Santa, either.) Too

silly. My own independent thoughts brought me there. I didn’t know any-
one else who thought that way. Don’t know why I did. Never discussed
it with others until confirmation class, age 15–16. Very gradual.’’
. ‘‘The Bible—even as a kid it didn’t seem logical; existence of God, Jesus;
concept of heaven and hell; the idea that one religion is the ‘‘right’’ reli-
gion and everyone else who believes just as strongly, but in a different set
of beliefs are wrong; lack of tolerance for those that are different’’
. ‘‘Internal inconsistencies . . . willingness to suspend reason to defend
beliefs’’
. ‘‘Realized as a child a great contradiction in a vengeful/loving God’’
. ‘‘Contradictory claims, supernatural explanations for physical events’’
. ‘‘Experiences at church that were illogical or caused cognitive disso-
nance’’
. ‘‘Claim of being the only truth; faith over reason; logical contradictions;
ethnocentricity; conflicts with science’’
. ‘‘Even as a child I found Biblical stories to be impossible and far-fetched.
It was obvious to me. I couldn’t believe people fell for it.’’
. ‘‘Careful scrutiny of religious claims—if God is all-knowing, what is the
point of prayer? (epiphany)’’
. ‘‘Belief without evidence, belief in the face of massive counter-evidence’’
. ‘‘Lack of questioning, faith instead of facts’’
. ‘‘The idea of a superman in the sky; contradictions in the Bible’’
. ‘‘Hypocrisy of those who profess to believe’’
When asked to explain the emergence of their secularity, one of the

most frequently occurring phrases was that ‘‘things didn’t make sense.’’
Whether attributable to modeling or education by a parent, teacher, or
other significant adult, oft-mentioned voracious reading and reflection,
strong observational skills, memories for detail, and/or inherited char-
acteristics (that give rise to a strong analytical bent or ‘‘intellectualism,’’
autonomy, boldness, curiosity, confidence, stubbornness, or rebellious-
ness), secularists repeatedly report and exhibit strong resistance to (or
drive to resolve) logical or empirical inconsistency. When this cannot be
resolved, there is voiced willingness to suspend judgment and accept
uncertainty pending further data or to actively challenge such contra-
dictions if logic or available evidence warrant. Taken together with the
findings on religious upbringing, it is not unreasonable to suggest that
more aggressive or stringent doctrinal or behavioral expectations will
tend, on average, to produce greater numbers of individuals who expe-
rience confusion, conflict, or critical reaction.
WORLDVIEW COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY

On the surface there is substantial unanimity among these individu-
als—nontheistic and ‘‘nonreligious.’’ But the more deeply worldviews
are probed, the more diversity becomes apparent. Consider, for exam-
ple, the following interviewees (both group affiliates and independents;
names are fictitious; ages are in parentheses):
Ruth (72) is intensely and a-religiously absorbed in life, particularly in art

(as a print-maker, lecturer, museum docent, and avid student). She was
raised in a ‘‘nonpracticing’’ Jewish home. Her father, whom she admired
greatly, was openly critical of supernatural religion. She has had a pass-
ing ‘‘sociological’’ interest in the ‘‘curious phenomenon’’ of religion, but
this is one of many aspects of the species about which she is naturally cu-
rious. This said, she has little inclination to focus substantial time or
energy on the subject. Unlike her husband (or her father) she is not
vocally or uniformly critical of religion. She can see how it helps some,
but also how it can be and has been harmful. Unless asked, she is too busy
to give the matter much thought.
Ellen (76) is a life-long skeptic and atheist who was reared in a loosely Prot-
estant household in a small midwestern town. She read voraciously from
an early age and concluded that supernatural phenomena were mytho-
logical rather than real. But this said, she always loved ritual and social
celebration, particularly as developed in religions. Following intermittent
exploration of a number of religious and philosophical traditions, she
found a comfortable balance of ideas, inspiration, and ritual—that
allowed her to quietly retain her atheism—in a liberal Jewish temple. She
then became aware of Sherwin Wine, dubbed the ‘‘atheist rabbi’’ who
founded a Jewish (secular) humanist movement, and Ellen became an

active participant. This offers a satisfying balance of community, cultural
richness, and ritual without supernaturalism.
Warren (87) was raised on a remote farm in eastern California. For reasons
he cannot explain, he began doubting religious beliefs early in life. Expo-
sure to Darwin’s theory of evolution in his adolescence sealed his doubt.
As a young man he served in the Pacific alongside Aussies in WWII. He
brought an Australian bride back to the United States after the war, and
together they built a life, a family, and a farm. His atheism never wav-
ered, but neither did his live-and-let-live attitude about religion. Others
can believe whatever they wish so long as they don’t try to change his
views. He doesn’t get ‘‘riled’’ about such things.
Josh (50) is a professional artist who was carefully educated in a virtual
Protestant cocoon through college. He married in the faith and planned to
raise his children in it, as well. But in early adulthood doubts arose, exa-
cerbated by marital difficulties. After years of increasing discomfort, one
day in his late thirties he resolved to probe as deeply inward as possible
to ‘‘find God.’’ He could not, however, find ‘‘Him.’’ Nor could he recon-
cile much of what he had been told about God with what he knew of na-
ture. This triggered an intense anger at having been fooled by false
‘‘truths.’’ After brief involvement in secularist groups that tended to in-
tensify his anger, further alienating family and friends, he realized he
needed to find ways to rein this in. He began a regimen of Yoga and Bud-
dhist group meditation as therapeutic means to tame his anger and find
greater perspective and peace. At the same time, he maintains a stance
that is affirmatively atheistic, empirical, and critical of supernatural reli-
gion. He actively pursues a strong interest in the sciences.
Rajinder (48) is a student of science and a skeptic reared in India, but was
educated in American universities and is now a citizen. Although he does
not accept the reality of religious supernaturalism, after careful reading
of many religious and philosophical texts, he has adopted a ‘‘metaphori-
cal’’ posture. For example, he embraces notions of samsara and karma as
useful ethical reminders that what one does (or does not do) is not self-
contained, but has larger (‘‘ripple’’) effects for good or ill, even though he
does not accept their ontological reality.
Bruce and Jill (48, 50). Bruce is Jewish by descent (only) and the product of
three generations of atheists. He reports only passing interest in religion
and spends little time asking ultimate questions, preferring to focus on
his work, his friends, his wife, recreation, and a practical absorption with
business, economics, and politics. With regard to metaphysical questions,
such as an afterlife, his attitude is, ‘‘Who knows. We’ll see. Nobody, to
my knowledge, has ever returned from the grave with a reliable report.’’
His wife is a product of a Catholic upbringing that left her critical of the
social, historical, and psychological effects of established and institutional
religion, but open to ‘‘spiritual’’ possibilities. It is not clear to her what is
real or imagined but this makes little difference, because there is some-
thing valuable in human experience that may be meaningfully called
‘‘spiritual.’’
Monica (22) was raised by a nominally religious single mother following an

early divorce. Reflecting the influence of selected teachers, she developed
an intense idealism regarding human, civil, and women’s rights and
human well-being. In late elementary and early high school, she concluded
that religion (particularly Christian—the only one with which she said she
is familiar) has too often been a force in opposition to these ideals. In col-
lege, she became a vocal antireligious (specifically anti-Christian) activist.
Her writings, in fact, came to the attention of a cable television personality,
who cited her as an example of what has gone wrong in American society
and education. She considers the episode a badge of honor. Having just
graduated, she does not know what she will do, but hopes to continue
advocating for, and writing about, human rights and environmentalism.
She cannot imagine abandoning her atheist stance.
The closer people’s worldviews are probed—even among self-

described secular or nonreligious individuals—the more difficult it is
to neatly place many into the major categories that frame Western dis-
course on ‘‘theism’’ and ‘‘atheism’’ or ‘‘religion’’ or ‘‘irreligion.’’ Survey
data among group affiliates provided evidence of worldview diversity
and complexity, as well.
If attention is restricted to customary (that is, ‘‘personal’’ and mono-
theistic) notions of ‘‘God,’’ this is a strongly nontheistic and apparently
naturalistic sample. Respondents were asked, for example: Do you
think that the degree of order or patterning we perceive in nature is
most likely attributable to
1. Properties that are intrinsic to the nature of the physical universe or all
that exists, and nothing more
2. A coherent organizing principle that we cannot, or do not yet, fully com-
prehend that is pervasive throughout the physical universe or all that
exists
3. An organizing principle or force that in some way transcends the physi-
cal universe or all that exists
4. An impersonal, but in some sense intelligent, creative force that has
brought all that exists into being
5. A personal, and in some sense intelligence creative force, or ‘‘God,’’
with which human beings can make contact or have a communicative
relationship
6. An omniscient, omnipotent, intelligent God that designed and created all
that exists
Based on responses to this item alone (n ¼ 875), this is a substantially

naturalistic group, with 78.6 percent choosing response 1, 17 percent
choosing response 2, and 1.1 percent choosing both 1 and 2. Only 2.7 percent
chose responses 3 or 4 (which could be considered alternative expres-
sions of ‘‘deism’’), one individual chose response 5, and none chose
6. In related texts, fourteen individuals made reference to the human

tendency to perceive or impose pattern whether or not it is ‘‘really
there.’’ (One stated definitively that ‘‘there is no order or patterning
in nature!’’) Had there been a response option attributing ‘‘order’’ to
human perception (or human perceptual bias, alone) rather than to
nature, more individuals might well have indicated this view.
Diversity became more apparent as worldviews were probed more
deeply about concepts such as the following:
. A transcendent entity: ‘‘a being, entity, or higher power beyond, apart

from, or transcending nature (call this ‘‘God’’ if you wish)
. A ‘‘personal essence, spirit, or soul apart from our physical bodies or con-
tinuing beyond our physical lives (or through multiple lifetimes)’’
. An ‘‘impersonal force or energy that courses through and connects all living
things or all that exists’’ (call this ‘‘spiritual’’ if you wish)
. An ‘‘ultimate purpose or direction in human life or all of existence’’
Response options for each of these items were as follows:
. Meaningless/nonexistent: ‘‘This makes no sense to me; I don’t think there is

any such thing.’’
. Unknowable: ‘‘I don’t know, and don’t think this is something human
beings can know.’’
. Maybe/unsure: ‘‘This may be; I’m just not sure.’’
. Sometimes: ‘‘Sometimes I think this is so and sometimes I do not.’’
. Metaphorical: ‘‘Even though I doubt or reject the reality of this, or view
this as a human construction, I like to think as though there is.’’
. Probably: ‘‘There is probably something like this, but I have no idea about
its actual nature.’’
. Definitely: ‘‘This is something I definitely think exists or is the case.’’
Strong majorities rejected the notions of a transcendent entity and

continuing personal essence (‘‘spirit’’ or ‘‘soul’’) as meaningless/
nonexistent or unknowable (Table 3.10).42 But when it came to the
question of an ultimate purpose or direction in human life or all of ex-
istence, rejection weakened. Somewhat surprisingly it was the notion
of an impersonal force that courses through and connects all (living)
things that elicited the most diverse response. A substantial number of
respondents (roughly 30 percent) accepted this maybe/sometimes,
probably, or definitely, with an additional 6 percent embracing this
metaphorically.
Again, there were notable differences among group types. Atheist
affiliates were predictably most likely to reject the concept of a tran-
scendent entity, followed by Secular humanists, Skeptics, and
Table 3.10
Response patterns for several worldview items
Transcendent entity
Meaningless/ Maybe or Metaphorical Probably or
nonexistent sometimes (as though) definitely Total
775 (86.6) 50 (5.6) 28 (3.1) 42 (4.7) 895 (100.0)
Personal essence
749 (84.0) 61 (6.8) 35 (3.9) 47 (5.3) 892 (100.0)
Ultimate purpose
632 (72.4) 58 (6.6) 107 (12.3) 76 (8.7) 873 (100.0)
Impersonal force
566 (63.9) 127 (14.3) 57 (6.4) 136 (15.3) 886 (100.0)

Values are number of respondents, with percentage of total in parentheses. Response
options compressed to simplify presentation.
Freethinkers. More Jewish and Unitarian Humanists viewed this as

unknowable, with slightly greater numbers allowing its possibility to
varying degrees. Responses concerning a personal essence (soul) were
similar, except that fewer Jewish Humanists flatly rejected the concept
and more considered this unknowable or were unsure.
Response patterns shifted markedly with regard to ultimate purpose
and an impersonal force. A substantial number of respondents (12.3
percent overall) viewed ultimate purpose metaphorically. A slightly
greater percentage of males (13.3 percent) than females (10.7 percent)
indicated this view. The concept of an impersonal connecting force or
energy elicited the greatest response variation among groups. Jewish
Humanists were most likely to allow the possibility or reality of such a
phenomenon, followed by Unitarian Humanists. Females more often
accepted an impersonal force maybe/sometimes (17.5 percent of
women; 11.8 percent of men), or probably/definitely (22.2 percent of
women; 11.4 percent of men). But both male and female Jewish
Humanists accepted the concept more often than those in other groups.
Although substantially nontheistic, group affiliates were by no means
equally naturalistic. This was further evidenced by data on something
called ‘‘spiritual/ity.’’
‘‘Spirituality’’—Supernatural, Immanent, and Psychological

The degree to which group affiliates allowed or accepted the existence
of an ‘‘impersonal force or energy that courses through and connects all
living things or all that exists’’ (and not in a metaphorical sense) sug-
gests the salience of something-called-spirituality, however defined,
among some secular affiliates. As one female affiliate of a secular
humanist group once confided, her greatest challenge and complaint as
a member was that she felt compelled to ‘‘check her spirituality at the
door.’’ The following survey item was devised to assess the meanings
and relevance of ‘‘spiritual/ity’’ among group affiliates:
With regard to ‘‘spiritual’’ and ‘‘spirituality’’ . . . (check any that
apply to you)
__ I (tend to) avoid these terms; they do not apply to me or my experience.

__ I (may) use these terms, but only in psychological or experiential terms,
__ as a special state of being at peace or equilibrium or harmony.
__ as a process or experience of greater awareness or higher consciousness.
__ as a general feeling or experience of connection with others or nature.
__ I use these terms to refer to something that exists beyond physical nature
and its properties (a force, energy, or entity, or multiple forces or entities),
with which I/we can make contact.
Among 896 respondents to this item, 58 percent indicated ‘‘avoid/

do not apply’’ and 38 percent indicated that they may use the terms in
a psychological/experiential sense. Only 3.5 percent indicated transcen-
dental usage. Among the respondents who specified psychological
usage (Table 3.11), most indicated a feeling or experience of connection
with others or nature. Fewest indicated a process or experience of
higher awareness or consciousness. Fittingly, being at peace, harmony,
or equilibrium was in between.
Written texts were provided by 250 respondents (in response to an
‘‘Other’’ prompt after the scaled item). The great majority of these con-
veyed naturalistic or nontranscendental uses and meaning of ‘‘spirit-
ual/ity.’’ The following were the most frequent meanings:
. Experience of/in nature

. Awe, wonder, gratitude, or appreciation (about existence, nature, the universe)
Table 3.11
Use of ‘‘spiritual/ity’’ in specifically psychological/experiential senses
1. As being at peace, harmony, equilibrium 46 (14.5)

2. As process/experience of higher awareness, consciousness 18 (5.7)
3. As feeling/experience of connection with others/nature 146 (46.1)
Responses 1 and 3 35 (11.0)
Responses 2 and 3 14 (4.4)
Responses 1, 2, and 3 58 (18.3)
Total 317 (100.0)
. A sense of social connection or generalized connectedness

. Intense emotional experience
. Reaction to art, literature, music, aesthetic beauty
. Psychological process
. Sense of something greater than oneself (but not ontologically transcen-
dental).
As indicated in Table 3.12, there were notable differences in the pro-

pensity to apply ‘‘spiritual’’ terms or concepts based on worldview
type, self-descriptions,43 and group types. Just as notably, however, use
of these terms or concepts was not restricted to the ‘‘softer’’ secularists,
alone. Even among those with thoroughgoing naturalistic worldviews
(Level 1 secularists who flatly rejected a transcendental entity, personal
essence, impersonal force, and ultimate purpose—about one-third of
the entire sample), 15.7 percent indicated willingness to use these terms
nontranscendentally (to describe a kind of personal or human experi-
ence), even though they resolutely resist using ‘‘spiritual’’ to describe
themselves in general.
Unsurprisingly, those who described themselves as ‘‘atheist(ic)’’ or
‘‘anti-religious’’44 were most averse to ‘‘spiritual/ity.’’ Those who
described themselves as ‘‘agnostic’’ or ‘‘naturalistic’’ were most likely to
make nontranscendental or transcendental references to it. For some,
‘‘agnostic’’ denotes the affirmative unknowability of matters transcenden-
tal, and for others, open-ended indecision about them. Written comments
also suggested that ‘‘naturalistic’’ is often construed as an affinity for
nature rather than philosophical rejection of transcendental phenomena.
As one respondent wrote, ‘‘I’m naturalistic—after all, I’m a veterinarian.’’
Among group types, Atheist and Skeptic affiliates were most averse
to the concept, and Jewish and Unitarian Humanists, least. The Jewish
Humanists were most likely to make reference to ‘‘spiritual/ity’’ in both
Table 3.12
Uses and meanings of ‘‘spirituality’’ among secular affiliates
Uses of ‘‘spiritual/ity’’a*
Describe self as
N Avoid term Psychological Transcendental ‘‘spiritual’’b
Worldviewscà
Level 1 299 83.3 15.7 0.0 1.06
Level 2 453 77.7 21.2 0.0 1.13
Level 3 534 74.7 23.4 0.0 1.14
Level 4 700 65.9 32.6 .1 1.34
Self-descriptions
Atheist(ic) 555 67.0 30.8 .5 1.34
Anti-religious 264 62.9 34.8 .8 1.55
Skeptical 449 60.6 35.6 2.0 1.57
Freethinker 415 58.3 37.3 2.4 1.62
Secular 497 53.7 41.8 3.0 1.54
Agnostic 323 48.3 47.1 2.5 1.90
Naturalistic 292 47.6 45.5 4.8 1.87
Group affiliations
Atheist 101 75.2 23.8 0.0 1.15
Skeptic, rationalist 151 65.7 29.8 2.0 1.48
Secular Humanist 381 62.5 33.3 2.4 1.55
Freethought 30 50.0 50.0 0.0 1.90
Unitarian Humanist 126 47.6 47.6 3.2 2.04
Jewish Humanist 107 30.8 59.8 8.4 2.82
a
Values are percentage of respondents.
b
Values are means (Scale: 1 = not at all; 7 = very much).
c
Level 1 = God/soul/force/purpose meaningless/non-existent (‘‘straight-ticket rejecters’’)
Level 2 = God/soul/force/purpose meaningless/ non-existent OR don’t know/unknowable
Level 3 = God/soul/force meaningless/non-existent OR don’t know/unknowable
Level 4 = God/soul meaningless/non-existent OR don’t know/unknowable
N = number of respondents
nontranscendental and transcendental terms (most of the latter were

female). Written comments, discussions, and interviews indicated that a
distinction between definitively nontranscendental (social, psychologi-
cal, or metaphorical) and transcendental senses of the ‘‘spiritual’’ (such
as an immanent force in nature) was important and clearly drawn
among some, but fuzzy or indecisive among others—whereas an overtly
‘‘supernatural’’ notion of the ‘‘spiritual’’ (as in an entity existing apart
from nature) was overwhelmingly rejected.
Attitudes About ‘‘Religion’’ and the ‘‘Religious’’

Concern about the perennial role of ‘‘religion’’ in human affairs, and
its public resurgence in the United States and elsewhere, was pervasive
among those observed, interviewed, and surveyed. Roughly two-thirds
of the affiliates indicated that they had become more nonreligious,
vocal, or actively involved with secularist groups because of the
‘‘resurgence of religion in recent times.’’
When asked to what extent they would say they are ‘‘angry about
the role, dominance, and/or effects of religion in the world,’’ nearly 80
percent indicated anger affirmatively (Table 3.13; scaled responses from
5 to 7; 1 ¼ not at all angry; 7 ¼ very angry). Written comments provided by
79 individuals indicated a range of reactions other than anger, such as
‘‘concerned,’’ ‘‘distressed,’’ ‘‘disappointed,’’ ‘‘distraught,’’ ‘‘frustrated,’’
‘‘puzzled,’’ ‘‘sad,’’ ‘‘troubled,’’ ‘‘upset,’’ ‘‘worried,’’ and ‘‘aghast.’’
Although some writers made it clear that ‘‘anger’’ was apt and warranted,
others said that there are more reasonable or productive sentiments.
Respondents were also asked to what extent they considered religion
a harmful or positive force in human affairs (1 ¼ harmful; 7 ¼ positive).
Roughly three-quarters of respondents considered religion more harm-
ful than positive, but again there were considerable differences among
Table 3.13
Reported anger about the role and effects of religion in the world
Secular Jewish Unitarian Skeptic, Free-

Humanist Humanist Humanist Atheist rationalist thought Total
Angry 298 83 98 86 106 24 695

(57)a (80.1) (76.9) (79.0) (86.0) (71.6) (82.8)
Total 372 108 124 100 148 29 881
number of
respon-
dents
a
Values are number of respondents, with percentage in parentheses. Scale: 1 = not at all
angry; 7 = very angry.
groups (Table 3.14). Jewish Humanists were least likely to consider reli-
gion a harmful force followed by Unitarian Humanists; Freethought,
and Atheist affiliates were most likely to be of this opinion.
Respondents were offered the opportunity to indicate that ‘‘religion
is too complex a phenomenon to generalize about in this way’’ in addi-
tion to, or instead of, a scaled response.
In Table 3.14, those who chose this option instead of a scaled response
are reported. In Table 3.15, those who chose this option whether or not
they provided a scaled response are reported. In both cases, Jewish
Humanists were most likely to feel that ‘‘religion’’ is too complex to
generalize about in such a manner, followed by Unitarian Humanists;
Freethought, and Atheist affiliates were least likely to do so.
Overall, more than a third of respondents felt that ‘‘religion’’ was
too complex to characterize or evaluate simply (whether or not they
provided scaled responses).
Additional items provided further insight into respondents’ attitudes
about ‘‘religion’’ and related issues. In general, Jewish Humanists
were less critical of ‘‘religion’’ and more (self-critical) of ‘‘skeptical and
nonreligious people’’ than others, with the Unitarian Humanists close by.
Close inspection of the data indicated that this was true of both males and
females in comparison with other groups. Atheist and Freethought affili-
ates tended to be most critical of ‘‘religion.’’ Skeptic and Secular humanist
affiliates generally held the middle ground, with Secular humanists more
severe, on average, and Skeptics somewhat less so.
Purpose and Meaning in Life

There was strong unanimity about the value or personal meaningful-
ness of life among group affiliates and interviewees, as long as this is
carefully qualified. When asked to what extent they considered their
own lives worthwhile (1 ¼ not at all; 7 ¼ very), an overwhelming
majority of affiliates affirmed that they did (91.8 percent responded
between 5 and 7; 5.9 percent at the scale midpoint; n ¼ 891).
When it came to generalized meaning attributable to human life,
however (‘‘Do you feel that human life or existence is, in general, not
at all [or] very meaningful?’’), matters changed. Response to this item
dropped to 670 individuals. Of these, the majority responded affirma-
tively (71.8 percent, 5–7), but a substantial minority did not (17.2 percent,
1–3; 11 percent, midpoint). Moreover, 272 individuals chose an optional
item indicating that ‘‘this is not a meaningful question to me’’ whether
or not they responded to the question on meaningfulness. Written com-
ments clearly indicated that whatever meaning there is in human life is
assigned by human beings to their own lives. Many expressed discomfort
speaking about general ‘‘meaningfulness’’ of life at all (in order to avoid
even a hint of any transcendental or ultimate meaning).
Table 3.14
Religion as a harmful or positive force in human affairs
Secular Jewish Unitarian Skeptic,

Secular Humanist Humanist Humanist Atheist rationalist Freethought Total
Religion a harmful 302 (78.6) 61 (56.0) 81 (63.8) 90 (87.4) 110 (72.4) 29 (96.7) 673 (74.4)
forcea
Religion too com- 50 (13.0) 29 (26.6) 19 (15.0) 5 (4.9) 14 (9.2) 0 (0) 117 (112.9)
plex to general-
ize aboutb
Total respondents 384 109 127 103 152 30 905
a
Values are number of respondents rating religion a harmful force (1 to 3 on a scale with 1 = harmful force, 7 = positive force); percentage in paren-
theses.
b
Values are number of respondents who gave no scaled response and indicated that religion is much too complex a phenomenon to generalize about
in this way; percentage in parentheses.
Table 3.15
Religion too complex to evaluate generally as a harmful or positive force in human affairs
Group type/affiliation
Secular Jewish Unitarian Skeptic,
Humanist Humanist Humanist Atheist rationalist Freethought Total
Religion too complex 126 (32.8) 53 (48.6) 55 (43.3) 30 (29.1) 48 (31.6) 7 (23.3) 319 (35.2)
to generalize about
Total respondents 384 (00.0) 109 (00.0) 127 (00.0) 103 (00.0) 152 (00.0) 30 (00.0) 905 (00.0)
Yet, in response to an open-ended query about ‘‘what gives you the

greatest sense of meaning in life,’’ respondents readily listed a range of
experiences and activities—particularly family and social relations, pro-
ductive work and personal achievement, contributing positively to the
quality of human life, the acquisition of knowledge, and the experience
of nature:
Family (235 mentions)

Helping, caring for others (177)
Nature (experience of, connection with, being part of; 167)
Learning, knowledge, understanding (165)
People, social relations in general (160)
Friends, friendship (157)
Contributing, improving things, ethical action (146)
Children, child-rearing, parenting (144)
Enjoyment, happiness, satisfaction in living (96)
Love, loving (92)
Beauty (experience of; 78)
Work, accomplishment (63)
Meaningful personal activity in general (58)
Art (28)
Experience in general (27)
Music (24)
Creativity (23)
Political action, involvement (22)
Engagement, involvement in general (15)
Hope (13)
They overwhelmingly consider their lives worthwhile, but meaning

is assigned to life by those who live it. The sources of meaning in their
lives are remarkable for their unremarkableness: familial, social, educa-
tional, creative, contributive, and experiential.
Attitudes About Death

The value of living is generally not diminished or threatened by the
inevitability of death. Indeed, some indicated that the value of living is
enhanced by the fact of our mortality. Group affiliates were asked:
‘‘To what extent would you say that you fear death?’’ (1 ¼ not at all;
7 ¼ quite a lot) and ‘‘What is your attitude about death?’’ (open-ended
item). The distribution of responses concerning fear of death was
broad, but with a clear skew toward little or no fear (Table 3.16). In a
secular humanist meeting, one young affiliate admitted that he has
long harbored an inexplicable fear of death. On the other hand, an
83-year-old secular humanist affiliate, with whom I spent a good deal
of time in his last weeks in hospice, maintained his acerbic wit and
skeptical assumption that the end was the end—to the very end.
Table 3.16
Reported fear of death
Scale
Total
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 respondents
284 182 109 102 65 36 21 799

(35.5) (22.8) (13.6) (12.8) (8.2) (4.5) (2.6) (100.0)
Values are number of respondents, with percentage in parentheses. Scale: 1 = not at all;
7 = quite a lot.
Attitudes about death most often mentioned in written texts made

mention of
. finality—the end, it happens, inevitable, unavoidable, no afterlife

. acceptance—part of life, the natural process of living organisms
. neglect—no attitude, ignore it, not worth thinking about (can’t do any-
thing about it, anyway)
. resistance or fear—(of death or, more often, the process of dying)
. desire for control over dying process—(including suicide if warranted)
. mystery—unknown, uncertainty, wonder.
Notably, the older the respondents, the less the reported fear of death.
Although this relationship was modest, it was statistically significant
(r ¼ 0.272; p < 0.01, two-tailed). A pervasive theme was, in a word,
‘‘acceptance.’’ The sense among many was that this is an attitude
worth cultivating no matter how difficult this may be. Death is a part
of life/nature, it happens, it’s unavoidable, it’s final, and there is little
to be done about it other than to do what one can to live a healthy
and positive, productive life. In text responses, many respondents dis-
tinguish between fear of death ‘‘in principle’’ and fear of the process
of physical decline or dying. It was repeatedly made clear that scaled
responses pertained to the former rather than the latter. The impor-
tance of personal control over the dying process was also mentioned
by many.
It may be that because secularists tend to reject the notion of an after-
life or the suggestion that belief is necessary for acceptance of death,
the reported lack of fear may reflect a degree of dismissive bravado that
conceals deeper or neglected fear. Relevant texts and interview discus-
sions suggest that this is likely true among some, but not all. Many
respondents wrote on the general theme of inevitability, acceptance,
and getting on with the business of living to the best of one’s ability.
This is not to deny, entirely, that the fact of death is an unsettling one
(because of the natural tendency for consciousness to want to persist). It
is, rather, to say that the mature individual is one who accepts reality—
however undesirable—without whining or throwing a tantrum. It is
even, some suggested, possible to embrace death as a beneficial conclu-
sion to human life, in both natural and personal terms. It is possible for
human beings to cultivate a mindset concerning mortality that nullifies
death’s ‘‘sting.’’ This is a model of mature human living to which many
secularists say they openly aspire. This said, some noted in interviews
and survey comments that it is the quality of life that is important, lead-
ing them to support ‘‘death with dignity’’ and ‘‘physician-assisted sui-
cide’’ measures like those in Oregon or the Netherlands.
WHAT DO THEY VALUE AND HOW DO THEY LIVE?

As just indicated, a majority of group affiliates cited social relation-
ships as a significant source of meaning in life. Indeed, 63.8 percent
mentioned social life (family, friends, people in general); 39.2 percent
mentioned personal experience or pursuits (work, creativity, experience
of nature or art); and 33.8 percent mentioned social or political engage-
ment (making a contribution, volunteering, political action, helping
and caring for others). These commitments are not in word, alone.
Most affiliates were married or partnered at the time of the survey
(68 percent; n ¼ 907). Most (76.6 percent) had children (whether ‘‘bio-
logical,’’ adopted, or by marriage). Among those providing this infor-
mation (n ¼ 860), 11 percent had never been married, 50.9 percent had
been married but never divorced, and 38.1 percent had been divorced
at least once.
To understand their value systems, a distinction must be made
between what may be called ethical ‘‘essentials’’ and moral ‘‘preferen-
tials.’’ The former are principles and behavior patterns considered
essential for acceptable (or desirable) social life. The latter are personal
or cultural preferences that are not felt to be critical for achieving a
desirable quality of life—individual or societal. Matters such as hon-
esty/truthfulness/trustworthiness, treating others fairly or consider-
ately, and justice are considered essential for personal and societal
well-being, and so the importance of these values is strong and virtu-
ally unanimous (Table 3.17; 1 ¼ not at all, 7 ¼ extremely important).
This said, many questioned the specific meaning of justice and the
degree to which it is applied equally and fairly.
Responsibility for improving the world and helping others in need
received strong endorsement, if not quite as strong or unanimous as
honesty, fairness, or justice. This said, the most frequently mentioned
ethical principle in interviews with both affiliated and independent sec-
ularists was the ‘‘golden rule.’’ This is considered a fundamental
Table 3.17
Respondents’ rated importance of selected values
Importance
Total Standard
Values respondents Meana deviation
Honesty, truthfulness, trustworthiness 917 6.74 0.565

Treating others fairly 912 6.61 0.671
Justice 911 6.59 0.786
Treating others considerately 912 6.45 0.815
Compassion 911 6.43 0.905
Responsibility for improving world 913 6.02 1.159
Helping others in need 905 5.90 1.105
Moderation of own appetites, emotions 908 5.15 1.455
a
Scale: 1 = not at all important; 7 = extremely important.
insight into the nature of human social life that, many noted, predated
Christianity.
With regard to ‘‘moderation of one’s own appetites and emotions,’’
endorsement was notably weaker and more variable. The question arises:
how much moderation, and of what appetites or emotions? In a study of
the ethical values of religious ‘‘skeptics’’ and ‘‘believers’’ by Middleton
and Putney,45 a pertinent distinction was made between ‘‘ascetic’’ and
‘‘social’’ ethical standards. They found that social standards (that devalue
actions intrinsically harmful to social life, such as lying, stealing, or phys-
ical injury) were held strongly and equally among religious ‘‘skeptics’’
and ‘‘believers.’’ By contrast, ‘‘ascetic’’ standards (concerning personal
behavior such as smoking, gambling, alcohol consumption, or sexual
activity) were stronger among religious believers than skeptics.
Moderation of one’s appetites and emotions, at least in general prin-
ciple, would seem to fall into the ‘‘ascetic’’ category. Even so, when
asked whether it is ‘‘important to focus our own and our children’s
attention on values and aims beyond material consumption or consum-
erism,’’ 95 percent of the group affiliates agreed (5 to 7 on a 1–7 scale;
mean ¼ 6.42). Moreover, the manners and lifestyles of the secularists
whom I have come to know well over the past several years, both inde-
pendent and affiliated, can only be described as modest (to the point,
some would say, of being downright ‘‘square’’). These are, in the main,
responsible and generally serious-minded parents, employees, and citi-
zens whose attitudes and actions—apart from their worldviews—
would attract little attention from their neighbors. Indeed, because
many report that they tend to be strategically circumspect about their
views in public or in unfamiliar contexts, little does attract attention
and most blend quietly into middle-class North American life. This
Table 3.18
Affiliates’ attitudes about controversial ‘‘moral’’ issues
Should be
Completely Accept with limited or Completely
Na acceptable reservations discouraged unacceptable
Same-sex 749 79.6 10.7 4.9 4.8

marriage
Divorce 752 69.9 21.8 6.6 1.6
Sex before 753 60.0 31.4 6.1 2.4
marriage
Sex between 740 2.4 7.9 27.6 62.0
a legal
adult and a
minor
Embryonic 757 87.6 9.1 5.0 2.8
stem cell
research
Genetic 744 44.1 48.6 5.0 2.3
research in
general
Physician- 760 68.8 26.1 2.8 2.4
assisted
suicide
Death pen- 740 16.2 18.5 29.4 35.9
alty
a
These items were added to the end of the survey following distribution to the first three
groups (n = 141; one Atheist, Secular Humanist, and Humanist Unitarian group, each);
total sample size for these items was therefore 770.
Values are percentage of respondents. N = total number of respondents.
said, with regard to matters considered preferential rather than essen-

tial for individual and societal well-being, both interviewed and sur-
veyed secularists live up to their self-descriptions as politically (or
socially) ‘‘liberal’’ (83.6 percent) or ‘‘moderate’’ (11.4 percent).
Most consider same-sex relations or marriage matters of personal
choice that do not threaten the common good, and therefore acceptable
(Table 3.18). Similarly, divorce and physician-assisted suicide, though
regrettable, are sometimes preferable to an intolerable quality of per-
sonal or family life. They are acceptable, in principle, as long as they
are decided upon responsibly on a case by case basis. (The same can
be said of abortion.)
Ethical lines are drawn more carefully or sharply on some issues.
For example, sexual relations between an adult and a minor, in princi-
ple, are completely unacceptable (62 percent) or should be limited or
discouraged (27.6 percent). It is, after all, the law, and the law is
reasonably designed to protect the young from sexual predation and
victimization. Again, the prime directive is ensuring individuals’ well-
being—in this case, children. Even so, reasonable judgment must be
applied, as in the case, say, of a 17- and 21-year-old ‘‘in love.’’ As a
result, general-principle responses were frequently qualified with ‘‘it
depends on the circumstances.’’
Although there is strong support for the use of embryonic stem cells
in research on, for example, chronic illnesses (over and against reli-
gious objections), many have reservations about genetic research in
general. The latter covers a broad range of phenomena with both
potentially desirable and undesirable outcomes. Some express concern
about potentially harmful environmental and human impact of geneti-
cally modified plants, and although knowledgeable, voluntary, and
carefully monitored termination of one’s own life is deemed an intrin-
sic human right, the state’s right to punitively take individuals’ lives
(and the deterrent value or justness of the death penalty) is viewed
more critically.
The common thread in such matters is the application of prudent
judgment and critical reason with the aim of discerning what is, or is
not, likely to advance or threaten individuals’ well-being and the com-
mon good. Not surprisingly, among the most highly regarded values
was that of critical reasoning. Nearly 98 percent endorsed the impor-
tance of ‘‘critical, logical thinking’’ and nearly 96 percent endorsed the
value of ‘‘guiding children to think critically and logically’’ (5 to 7 on a
1–7 scale with 7 ¼ extremely important).
Many of the affiliated secularists were noticeably less confident about
what, exactly, the content of children’s philosophical guidance should be
or how this should be provided. Because the majority experienced, and
then rejected, religious upbringing, moral ‘‘inculcation’’ and religious (or
philosophical) ‘‘proselytizing’’ are anathema. The line between ‘‘educa-
tion’’ and ‘‘proselytizing’’ is difficult to draw, and there are frequent dis-
cussions of this issue in secularist meetings. So it is that when asked on
two occasions, a year apart, one secular humanist group was split down
the middle about the advisability of a children’s program.46 A few mem-
bers have struggled for more than a decade with limited success to insti-
tute a children’s educational program. They are not alone. Among the
groups observed and surveyed here, only the Jewish Humanist groups
have maintained multiyear children’s educational programs (that focus
on Jewish cultural heritage and general ethical principles embodied in
that heritage—such as tikkun olam, one’s responsibility to ‘‘repair the
world’’ and contribute to the welfare of the community).
There are signs that ambivalence about children’s instruction in
organized secularity is beginning to abate. Widely publicized atheist
and skeptic summer camps have emboldened some locals to renew
calls for children’s educational programs in critical thinking, logic,

ethics, values, and philosophy, as has the appearance of a volume on
Parenting beyond Belief—On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids without Reli-
gion.47 The secular humanist group just mentioned now has an active
children’s program committee and a fledgling program. And the secu-
lar humanist chapter that emerged from an atheist meet-up includes
several young parents or parents-to-be who are motivated to partici-
pate in the creation of an environment in which their children can be
educated—‘‘not proselytized’’—to judge truth claims critically and
intelligently and find their own philosophical way (hopefully, pro-
moters admit, along skeptical and secular lines). The degree to which
these endeavors can overcome a strong and abiding emphasis on philo-
sophical individualism or autonomous discovery—and so, endure—
remains to be seen.
SUMMARY
These findings are consistent with Beit-Hallahmi’s conclusion that ‘‘the
modal atheist in Western society today . . . is much more likely to be a
man, married, with higher education’’48 and Hunsberger and Altemeyer’s
conclusion that ‘‘[d]emographically, active [or affiliated] atheism appears
to be mostly an educated, ‘left-winger,’ old, guy, thing.’’49 To these char-
acterizations might be added ‘‘a substantially white, Euro-American’’
thing. This said, there are signs that affiliated secularism continues to
replenish itself with younger participants, in part through the mechanism
of the Internet as a marketing, sorting, and assembling mechanism.
There has been an observable tendency over the past 200—and
2,000—years for particular skeptical or secularist movements and col-
lectives to emerge and fade away, continually replenished by new ones
under new leadership and labels with distinctive slants, from the kako-
daimoniotai to ‘‘brights.’’50 Substantial or affirmative secularity has been
a minority position throughout Western history, and organized secular-
ity has perennially attracted an infinitesimal portion of the secular or
skeptical population. But this persists, even as it waxes and wanes over
time and across societies.
No research takes place in a historical vacuum, and it is important
to acknowledge the environment in which the data just presented were
gathered. Secularists of various stripes have been wrested in recent
years from a comforting mid-twentieth-century presumption of inexo-
rable, straight-line secularization (heading toward the positions they
themselves hold). Both independent and affiliated secularists have been
upset by a resurgence of religion in governance, public life, and world
affairs in recent decades. Many have become more vocal, assertive,
and/or engaged as secularists. They have been emboldened, to some
extent, by a series of published tracts that give voice—sometimes quite
strident—to their perspectives and concerns.51 Reference is often made

to the ‘‘gay revolution’’ as a model to be emulated: proudly asserting
one’s identity and equal political, human, and civil rights.
But it is equally important to recognize that this is not a uniform
response, nor are secularists a homogeneous mass—even among the
small minority of secularists who affiliate on this basis. Peter Steinfels
and Barry Kosmin52 have suggested that much as religiosity may be
viewed along a continuum from orthodox or fundamentalist to liberal,
so forms of secularity must be distinguished, from ‘‘hard’’ to ‘‘soft,’’ with
respect to worldviews, values, attitudes about something-called-religion,
the place of religious expression in government or public discourse, and
much else. Psychologist Frank Barron53 once suggested distinctions
between ‘‘fundamentalist’’ and ‘‘enlightened’’ forms of ‘‘belief’’ and
‘‘unbelief.’’ Although his nomenclature may have a ‘‘politically incor-
rect’’ ring today, the import of his observation is valuable. Regardless of
the content of existential/metaphysical worldviews—naturalistic or
supernaturalistic—these (or the personalities of their holders) range from
authoritarian, dogmatic, or prejudicial to tolerant, nuanced, and accept-
ing or live-and-let-live.
It is sometimes asked whether secularists are more or less dogmatic
or prejudicial than the ‘‘religious.’’54 The question may be framed too
broadly because there is considerable diversity on both ‘‘sides,’’ includ-
ing those who describe themselves as ‘‘atheist(ic).’’ The answer depends
on degrees and types of secularity (and the personalities of those who
hold varying positions), much as it depends on degrees and types of
religiosity. Gordon Allport, and a legion of researchers following
him, distinguished between ‘‘mature’’ or ‘‘intrinsic’’ and ‘‘immature’’ or
‘‘extrinsic religion,’’ with the latter tending to be more dogmatic or
broadly prejudicial than the former.55 Similar consideration has not yet
been extended to ‘‘atheists’’ (or ‘‘secularists’’) in the social sciences.
The answer also depends on the target(s), breadth, and intensity of
judgmental generalization. Affiliated Atheists hold comparatively criti-
cal views of something-called-religion, much as many Americans gen-
eralize broadly (and negatively) about something-called-atheism. But
this is hardly uniform among self-described atheists or across a broader
spectrum of distinguishable secular types. Recall that roughly a third
of the secular affiliates felt that it is not possible to make blanket judg-
ments about something-called-religion, from 30 percent of the Atheists
to 50 percent of the Jewish Humanists. Moreover, this is not uniform
concerning targets, since the affiliated Atheists and fellow secularists
are comparatively nonjudgmental about homosexuality, for example.
Are the secularists interviewed and surveyed here critical of ‘‘tradi-
tional’’ monotheistic notions of ‘‘God’’ or an ‘‘afterlife,’’ or perceived
excesses in human behavior attributed to these? Overwhelmingly. How-
ever, when probed more deeply, only about one-third categorically
rejects ‘‘God,’’ ‘‘soul,’’ ‘‘ultimate purpose,’’ and an impersonal force.

Another third is receptive to the ‘‘spiritual’’ notion of an immanent con-
necting force (‘‘within nature’’) sometimes, probably, definitely, or
metaphorically. And another quarter is similarly receptive to some
kind of ultimate purpose or directionality in human life or existence in
general.
The more closely we probe peoples’ worldviews and lifeways, as
evidenced by the data presented here, the more difficult it becomes to
neatly place many (and quite possibly a growing number) into some of
the central categories that frame much ‘‘Western’’ discourse, such as
‘‘theist’’ or ‘‘atheist,’’ ‘‘religious’’ or ‘‘nonreligious.’’ Even if seculariza-
tion is not a straight-line trajectory culminating in ‘‘hard secularity,’’
there is evidence of increasing individuality and eclecticism in people’s
constructions of their existential and metaphysical worldviews.56
The more closely we look at affiliated secularists, the more cultural
diversity becomes apparent among the institutions they create. The
central preoccupations, and institutional ethos, in Atheist, Skeptic, and
Secular, Jewish, or Unitarian Humanist groups are not the same, even
if they share a degree of doubt or disapproval concerning certain cul-
turally prevalent ‘‘religious’’ ideas or institutions. This shared charac-
teristic has earned them a marginal and culturally symbolic position,
particularly in the United States. As such, secularists (often encapsu-
lated as ‘‘atheists’’) have long been viewed as homogenous figures set
against a ‘‘religious’’ ground.
As Penny Edgell and her colleagues have observed, the notion of
‘‘atheist,’’ even among those who do not think they know (or have ever
known) one, serves as a symbolic cultural and moral boundary marker
that defines (for some) what it is (and is not) to be ‘‘an American’’:
Some people view atheists as problematic because they associate them

with illegality, such as drug use and prostitution—that is, with immoral
people who threaten respectable community from the lower end of the
status hierarchy. Others saw atheists as rampant materialists and cultural
elitists that threaten common values from above—the ostentatiously
wealthy who make a lifestyle out of consumption or the cultural elites
who thing they know better than everyone else. Both of these themes rest
on a view of atheists as self-interested individualists who are not con-
cerned with the common good.57
In contrast to this, both affiliated and independent secularists describe

themselves as rational, reasonable, and thoughtful, as well as ethical,
law-abiding, and responsible. They express concern about improving the
quality of life ‘‘here and now’’ and in the future (principally but not
exclusively for human beings). Well aware of survey data on mainstream
attitudes about ‘‘atheists,’’ ‘‘nonbelievers,’’ or ‘‘secular humanists,’’ they
view themselves as widely misunderstood, misrepresented, and unrea-

sonably maligned, particularly in the United States.58 Many find it
incredible that they and their forebears and fellows are castigated for
holding essentially ‘‘conservative’’ positions—or as comic Bill Maher
once put it, for saying ‘‘I don’t know’’—about ultimate existential or
metaphysical questions. They overwhelmingly consider their lives worth-
while and find meaning, most of all, in family, friends, personally
enriching experience, productive work, and positive contributions. Ironi-
cally, but for their secularist stances or naturalistic worldviews, their val-
ues and lifestyles tend to be substantially similar to those of many
(moderate or liberal) ‘‘religious’’ neighbors in their communities.
The secularists studied here, taken together, resemble another popula-
tion that has perhaps been better served by research—scientists and aca-
demics, particularly social scientists.59 Both affirmative secularists and
scientists tend to be well educated and serious minded, with a decid-
edly intellectual bent. They tend to be male somewhat more often than
female. There is shared dedication to the empirical investigation and
understanding of nature, even among those who accommodate transcen-
dental or variously ‘‘spiritual’’ or ‘‘religious’’ ideas and commitments
within their worldviews. Substantial numbers of both are educators.
They extol and exhibit the values of individualism and autonomous
thought, but are nonetheless collaborative and sociable. And they tend
to be politically liberal citizens whose lifestyles typically blend quietly
into the North American cultural standards of their neighborhoods.
NOTES
1. Thrower, 1980.
2. This has been observed repeatedly by, for example, Vernon, 1968; Capor-
ale and Grumelli, 1971; Hale, 1977; Pruyser, 1992; Bainbridge, 2005; Hunsberger
and Altemeyer, 2006; see also, Pasquale, 2007b.
3. For example, Bainbridge, 2005; Beit-Hallahmi, 2007; Cimino and Smith,
2007; Hunsberger and Altemeyer, 2006; Kosmin and Keysar, 2007; Pasquale,
2007b; Zuckerman, 2007 and 2008.
4. Caporale, 1971, 3.
5. Such as Budd, 1967; Campbell, 1965, 1969, and 1972; Cimino and Smith,
2007; Demerath, 1969; Demerath and Thiessen, 1966; Black, 1983; McTaggart,
1967; Hunsberger and Altemeyer, 2006.
6. Hale, 1977, 97.
7. Pruyser, 1974, 195.
8. Ibid., 174.
9. Ibid., 196.
10. Pasquale, 2007a.
11. Atheist, skeptic, or rationalist student groups at some universities in the
region were not sought out for inclusion in the study. Membership is typically
small and shifts annually as students matriculate and graduate.
12. It should also be noted that the nature and quality of mailing lists varied
noticeably among the groups. This reflects, in part, differences in the purposes,
activities, and nature of affiliation in these groups. Some exhibit formal organi-
zational structure with governing boards, committees, regular meetings, and
clearly defined levels of membership. Others are less structured networks of
interested individuals and supporters who meet irregularly, distribute newslet-
ters or other bulletins, maintain continuing contact largely via e-mail, and have
less well-defined affiliation levels or requirements, As a result, some were
clearly regularly updated lists of active or dues-paying members, whereas
others were less frequently updated and/or more inclusive lists covering both
active participants (in meetings, e-mail correspondence, or other activities) as
well as people who had inquired about the group or asked to receive electronic
or printed newsletters.
13. Nearly 60 percent of Unitarian humanist affiliates indicated affiliation with
a Unitarian church or fellowship; in other groups 10.5 percent or less did so.
14. A secularist movement dedicated to ‘‘illuminating and elevating the nat-
uralist worldview.’’ See http://www.the-brights.net/.
15. As in, for example, Robertson, 1936, or Jacoby, 2004.
16. From here on, when referring specifically to the surveyed groups, the
group category names will be capitalized.
17. Because of small sample size, limited reference will be made to results
for the Freethought group affiliates.
18. I am grateful for a Shand Award from the Society for the Scientific Study
of Religion (2006), which helped defray survey distribution costs.
19. Preliminary analysis of response patterns among the United States and Brit-
ish Columbia humanists disclosed no strong or systematic differences for many of
the variables reported here. Data are therefore reported for the full sample.
20. McTaggart, 1997.
21. Personal communication, Tom Flynn, ed., Free Inquiry, September 13, 2007.
22. Hunsberger and Altemeyer, 2006.
23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetup (accessed June 24, 2008).
24. Bainbridge, 2005.
25. Lee, 1995.
26. Members, organizers, and young visitors at established secularist groups
have repeatedly mentioned that the old-age skew is a recruitment problem,
because young secularists do not feel at home among a majority of ‘‘elders.’’
27. Gender distribution of survey respondents was a fair reflection of the
actual gender distributions in the groups (based on mailing list counts or
group reports; indicated in brackets).
28. For example, Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle, 1997; Roozen, 1980; Stark, 1963;
Vetter and Green, 1932.
29. Campbell, 1965, 333.
30. See, for example, Argyle, 1958; Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle, 1997; Spilka,
Hood, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch, 2003; Thalheimer, 1965; Vetter and Green, 1932.
31. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html.
Source: Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky, ‘‘Jewish Population of the United
States, 2006,’’ in American Jewish Year Book 2006, Vol. 106, ed. David Singer and
Lawrence Grossman (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2006).
32. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/41000.html, U.S. Census Bureau;

State & County Quickfacts.
33. Vetter and Green, 1932, 185.
34. http://religions.pewforum.org/.
35. Kosmin and Keysar, 2006.
36. For example, Altemeyer and Hunsberger, 1997; Roozen, 1980; Vetter and
Green, 1932.
37. Altemeyer and Hunsberger, 1997.
38. McTaggart, 1997.
39. Distinctions were not made among fundamentalist or liberal Protestant
denominations or sects. Differences in perceived strictness might well vary
among these.
40. Respondents were asked to indicate (yes/no) if they had experienced
conflict over religion with (a list of) others.
41. For example, research suggesting significant involvement of early family
maladjustment or rebelliousness (e.g., Caplovitz and Sherrow, 1977) has not
been borne out by later work (e.g., Altemeyer and Hunsberger, 1997).
42. Response categories have been compressed to simplify presentation.
43. Repondents were asked to indicate which (if any) of several listed
descriptors applied to them.
44. Note that despite the widespread criticism of something-called-religion,
less than one-third of the sample (264) was willing to apply the term ‘‘anti-
religious’’ to themselves.
45. Middleton and Putney, 1962.
46. December, 2005, mean ¼ 3.3 on a 5-point scale (1 ¼ not at all; 5 ¼ very)
concerning the importance of a children’s educational program, n ¼ 98;
November, 2006, mean ¼ 3.32, n ¼ 111. Part of the reason for this ambivalence
is likely attributable, as well, to limited personal investment, since most mem-
bers were well past child-rearing age.
47. McGowan, 2007.
48. Beit-Hallahmi, 2007, 313.
49. Hunsberger and Altemeyer, 2006, 106.
50. See, for example, Budd, 1977; Campbell 1972; Marty, 1961; Robertson, 1936;
Thrower, 1980; Warren, 1943. Will Durant writes (1966, 361) that in ancient
Greece ‘‘Lysias tells of an atheistic society that called itself the kakodaimoniotai, or
Devils’ Club, and deliberately met and dined on holy-days set apart for fasting.’’
51. For example, Dawkins, 2006; Harris, 2004; Hitchens, 2006.
52. Steinfels, 2006; Kosmin, 2007.
53. Barron, 1963.
54. For example, Hunsberger and Altemeyer, 2006.
55. Allport, 1950; Batson, Shoenrade, and Ventis, 1993.
56. Consider the increase in religious ‘‘nones’’ (no specific religious affilia-
tion) or ‘‘spiritual but not religious’’ in recent decades (Kosmin and Keysar,
2007; Roof, 1999).
57. Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann, 2006, 225 and 227.
58. A majority of group affiliates agreed that ‘‘people with my way of think-
ing are discriminated against in society.’’
59. See, for example, Beit-Hallahmi, 1977 and 2007; Brown, 2003; Ecklund
and Scheitle, 2007; Roe, 1953.
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Chapter 4
Sexuality and the Secular

Thomas J. Linneman
Margaret A. Clendenen
We begin with a quick exercise in word association. What images does

the phrase ‘‘religion and homosexuality’’ most readily bring to mind?
Pastor Fred Phelps brandishing a sign reading ‘‘God Hates Fags’’? Jerry
Falwell warning of the gay ways of Teletubby Tinky Winky? Mega-
church pastor Ted Haggard drummed out of his church due to his trysts
with a gay masseur? The controversy over gay Episcopal bishop Gene
Robinson? Such high-profile examples dominate the ways we connect
homosexuality and religion, both within popular culture and academe.
The literature surrounding the intersection of religion and homosex-
uality has concentrated primarily on two themes: how Christians under-
stand and react to homosexuality and how gay men and lesbians
attempt to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. Recent examples of
the former1 demonstrate how and why Christian conservatives feel
threatened by the lesbian and gay rights movement and the ways in
which they have responded to the many successes this movement has
achieved. Examples of the latter demonstrate that religion can be both
an inhibitive2 and a liberating3 force within the everyday lives of gay
men and lesbians. Both themes, however, focus on the role of religion
and practices of religious faith. Indeed, a prevalent assumption in both
sociological literature and the culture at large is that discrimination
against gay men and lesbians is rooted in conservative religious beliefs.4
Though the lively battle between these groups seduces our attention, it
distracts us from considering how those living apart from religion view
homosexuality and the movement for lesbian and gay rights. Without
considering atheists’ and agnostics’ views of homosexuality, we cannot
develop a comprehensive understanding of beliefs about homosexuality:

what happens to these attitudes when God is not in the picture? If you
remove the ‘‘God’’ from Phelps’ ‘‘God Hates Fags,’’ does the hate nec-
essarily disappear as well?
Studies consistently have shown that atheists are more liberal and
more likely to be politically radical than their religious peers.5 Yet, does
this mean that atheists are also more likely to be accepting of homosex-
uality? Thomas Clark, the founder and director of The Center for Natu-
ralism, contends in a 1994 article in The Humanist that all arguments
about the immorality of homosexuality and the threat of the gay rights
movement are based in religious ideology.6 Similarly, in a 2006 article
in the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, sociologist Phil Zucker-
man demonstrates that the eighteen countries that are most accepting of
homosexuality also have high levels of atheism among their popula-
tions.7 The only mention of homosexuality in Beit-Hallahami’s chapter
is a 1949 study that showed that people with high degrees of ‘‘religion-
ism’’ were more intolerant of criminals, homosexuals, unwed mothers,
and ‘‘conscientious objectors’’ than people with low degrees of ‘‘reli-
gionism.’’8 Yet, in the sixty years since this study was published, we
have witnessed the 1969 Stonewall riots and the subsequent rise of the
lesbian and gay rights movement. Surely it is time to reconsider what
people with low degrees of ‘‘religionism’’ think about homosexuality.
Some researchers have analyzed connections between sexuality and
religion, but these studies do not adequately allow for the study of
atheists’ attitudes because of their lack of specificity in measuring athe-
ism. For example, Hoffman and Miller’s research on the effects of reli-
gion on social attitudes, while careful about measuring various types
of Protestantism, simply has an ‘‘Unaffiliated’’ category.9 Laumann and
his coinvestigators’ survey of American sexual behavior, widely consid-
ered the most definitive study of sexuality in recent decades, offers
only a category of ‘‘No Religion at All.’’10 However, Hout and Fischer
show that those who express ‘‘no religion’’ in surveys are in reality of-
ten unchurched people who hold religious beliefs.11 These studies,
therefore, do not allow us specifically to study atheists and sexuality.
A body of research that addresses both atheism and homosexuality
focuses on quantitative measures of discrimination against atheists and
gays and lesbians. Most of this research12 has used General Social Sur-
vey (GSS) data to compare people’s willingness to grant civil liberties
to ‘‘atheists’’ with their willingness to grant civil liberties to homosex-
uals, militarists, and racists. GSS questions regarding atheists are pre-
faced by the following statement: ‘‘There are always some people
whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people. For
instance, somebody who is against all churches and religion.’’ The use
of the word ‘‘against’’ ascribes a certain degree of militancy to atheists
that they may or may not have, and the use of ‘‘churches’’ and
Sexuality and the Secular 91
‘‘religion’’ suggests a definition of atheism far beyond a lack of belief

in God. Thus, instead of reflecting people’s willingness to grant civil
liberties to atheists in general, these questions more likely elicit opin-
ions regarding people who are actively opposed to organized religion.
In addition, this research gives us no insight into the minds of atheists
themselves.
More recent research from Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas
Hartmann13 provides a better measure of levels of discrimination against
atheists and gays and lesbians. As part of the larger Minnesota Mosaic
Project, researchers asked a random sample of American adults whether
certain groups shared their vision of America. Of all groups listed (athe-
ists, Muslims, homosexuals, conservative Christians, recent immigrants,
Hispanics, Jews, Asian Americans, African Americans, and white Ameri-
cans), atheists were the least likely to be seen as sharing people’s visions
of America. Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann view the greater level of
reported discrimination against atheists as opposed to homosexuals as
particularly notable: ‘‘The possibility of same-sex marriage has widely
been seen as a threat to a biblical definition of marriage . . . and the
debate over the ordination of gay clergy has become a central point of
controversy within many churches. In our study, however, concerns
about atheists were stronger than concerns about homosexuals.’’14 But
again, here we have the atheist as object: people are concerned about
atheists, but we have no idea what concerns atheists themselves.
We do have some evidence regarding how atheists feel about the
prejudice they experience. The differing levels of stigma identified by
Edgell and her coauthors are reflected in everyday comparisons made
by atheists between themselves on the one hand and lesbians and gay
men on the other. Through content analysis of the secular humanist
magazine Free Inquiry, interviews with participants and leaders of
atheist/secular humanist organizations, and participant observation at
atheist/secular humanist meetings and events, Cimino and Smith found
that atheists and secular humanists frequently employ language appro-
priated from the gay rights and women’s rights movements.15 They
particularly note the prevalence of ‘‘coming out’’ rhetoric among athe-
ists. Individual atheists with whom they spoke discussed the process of
revealing their atheist identity to others in terms analogous to those
used to describe the process of ‘‘coming out,’’ among gay men and les-
bians. They also found coming-out rhetoric to be prevalent in atheist
publications, such as in a Free Inquiry editorial written by philosopher
Paul Kurtz, the founder/leader of the Council for Secular Humanism.
In this editorial, titled ‘‘Letting Atheists Come out of the Closet,’’ Kurtz
called for action: ‘‘Let us declare: ‘We are secular humanists, atheists,
and agnostics and proud of it! We demand equal access and equal
rights’.’’16 After ‘‘coming out,’’ individual atheists also discussed dis-
covering ‘‘pride’’ in their identity, analogous to lesbian and gay pride.17
Cimino and Smith further argue that secular humanists and atheists
have begun to construct themselves as a minority movement, termed
the freethought movement. As examples of the progression of the
movement and its claiming of minority status for atheists and secular
humanists, they point to the founding of the Center for Atheism in
Washington, D.C., a political lobbying group, and the Anti-Discrimination
Support Network, a group based out of the Freethought Society of
Greater Philadelphia to which one can report incidents of discrimination
against nontheists. Similarly, there has been some discussion among athe-
ists regarding the use of a more positive-sounding word than ‘‘atheist’’ to
describe those who do not believe in God. One prominent organization,
The Brights Network, promotes the use of the word ‘‘Bright’’ instead of
e.g., atheist or agnostic, claiming that transitioning to using this more pos-
itive-sounding word is analogous to the gay rights movement encourag-
ing the use of ‘‘gay’’ instead of ‘‘homosexual.’’18 Thus, as gay men and
lesbians had to make conscious decisions to organize and to construct
themselves as a minority movement19 so have some atheists begun to
organize as an emerging social movement and identity politics is a key
tactic within this movement. Like other contemporary movements, differ-
ent groups and organizations within the freethought movement make use
of the Internet and other forms of media to promote their message and to
allow individuals active in the movement to connect, organize, and ‘‘try
on’’ atheist/activist identities.20
In this chapter, using both analysis of national survey data and
analysis of Internet discussions from a major atheist organization, we
explore the ways in which atheists and agnostics think about homo-
sexuality and the movement for lesbian and gay rights. We move
beyond the assumption that, given their common freedom from reli-
gion, atheists and agnostics will similarly and overwhelmingly sup-
port the movement for gay and lesbian rights. Using both sources of
data, we show that atheists think about homosexuality in multifaceted
ways.
SECONDARY ANALYSIS
Methods
To analyze the attitudinal connections between secularism and
homosexuality, we use data from the GSS between the years 1988 and
2006. The GSS is an almost annual face-to-face interview survey con-
ducted by the National Opinion Research Center. The population from
which the GSS samples are drawn is all noninstitutionalized Americans
aged 18 and above. The multistage probability sampling procedures
used for the survey have consistently produced response rates between
73 and 82 percent.
We begin in 1988 because this was the first year in which the GSS
asked a question they call simply GOD:
Please look at this card and tell me which statement comes closest to
expressing what you believe about God:
1. I don’t believe in God.
2. I don’t know whether there is a God, and I don’t believe there is any
way to find out.
3. I don’t believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a Higher Power of
some kind.
4. I find myself believing in God some of the time, but not at others.
5. While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God.
6. I know God really exists, and I have no doubts about it.
For the analyses below, we excluded respondents who chose responses

3, 4, or 5 because we wanted to analyze only those who had the more
clear-cut religious attitudes. Those who claimed they don’t believe in
God we labeled atheists, those who claimed they don’t know whether
there is a God we labeled agnostics, and those who have no doubts
about the existence of God we labeled believers. We also used the GSS
measures for religious preference (RELIG), attendance at religious ser-
vices (ATTEND), and prayer habits (PRAY).
The GSS also regularly asks questions about respondents’ attitudes
regarding homosexuality. One of these questions, labeled HOMOSEX,
deals directly with sexual behavior: ‘‘What about sexual relations
between two adults of the same sex—do you think it is always wrong,
almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all?’’
Three other questions deal with civil rights issues. Beginning with
‘‘And what about a man who admits that he is a homosexual?’’; the
three questions are as follows:
Suppose this admitted homosexual wanted to make a speech in your

community. Should he be allowed to speak, or not?
Should such a person be allowed to teach in a college or university, or not?
If someone in your community suggested that a book he wrote in favor of
homosexuality should be taken out of your public library, would you
favor removing this book, or not?
The wording of these questions is not ideal. For example, in the

HOMOSEX question, it is hard to determine what a respondent means
if she chose that such behavior is ‘‘wrong only sometimes’’ (fortunately,
respondents tended to choose one of the extreme responses to this ques-
tion). In addition, the word ‘‘admits’’ at the beginning of the civil rights
questions adds bias. But one must keep in mind that the GSS began
asking these questions in 1973, the same year the American Psychiatric
Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders.21 To
maintain the ability to measure opinion trends over time, the GSS has
kept the wording of these questions the same.
For the dependent variable in our regression equations, we com-
bined these homosexuality questions into a single additive index. We
gave equal weight to the attitudes regarding sexual behavior and atti-
tudes regarding civil rights. That is, we took the HOMOSEX variable,
with values ranging from zero to three, and combined it with the di-
chotomous civil rights variables (0/1, 0/1, 0/1) to create an index that
ranged from zero to six. Respondents scored a zero on the index if they
believed gay sex was always wrong and they denied civil rights on all
three questions. Respondents scored a six on the index if they believed
that gay sex was not wrong at all and supported all three civil rights.
In addition to these attitudinal questions, since 1991 the GSS has
asked a subset of its respondents about their sexual behaviors. We use
the variable SEXSEX5, which asks: ‘‘Have your sex partners in the last
five years been exclusively male, both male and female, or exclusively
female?’’ By combining this question with the respondent’s own sex,
we are able to identify those respondents who, for example, identify as
male and claim that their sex partners have been male. Using these
variables, we classified people into two categories: those whose sexual
behavior has been exclusively heterosexual and those whose sex life in
the past five years has involved same-sex behavior. We realize that this
technique is less than ideal: those engaging in same-sex behavior may
not identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. In addition, people who have
not had a sex partner in the last five years bear the additional misfor-
tune of being left out of these analyses.
Findings
Atheists and Agnostics: An Overview of Demographics and
Religious Behaviors
The GSS has included the GOD question in seven different years of
its administration. Of the 11,335 people who have responded to this
question, 7,042 of them (64.1 percent) are believers, 269 of them (2.4
percent) are atheists, and 454 of them (or 4.1 percent) are agnostics.
Because of these small frequencies for the atheists and agnostics, we
did not conduct trend analyses, as the frequencies of these groups for
each year of data would simply be too small. Table 4.1 illustrates some
differences among the three groups. Although some of the differences
between believers and the other groups are to be expected (and reflect
previous research22), there are also some interesting differences
between atheists and agnostics. For example, the average agnostic has
Table 4.1
Demographic differences among the groups
Believers Atheists Agnostics
Mean years of education 12.74 13.79 14.54

Percent male 37 64 65
Mean age (years) 47.19 43.92 41.16
Percent middle/upper class 47 55 66
Mean political viewsa 4.31 3.45 3.61
a
Based on the GSS variable POLVIEWS, where 1 = very liberal and 7 = very conservative.
0.75 more years of education and is 2.75 years younger than the aver-
age atheist. Also notice that, with regard to overall political views,
atheists tend to be slightly more liberal than agnostics. These differ-
ences will come up again in our regression analyses.
Another aspect that will arise in later analyses concerns the effects of
religious behaviors on the attitudes of atheists and agnostics. One might
assume that those who state they do not believe in God would not ex-
hibit religious behaviors. This is not always the case. Where Hout and
Fischer identified ‘‘unchurched believers’’ in their research,23 we iden-
tify ‘‘churched nonbelievers.’’ Just over half of the atheists (55 percent)
and agnostics (51 percent) express no religious denominational prefer-
ence. Therefore, there are GSS respondents who identify as Protestants
or Catholics but who do not believe in God. One explanation for this is
some of the respondents may have been raised in particular religious
traditions and still identify with these on a cultural level. Perhaps more
interesting is the finding that only a third of atheists (32 percent) and
agnostics (34 percent) claim they never pray, and only half of the athe-
ists (55 percent) and agnostics (52 percent) claim they never attend reli-
gious services. Of course there are the stories of the atheist who is
dragged to church during the holidays, but the GSS contains a number
of respondents who, although they claim they don’t believe in God,
attend religious services on a regular basis (even once a week or more).
This allows us to examine the effect of connection with religious com-
munities on the attitudes of atheists and agnostics, and we do so below.
Atheists’ and Agnostics’ Attitudes toward Sexuality

Table 4.2 offers the first examples of an unexpected finding.
Although atheists’ overall political views are slightly more liberal than
the views of agnostics, when it comes to issues regarding homosexual-
ity, atheists are significantly more antigay in their attitudes than agnos-
tics. As one would expect, atheists, compared to believers, hold more
progay attitudes, but agnostics are even less likely than atheists to be
Table 4.2
Attitudes toward homosexuality
Believers Atheists Agnostics
Percent who believe same-sex 75 42 29

behavior is wrong
Percent against gay college teacher 33 21 10
Percent against gay book in library 35 21 11
Percent against gay public speaker 24 13 6
against same-sex sex or against civil rights. Even though the sample
sizes of atheists and agnostics are small, all of the differences between
these two groups reach statistical significance at the p < 0.05 level
(based on simple cross-tabulations). To what can we attribute these dif-
ferences? One reason may be the more dichotomous and dogmatic
worldview held by some atheists. Agnostics, in contrast, might be less
willing to make definitive stands, and thus may be less likely, for
example, to say that homosexuality is ‘‘always wrong.’’
Another set of possibilities involves the demographic differences we
described above. Perhaps these differences between atheists and agnos-
tics can explain away their differences in opinion around homosexual-
ity. To address this, we turn to Table 4.3, which presents a set of
regression models that use the index of attitudes toward homosexuality
as the dependent variable. Model 1 shows a 0.59 point difference
between atheists and agnostics on the six-point index: a significant dif-
ference (p < 0.01, as judged by a simple difference-of-means test). Recall
that agnostics had on average 0.75 more years of education than athe-
ists. It is a well-known finding that education increases support for gay
and lesbian issues.24 Including education in Model 2 does decrease the
difference between atheists and agnostics, from 0.59 to 0.42, and it
increases the explained variation from 7 to 16 percent. However, almost
a half-point difference remains, so education is not the entire explana-
tion. Adding in the other variables also does not decrease the effect. In
fact, adding Political Views in Model 5 actually increases the size of the
effect. The difference between atheists and agnostics is quite robust.
This difference is limited to attitudes toward homosexuality and
does not apply to other sexuality-related issues. We constructed a nine-
point attitudinal index using three GSS variables with similar response
choices to the HOMOSEX variable: variables concerning premarital sex,
extramarital sex, and sex between teenagers 14 to 16 years old. Atheists
and agnostics, while differing significantly from believers on this index,
do not differ from each other in any statistically significant way. With
regard to sex-related behaviors measured by the GSS (watching X-rated
Table 4.3
Explaining attitudes toward homosexuality
Independent Model Model Model Model Model

variables 1 2 3 4 5
Atheista 1.41 1.23 1.32 1.31 1.01

Agnostica 2.00 1.65 1.73 1.68 1.46
Education — 0.19 0.19 0.17 0.18
Female — — 0.33 0.36 0.33
Age — — — 0.02 0.02
Political — — — — 0.30
Views
Constant 2.69 0.22 0.00 1.22 2.34
R2 0.07 0.16 0.16 0.19 0.23
n 4627 4622 4622 4617 4460
a
The coefficients for atheist and agnostic are in reference to the omitted category of
Believers.
The dependent variable used was index of attitudes toward homosexuality; score: 0 = no
support; 6 = full support. — = not applicable. All coefficients are significant at the p < 0.01
level. R2 = Pearson correlation coefficient; n = number of respondents.
movies, frequency of sexual intercourse, and number of sexual partners

over the past five years), atheists and agnostics are more sexually occu-
pied than believers, but they do not differ from each other on any of
these measures.
The differences between atheists and agnostics with regard to atti-
tudes toward homosexuality become even more intriguing when we
take into account attendance at religious services (a rough measure of
connection to religious community). Above we described the unusual
fact that a number of atheists and agnostics attend religious services on
a regular basis. Does this regular exposure to religious community affect
their attitudes towards homosexuality? To address this question, we
used regression analysis to examine the interaction effect between the
religious attendance variable and the categories in the GOD variable,
again using the index as the dependent variable. Among the believers,
attendance has the expected effect: believers who often attend religious
services (more than once a week) score 1.44 points lower on the attitude
index than believers who do not attend religious services (1.71 versus
3.15). Among the agnostics, attendance has little effect. In fact, it has the
opposite effect (though this effect is small): agnostics who often attend
religious services score 0.16 points higher on the attitude index than
agnostics who do not attend religious services (4.85 versus 4.69). In stark
contrast to this, atheists who often attend religious services are far more
likely to be homophobic than their atheist counterparts who do not
attend religious services. The difference between these two groups on

the attitude index is a striking 2.64 points (1.80 vs. 4.44). Notice that
atheists who often attend differ very little from believers who often
attend: 1.80 versus 1.71. It seems that involvement in religious commu-
nity trumps the effect of atheistic beliefs. Yet somehow agnostics are
unaffected by such religious participation.
God Hates Fagnostics? And Gaytheists?

Given their often unpleasant experiences with organized religion,
are gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals more likely to be atheist or agnos-
tic? Since the GSS began asking respondents about their sexual behav-
ior, 10,533 people have responded to these questions. Of these, 10,108
(96 percent) claim exclusively heterosexual behavior and 425 (4 per-
cent) claim lesbian, gay, or bisexual sexual behavior (hereafter, for the
sake of concision, referred to as LGB). This did not leave us with a
huge sample size, especially once we took into account the fact that
only 284 of these 425 LGB respondents answered the GOD question. It
is for this reason that we do not break these respondents out into sepa-
rate categories of gay men, lesbians, bisexual men, and bisexual
women. The number of cases simply gets too small. However, even
with a sample size of only 284, significant (well below p < 0.01) differ-
ences exist between heterosexual and LGB respondents. Whereas 62
percent of heterosexual respondents are believers, only 42 percent of
LGB respondents are believers. The LGB respondents are more likely
to be atheists than were heterosexuals: only 2.5 percent of the hetero-
sexual respondents claim they do not believe in God, compared to 5.6
percent of the LGB respondents. Whereas 4 percent of the heterosexual
respondents are agnostics, 12 percent of LGB respondents are. Thus,
according to the GSS data, GLB people are nearly three times more
likely than heterosexuals to respond to the GOD question in an atheis-
tic or agnostic way. Although there are millions of LGB people who do
have active faith lives and their integration into various religion com-
munities remains an unfortunately troublesome issue for many
denominations and congregations,25 it does seem that some LGB peo-
ple completely forsake God altogether. Another possibility for these
results involves reversing this causality: GLB atheists and agnostics,
free from religious strictures, are more able than believers to acknowl-
edge their sexuality to the GSS interviewer.
Given that GLB respondents make up 10 percent of the atheists/
agnostics in the GSS samples, one might wonder what effect their
inclusion has on the regression results presented in Table 4.3. We ran
these regression models excluding the GLB respondents and the results
remained essentially the same. Using Model 5, the difference between
atheists and agnostics on the homosexuality index moved from 0.45 to
0.52 (keeping in mind that taking into account the SEXSEX5 variable
decreased the number of cases by nearly 1,700). Running the results
with only the LGB respondents erases the difference between atheists
and agnostics completely, but it also reduces the number of valid cases
to 106, making comparability to the previous results questionable.
We also ran simple cross tabulations using a GSS variable regarding
gay marriage. Unfortunately, this variable appeared in only the 1988
and 2006 GSS, leaving us with a small number of cases. Atheists and
agnostics hardly differ in their attitudes toward gay marriage: 35 per-
cent of atheists and 31 percent of agnostics either disagree or strongly
disagree with gay marriage. Removing the GLB respondents from this
crosstab produces altered results: these percentages change to 42 per-
cent for atheists and 25 percent for agnostics. Given the very small
number of cases left for such an analysis, this difference does not reach
statistical significance. However, it is at least in the direction that the
other results had shown: atheists seem less supportive of GLB people.
The results from the GSS analyses shed some light on the heretofore
unexamined relationships between homosexuality and secularism. As
with findings from most exploratory research, these results raise more
questions than they answer. We were also troubled by our reliance on
a single survey question to measure atheism and agnosticism, espe-
cially when we realized that those who claim they don’t believe in God
sometimes engage in religious behaviors. We decided it was important
to study how avowed atheists, people for whom atheism is a signifi-
cant component of their lives, discuss the issue of homosexuality. To
hear these voices, we turned to the Brights, one of the largest groups
in the freethought movement today.
DISCUSSION FORUM ANALYSIS

Methods
We collected the data for this research component from the Brights’
Movement Forum, the official Web forum of the Brights’ movement.
Although we recognize that people who post on an atheist Web
forum are likely to view ‘‘atheist’’ as a more important part of their
identity than most atheists, we felt that this was the best way to begin
to understand the complexity of atheists’ opinions about homosexual-
ity. Using the Web forum also allows us to gain insight into the every-
day organizing and socializing among people active in the freethought
movement.
The Brights’ movement was founded in 2003 by Mynga Futrell and
Paul Geisert, two teachers in Sacramento, California. The movement is
currently supported by Daniel Dennett, a leading atheist philosopher at
Tufts University, and Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and
the author of the best-selling The God Delusion.26 A bright is defined as a

person with a naturalistic worldview, and a naturalistic worldview is
defined as being free of mystical and supernatural elements (a Bright
with a capital B is someone who has registered as a bright on the
Brights’ Web site). Thus, while most Brights are atheists, not all atheists
are Brights; an atheist who checks her horoscope every day, for example,
cannot be considered a Bright because she still places some stake in a
mystical force. There are registered Brights in over 140 countries, and as
of March 2008, the Brights movement had 40,000 registered members.27
The discussion forum includes a search engine. Terms entered into
the search engine pull up every thread that contains the specified
word. The terms we used for our searches were: lgbt, glbt, lgbtq, glbtq,
lgbtqqa, glbtqqa, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, homosexuality, homo-
sexual, same-sex marriage, civil union(s), dyke, faggot, fag, coming out,
sexual orientation, and sexual preference. We found and compiled
every discussion or mention of homosexuality on the forum from the
year 2007. This amounted to approximately 1,100 single-spaced pages
of text. We then coded each discussion entry for the themes that
emerged. We also compiled the age, sex, and current location of every-
one who participated in a discussion related to homosexuality. How-
ever, we are relying on their self-reports of this information, and many
chose not to do so. Of the 39 percent of the participants who specified
their sex (67 of 172), 79 percent were male and 21 percent were female.
Of the 55 percent of the participants who identified their age, 3 percent
were under 18 years of age, 25 percent of people were between 18 and
25, 25 percent were between 26 and 35, 21 percent between 36 and 45,
17 percent between 46 and 55, and 10 percent were 56 years or older.
Sixty-eight percent of the participants identified their location. Partici-
pants in discussions about homosexuality were from 19 different coun-
tries, with the top three being the United States (45 percent), the
United Kingdom (16 percent), and Canada (11 percent).
Results
The Brights’ Movement Web forum covered a vast array of topics
relating to the lives of the participants. Some of the posts to the forum
were mundane, but often the participants engaged each other in exten-
sive discussions on a wide variety of political and social issues. Discus-
sions of homosexuality were quite prevalent within the forum. Of the
total number of threads on the forum, 7.2 percent mentioned homosex-
uality. In compiling and analyzing the discussions and mentions of
homosexuality from the Brights’ movement Web forum, three domi-
nant themes emerged. Below, we critically examine each of these
themes by analyzing the parts of the discussions in which the themes
were most clearly demonstrated. We attempt to offer representative
examples. We note when there was dissenting commentary and also

note the reactions to such dissent. Words or phrases in bold were
emphasized in the original posts.
The Morality of Homosexuality

Atheists are frequently cast as immoral. According to one argument
in this vein, atheists are unable to be moral because they lack belief in
the religious faiths that define morality for many in society.28 In contrast
to this assertion, however, we found discussions of morality to be quite
prevalent on the Brights’ forum. Clearly, we were particularly interested
in conversations about the morality of homosexuality. With regard to all
issues, though, the consensus definition of morality was that moral
actions are those that do not infringe on the rights or privacy of others.
This was described succinctly by a 21-year-old female from Australia, in
response to a question about how to define morality: ‘‘Simple . . . , ‘if I
do this, will it cause suffering of any kind for any length of time towards
any living thing of reasonable consciousness?’’’
When this definition of morality is applied specifically to gay men
and lesbians, forum participants argue that because homosexual sex
between consenting adults does not hurt anyone, there is no reason to
define it as immoral. Although there were a few exceptions to this atti-
tude, the discussions on the forum were overwhelmingly affirming of
the morality of gay and lesbian relationships, and these exceptions were
all quickly challenged by others on the forum. The overall consensus
can be characterized by these comments from forum participants:
In the case of homosexuality, and this is key: there is absolutely nothing

by nature harmful about a homosexual relationship. If gay people are in
gay relationships and they’re having sex and finding intimacy and they’re
loving all of it, good. Very good. If they’re having bad sex or find them-
selves in bad relationships, I mean, it’s bad, but it’s bad when it happens
to heterosexuals, as it regularly does, and it happens irrespective of the
sex of the partners, everything aside. So the homosexuality question is so
easily and simply and strongly answered that it’s really sick that as a spe-
cies we even have to discuss it. (16-year-old male from Canada)
There is no rational reason to condemn homosexuality. That’s the
issue. There are plenty of rational reasons to condemn pederasty, bestial-
ity, yadda, yadda, yadda, but what consenting adults do at night, in pri-
vate, is of no concern to me, until it leaves the house. That’s a general
statement; if they’re in there plotting a murder, I don’t care, until they
come outside to commit the act. (28-year-old male stationed in Iraq)
Sometimes, Brights discussed homosexuality as simply one example

among a litany of social/political issues that have been wrongly cast as
immoral by our culture and/or government:
Intermixing drug prohibition (alcohol prohibition), polygamy, obscenity,

gay marriage, even suicide, etc., with immoral acts is a religious tactic to
confuse the issue [to] justify passing legislation against them. Some call
these victimless crimes. I call them issues of virtue and personal freedom.
In either case, they should be left as individual choices, and not made
illegal. (from the United States, sex and age unspecified)
Thus, in conversations relating to the morality of homosexuality,

Brights affirmed the morality of homosexuality and, likewise, tended to
criticize actions by the government that infringe on what they perceive
as the rights of lesbians and gay men. However, this type of support is
less than ideal when one considers many of the goals of the lesbian
and gay rights movement. These discussions of morality concentrate a
great deal of attention on the sexual acts themselves and give little con-
sideration to issues of identity and civil rights so important to lesbians
and gay men. Granted, there were discussions on the forum about civil
rights, especially gay marriage. However, by focusing their morality
discussions on individual acts and by comparing homosexuality with
act-based issues (such as obscenity or bestiality), some participants in
the discussion forum construct homosexuality in a particular way that
often fails to recognize lesbian and gay identities and denies the com-
plexity of lesbian and gay lives.
The Discriminatory Nature of Religion

If, as Brights argue, homosexuality and homosexual sex are not
inherently immoral, from where do discriminatory beliefs and attitudes
regarding gays and lesbians originate? Consistent with sociological
research and cultural assumptions concerning the origin of discrimina-
tory attitudes towards gays and lesbians, Brights frequently describe
prejudice and discrimination against gays and lesbians as being rooted
in organized religion:
Situations like this are where religion and ‘‘commonsense morality’’ part
ways—like homosexuality, stem cells, drugs, pornography, blasphemy.
Since [religious people] believe in an ultimate morality that isn’t based
on suffering and rights, you have suffering, on many levels and massive
scales, caused by the supposed guiding light of mankind. (45 years old,
from the United States, sex unknown)
I say it is generally irrational attempts to oppress others in areas like
sex, pornography, homosexuality, censorship, attempts to denounce love,
and general persecution of those they deem ‘‘immoral’’ out of no expla-
nation but their religion that not only made me give up the idea of reli-
gion altogether, but in fact I have a very negative view on it. Curiously,
I have a negative view on Christianity, Islam . . . and Judaism . . . but
none against Buddhism, Wicca, and several other religions. This is
because I have never heard of Buddhists or Wiccans going around to

oppress others irrationally in the name of their belief. (no personal infor-
mation given)
For many Brights, then, organized religion is seen as problematic not only
because Brights lack the belief in God necessitated by most religions, but
also because they claim that believing in God inspires a host of other
damaging social and political ramifications. The way some religions treat
homosexuality provides these Brights with a clear example of one of their
primary problems with religion. In making their case, some Brights (such
as in the first quote above) paint religion with a single, wide brush. They
do not acknowledge the wide diversity of religious thought on homosex-
uality, much of which has developed only in recent years, both among
and within various religious traditions.29 The second quote above takes a
step toward making distinctions among religions, but still puts all Chris-
tian traditions into a single, discriminatory category.
Brights also discussed the ways in which damaging beliefs have
affected individual gays and lesbians, criticizing these beliefs both for
their content and their effects.
When you base your morality on an ancient book that ‘‘says’’ it’s the ulti-
mate authority, instead of what alleviates human suffering, you are will-
ing to forsake your [gay] children. Throw in some silly antiquated view
of what is manly, and you have the potential for a whole lifetime of
human suffering. (30 years old, from the United States)
There are issues that we, Brights, would never even imagine they
have to deal with . . . Knowing about religious gays who struggle with
their homosexuality always evokes deep emotions in me: I’m convinced
that non-believer gays actually suffer much less than believer gays—
because at least they don’t have to battle with their own selves. (20-year-old
female from England)
One thirty-three-year-old Bright from the United States discussed the

example of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. As noted at
the very beginning of this chapter, Phelps is notorious for protesting
using the phrase ‘‘God Hates Fags’’:
I would almost have to give Phelps & Co. props, if they weren’t causing
pain to so many already suffering people. I’m sure many fundamentalists
dislike the WBC [Westboro Baptist Church] because it strips away the
‘‘love the sinner, hate the sin’’ line that said fundamentalists like to dish
out for PR purposes, and exposes the basic message of religion-based
homophobia for what it is. (33 years old, from the United States)
One word arises again and again in these postings: suffering. These
Brights construct gay men and lesbians as victims whose lives have
been tormented by conservatives in the name of religion. Given the

prominence of the battle between Christian conservatives and gays and
lesbians in recent decades and the potent imagery this brings to mind,
it is no surprise that Brights would use this battle to offer stirring exam-
ples of the harm religion can cause. Yet Dawne Moon, in her insightful
study of how Methodist congregations deal with the issue of homosex-
uality, cautions us regarding the use of suffering as a political tool:
When people use the language of pain in politics, they risk perpetuating
hierarchy and further isolating people, and there can also be broader
unintended political effects as well. The politics of emotion has contrib-
uted, of late, to a political climate where being a victim, being wronged
or pained, is what gives people a right to challenge the way things are;
victimhood has become the righteous position from which to make politi-
cal interventions, the only political position from which to make political
interventions, the only political position that is not immediately suspect.30
These Bright discussion participants put lesbians and gay men in the
position of ‘‘sufferers,’’ and, according to Moon, this limits the political
possibilities for achieving change. In addition, Brights are in the odd
position of pitying the suffering of gay men and lesbians while at the
same time envying the progress the lesbian and gay rights movement
has made, as the next section makes clear.
The Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement as a Model

By far the most prevalent theme related to homosexuality on the
Brights’ forum concerned comparisons between the Brights and the les-
bian and gay rights movement. Like the atheists and secular humanists
interviewed by Cimino and Smith,31 Brights frequently drew comparisons
between their struggles for equality and the struggles that the lesbian and
gay rights movement has had to endure. This was accomplished through
comparisons of the language used by each group, comparisons of the dis-
crimination faced by atheists and that faced by gay men and lesbians,
and frequent use of coming out stories and the rhetoric of the closet.
As the Brights movement explicitly patterns itself after the gay rights
movement by choosing to use the moniker ‘‘Bright’’ instead of ‘‘athe-
ist,’’ analogous to ‘‘gay’’ instead of ‘‘homosexual,’’ individual Brights
frequently talked about the language used to describe both groups:
I see very little difference in our usage of the word bright, in comparison
to homosexual people wanting to use ‘‘gay’’ as their title. We both
wanted something positive to show that being an atheist isn’t a sad or
depressive, or immoral thing. We both do not wish to tell anyone who
goes by such a meme that they must follow any rules and that individu-
ality is encouraged. It may mean different things to different people, but
given enough time and exposure people will stop associating the word
with the original definition. The word ‘‘homosexual’’ gives off a worse
vibe than ‘‘gay’’ does, just like ‘‘godless’’ and ‘‘atheist’’ sound worse than
‘‘bright.’’ (21-year-old female from Australia)
Other participants employed this logic quite frequently throughout the

forum. There were a few people who questioned the comparison, how-
ever. For instance, this forum participant said:
The term ‘‘gay’’ is now becoming (or has become) the biggest insult you
can throw at anyone . . . I remember reading the ‘‘gay’’ reference on my
first visit to the Brights.net and hoping then, as I hope now, that the
same fate does not await the term ‘‘Bright/s.’’ But I like the term myself.
I call myself a Bright. But I very rarely (seven times to date) tell anyone
else I am one. (no personal information given)
Overwhelmingly, though, individual Brights were comfortable viewing

the term ‘‘bright’’ as comparable to ‘‘gay.’’ Once this comparison was
made, it was also noted that, like gays and lesbians making a conscious
decision to use the word ‘‘gay,’’ Brights also consciously must choose
to use ‘‘Bright’’ in everyday conversation:
So why not say Bright? Really! Why not? The reason that the word
‘‘gay’’ worked is that homosexuals used it. They used it proudly, and
even defiantly. They made the word stick, despite ridicule, and they
changed their image in this country. We can do the same, but we have to
use the word. We have to correct people when they call us atheists and
we have to make the word stick. We have to do it. No one else will do it
for us. (40 years old, from the United States)
According to the Brights’ movement, and the Brights who post on the
forum, by using the term Bright, they can begin to change the way in
which atheists are viewed in our society. This can be viewed as a type
of identity deployment, which Bernstein defines as ‘‘expressing identity
such that the terrain of conflict becomes the individual person so that
the values, categories, and practices of individuals become subject to
debate.’’32 The goal here, by confronting people with a new term, is to
force the listener to ponder his or her prejudices against atheism. But
where the terms ‘‘gay’’ and ‘‘queer’’ (which has been reclaimed by
some lesbian and gay activists) already bore some familiarity among
the general public, the term ‘‘bright’’ is virtually unknown, making this
strategy of identity politics all the more difficult to pursue.
Brights moved beyond these linguistic comparisons to discussions of
the stigmatization of atheism and homosexuality. One fifty-three-year-old
man from Mexico even cited the Edgell et al. study.33 Other Brights dis-
cussed this stigma as it plays out in their everyday experiences. One
forty-one-year-old college student from the United States, for example,

felt that a Fundamentalist Christian woman in her class treated her
unfairly, as the Christian woman continually made negative comments
regarding atheists during class time:
You know what is funny? We have one gentleman in the classroom who
is very obviously gay and the Fundie tolerates him, even though in our
gov[ernment] the Religious Reich is forbidding gays from having civil
unions and making snide remarks. Not that I want her to pick on the
guy, I don’t and would not like it, but why can’t she have the same toler-
ance for me as she does of him? (41-year-old woman from the United
States)
A gay man from the United States also compared the stigma surround-
ing atheism and homosexuality when giving advice to a sixteen-year-
old struggling to tell his parents that he is an atheist:
I’m gay and grew up in an Episcopalian household with parents who

have a few close gay friends. Nonetheless, they have never been tolerant
of my life. Your telling your parents that you reject all religion is going
to be tantamount to me telling my parents that I don’t like girls. I
strongly recommend that you wait until you are independent and have
NO strings attached before you consider saying anything. By that time,
you may find no need to discuss religion at all. I never told my parents
that I am atheist. It would finish off what coming out gay didn’t kill.
(male from the United States)
Edgell and her coauthors claim that atheists are the group most reviled
in their sample of Americans.34 According to these Brights, such survey
results prove true in their own lives.
Like the atheists and secular humanists interviewed by Cimino and
Smith,35 Brights discussed the process of coming out of the closet as a
way to describe the revelation of their identity, and, also, as a way to
begin to overcome some of the stigma surrounding that identity:
It wasn’t calling themselves ‘‘gay’’ that advanced the civil rights of

homosexuals—it was coming out of the closet. We have a nice, positive-
sounding name to call ourselves, but if we don’t come out, we will never
achieve anything. . . . The gays proclaimed ‘‘we’re here and we’re
queer!’’ We need to proclaim, ‘‘we’re Bright and we’re right!’’ (55-year-
old male from the United States)
On the forum, individual ‘‘coming out’’ stories were extremely preva-

lent. They ranged from teenagers struggling to tell their parents that
they do not believe in God, to a fifty-year-old woman who ‘‘came out’’
to a friend only to become the target of her friend’s evangelism, to a
father trying to decide how best to tell his children that while their
mother makes them go to church, he does not believe in God. Here are
two examples of coming-out stories. We chose the first because it is
fairly typical of coming out stories on the forum, while we chose the
second because of the striking parallels that can be drawn between it
and discussions of coming out among gay men and lesbians:
So there seems to be a Bright’s equivalent to a gay coming out, and I’m

kind of having the same problem. I come from a deeply religious family,
but I’ve tried to break free from that. The problem is that I’m also deeply
involved in the community, I am a scout leader at the church, I’m also a
designer for many church Web sites and am involved in church activ-
ities. All my friends are also part of this community, my girlfriend is also
involved in church and doesn’t really know about my atheism. I’ve been
doing that for years, and now I feel like a sort of hypocrite working for
the church when I really don’t believe in what they’re doing anymore
(since about a year ago?). I’m not really sure how to handle this situa-
tion. While I can’t simply leave, since my whole life is based on my
exchange with this community, I can’t simply stay and pretend like noth-
ing’s going on. (from Canada)
My dad is a reverend, former pastor, and former televangelist. Need-
less to say, coming out to [my family] wasn’t exactly that easy. I held it in
for the longest time, and then suddenly decided to tell my Uncle Tommy
that I don’t believe in god. Big mistake. He tells my parents, and then I
get the first, of about a hundred thousand to date, hell/Jesus talks. I get
one almost daily, so it’s sort of the norm now, but it really makes me
think that they’re nutcases, as is stereotypical. You know? They’re still in
denial, I believe. Especially my sister, who is completely awestruck, and
my mom who is constantly annoying me with ‘‘god did this, god did
that’’ mumbo jumbo. (17 years old)
Like gay and lesbian identities, one’s atheist identity is not readily
apparent to those with whom one interacts and is something that can
be concealed if that person so chooses. Also similar to gay and lesbian
identities, once an individual reveals her atheist identity, odds are
good it will develop into a master status within her community, affect-
ing all aspects of this person’s interactions with those close to her.36
This leads atheists to consider these moments seminal and explains
why it is common to have coming-out stories in their narrative reper-
toires.37 However, one possible difference between the two groups is
the perceived ability to change one’s behavior. Clearly there are many
who believe that a refutation of homosexuality is possible, and the ex-
gay movement has gained in prominence in recent decades.38 But just
as many consider homosexuality to be inherent and unchangeable (for
example, the one time the GSS asked Americans about this issue, in
1994, 52 percent of respondent said sexual orientation could not be
changed). As the lesbian and gay rights movement continues to achieve

success, these numbers are likely to increase. But for atheists, making
the argument for an inherent identity is more difficult. Many social
groups engaging in identity politics at least partially base their claims
on the inherent nature of the identity: gay men and lesbians, women,
racial and ethnic minorities, and people living with disabilities or dis-
ease, to name a few. The Brights are attempting something consider-
ably more difficult: engaging in identity politics based on a set of
beliefs held by a small minority in the United States.
CONCLUSION
We often tell our students that sociology’s job is to complicate that
which seems simple. The understanding of relationships between secu-
larism and homosexuality, as far as we had seen, was vastly oversim-
plified: of course atheists and agnostics support gay men and lesbians;
why on earth wouldn’t they? We hope that this chapter has done its job
and that we have added some much needed nuance to these relation-
ships. The first problem we identified is that, too often, atheists and
agnostics are equated (or, worse, put into a category of ‘‘no religion’’).
Our GSS research shows that separating them exposes confounding dif-
ferences between the two groups. Second, even though many atheists
offer their support of lesbians and gay men, we use our Brights
research to argue that this support is sometimes less than ideal and
that these faulty connections between atheists and gay men and les-
bians hold the potential for political discord.
We readily admit that our explorations here are just that: preliminary
steps toward a better understanding of these connections. We end with
suggestions for moving beyond our findings. Undoubtedly, the differ-
ences between atheists and agnostics need further attention. As far as
we were able to tell, these differences are real and persistent. As with
any representative quantitative research on these groups, though, the
sample sizes were frustratingly small. There should be attempts to rep-
licate these differences with other sources of data, especially interna-
tional sources, given that rates of atheism in other countries are
markedly higher than in the United States.39 If the differences do
remain, explaining them is the next step. We acknowledge defeat in this
respect, and welcome any suggestions for why these differences exist.
Our research on the Brights is enlightening, but admittedly small scale.
We hope we have shown enough complexity in their thinking about
homosexuality to spawn more expansive research, either through study-
ing a longer period of time on the forum, or studying other atheist groups.
We also realize that the study of preexisting Internet discussion forums
has its limitations. Though the entries seemed sincere, there is no way to
verify this. Our roles as complete observers did not permit us to ask for
clarification to some of the arguments Brights made. But one thing was
clear: talk of homosexuality conjures many emotions in atheists: respect,
sympathy, envy, and hope. A full analysis of these emotions, perhaps
through in-depth interviews, would bring us closer toward understanding
the complex relationships between sexuality and the secular.
NOTES
1. Moon, 2004; Linneman, 2003; Hartman, 1996.
2. Erzen, 2006; Wolkomir, 2006.
3. Wolkomir, 2006; Gray and Thumma, 2005; Wilcox, 2003; Rodriguez and
Ouellette, 2000; Warner, 1995; Thumma, 1991.
4. Bull and Gallagher, 1996; Herman, 1997.
5. Beit-Hallahami, 2005.
6. Clark, 2004.
7. Zuckerman, 2006.
8. Beit-Hallahami, 2005, 305.
9. Hoffmann and Miller, 1997.
10. Laumann et al., 1994.
11. Hout and Fischer, 2002.
12. Reimer and Park, 2001; Miller, 1996; Ellison and Musick, 1993.
13. Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann, 2006.
14. Ibid., 230.
15. Cimino and Smith, 2007.
16. Kurtz, 2000, 6.
18. Ibid.; www.the-brights.net.
19. D’Emilio, 1983.
20. Taylor and Whittier, 1992.
21. Bayer, 1987.
22. Beit-Hallahmi, 2007.
23. Hout and Fischer, 2002, 165.
24. Loftus, 2001; Yang, 1997.
25. Moon, 2004; Hartman, 1996.
26. Dawkins, 2006.
27. www.the-brights.net.
28. Craig, 2007.
29. Moon, 2004; Hartman, 1996.
30. Moon, 2004, 236.
32. Bernstein, 1997, 537.
33. Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann, 2006.
34. Ibid.
36. Linneman, 2003.
37. Plummer, 1995.
38. Erzen, 2006.
39. Zuckerman, 2007.
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bridge companion to atheism, ed. Michael Martin, 300–17. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press.
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tity by the lesbian and gay movement. American Journal of Sociology 103 (3):
531–565.
Bull, Chris, and John Gallagher. 1996. Perfect enemies: The religious right, the gay
movement, and the politics of the 1990s. New York: Crown.
Cimino, Richard, and Christopher Smith. 2007. Secular humanism and atheism
beyond progressive secularism. Sociology of Religion 68 (4): 407–424.
Clark, Thomas. 1994. Secularism and society: The case for gay equality. The
Humanist 54 (3): 23–29.
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panion to atheism, ed. Michael Martin, 69–85. New York: Cambridge Uni-
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Ellison, Christopher G., and Marc A. Musick. 1993. Southern intolerance:
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tion in spiritual practice. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
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vatives, and everyday hostilities. New York: New York University Press.
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Wilcox, Melissa. 2003. Coming out in Christianity: Religion, identity and commu-
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and ex-gay Christian men. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Yang, Alan S. 1997. Trends: Attitudes toward homosexuality. Public Opinion
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———. 2006. Is faith good for us? Free Inquiry 26 (5): 35–38.
WEB SITES
The Brights. http://www.the-brights.net.
The Brights’ Web Forum. http://www.the-brights.net/forums.
Chapter 5
Morality and Immorality

among the Irreligious
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
The question of morality and immorality among nonbelievers is part of

an old, indeed ancient, discourse on the relationship between religion
and morality. In the fifth century BCE, Athenian historians asserted that
fear of the gods and belief in divine reward and punishment kept
humans close to the word of the law, while the absence of such fear
and such beliefs led to lawlessness.1 Later, it was the Roman Cicero, in
De Natura Deorum (45 BCE), who wondered whether, without fear of the
gods, trust and cooperation among humans will be lost and, with
them, justice. It has often been claimed that only the expectation of
supernatural reward and punishment, meted out by omniscient, but
invisible, entities, can cause humans to give up their natural selfishness
and recognize the needs of others.
Cicero’s concern has been reiterated in the form of two questions:
1. Can the institutions of society survive without their authority believed to

originate from the world of the spirits?
2. Could individuals who reject supernaturalism be moral?
With growing secularization and the reality of atheism and atheists,

these questions took on some immediacy, or, in some circles, even ur-
gency. ‘‘It is one of the oldest of sociological generalizations that any
coherent and viable society rests on a common set of moral understand-
ings about good and bad, right and wrong . . . these common moral
understandings must also in turn rest upon a common set of religious
understandings that provide a picture of the universe in terms of which
the moral understandings make sense.’’2 If it is indeed religion that pro-

vides moral coherence, how can society survive without it? Another
interpretation is offered by looking at technological development: ‘‘In
the technologically developed society authority is freed, to the extent
that technology has provided it with coercive instruments, from the
constraints imposed by the need to maintain its sanctity.’’3 In a techno-
logically advanced society, religion loses its legitimation function, and
so the decline of religion should not affect the social order.
WOULD YOU TRUST AN ATHEIST?

Individuals who reject all supernaturalism have long been considered
morally suspect. John Locke stated that nonbelievers should not be
trusted, because ‘‘promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of
human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.’’4 His contemporary,
Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), presented an opposite view and argued that mo-
rality had nothing to do with religious belief and that a society of atheists
could be as moral as or more moral than a society of Christians.5 He also
wrote in 1697 that ‘‘who pass through the hangman’s hands, there are
none found to be Atheists’’6 Bayle was clearly far ahead of his time.
George Washington, echoing John Locke, warned in his Farewell
Address (1796): ‘‘Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life,
if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instru-
ments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge
the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. What-
ever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of
peculiar structure, reason, and experience both forbid us to expect that
national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.’’7
Voltaire, to whom Christianity was an ‘‘infamy’’ that deserved crush-
ing, but was still a deist, found the influence of faith useful among the
masses and once silenced a discussion about atheism until he had dis-
missed the servants, lest in losing their faith they might lose their moral-
ity.8 Voltaire’s rhetorical question was ‘‘What restraint, after all, could be
imposed on covetousness, on the secret transgressions committed with
impunity, other than the idea of an eternal master whose eye is upon us
and will judge even our most private thoughts?’’9 On another occasion,
Voltaire stated this idea forcefully: ‘‘I want my attorney, my tailor, my
servants, even my wife to believe in God; and I think that I shall then
be robbed and cuckolded less often.’’10 It seems that Voltaire became
worried, realizing that secularity was indeed spreading beyond the elite.
We find the best known and most quoted modern warning about
nihilistic, amoral, atheists in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
(1880). Mitya tells Alyosha about a conversation he had with the atheist
Rakitin: ‘‘ ‘But what will become of men then?’ I asked him, ‘without
God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what
Morality and Immorality among the Irreligious 115
they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing, ‘a clever man can do
what he likes,’ he said.’’11 Earlier in the book, Father Zossima presents
an overview of the contrast between contemporary secular Europe,
immoral and revolutionary, and the great popular Russian tradition of
faith and obedience: ‘‘It is different with the upper classes. They, fol-
lowing science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with
Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no
crime, that there is no sin. And that’s consistent, for if you have no
God what is the meaning of crime? In Europe the people are already
rising up against the rich with violence, and the leaders of the people
are everywhere leading them to bloodshed, and teaching them that
their wrath is righteous. But their ‘wrath is accursed, for it is cruel.’
But God will save Russia as He has saved her many times. Salvation
will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness.’’12
William James, writing in 1891, described the difference between a
religious and a secular morality in terms of energy, music, and objec-
tive power:
‘‘. . . in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral
energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power. Life, to be sure, is
even in such a world a genuinely ethical symphony; but it is played in
the compass of a couple of poor octaves, and the infinite scale of values
fails to open up. . . . When, however, we believe that a God is there, and
that he is one of the claimants, the infinite perspective opens out. The
scale of the more imperative ideals now begin to speak with an alto-
gether new objectivity and significance, and to utter the penetrating, shat-
tering, tragically challenging note of appeal.’’13
James, an ambivalent but consistent defender of religion,14 was imply-

ing that atheism may be a true risk factor on the road to an immoral
symphonic performance.
The sociologist Talcott Parsons stated that ‘‘. . . man’s relation to the
supernatural world is in some way intimately connected with his moral
values.’’15 Both James and Parsons make claims about psychological
processes in individual humans. Such processes must be different in a
person who does not believe in the supernatural. Such ideas are still
common in the United States today. Surveys have consistently shown
that atheists have been the least trusted group, because they are per-
ceived as having rejected the basis of moral solidarity and cultural
membership in American society.16
RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR MORAL DOMAINS

If we do just a little bit of introspection, it seems that we all have inside
our heads a moral calculator, part of our stream of consciousness, con-
stantly scanning and rating actions as positive or negative, superior, or
inferior. The moral calculator does a whole legal proceeding in a split sec-
ond, judging intentions, consequences, circumstances, and character. It
leads to frequent condemnation and rare praise, whether of ourselves or
of others. We know that condemning others brings some pleasure and a
feeling of superiority, while praising others seems less satisfying. The
algorithms behind all these calculations must be based on general princi-
ples, intuitions, and ideals, which are known collectively as morality.
A leading researcher defined morality as ‘‘. . . prescriptive judg-
ments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to
relate to each other.’’17 This definition is designed to steer us away
from cultural conventions: ‘‘Moral judgments are primarily about wel-
fare, justice, and rights, distinguishable from judgments about conven-
tional uniformities.’’18 Shweder19 and Haidt20 correctly point out that
such definitions are too secularized and Western, because in many cul-
tures some domains of ‘‘conventional uniformity’’ give rise to moral
judgments, emotional reactions, and severe condemnation. Thus, in
some Indian communities, a widow eating fish may be condemned, as
may be parents refusing to sleep in the same bed with children.
Shweder suggested a universal morality triad of Autonomy (harm,
rights, and justice, with violation leading to anger), Community (duty,
hierarchy, and interdependency, with violation leading to contempt),
and Divinity (natural order, sacred order, sanctity, sin, and pollution,
with violation leading to disgust). Haidt21 proposed a division of mo-
rality into five domains: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loy-
alty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. If we use Shweder’s and
Haidt’s divisions, what we observe is that the elements of the triad or
the five foundations cannot be regarded as having an equal standing in
practice, and some domains are underemphasized or absent in specific
belief systems. A hierarchy of moral domains is universal. Whatever
concerns some individuals may have about purity, we have reason to
assume that they do not lead to the same emotional reactions as con-
cerns about harm and fairness.
Purity rules are also about identity. Thus, food taboos serve as iden-
tity markers, which are always tied to self-esteem and superiority.22
Individuals feel superior to members of their caste who choose not to
observe the taboos or sometimes to nonmembers who naturally do not
observe them. The arbitrary and sometimes symbolic meaning of food
taboos can be illustrated with the case of the Nation of Islam in the
United States, which expects its followers to avoid cornbread and okra,
because they have been identified for so long with Afro-American cul-
ture and the history of slavery. The group seeks to renew Afro-
American identity, and the rejection of such foods clearly symbolizes
that. In this case we know the circumstances that led to the choice of
an object as tabooed. In other cases the historical roots are unknown,
but the function as an identity marker is clear.
Shweder and Haidt suggest that disgust is a potent moral emotion,

but we must tell parochial from universal revulsions. Humans clearly
share a capacity for revulsion, culturally conditioned and activated.
Individuals may have their own visceral reactions to homosexuals,
gypsies, Jews, Africans, menstruating women, or snails, and cultures
may have their own parochial revulsions to dog meat or women with
an unmodified clitoris. Ideas about death pollution, specific to one cul-
ture, may reflect universal fears about death. But the question is
whether violations of death pollution customs are judged in the same
way as violations of care and fairness rules.
The idea of purity/sanctity is found only in religious traditions, and
norms dealing with group loyalty and respect for authority vary greatly
in many cultures and settings, religious or secular. Concerns about
autonomy (harm and fairness) are universally most salient and univer-
sally accompanied by anger. Contempt and disgust are experienced as
less morally powerful than anger.
Preoccupation with purity and pollution varies with some religions,
such as Hinduism and Judaism investing much in them, but a distinc-
tion between purity rules and concerns about justice is always made.
In the Old Testament we find several texts, attributed to mythological
prophets, which denounce those who follow their ritual obligations but
act unjustly toward the weak and helpless. ‘‘To what purpose is the
multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. . . . Learn to do
well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead
for the widow.’’ (Isaiah 1:11, 1:17)
Ancient prophetic texts from West Asia teach us that ritual obliga-
tions are secondary to justice because rituals are an expression of
duties to the gods and are secondary to our duties to other humans.
Sayings attributed to the mythological Jesus reflect what must have
been an ongoing discourse millennia ago about the moral primacy of
justice over any pollution rules. This discourse about moral hierarchy
is still evident among Orthodox Jews, the proud successors to the
Pharisees denounced in the New Testament.23
In South Asian religions, we find a strong historical tradition of an
emphasis on purity and on the relationship of status to purity, together
with the same primacy of Ahimsa, the prohibition on any violence, in
Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. If we look at the Five Precepts that
are the basis of Buddhist moral ideals, we find a clear hierarchy. The
first precept is to avoid killing or harming living beings. The second is
to avoid stealing, the third is to avoid sexual misconduct, the fourth is
to avoid lying, and the fifth is to avoid intoxication. The descending
order of severity is clear. Intoxication may give rise to both contempt
and disgust, but is in itself not as much of sin as violence.
All cultures recognize the limited validity of parochial revulsion and
the universal validity of care/fairness norms. Brown’s work24 on
universals in human behavior supports the notion of panhuman moral

ideals. He lists among the culture components found everywhere: moral
sentiments; right and wrong; murder proscribed; rape proscribed; sexual
regulation, including incest prevention; redress of wrongs; tabooed
foods; and tabooed utterances. It is clear that controlling aggression is
foremost and then controlling sex, as well as justice. Food taboos are uni-
versally found, but the specific taboos vary from one culture to another
and make no sense to outsiders, whereas rules about violence and incest
are easy to understand across cultures.
Hauser25 proposed a universal moral grammar that constrains
human behavior, with such ideals as caring for children and the weak;
avoiding killing; avoiding adultery and incest; and rules against cheat-
ing, stealing, or lying. Systematic research shows that judgments about
welfare and justice are consistent across cultures.26
We can expect the irreligious to be concerned only about harm/care
and fairness/reciprocity, and this is indeed what Haidt27 reports. If we
follow the Shweder triad, the irreligious will be concerned mostly with
autonomy, less with community, and never with divinity. Concerns
about harm and fairness are universal indeed, and this is a meeting
point between atheists and religionists.28
Has Secularization Corrupted Western Society?

Over the past two centuries, anti-Enlightenment polemicists (and
others concerned about what secularization might do to individuals)
have been treating us to warnings and laments about the dire conse-
quences of the decline in the authority of religion. We are not surprised
to read Hegel’s observation: ‘‘Reverence for God, or for the gods, estab-
lishes and preserves individuals, families, states; while contempt of God,
or of the gods, loosens the basis of laws and duties, breaks up the ties of
the family and of the State, and leads to their destruction.’’29 Herbert
Spencer asserted that ‘‘the control exercised over men’s conduct by theo-
logical beliefs and priestly agency has been indispensable,’’30 and
Charles Darwin wrote: ‘‘A man who has no assured and ever present
belief in the existence of a personal God or of future existence with retri-
bution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only
to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which
seem to him the best ones.’’31
In the late 1920s, T. S. Eliot stated: ‘‘It is doubtful whether civiliza-
tion can endure without religion,’’32 and in 1933, it was Adolf Hitler
who objected to secular schools, in which no character training is possi-
ble without religious instruction.33 Kristol34 claimed that nothing could
replace religion as the vehicle for moral tradition, and Bork35 argued:
‘‘Belief is probably essential to a civilized future.’’ The psychoanalyst
Neville Symington wrote: ‘‘What is certain is that religion is the
guarantor of civilization and without it we collapse into barbarism.’’36

The bioethicist Leon Kass has stated: ‘‘Western moral teaching, so
closely tied to Scripture, is also in peril if any major part of Scripture
can be shown to be false.’’37 The political struggle against Enlighten-
ment ideals calls for reversing the historical course of secularization
and modernity, and recreating a premodern, idealized, past.
Rothman38 stated that secularization and the rise of secular humanist
elites were behind the historical decline of the United States, as its elite
lost the confidence that used to be based on the idea of a ‘‘sacred mission’’
and secularists had undermined the spirit that made capitalism great.
According to Davies ‘‘respectable Britain’’ which was in existence till the
middle of the twentieth century, was maintained thanks to the church,
and to Sunday Schools. What made respectability widespread was not
‘‘the minority with a strong faith but the majority with some faith.’’39
Those sounding the alarm on the moral apocalypse have suggested
that modern society has not reached the level of anarchy expected in the
wake of secularization only because it was using up something described
as ‘‘moral capital.’’40 Referring to unnamed ‘‘social critics,’’ this view is
expressed as follows: ‘‘. . . for well over a hundred fifty years now, social
critics have been warning us that bourgeois society was living off the
accumulated moral capital of traditional religion and traditional moral
philosophy, and that once this capital was depleted, bourgeois society
would find its legitimacy ever more questionable.’’41 Glazer, a well-
known sociologist, assures us that in this case Kristol was speaking for
him also, as well as for Daniel Bell, another leading sociologist.
According to Himmelfarb42 it was already the late Victorians (in the
1880s) who were living off the religious capital of their immediate past.
This capital has been considerable, because Himmelfarb43 claimed that
her own contemporaries were still living off the religious capital of pre-
vious generations, but that only another Great Awakening could replen-
ish the depleted source of social integration and individual integrity.
This view is shared by Robert K. Bork, who states: ‘‘We all know
persons without religious belief who nevertheless display all the vir-
tues we associate with religious teaching . . . such people are living on
the moral capital of prior religious generations . . . that moral capital
will be used up eventually, having nothing to replenish it, and we
will see a culture such as the one we are entering.’’44 One nice thing
about the ‘‘moral capital’’ explanation is that it cannot be disproved.
We can look forward to a long future ahead of us, in which this elusive
substance is going to sustain morality and decency.
The ‘‘Noble Lie’’ Tradition

Aristotle, in Politics, suggested that autocratic rulers should put on a
show of religiosity to exploit popular beliefs about divine reward and
punishment. In Plato’s plan for an ideal state, the lower classes must
believe that the social order had supernatural sanction, being unable to
consider it a purely human creation and still regard it as binding. This
idea became known as the Noble Lie. Defenders of Plato mention that he
also hoped that the upper class would believe that lie for the good of the
state. That religion was a fraud designed to keep lawlessness at bay was
a notion which was being openly expressed 2,500 years ago in Athens.45
The idea that the elite can give up religious illusions, but that the
spread of unbelief among the masses would lead to anomie, has been
expressed and discussed in modern times. Stewart46 suggested that the
philosopher Leibnitz was a closet atheist, who believed that the masses
needed religious belief, but Jean-Jaques Rousseau openly suggested
that the basis for public order is the belief in a powerful Divinity, to be
enforced by the state.47
Himmelfarb48 praised Victorian agnostics, who were ready to hide
their own absence of faith in the interest of maintaining public moral-
ity. Sigmund Freud did not hide his atheism, but was among those
who thought that the elite does not need external authority, whereas
the masses will deteriorate into lawlessness without the promises of
divine judgment and retribution.49
Describing the educated classes in Europe and the United States in
the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, Leuba stated:
‘‘There is among us a large number of well-intentioned persons of influ-
ence who go to great length to hide their disbelief. The masses, they
think, are not able to live decently without the support provided by the
religion they profess.’’50 Leuba did not hesitate to name names and
denounce those, such as G. Stanley Hall, one of the founding fathers of
psychology in the United States, who presented a facade of religiosity
for the sake of their public image and the benefit of the masses.
Kristol51 presented a clear rationale for the Noble Lie. ‘‘If God does
not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot
live without . . . let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot
do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth
and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided
into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men,
and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine—for if the illusions
of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what mad-
ness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish. It would
become the duty of the wise to publicly defend and support religion,
even to call the police power to its aid, while reserving the truth for
themselves and their chosen disciples.’’52
Leo Strauss, one of the great inspirations to US neo-conservatives,
was an atheist, but thought the truth known to the educated elite
should not be available to the masses, lest it destroy the social order.
He proposed a state religion as a way of creating social cohesion and
state control.53 Similarly, Bork,54 while claiming that religion is vital for
the social order, never said that we should believe the claims of reli-
gion because they are true.55
One clear answer to the Noble Lie argument has been given by
George Santayana: ‘‘To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better
than to live in harmony with the truth; it is not nearly as safe, not
nearly as sweet, and not nearly as fruitful.’’56
THE ATHEIST DICTATORS CLAIM

Over the past half-century, religionists have enjoyed telling us that
the historical secularization experiment has been a failure, most deci-
sively proven by the acts of atheist despots in the twentieth century,
such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.57 Looking at the
record, it should be noted first that Adolf Hitler was a member in good
standing of the Roman Catholic Church until his dying day. His official
biography as the Reichskanzler of Germany always reflected this fact.
The Third Reich was far from being a secular enterprise, and most
Nazi leaders made frequent references to the Christian God in their
speeches and writings58 Most Nazis came from Christian homes (in
1933, 95 percent of Germans were Christians), and in Nazi-occupied
Europe, the political forces that supported the occupier were always
proreligious. Religious polemicists happily ignore the record of official
Roman Catholic collaboration with such dictators as Francisco Franco,
Antonio Salazar, Jozef Tiso, and Benito Mussolini.
Away from Europe, Shinto religion did play a major role in the rise and
fall of the fascist Japanese empire, Nazism’s global ally.59 Japanese Zen
Buddhism, widely considered meditative and pacifist, was actually an en-
thusiastic supporter of the imperial regime and Japan’s war policies.60
As to Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim Il-Sung, they
were indeed atheists, but their despotic and cruel acts have been
matched by the behavior of thousands of rulers in history who were
publicly committed to a variety of religions. One wonders what reli-
gionists like D’Souza think of the religious regimes that would happily
join them in denouncing atheism, such as those in Iran, Saudi Arabia,
or Sudan.
Looking at events over the past thirty years, we can still find plenty
of examples of horrors sanctioned to various degrees by religious tradi-
tions and establishments. A short list would include Rwanda, Afghani-
stan, Iran, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Sri Lanka.61 In the twenty-first
century, it is still possible to find religious dictators, claiming divine
authority, who have caused millions of deaths, such as Robert Mugabe.62
Ferguson63 argued that the twentieth century, the ‘‘age of hatred,’’
was more violent in both relative and absolute terms than any previous
era, but then conceded that it was no worse than other ages. In earlier
times, the carnage was not less horrifying. The only significant differ-
ences between the horrors of the twentieth century and the horrors com-
mitted in earlier times were technological capacity and moral outrage,
which were not to be found before the coming of the Enlightenment.
Long before modern genocides, there were religious texts reporting
and commanding the total annihilation of some human groups. The
Old Testament offers us narratives of the extermination of the Midian-
ites and the Canaanites by the Israelites, as ordered by divine authority
(see Numbers 31, 1 Samuel 15). These blood-curdling narratives are
totally fictitious, but they reflect very real ideals. They were invented
to justify and explain prescribed exclusionary attitudes towards non-
Israelites. Those who composed them more than two millennia ago
were not worried about anybody being outraged by them. Moore64
claimed that the readiness to persecute and kill people of different reli-
gious and political persuasions in the defense of ‘‘moral purity’’ had
its origins in Old Testament monotheism, responsible for some of the
most virulent forms of intolerance in history. However, we can easily
discover that followers of nonmonotheistic religions are just as commit-
ted to lethal intolerance.
Traditional religious morality is ethnocentric, which meant that
moral compassion ended at the boundary of the religious community.
The celebrated ‘‘Love thy neighbour’’ command in the Old Testament
quite explicitly covered only members of the tribe. The original verse
states: ‘‘Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the chil-
dren of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am
the Lord’’ (Leviticus 19:18).
Pre-Enlightenment ideals were always close to pre-Enlightenment
practices. The Age of Faith was the age of unchecked human cruelty.
The Middle Ages were marked by unimaginable barbarities, including
many public displays of sadistic violence presented without apologies
but with great pride. Torture was considered just one privileged way
of discovering truth. Countless millions died in various crusades
against heretics and infidels, whether in Europe or in West Asia. When
genocide was carried out in the Middle Ages, moral outrage by wit-
nesses was hard to detect, as such behavior was taken for granted. No
medieval intellectuals protested the inhumanity of the Crusades. The
European sphere was not unique, and we can assume that untold acts
of horrific carnage were taking place on other continents.
The reality of European colonialism, starting in 1492, was one of
genocidal cruelty, often sanctioned by religious authorities. Christian
missionaries were often part of the colonial enterprise which enslaved
whole continents. Secular intellectuals were prominent in the global
anticolonialist struggle, promoting the rights of non-Europeans, most
visibly in the cases of Algeria, Vietnam, and Palestine. Anticolonialist
movements were likely to be made up of the least religious. During the
years of United States military intervention in Vietnam (1954–1975),

studies showed that those with no religious affiliation were most
opposed to the war. In the 1960s’ civil rights movement in the United
States, most of the white activists involved were unaffiliated or secular,
and an inverse relationship was found between religiosity and support
for the movement.65
The apartheid regime in South Africa (1948–1994) was being led and
supported by devout Christians and opposed by atheists. Under apart-
heid, South Africa did not admit atheists or agnostics as immigrants, de-
spite its desperate efforts to increase the white population. This policy
was fully justified, because atheists were indeed likely to oppose govern-
ment policies.66 Looking at the Jewish community in apartheid South
Africa is instructive, as religiosity again correlated with support for the
regime. Jews made up fifty percent of all white activists arrested for their
opposition to apartheid, despite constituting only 2 percent of the white
South African population. But who were these activists? Just like the
case of other whites, religious Jews supported the regime. The activists,
who made up most of the white members of the African National Con-
gress, were atheists of Jewish descent.67
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

One answer to the claim that a Golden Age of morality preceded the
coming of secular revolutions was given by Mark Twain in 1889:
‘‘There were two ‘Reigns of Terror,’ if we would but remember it and
consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heart-
less cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a
thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the
other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the ‘hor-
rors’ of the minor. . . . A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled
by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to
shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the cof-
fins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and
awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or
pity as it deserves.’’68
Honore de Balzac, writing only 40 years after the Revolution, men-
tions the well known fact that more people were sacrificed in building
the aqueduct of Maintenon, designed to supply water to the Versailles
palace, than during the revolutionary Reign of Terror.69 But what does
this have to do with religion?
The monarchy, needless to say, enjoyed the active support of the
Church, as all tyrannical regimes of yore were all legitimized in terms
of some religious doctrine. A well-known critic has described the histor-
ical role of Christianity as follows: ‘‘It has been, at all times and every-
where, the steady defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social
theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery,

as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings.’’70 Smith reminds us
that Christianity should not be singled out, as ‘‘. . . religion has rarely
been a positive, liberal force. Religion is not nice; it has been responsible
for more death and suffering than any other human activity.’’71
About the notion of continuity between religious traditions and cur-
rent political ideals, the following is the judgment of one historian:
‘‘Human rights—roughly the idea that all individuals everywhere are
entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on this earth—is a
relatively modern proposition. Political orators like to trace this idea to
religious sources, especially to the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition.
In fact the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to
human rights in the contemporary sense—not only for their acquies-
cence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their addiction to
slavery, torture, wartime atrocities and genocide. Christianity, for
example, assigned to earthly misery an honored and indispensable role
in the drama of salvation. The trials visited on mankind in this world
were conceived as ordained by the Almighty in order to test and train
sinful mortals. From the religious perspective, nothing that might take
place on earth mattered in comparison to what must take place here-
after. The world was but an inn at which humans spent a night on
their voyage to eternity, so what difference could it make if the food
was poor or the bed uncomfortable?’’72
THE TRANSATLANTIC EXPERIMENT

Over the past two centuries, a great social experiment has been taking
place on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean. On the west side of the
Atlantic we find the United States, which leads modern nations on all
measures of religious commitment and beliefs, whereas Europe, to the
east of the Atlantic leads in secularity. Ninety-five percent of Americans
say that they believe in God, and 66 percent believe in the devil. Among
holders of graduate degrees, the percentage of those believing in the devil
is only 55 percent: ‘‘Regardless of political belief, religious inclination,
education, or region, most Americans believe that the devil exists.’’73 On
the more benevolent side of U.S. popular theology, a 2001 poll found that
43 percent of Americans thought pets went to heaven, whereas 40 percent
held the opinion that heaven is reserved for humans.74
When we compare the United States to other nations with the same
level of economic development, whether it is to members of the G8
(eight leading world economies) or OECD (the world’s 25 leading
economies) or the English-speaking world, it becomes clear that all
other countries are significantly more secular. If we order nations by
the percentage of nonbelievers, European nations are at the top. Swe-
den is first, Denmark third, and Norway fourth, followed by the Czech
Republic, Finland, France, Estonia, Germany, Russia, Hungary, Nether-

lands, Britain, and Belgium.75 Beyond that, ‘‘What makes modern
Europe unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which athe-
ism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.’’76
If religiosity guarantees morality, the United States should be a
happy place, brimming with the good and virtuous life, but reality is
somewhat different. In 1997, Ralph Reed, executive director of the
Christian Coalition, stated that the United States was ‘‘the most
devoutly religious nation in the entire world. . . . America is a nation
undergirded by faith, built by faith, and enlivened by faith. It is not a
faith in word alone, but an active, transforming faith. Look around
today and what you will see are the fruits of our national faith,’’77 and
at the same time Reed lamented: ‘‘Social pathologies once imagined
only in our darkest nightmares are a daily reality.’’78 Reed offers a so-
lution to all social problems, and we can all guess what it is: More reli-
gion, of course. Like Dostoyevsky’s Father Zossima, he is certain that
faith will save the American Way.
Compared to other wealthy nations (per capita GNP over $20,000),
the United States has the highest rates of violence and incarceration, as
well as other social pathologies such as drug addiction, the highest
teen pregnancy rate, and sexually transmitted diseases rates among
developed nations. What is also quite prominent in the United States is
the absence of social solidarity and compassion. Tens of thousands of
American families lose their homes every year because of medical
expenses. This is inconceivable in other wealthy nations with universal
health care systems.
For many American conservatives, the only thing that stands
between them and the immoral welfare state is religion,79 and religion
has indeed played a role in that. If in Old Europe it was the monarchy
that enjoyed religious sanction, in the United States it has always been
capitalism. Leuba80 wrote about those in the United States who wanted
‘‘to preserve at all cost, for the masses, a religion preaching humility,
obedience to established authority, and renouncement of earthly posses-
sions in exchange for the imperishable treasures of heaven.’’ We find an
echo of that in the words of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, a lead-
ing abolitionist, who stated in 1875: ‘‘no man in this land suffers from
poverty unless it be more than his fault, unless it be his sin.’’81 In 1877,
Beecher preached against the railroad strikers: ‘‘the necessities of
the great railroad companies demanded that there be a reduction of
wages. . . . It was true that $1 a day was not enough to support a man
and five children, if a man would insist on smoking and drinking beer.
Was not a dollar a day enough to buy bread? Water costs nothing.’’
Beecher’s well-fed congregation reportedly laughed in accord.82
A great symbiosis between religion and economic enterprise can be
observed in the United States today. Thousands of religious entrepreneurs
have made great fortunes by selling salvation to the masses. Little has
changed since Sinclair Lewis wrote about Elmer Gantry,83 except the enor-
mous increase in the sums of money involved. New generations of Gan-
trys, with names like (Dr.) Kreflo A. Dollar, have taken over the mantle.84
When all the world’s nations are ranked on measures of the quality
of life, happiness, and longevity, we find at the top of the list more or
less the same names. On the World Map Of Happiness, produced
recently, the 10 happiest nations in the world are Denmark, Switzer-
land, Austria, Iceland, The Bahamas, Finland, Sweden, Bhutan, Brunei,
and Canada. East Asia is another region where we can observe the con-
nection between public morals and secularity. Japan and South Korea
present a European-like picture of low religiosity, low levels of violence,
and much solidarity. Japan holds the world’s average life expectancy re-
cord. The most secularized nations demonstrate a high level of solidar-
ity and have crime rates that are a fraction of that in the United States.
They show no signs of moral anarchy, but some signs of contentment.85
FINDINGS ON RELIGION AND INDIVIDUAL MORALITY

The claim that religion supports impulse control is one of the most
common made in its defense, and it has been investigated over the past
century, with some interesting results.
Exemplary Moral Behavior and Moral Rehabilitation

Those extolling the moral benefits of religion can justifiably point to
such cases of moral commitment as Roman Catholic nuns, and mem-
bers of other religions, taking care of terminal patients or the severely
retarded; many religious individuals helping the unfortunate all over
the world and showing great humanity; and religious pacifists ready to
be imprisoned, or die, for their moral objection to war.86
Another phenomenon which is almost uniquely religious is that of a
dramatic moral transformation in individuals and communities, pro-
duced by a religious conversion or revival. The case of the Handsome
Lake religion among the Seneca is one dramatic example of moral revi-
talization.87 We can point to inspiring cases of converts saved from a
life of crime and drug dependence, but although dramatic cases may be
found, overall efficacy with criminals and addicts remains to be proven.
On the other side of the ledger, one can point to horrific acts com-
mitted with religious sanction. Saradijan and Nobus88 found religious
beliefs held by the clergy offenders removed inhibitions and were
instrumental in facilitating offending behavior against children.
Whether it is religious professionals who abuse their power over the
helpless and the gullible89 or genital mutilation and lethal, motivated,
medical neglect, helpless children suffer under various religious
commandments. Asser and Swan90 reported on child fatalities caused

by medical neglect in twenty-three U.S. religious groups, led by Chris-
tian Science, the Church of the First Born, and the Faith Assembly.
Cases of death caused by exorcism are still reported in the world
media.
Tolerance and Prejudice

Research on prejudice and intolerance has consistently shown that
being more religious was correlated with more prejudice, authoritarian-
ism, intolerance, and punitive attitudes (supporting harsh penalties,
including death). In one classical study, the findings were summarized
as follows: ‘‘it appears that those who reject religion have less ethno-
centrism that those who seem to accept it.’’91 The prevalence of reli-
gious prejudice has been interpreted to show that the moral obligations
owed coreligionists do not extend to outsiders.92 We know that the ter-
ror of death, a common religious theme, increases social conformity.93
What is socially and politically significant is that a strong religious
commitment may interfere with a commitment to religious freedom, as
the concern of group members for their own rights does not extend to
the rights of others and of other groups.
Prosocial Behavior
What are the predictors of compassion, altruism, honesty, and readi-
ness to help? Do religious people feel more empathy towards their fel-
low men and are more likely to provide help to a person in need?
According to Duriez,94 the answer is no.
When college students in the United States were given a chance to
cheat and to perform an act of helping, there was no correlation
between their eventual behavior and their religiosity level.95 On the
other hand, it has been found that for adults in the United States religi-
osity was inversely related to a predisposition to cheat on taxes. Find-
ings over many years in the United States indicate that religiosity does
predict more generous donations to charity and doing volunteer work
with the needy.96
Darley and Batson97 wanted to test whether the parable of the Good
Samaritan, taken from the New Testament and presented as a model of
true altruism, would affect helping behavior. Christian seminary stu-
dents, who had just read the parable, some of whom were supposed to
give a talk about it, were put in a situation where that could help
someone in apparent distress. After meeting the experimenter and
being asked to help, they ran across a man who was clearly incapaci-
tated. The results showed that the parable of the Good Samaritan had
no effect on the students’ readiness to help.
What happens in situation where altruism is literally hazardous to

one’s life? Oliner and Oliner98 studied the truly heroic behavior of indi-
viduals who saved the lives of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust,
but reported that religiosity had no effect in these cases. Varese and
Yaish99 found that ‘‘religiosity and altruism are negatively related; the
less religious one is, the more likely she is to rescue. A plausible expla-
nation for this negative effect is that a very religious person might be
more receptive to anti-Semitism.’’ It seems that the net contribution of
religion in the Holocaust in terms of altruism was negative.100
Hedonistic Offenses
Research has consistently shown the effects of religiosity on ‘‘sinful’’
behaviors such as gambling, extramarital intercourse, and illicit drug
use. When it comes to psychoactive substances, which are tied to the
experience of pleasure and loss of control, religiosity predicts less use,
less abuse, and less dependence.
Serious Crime
Studies in different countries found that some measures of religios-
ity are negatively correlated with deviance of all kinds. For adolescents
who are at risk because of poverty and family history, ritual attendance
is a protective factor, reducing the probability of delinquency, drug
use, and later maladjustment. Religious commitment reduces delin-
quency when church membership is the norm, but not where is it un-
usual. Large-scale surveys of adults find that a wider range of offenses
and deviance is affected, including rape and other crimes of vio-
lence.101 However, religiosity appeared to serve as a weaker deterrent
on serious crimes such as murder and theft. Jensen102 found that homi-
cide rates were higher in nations where beliefs in a God and the devil
were prevalent, such as the United States.
EXPLAINING THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY

One way of looking at the religion–morality connection has been
through the evolutionary lens, with attempts to demonstrate that reli-
gion does have evolutionary roots or evolutionary value because of its
potential contribution to individual and social integration. Although a
variety of psychological explanations have been offered for the evolu-
tion of religion over the past three centuries,103 recent theorizing has
focused on brain architecture and universal cognitive mechanisms to
account for religious ideas. Although these basic cognitive mechanisms
are held to be adaptive, religion itself has been considered a cognitive
error, an appendage to more necessary psychological processes.104
If this is the case, then religion has survived without being adaptive
and without offering believers any real advantage. This seems to be the
dominant view among those who have developed evolutionary explan-
ations of religion.
Other researchers hold to a evolutionary logic which assumes that
religion could not have survived so successfully among humans with-
out making a real contribution to adaptation, and what could be that
contribution if not the presumed privileged connection with morality.
In the behavioral sciences today, assertions about the vital role of reli-
gion in the survival of the social order are part of a wider discourse of
psychological pragmatism. Benton Johnson expressed this view in the
following way: ‘‘Although religious ideas are not true, there is much in
religion that is good.’’105 And so the question becomes ‘‘Is a belief in
the world of the spirits good for you? Is it good even though it is not
true? Does it have positive consequences?’’
We can find hundreds of books and articles, published over the past
few decades, most often in the United States, telling us that religion is a
‘‘resource for well being,’’ and specifically for ‘‘prevention, healing and
empowerment.’’106 In other publications, religion is assessed in terms of
‘‘costs and benefits.’’107 As revelation lost its authority, these arguments
emphasize positive consequences of collective and individual religious
commitments, rather than assert the truth and authority of a particular
religious message.108 In this instrumentalist line of defense, the refer-
ences are always to a generic ‘‘religion’’ or ‘‘faith,’’ reflecting the reality
of secularization. When those seeking a desecularization of culture talk
about ‘‘faith,’’ they are careful to use the most generic and nebulous lan-
guage, speaking out of clear weakness.
Claims about religion’s role in adaptive individual and social behav-
ior have been made recently by psychologists, anthropologists, and soci-
ologists. Alcorta and Sosis,109 Bering,110 Norenzayan and Shariff,111 and
Rossano112 are among those who suggested that religions facilitate costly
prosocial behaviors, primarily where reputational concerns are height-
ened. One thing religions do is to promote the idea of ever-vigilant spir-
itual monitors. Believing that the spirits were always watching may
have helped reduce the number of noncooperators in human groups.
One hypothesis is that the evolution of cooperation could not have
proceeded without the support of religious ideas.113 McCullough and
Willoughby114 present findings relating religiosity to various measures
of self-control. They then suggest that religion may have evolved
because of its ability to help people exercise self-control. The explicit
notion is that the connection between religion and prosociality had
evolutionary value in the past and has social value at present.
Several interesting experiments, which measured the behavioral
effects of introducing religious ideas into one’s consciousness without
awareness, have been carried out. Randolph-Seng and Nielsen115 found
that participants who were primed with religious words cheated signif-
icantly less than participants who were primed with neutral words.
Conscious priming demonstrated a greater effect than the nonconscious
priming.
Shariff and Norenzayan116 reported that priming with religious con-
cepts promoted cooperative behaviors, regardless of personal religiosity.
However, similar effects were found when the stimulus words were
‘‘jury,’’ ‘‘contract,’’ or ‘‘police.’’ Randolph-Seng and Nielsen117 suggested
that the Shariff and Norenzayan118 experiment was flawed because
respondents were probably conscious and the religious priming effects
were general. When presented with the word ‘‘God,’’ respondents,
whether believers or not, were responding to the cultural association, just
as they did with the word ‘‘police.’’ These findings clearly show that reli-
gious stimuli do affect behavior even in a secularized culture, but these
findings also demonstrate that secular impulse control stimuli, such as
‘‘police’’ or ‘‘jury’’ had the same effect as ‘‘God.’’ Historically speaking,
the transition from the religious to secular control seems easy, smooth,
and well established, despite the powerful legacy of historical religions.
EXPLAINING THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

Over the past five decades, evolutionary researchers have explored
the phylogenesis of cooperation, because the phenomenon of altruism
initially seemed like a problem for evolutionary theory. What is univer-
sally agreed now is that cooperation is a fundamental aspect of all bio-
logical systems119 and there are clear biological imperatives that push
organisms to coordinate their activities with those of conspecifics.
Cooperation based on reciprocity makes sense for all organisms, from
bacteria to primates.120 Impulse control, and a balance between cooper-
ation and competition, are crucial for individual and species survival.
Restraints on individual behavior are necessary for social life and have
been naturally selected because of their survival value.121 The biologi-
cal forces directing organisms towards cooperation have been in exis-
tence long before the appearance of Homo sapiens. Pylogenetically,
religions cannot be the real source of any moral codes but, at most,
social enforcers of evolved moral responses in some cultures, taking on
this role in quite recent times.
These conceptions of human evolution are supported by a variety of
findings and simulations, and so it is not surprising that more
researchers have reached the conclusion that religion is not in any way
vital for the maintenance of morality, but may define its (narrow) scope
within a particular culture.122
Similarly, Bocock123 acquits religion of any responsibility for human
cruelty, because hatred and aggression are innate, and humans learn to
direct them as socially prescribed targets. Thus, religion cannot be
blamed for an emotion that predates its appearance in the lives of indi-
viduals and collectivities. Both religions and nationalisms merely pre-
scribe socially conventional ways of expressing hate.
It seems that evolutionary thinking has not provided the hoped-for
support for ideas about the privileged religion–morality connection. If
humans are hardwired to cooperate because of particular phylogenetic
forces and then also hardwired to develop religious beliefs, because of
a separate set of particular phylogenetic forces, then we see two sepa-
rate and powerful phenomena, which can be combined in history and
culture, but in not in evolutionary time, going far into the past to the
earliest of humanity.
Looking at the historical record, we do find circumstantial evidence
for a cultural–structural connection. Stark124 found that religion sus-
tains the moral order only when it is based on belief in powerful and
morally concerned gods, but in some highly developed societies, the
religious basis for morality is missing. Moralizing religion, like the
wheel or farming, may be a cultural invention, and moralizing gods
appear in large, differentiated groups where religious elites control
many resources.125
ONTOGENESIS OF MORALITY
How should we think about the genesis of the internal moral calcu-
lator, or the ‘‘moral faculty,’’ in any given individual? Children are
made into moral agents quite early on in their lives, through socializa-
tion and social control mechanisms, as they are assigned blame and
learn to blame others and especially themselves. Whatever we call mo-
rality is tied to powerful bonds developed between children and care-
takers. The panhuman experience is that parents are the carriers of
morality, as they convey to their children a fantasy of a world ordered
into right and wrong, reward and punishment.
Socialization in all cultures focuses first on impulse control and then
on competition–cooperation skills. Ethical reasoning everywhere involves
the capacity to transcend self-interest.126 Morality is an abstraction, while
discipline and impulse control are what children and parents experience
in all cultures. The universal early experience of every human includes a
total dependency on other humans, who create an internalized system of
impulse control, as well as heightened sensitivity to external impulse
control systems. Parents everywhere teach their children compassion,
responsibility, and honesty, values that are promoted via exemplary
models. They limit aggression and reinforce altruistic acts among their
children.127 The young are asked to reduce their egocentrism and impul-
sivity in return for parental love. Erikson128 stated that ‘‘the internaliza-
tion of the parental voice’’ creates what he calls ‘‘the judicial’’ in human
life and culture.
All cultures have the same ideal of impulse control. Self-control is

the master virtue, because it overcomes selfish and antisocial impulses
for the sake of what is best for the group.129 This universal ideal is that
of controlling one’s body, because maturity equals the ability to set
limits on the gratification of physical needs. The newborn baby is pure
body and as such is the enemy of culture and society. Its body has to
be conquered externally and internally. The ideal we convey to our
children is that of rising above bodily needs, conquering the weak-
nesses of hunger, elimination, disease, sex, and death. Pain, hunger,
and desire are experienced as ego-dystonic invaders, which we learn to
resist. Surrendering to the body in pleasure or in pain and disease is
experienced as a failure, as nature wins over culture and our conscious
will. Victory over the body is achieved in asceticism, fasting, celibacy,
or athletic feats. Victory over our own body equals victory of spirit and
culture over nature in the most direct and decisive way. Both secular
and religious individuals share a universal guilt complex in cases of
surrender to the body and its weakness. Ontogenetically, the earliest
moral intuitions precede any learning about supernatural agents and
are unrelated to beliefs about them. Universal socialization towards
self-control precedes the use of religious ideation.
Giving up our egocentric perspective is the starting point for sympa-
thy and concern, leading to responses in terms of justice and fairness.
Innate empathic arousal and internalized empathy are the motivating
force behind moral orientation.130 Jean Piaget, who pioneered moral
development theory, believed that basic discipline is learned from
parents, but the ethic of cooperation and justice is learned in interac-
tion with peers.131 Lawrence Kohlberg thought that justice-based moral
reasoning develops out of perspective-taking abilities developed in
social interaction.132
THE NEW PUBLIC MORALITY

The disappearance of religious justification for the social order has
not brought about the disintegration of society. The secularization of
moral discourse has not reduced human kindness. Just the opposite is
true. Secularization means that we no longer interpret misfortune as
caused by supernatural agents angry at human sins. We cope with nat-
ural disasters and disease without tying them to any imaginary moral
calculus. What can be and is condemned is human immorality. The
Enlightenment means that humans have come to think of injustice and
of many forms of suffering as social arrangements, under human con-
sideration. The new public morality means a change from an emphasis
on the idea of individual sin to concern about collective injustice and
individual rights. It also means that rules may be discussed in the con-
text of power in interpersonal relationships.
Historically, kinship has been the foundation of social solidarity.

The Enlightenment morality transcends kin, tribe, and nation. ‘‘In the
course of human cultural development there has been a gradual
though faltering progression toward enlarging the area brought within
a single ethical system. The logical (and undoubtedly necessary) end of
such an evolutionary process is the establishment of a world commu-
nity and the permanent elimination of borders that limit the applica-
tion of basic ethical codes.’’133
The Enlightenment has led to a new, totally secular, public discourse
about morality, focusing on justice, rights, equality, and human welfare,
and dealing with impulse control as an individual problem. Enlighten-
ment ideals have been translated into the language of human rights,
civil liberties, women’s rights, children’s rights, the right to education
and health, national self-determination, and the rights of workers. This
language of rights, which today seems natural and familiar, has been
created in a secular context, by secular individuals. We know now how
many of these ideas have been considered radical and revolutionary
when first proposed and are now universally preached, if not practiced.
This sea change in our moral outlook is evident in the Universal Dec-
laration of Human Rights (UNUDHR), adopted by the United Nations
on December 10, 1948. This document is both a declaration of the tri-
umph of the Enlightenment and a political program for future action,
which is bent on tearing down traditional human divisions. Public decla-
rations are significant, even though we often find them hypocritical. We
have to recall that, three hundred years ago, those committed to equality
and human rights could not express their views publicly very often.
The new universal morality has led to new forms of global humani-
tarian action, in such secular groups as Amnesty International (winner
of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977) and Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF,
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999), Human Rights Watch, and
Greenpeace. Bernard Kouchner, the founder of MSF, can serve as a
leading exemplar of the new atheist, humanitarian, morality.134 It is im-
portant to note that the Red Cross (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in
1917, 1944, and 1963), despite the religious associations of its emblem,
was founded in 1863 by Henri Dunant, a militant secularist.
One significant element of the new public morality is its support of
religious freedom and tolerance. As has often been observed, religion-
ists are rather intolerant, but the irreligious are likely to defend the
rights of religionists. As one observer put it, ‘‘Atheism is a European
legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a safe public
space for believers.’’135
We find a rather unexpected view of religion and morality coming
from the 14th Dalai Lama, widely revered in the United States as a
spokesman for religion, and sometimes even on ‘‘religion and science.’’
To the surprise of many among his admirers, it turns out that he does
not believe that we need any religion to serve as the source of ethics:
‘‘Rather, I am speaking of what I call ‘secular ethics,’ which embrace
the principles we share as human beings: compassion, tolerance, con-
sideration of others, the responsible use of knowledge and power.’’136
This statement is another recognition of the historical victory of the
Enlightenment and the new public morality.
Should You Trust an Atheist?

Are atheists more likely to be involved in criminality or deviance?
Ever since the field of criminology got started and data were collected
of the religious affiliation of criminal offenders, the fact that the unaffili-
ated and the nonreligious had the lowest crime rates has been noted.137
According to von Hentig,138 having no religious affiliation is the best
predictor of law-abiding behavior. There is no reason to doubt the va-
lidity of this generalization today. We know very well that the prisons
are not filled with atheists, and as Bayle noted in the seventeenth cen-
tury, there are rarely among those punished for capital crimes.
Looking at modern culture, we know quite well that secular public
servants could be trusted with our tax money and will be more
devoted to the public interest. Transparency International is an organi-
zation devoted to monitoring levels of corruption in the world’s
nations. When the world’s nations were ranked from the least to most
corrupt in 2008, at the top we find the usual suspects: Denmark, New
Zealand, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Aus-
tralia, and Canada. It turns out that there is a clear correlation between
low religiosity and low corruption.
Could we or should we expect atheists to be morally superior in any
way? One answer to that is to embrace the null hypothesis, which denies
any relevance of religious commitment to the reality of everyday life. One
leading atheist proves that modesty is another virtue of the faithless when
she states, ‘‘You can’t accurately claim that atheists are particularly virtu-
ous or intelligent or even courageous.’’139 Atheists may be immoral or
moral, but this has little to do with their absence of supernaturalism and
more to do with general factors common to them and the rest of humanity.
However, what we hear sometimes, explicitly or implicitly, is that
atheists are somehow deficient in their qualifications for public office
or social life, because of a lack of moral energy or moral harmony.140
The claim that atheists are somehow likely to be immoral or dishonest
has long been disproved. No one has seriously claimed, by way of pre-
senting historical or statistical data, that atheists or agnostics are more
likely to commit immoral acts (with the exception of the ‘‘atheist dicta-
tors’’ argument presented above). Although any given atheist may be
no better or worse than a next door neighbor, probabilities are that the
atheist neighbor is also better educated, which in turn is tied to other
positive attributes. Lifelong atheists have been found to be well-

socialized, law-abiding, and nonviolent. They are also likely to be less
prejudiced and more tolerant than religious individuals.141
It has become clear by now that secularization has not created the
moral equivalent of the mythological Sodom. We know that secular
morality is possible, because we can observe it in action every single
day all over the globe.142 What we have found is that under certain
social-historical circumstances, religion is the main source of legitimacy
for social order in some societies,143 but secular legitimation is possible.
What is clear is that we can be pro-social without being religious, and
that the secular system of social control is just as effective (or ineffec-
tive) as the religious one.
If, according to McCullough and Willougby144 and to Norenzayan
and Shariff145 religion is tied to self-control and to prosocial behavior,
what does it imply for those lower in religiosity? If indeed it is claimed
that atheists are different in terms of moral behavior, then we must ask
for a specification and a detailed description of the psychological pro-
cesses involved. If the normal process is that which takes place in a
religious family, and such families may still represent the global majority,
what would the irregular cases in the minority look like?
Growing up in an atheist family means developing inner controls,
because those are always internalized because of the parental teaching
of self-control. The internalized voice is found in all children because
of the interaction between parents and children, regardless of the reli-
gious environment surrounding any given family. Atheists obviously
go through blaming themselves, and others, and feel guilty. They have
gotten all that from their evolved brain architecture and early experi-
ence, without the help of any functional religious illusions.
Any claims about the positive contributions of all and any religions
to morality and prosocial behavior, either prehistorically or now, has to
account for the behavior of atheists and the reality of global seculariza-
tion. The assumption of a direct connection between one’s moral fac-
ulty and one’s religiosity or religion is challenged by atheists, a
growing segment of humanity.
The author thanks Gabriel Bar-Haim, Barry D. Berger, Harvey Chisick,
Menachem Kellner, and Richard Schuster for their important help in the
preparation of this chapter.
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Chapter 6
The Evolution of Popular

Religiosity and Secularism:
How First World Statistics Reveal
Why Religion Exists, Why It Has
Been Popular, and Why the
Most Successful Democracies
Are the Most Secular
Gregory S. Paul
For the first time since modern humans evolved democratic modernity
has confronted popular religiosity with a set of scientific and socioeco-
nomic pressures and threats of a scope it has not previously faced. As a
result theism has been effectively ruined in some first world nations in
favor of popular nontheism. In turn, the data generated by this fast and
voluntary loss of mass first world theosupernaturalism has produced
the statistical information that provides the key to finally answering
some of the most fundamental and perplexing questions of why the
majority of the world believes in deities whose objective reality is as
plausible as that of other supernatural entities such as ghosts, gremlins,
and fairies.1 Based on the sociological analysis conducted by a number
of researchers in recent years, this new synthesis of popular religion
and secularism explains the fundamental questions of mass religion,
including why theofaith appeared, why it has been so popular around
the world for most of history, why belief in and worship of a creator
has suddenly and strongly contracted in the western democracies while

remaining relatively high, conservative, and procreationist in the United
States,2 and why only those First World nations that have seen histori-
cally unprecedented declines in mass religiosity are enjoying the best
socioeconomic circumstances yet seen. These in turn allow the funda-
mental nature of religious opinion in most people to be described.
This work focuses on long-term trends in large populations with an
emphasis on majority opinions that have led to high levels of religious
activity, and/or serious belief in the existence of one or more supernat-
ural deities versus the lower levels associated with popular secularism.
Because the emphasis is on popular trends, terms such as religious and
secular are used to characterize and contrast the views of national
populations, rather than the configuration of governments. For a
hypothesis regarding mass theism or nontheism to be verified it must
be plausible, it must be compatible with rather than contradicted by
the observed statistical data, and there cannot be an alternative that is
superior in these regards; these obvious criteria are outlined because
many common explanations for popular opinion on these matters do
not meet these requirements.3 Little attention is paid in this chapter to
presently or formerly communist states because popular opinion has
been skewed by government suppression. The methods for estimating
the level of popular theism and nontheism and their relationship to
socioeconomic conditions in First World democracies is detailed in
Appendix 1. The data is used to construct the exclusively extensive
Popular Religiosity Versus Secularism Scale (PRVSS), and the uniquely
comprehensive Successful Societies Scale (SSS).
THE NONUNIVERSALITY OF RELIGION

If all national societies retained high levels of popular religiosity,
then the resulting uniformity would render it impossible to determine
its actual causes and effects. Such homogeneity would also be compati-
ble with, but would not prove, the widely held belief that theosuperna-
turalism is a universal human condition inherent to most if not all
human minds. Some researchers have proposed that mass seculariza-
tion of national populations has not occurred in the first place (Finke
and Stark 1993; Stark and Finke 2000; Stark 2008), and others contend
that most of the world is experiencing a resurgence of popular religios-
ity (Lester 2002; Longman 2006; Mead 2006; Shah and Toft 2006), espe-
cially of the conservative variety; fortunately for optimal scientific
analysis these propositions are flawed.
Barrett et al. (2001), Bruce (2002), Paul (2002, 2005, 2008a, 2009c),
Pew (2002, 2007, 2008), Groeneman and Tobin (2004), Norris and
Inglehart (2004), Smith and Kim (2004), Gallup (2005b, 2006a–c, 2007a,
b), Savage et al. (2006), Times/Harris (2006), Zuckerman (2006, 2008),
The Evolution of Popular Religiosity and Secularism 151
Figure 6.1. World Belief
Barna (2007a, b), Rainer (2007), and Paul and Zuckerman (2007)
describe the past and current status of theism and nontheism around
the globe and in the First World that forms the core of the discussion
in the next few paragraphs. At the end of the 1800s popular theism
was still nearly universal, with nontheists probably less than a percent
(Figure 6.1). Although making some gains in particular regions, Africa
especially, Christianity has remained stable at a third of the total. De-
spite the exceptional population growth of the population of India Hin-
duism has experienced minimal growth and remains limited to one
ethnic group. Then an eight and now a fifth of the population, Islam is
the only major faith to enjoy significant growth, but mainly through
rapid reproduction. Paganism has drastically declined in spite of the
appearance of New Ageism. None of the chief religions is growing via
large-scale conversion. Mass religiosity, often of an increasingly funda-
mentalist nature, remains the norm in the rest of the Third and Second
Worlds, but secularism is rising in some Latin American countries.
Over the last century the nonreligious have ballooned to about a sixth
of the population. The recovery of mass theosupernaturalism in for-
merly communistic states has been exaggerated.
The most historically radical, and for the purposes of this inquiry,
the most scientifically informative circumstances have arisen in the First
World. In eighteen of nineteen of the most prosperous democracies—
Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan—only a few
percent to at most half absolutely believe in the gods, and in some exam-
ples two thirds or more qualify as atheists and agnostics. Levels of reli-
gious activity are correspondingly suppressed, and majorities—up to and
more than 80 percent in some cases—accept human descent from animals.
The de-Christianization has not been filled by a corresponding rise in

alternative forms of spirituality including neopaganism, and Muslims
make up only 4 percent of western Europeans. Religion is not, therefore,
nearly as universal as language that is very well developed in all
mentally healthy adults (contra Bloom 2007; also contra Dennett 2006;
Boyer 2008).
Equally important to solving the religion question is the major excep-
tion to western popular secularism, the American Anomaly, where
two-thirds absolutely believe in God, and religious practice and socio-
political activism remain strong to the point that even Democrats are
playing the religion card.4 American Exceptionalism extends to opinion
on human origins, only half accept human descent from animals, almost
as many think God invented humans a few thousand years ago, and
the new Answers in Genesis Museum draws in big crowds.
The seven indicators that form the PRVSS confirm that the United
States is over all the most religious and creationist First World nation,
followed by Ireland, which retained exceptional levels of religious ac-
tivity even though belief is below American levels at the time of the
ISSP survey, and more distantly Italy. Sweden, Japan, Denmark, and
France are the most secular, with the other nations falling in between
(see Figure 6.5 and Appendix 2). That no nation scores a 10 on the
PRVSS signals that none are entirely atheistic, but the reality of First
World secularization is affirmed. Those First World nations where half
or less absolutely believe in God and a solid majority accept human
descent from animals—which are always the same—are tagged secular,
hypotheistic, and proevolution (Paul 2005). Jensen (2006) criticized this
secular label, and Stark (2008) cites one survey as denying large num-
bers of European nonbelievers, but multiple surveys indicate that some
secular nations have large nontheistic majorities (Times/Harris 2006;
Zuckerman 2006, 2008). The one First World country where a solid ma-
jority have no doubt there is at least one god exists, almost a third take
the Bible literally, and a solid majority support for evolution is absent,
the United States, is tagged as religious or theistic, theoconservative,
and procreationist or creationist.
The cumulative long-term longitudinal evidence indicates that religi-
osity is failing to recover in any secular democracy as the post-WWII
secularization generally continues. The relatively robust level of
Amero-faith has inspired the conventional wisdom that faith is so inte-
gral to the national character that the United States will always remain
pious, but indicators show that even the states are rapidly secularizing,
as suspected by Hitchens (2007). The results of consistently worded
Gallup surveys indicate that those who accept evolution have been
edging up, whereas those who think the Bible is built on legends and
fables rose from one in ten to nearly one in four in just three decades
(Figure 6.2; Paul 2008a).5 The number of atheists and agnostics rose
Figure 6.2. Percent of Population Sampled
from about 2 million in the 1950s to as much as 60 million, a fifth of

the population according to two Harris polls designed to overcome
American’s reluctance to admit nonbelief (Figure 6.2; Taylor 2003,
Times/Harris 2006).6 The nonreligious doubled in the last decade and
half alone (Figure 6.3; providing the market base for recent atheist
best-selling books, Dawkins 2006; Dennett 2006; Harris 2006; Hitchens
2007). In comparison the fast-reproducing Mormons expanded from 2
to just 6 million over the same period, and their growth is slowing.
The 2008 Pew survey finds that only half the population now abso-
lutely believes in a personal God,7 a striking drop from probable his-
torical levels and well below some Second and Third World countries,
Figure 6.3. NORC: Percent of Population Sampled
and shows that American religiosity is unstable in that large numbers

switch allegiances. Church membership has steadily declined over the
last half century, and if anything, the drop sped up after 9/11 (Figure
6.2). Only a fifth of the population is in church on a typical Sunday.
Once making up almost the entire population, Christians are down to
three quarters, the Catholic fifth of the population remains steady only
because of massive Hispanic immigration, and the formerly dominant
Protestants are close to being a minority for the first time (Figure 6.3)
and may already be if the heretical Mormons are subtracted. Until
recently liberal and ‘‘mainline’’ churches were understood to be dwin-
dling, but Bible literalists have sunk steadily and spectacularly from
four in ten to less than a third over thirty years—contradicting the
impression of a numerically resurgent religious right—and if the con-
sistent trends continue literalists should be matched and then outnum-
bered by Bible skeptics in a decade or two (Figure 6.2). Other Biblical
worldviews are also waning (Barna 2007a), whereas a bastion of theo-
conservative creationism, the Southern Baptist Church, is shrinking as
a portion of the population because of a failure to sustain sufficient
baptism rates (Banks 2005a, b; Rainer 2005; Salmon 2008). Following
the pattern of failing western churches, American Christianity is femi-
nizing as men become increasingly reluctant to spend time attending
religious services, and children are strongly prone toward picking up

their non/religiosity from their fathers (Haug and Warner 2000). A
given generation retains its level of religiosity through life, and young
Americans are the least theistic and most socially tolerant generation in
the nation’s history; even the nation’s deeply entrenched antiatheist big-
otry is easing as gays become widely tolerated and often popular (Edgell
2006; Mendenhall 2006; Anonymous 2007; Grossman 2007; Rainer 2007;
Paul 2008b; Zogby 2008). Some regions of the United States are already
as nonreligious and proevolution as some secularized western nations,
and once red, theoconservative states are turning a more secular purple
and even blue (Judis and Texeira 2002; Sager 2006).
It is crucial to this investigation that the loss of First World belief is
largely a casual, voluntary conversion within which hundreds of mil-
lions have spontaneously lost interest in religious beliefs and practices
despite the absence of an organized atheistic movement comparable in
scale to the churches that work against secularization. In most developed
nations the historical contraction of religion since WWII has been a nota-
bly quiet affair eliciting remarkably little popular controversy, and only
American society is experiencing a culture war. Only disbelief in the su-
pernatural has proven able to achieve significant growth by organic con-
version: that this is occurring despite the low rate of reproduction of
secularists makes their success at conversion all that more impressive.
HYPOTHESES PLAUSIBLE BUT FAILED

It’s Not Internal
The thesis that there is a compulsive ‘‘desire for God’’ in most or all
humans is falsified by the nonuniversality of the longing (Paul 2009d).
The absence of a consistent drive to be religious or spiritual in turn fal-
sifies a large number of potential hypotheses for why religion appeared
and is often popular. We first consider internal mental processes.
Secular or natural explanations commonly offered as primary causes
of mass religiosity include the following: fear of death or hell and a
desire for an enjoyable eternal life, fear of societal chaos if a society is
not godly, desire for an uber father figure or a universal companion,
an explanation for the meaning of life or the existence of the universe,
a social primate’s desire for community and need for practical social
support, a means to achieve political power, the excessive tendency to
perceive patterns where they do not exist, the retention of childhood
patterns of gullible thinking into adulthood, a deep set psychological
need for spirituality, a ‘‘God gene’’ in which religious belief and/or
prosociality somehow imparts a survival or reproductive benefit to
individuals or related groups, left brain hemisphere function, the eu-
phoria often associated with intense theistic beliefs and activities, and
memes that spread religious ideas like viral infections even if religious
devotion is maladaptive to a given individual or group.
The supernatural hypothesis contends that faith is popular because
it is part of the human mental condition to believe in their creator; the
exact mechanism of this speculative connection is obscure because of a
lack of reliable scientific data.
No predominantly internal mental causes, either natural or supernat-
ural, survive the test of large-scale First World secularization for the
simple reason that if any or all were crucial to mass belief then all pop-
ulations would be strongly religious unless subject to severe coercion
by an antireligious ruling elite. If fear of death and hope for a never-
ending paradise are primary driving forces behind mass belief, then
why have the great majority of the French, Swedes, and Japanese spon-
taneously abandoned religion even though they face the same lethal
fate as faithful Americans? Likewise, if need for social community is so
compelling, then why are western Europeans and Australians not
flocking to the churches? Political ambitions are not crucial because
public expressions of deep piety have become an electoral detriment in
the strongly secular democracies. Nor is the highly skeptical French
population genetically or neurologically distinct from highly religious
ones, so factors that potentially involve selective forces, including ex-
cessive pattern recognition and gullibility, are not predominant. There
a no reason to think that the brains of the French and Canadians are
more or less resistant to infectious memes.
The nonhomogeneity of faith that has resulted from the spontaneous
loss of theofaith among large populations falsifies the hypothesis that
belief and worship of supernatural entities is inherent to most much
less all human brains. The forces most responsible for generating and
deconstructing large-scale religiosity must be environmental. To the
extent that internal mental causes of religion and nonreligion are real,
they can contribute to the level of religiosity only when environmental
conditions are suitable for high levels of popular theosupernaturalistic
opinion (Paul 2009d).
Inadequate External Factors

The free market explanation for why America is unusually theistic
by First World standards (Stark and Finke 2000; Bruce 2002) has been
so thoroughly falsified (Voas et al. 2002; Norris and Inglehart 2004;
McCleary and Barro 2006a; Zuckerman 2006; Paul and Zuckerman
2007) that there is no need to consider it in detail. The failure of Euro-
pean churches to prevent the continent from sinking into mass war and
their complicity in fascism and the Holocaust (Goldhagen 2002; Paul
2003/4; Heckenes 2004; Dawkins 2006) may help explain the continent’s
postwar lack of religious enthusiasm, but does not adequately explain
why faith has since declined much more sharply in Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand than the United States. There is one modern democ-
racy where a specific WWII-related event helped spark a failure of mass
faith. Shortly after the conflict Emperor Hirohito admitted he was not
divine, and the Japanese majority has been leery of supernaturalistic
claims ever since. The Cold War against atheistic communism seemed
to inspire a pro-God reaction in the United States, but this does not
explain why Christianity was already imploding in postwar Europe,
even though they were subject to direct invasion by the Soviet alliance.
The comparison of the PRVSS to levels of immigration, and ethno-
cultural diversity failed to demonstrate statistically significant relation-
ships. Other factors must explain the American Anomaly.
THE TRIPLE THREAT TO WESTERN FAITH

The same population trend data that has allowed both the internal
and some external causes of popular opinion on religion to be rejected
allows the environmental reasons—which form three major factors—
why religion is in dire trouble in the First World to be determined.8
Modern Science, Evolution, and Education

For millennia religious explanations of the existence of a universe
containing humans encountered little competition because scientific
research hardly existed, and in recent centuries the emerging sciences
seemed to verify the need for a hyperintelligent creator. If modern sci-
ence confirmed the existence of a designer—if geologists, paleontolo-
gists and geneticists showed that there is not consistent order to the
appearance of organisms and for example, that they are too genetically
different to be related to one another, then belief in some form of crea-
tor would remain prevalent even among well-educated Westerners.
Instead, Darwinian and related sciences have refuted even Paleyian
intelligent design, much less the Genesis story, leaving belief in super-
natural gods at best an intellectual stretch. As Dawkins (2006) observes,
the scientific environment that Westerners dwell within permits and
encourages nontheism. It is not necessary for nonscientists to be well
informed on the details of the matter; simply living in a society where
the mainstream scientific paradigm does not demand belief in a super-
natural designer is sufficient for large-scale disbelief to arise, just as the
opposite will occur if the reigning paradigm favors a creator. Higher
levels of education correspond to lower rates of religiosity and crea-
tionism on a personal and national basis; every year of college sup-
presses average religiosity by about 7 percent, and scientists, especially
elite researchers, are exceptionally nontheistic (Leuba 1916; Larson and
Witham 1999; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Gallup 2005b, 2006a, b). This
Figure 6.4. Popular Reliousity versus Secularism Scale
is in accord with the experimental psychological evidence that accep-

tance of scientific explanations is automatically antagonistic to the ac-
ceptance of religious explanations for the same phenomenon in most
human minds (Preston and Epley 2009). In First World countries lower
levels of popular religiosity logically are associated with lower levels of
creationism because the latter cannot thrive outside the context of a
strongly pro-God population; there are no major exceptions to the pro-
gressive and statistically strong and very strong correlations that con-
tinue into regions of the United States (Figure 6.4, Appendix 3; Paul
2002, 2005, 2008a).
Because the rise of mass disbelief in a creator would not be possible
if not for the materialist results of modern science and popular knowl-
edge of the same, the Naturalistic Science Contribution to Democratic
Secularization is the first leg in the triad of popular secularism. How-
ever, the science and education factor does not explain why the United
States, whose mass science knowledge base is, aside from evolution,
similar to that of other First World nations (NORC 2008), remains more
religious than other advanced democracies.
Societal and Economic Security

As popular as the proposition that religion is a universal human
drive is the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis that proposes that
mass belief in and worship of creator deity is essential if a national so-
ciety is to enjoy benevolent social and economic circumstances (Appen-
dix 3; Paul 2005, 2009d), forming in turn the concept of ‘‘spiritual
capital.’’9 Many current theoconservatives maintain that a laissez-faire
capitalist economy combined with high levels of mass religiosity and
faith-based charity are more effective at producing a benevolent and
healthy socioeconomic environment than is secular democracy that

modulates free market capitalism with government-based assistance to
produce more equitable results (Brooks 2006). The hypothesis includes
the antievolution or creationist version that contends that popular ac-
ceptance of Darwinian science contributes to the irreligiosity that
dooms societies to chaos, and the proevolution version in which the ba-
sic existence of a creator, not its mode of creation, alone is considered
critical. If any version of the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis is
correct then the socioeconomic environment has little impact on the
level of popular religiosity because the latter can be high regardless of
whether the former is positive or negative. If the countervailing secu-
lar-democratic socioeconomic hypothesis (Appendix 3) is accurate, then
benevolent national circumstances are not compatible with high levels
of popular religiosity, either because the latter suppresses the former,
or the reverse, or because the two factors are mutually antagonistic.10 If
pathological socioeconomic conditions encourage popular religiosity
and improving circumstances curb the same, then this major environ-
mental factor is operative.
How the First World countries perform in each of the 25 socioeco-
nomic and environmental indicators is detailed in Appendix 1. The
United States scores the worst in fourteen and by a very large margin
in eight, very poorly in two, average in four, well or very in four, and
the best in one. Specifically, the United States, scores the most dysfunc-
tional in homicide, incarceration, juvenile mortality, gonorrhea and
syphilis infections, abortions, adolescent pregnancies, marriage dura-
tion, income disparity, poverty, work hours, and resource exploitation
base (Appendix 2). The level of relative and absolute societal pathology
in the United States is frequently so severe that it is repeatedly an out-
lier that strongly reinforces the correlation between high levels of pop-
ular religiosity and poor societal conditions; because it performs so
poorly relative to more secure democracies, the status of the United
States as an advanced First World nation is marginal. That none of the
nations scores a perfect 10 on the cumulative SSS affirms that even the
best performing examples are not close to being ideal utopias (Figure
6.5; Paul 2009d). The top-scoring countries are the three Scandinavian
countries, which sampled between 7 and 8, with Norway at the latter
value, and Holland a little lower than these three. Most countries are
in a fairly narrow middle zone from about 5 to over 6. The United
States is again an outlier: with a cumulative score of only 2.9, it is so
far below the other advanced democracies that some researchers have
described it as ‘‘sick’’ (Sapolsky 2005; Wilkinson 2005).11 The depth of
the poor performance of the United States makes it all the more diffi-
cult to explain its level of pathology vis- a-vis more secular democra-
cies, especially considering its exceptional wealth and power. On the
other hand, the position of the United States as the most competitive
Figure 6.5. SSS versus PRVSS. See Figure 6.4 for country letter key.
economy is tentative (WEF 2007) as more secular democracies contend

for the status, and no other First World country is as inefficient at
transforming its assets and resources into societal health (Sapolsky
2005; Marks et al. 2006; Rosnick and Weisbrot 2006).12 The next ques-
tion is what factors best explain the observed pattern: are they largely
or entirely nonreligious in nature, or is religiosity strongly interrelated?
The relationship between gross per capita income and the SSS is not
consistent (Appendix 3). The 10 percent of the U.S. population that is
foreign born is too small to dramatically alter its socioeconomic charac-
teristics, and a number of the moderately secular nations exhibit a
much higher proportion of aliens. The cultural fractionalization of the
United States is somewhat high, but is likewise exceeded in some mod-
erately secular democracies. Insular Japan is at the other extreme in
both attributes. The Pearson correlations (r) between these population
factors and societal conditions are too weak to explain the divergence
in First World conditions (Appendix 3; Neapolitan 1997; Beeghley
2003). Nor does a violence and sex saturated media offer a primary
causal explanation because the American popular culture has spread

across the First World (Tomlinson 1991; Neapolitan 1997; Beeghley
2003; Paul 2008c). America’s frontier heritage cannot be a critical con-
tributor to its exceptional violence and related issues because markedly
less dysfunctional Canada and Australia also have large frontiers
(Neapolitan 1997; Beeghley 2003). The major nonreligious factors do
not adequately explain America’s failings.
Other potential contributing factors are more religious than they
may first appear. America’s heritage of mass racial slavery and Jim
Crow apartheid may play a role in the nation’s current ills. Discrimina-
tory slavery and the chronic societal terror required to suppress human
rights is endorsed at length in the Old and New Testaments, including
the Jesus figure, and routine brutal treatment of blacks as inferiors by
white Christians, often with the tacit or explicit complicity of the re-
gional churches, began in the colonies in the 1620s and did not cease
until the 1960s (Dray 2003; Harris 2006, Jaspin 2007; Blackman 2008;
Budiansky 2008).13
The relationship between non/religiosity and socioeconomic prob-
lems is not ambiguous. When the United States is included all specific
indicators of religiosity and secularism show strong to very strong cor-
relations with SSS, higher levels of secularism as measured by nonthe-
ism and acceptance of secularism being associated with superior overall
socioeconomic conditions (Figure 6.5, Appendix 3). With the U.S. outlier
removed the correlations are moderate to good.14 The very strongest
and most progressive correlation is absolute belief in God with the reli-
gious United States at the dysfunctional end of the SSS and only highly
secular democracies at the other. The most comprehensive single corre-
lation in this study, the comparison of the cumulative PRVSS and SSS
scores (Figure 6.5), produces a robust progressive relationship with the
religious and creationist United States easily the most pathological,
none of the secular democracies below 4.8, and only the most secular
and proevolution democracies above 6.5. The very strong r correlation
of ~0.7 (Appendix 3) means that about half of the variation in PRVSS
scores can be explained by the variation in the SSS scores and vice
versa. With the U.S. outlier excluded the correlation is still strong, with
about a quarter of the variation of one axis explained by the other.
The results of the cross-national comparison abjectly falsify both the
creationist and proevolution versions of the moral-creator socioeco-
nomic hypothesis, which qualifies as an unsubstantiated urban legend
that has never been supported by a large-scale cross-national or cross-
regional study. The democratic-secular socioeconomic hypothesis is
robustly verified. This outcome is highly compatible with and strongly
supports the socioeconomic security hypothesis of democratic seculari-
zation detailed in the seminal work by Norris and Inglehart (2004) and
discussed by Zuckerman 2006, 2008) and Paul and Zuckerman (2007).
This is true because it is improbable that the tendency of levels of opin-

ion regarding the existence or nonexistence of a creator to so strongly
correlate with a large number of societal circumstances and vice versa
is an accident. Either socioeconomic conditions are strongly influencing
popular religiosity and secularism, or the reverse, or both effects are
occurring. The social environmental based hypothesis rests on a large
body of research that is used in the next paragraphs to describe the po-
litical, social, and economic policy differences between the United
States and other prosperous democracies that appear to be driving
their respective national conditions and hence their popular opinion on
non/religion (including Lane 1997; Neapolitan 1997; American Acad-
emy of Pediatrics 1998, 2000; Zimring and Hawkins 1999; Panchaud
et al. 2000; Singh and Darroch 2000; Messner and Rosenfeld 2001;
Kawachi and Kennedy 2002; Pew 2002; Beeghley 2003; Pratt and God-
sey 2003; Marmot 2004; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Reid 2004; Gallup
2005b, 2006a, b; Himmelstein et al. 2005; Sapolsky 2005; Schoen et al.
2005; Wilkinson 2005; Anderson et al. 2006; Banks et al. 2006; Wellings
2006; Winkleby et al. 2006; Zuckerman 2006, 2008; Finer 2007; Paul and
Zuckerman 2007; Trenholm 2007; Kaiser 2008; Rosenbaum 2009).
Among nations as a whole, and on a personal basis, levels of popu-
lar religiosity and creationism tend to decline as income levels rise
(Pew 2002; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Gallup 2005b, 2006a, b). But
among First World nations the correlations between per capita income
on the one hand and the SSS and PRVSS are weak, with the two most
religious and exceptionally dysfunctional countries exhibiting among
the highest levels of wealth, the high income yet theistic and creationist
United States a partial outlier; simple prosperity cannot, however,
explain the existing situation.15
There are strong to very strong and progressive correlations between
income disparity and poverty on one hand relative to the SSS and
PRVSS on the other, with the inequitable and theistic United States at
the dysfunctional end of the SSS and only the most egalitarian strongly
secular democracies at the other (Appendix 3). Up to half of the varia-
tion between these factors is attributable to the other. Removing the
outlier United States from the statistical processing leaves the two cor-
relations somewhat less strong. The existence of a major connection
between levels of popular non/theism and economic conditions, partic-
ularly those pertaining to levels of security and insecurity, is robustly
supported.
The basic causal mechanism of the socioeconomic security hypothe-
sis of democratic secularization is as follows. Among the prosperous
democracies, all but the United States have adopted most or all of a set
of pragmatic secular policies that have elevated these nations’ societal
efficiency, success, and security while reducing personal levels of stress
and anxiety. These include reduced socioeconomic disparity and
competition via targeted tax and welfare strategies, handgun control,

anticorporal punishment and antibullying policies, protection for
women in abusive relationships, intensive sex education that empha-
sizes condom use, rehabilitative incarceration, increased leisure time
that can be dedicated to family needs, and perhaps most importantly
job security and universal health care that make it difficult for ordinary
citizens to suffer catastrophic financial failure. As a result the middle-
class majorities of western Europe, Canada, Austro-Zealand, and Japan
feel sufficiently secure in their lives so that increasingly few citizens
feel a need to seek the aid and protection of a supernatural creator,
resulting in dramatic drops in religious belief and activity. The dis-
placement of faith-based charities with governmental assistance further
hinders the ability of the churches to influence the lay community. The
increasing number of nonreligious presumably make the automatic
psychological flip from preferring religious explanations to scientific
alternatives, further suppressing religiosity in general, as well as funda-
mentalist worldviews. Although the popular secularization induced by
pragmatic policies is accidental, the effect is apparently so efficacious
that it has occurred in every progressive western democracy despite
the absence of a large-scale organized atheistic movement and has yet
to be reversed by a major religious revival. Although the time frame
needed to inspire dramatic shifts in popular religiosity is decadal rather
than a few years, the speed of change can be startling.16 The universality
of the effect is supported by Asian Japan experiencing the same basic
secularization process as formerly Euro-Christian democracies.
As a member of the First World the United States is as anomalous
in social, economic, and political policies as it is in its non/religiosity.
Provided with comparatively low levels of government support and
protection, members of even the middle class are at serious risk of fi-
nancial and personal ruin if they lose their job or private health insur-
ance; millions go bankrupt in a given year, many because of
overwhelming medical bills. The need to acquire wealth as a protective
buffer encourages an intense competitive race to the top, which con-
tributes to income inequality. These high-risk circumstances and the
strong variation in economic circumstances help elevate rates of social
pathology and strongly contribute to high levels of personal stress and
anxiety. The majority are left feeling sufficiently insecure that they per-
ceive a need to seek the aid and protection of a supernatural creator,
boosting levels of religious opinion and participation. The nation’s
good score in life satisfaction and happiness is compatible with a large
segment of the population using religion to psychologically self-
medicate against high levels of apprehension.17 The ultimate expression
of this social phenomenon is the large minority who adhere to the
evangelical Prosperity Christianity and Rapture cultures, whose Bible-
based worldview encourages belief in the Genesis creation story. This
antirationalist effect is encouraged by the psychological exclusion

of scientific explanations by the widespread preference for religious
alternatives.
Not only does popular theism apparently depend on adverse socio-
economic circumstances, conservative religion appears to contribute to
the latter. Politically powerful elements of the American religious right
have preferred to focus on promoting a series of ideology based and
socioeconomically problematic wedge issues rather than addressing
social ills (Weisman and Cooperman 2006). These forces favor the
deregulated, reduced taxation especially for the wealthy, free market
economy that raises personal risk. As an adjunct to privatization, theo-
conservatives are promoting the displacement of government services
with faith-based charities that increase outreach into the general popu-
lation, even though data showing that faith-based charities are more
effective than government alternatives has not been produced (Johnson
et al. 2002), and charities lack the enormous financial resources and
infrastructure needed to provide the comprehensive assistance that the
government can (contra Brooks 2006). America’s high levels of adult
and especially juvenile mortality are probably partly due to the lack of
the comprehensive medical system that is opposed by most elements
of the creationist right (Kawachi and Kennedy 2002; Schoen et al. 2005;
Anderson et al. 2006; Banks et al. 2006; Winkleby et al. 2006). The Bi-
ble-based juvenile corporal punishment advocated by theoconserva-
tives (Dobson 2007a, b) may contribute to a tendency toward violence
in adult years (American Academy of Pediatrics 1998, 2000). The claim
that the Biblical God is the best if not sole source of morality is suspect
because the testaments justify the use of extreme personal and mass vi-
olence and theft to address various problems and can produce ‘‘honor
cultures’’ that demand extreme retribution for even trivial slights
(Grasmick et al. 1992; Niditch 1993; Neapolitan 1997; Nisbett and
Cohen 1999; Dray 2003; Ellison et al. 2003; Messner and Zevenbergen
2005; Dawkins 2006; Harris 2006; Hitchens 2007). The extent of natural
evil is so extensive that it falsifies the existence of a benign god (Paul
2009b), so the continual effort to justify the unethical acts of the pro-
posed creator potentially degrades the moral values of believers. Gun
control is opposed by many religious traditionalists. Hood et al. (1986),
Scheepers et al. (2002), and Sider (2005) observe that higher levels of
conservative religious practice are associated with elevated levels of
racial and ethnic prejudice, examples of which can be found in contem-
porary creationist literature (Morris 1991, 147–48). The patriarchal na-
ture of traditional evangelical marriage may contribute to its instability
(Bennett 2007). Extensive research, including this study, indicates that
the Biblically inspired abstinence only sex education programs are not
as efficacious in reducing adverse consequences of sexual activity to
the degree seen in better educated Euroyouth (Panchaud et al. 2000;
Singh and Darroch 2000; Wellings et al. 2006; Finer 2007; Trenholm
2007; Paul 2009a; Rosenbaum 2009).
Patterns within the United States support the proposition that high
levels of societal dysfunction are associated with high levels of religios-
ity, especially when traditionalist in nature. Levels of homicide, STD
infections, abortion, and teen pregnancy are especially high in the pro-
creationist Bible Belt, which is also the primary location of the rise in
mortality that is already unusually high in the region (Aral and
Holmes 1996, Nisbett and Cohen 1999; Doyle 2000, 2002; Beeghley
2003; Ellison et al. 2003; Messner et al. 2005; Ezzati et al. 2008). One
reason America has a high level of divorce is because of the excessive
rates characteristic of born-again married couples (Barna 2004; Sider
2005; Bennett 2007).18 Keister (2008) explores how conservative Protes-
tantism can hinder personal finances. The longitudinal investigation in
Appendix 1 finds that the United States did not enjoy markedly supe-
rior conditions prior to its recent secularization, the same applies to
once Christian Europe, and much of the recent improvements the
United States occurred in parallel with the national secularization.19
Not only does the validity of the secular-democratic socioeconomic
and the socioeconomic security hypotheses fail to substantiate the real-
ity of spiritual capital, the verification is sociologically intriguing
because, as Shermer (2006) and Bloom (2008) note, they appear to con-
tradict the proposal that Americans often benefit from participating
in religious activities (Putman 2000; Powell et al. 2003; Norris and
Inglehart 2004; Brooks 2006; Gillum et al. 2008; Norenzayan and Shariff
2008; Pew 2008; McClullough and Willoughby 2009), although this
effect is not consistent (Powell et al. 2003; Blumenthal et al. 2007; Keister
2008; Paul 2008d). Individuals frequently profit from being members of
one or more connected groups (Sampson et al. 1997; Putman 2000;
McNeely et al. 2002; CASA 2003; Eisenberg et al. 2004); the last two cita-
tions show that salutary group activities can be as simple as regular
family dinners. Such social ‘‘clubs’’ can be private or governmental, reli-
gious or secular; in other words Putman’s ‘‘social capital’’ is more effi-
cacious than ‘‘spiritual capital.’’ This is particularly true in a nation like
the United States where government support systems are relatively
weak in favor of private alternatives, belonging to religious ‘‘clubs’’ can
provide benefits not available to those who are unable (often due to
cost) or unwilling to join secular private cooperatives. In the secular
democracies people belong to critical support groups, including the
health care club, simply by being citizens, boosting overall general soci-
etal health to higher levels. It is therefore proposed that ‘‘secular capi-
tal’’ is a significant contributor to the success of irreligious democracies.
The empirical patterns and theoretical analysis indicate that the rela-
tionship between popular religiosity and societal circumstances is both
passive and active—a positive socioeconomic environment indirectly
negatively influences the level of mass theism and creationism; mean-

while high levels of conservative theism directly contribute to the poor
societal circumstances and faith-based charitable work that encourage
popular religiosity and creationist opinion. The socioeconomic security
contribution to democratic secularization is the second in the three-
legged stool of Western secularization.
The Corporate–Consumer Popular Culture

Although modern science provides the matrix for Western disbelief,
and socioeconomic circumstances have severely degraded faith in pro-
gressive democracies, the growing secularization of the United States is
not fully explained.
Religious traditionalists dominated the Western mainstream culture
until the Great War. Starting in the 1920s, only partly reversed during
the Great Depression, reinitiating during and after WWII, and accelerat-
ing in the 1960s, the popular culture has become increasingly radicalized
until it is unrecognizable by historical norms (Paul 2008b). A primary
driving force behind cultural secularization is private enterprise. At first
resistant to the initially antiestablishment counterculture as it began to
appear more than four decades ago, the corporations quickly realized it
is to their advantage to capture and exploit the ‘‘me generation’’ portion
of the secularized popular culture. This is because the long-term fiduci-
ary aim of capital is to persuade citizens to become materialistic, hedo-
nistic, and youth-, sports-, violence-, sex-, celebrity-, and status-obsessed
consumers whose values and life goals are antagonistic to those associ-
ated with traditional culture and piety. Although business interests are
careful to not overly offend their many religious customers, religious ac-
tivity and charity do not contribute to the mercantile bottom line. Capi-
tal prefers a calm, tolerant society whose main life goal is to acquire as
much personal material goods and services as possible.
The effect is measurable. A contributing factor to the slippage of
church activity is the retailers’ victorious campaign to repeal the once
widespread puritanical Blue Laws (Gruber and Hungerman 2006; Paul
2008c). The gay-friendly policies of corporations vex their theoconser-
vative elite allies, but capitalists must put priority into tapping into the
same-sex cohort’s disposable cash (Paul 2008b).20 The theoconservative
Coors family sells light beers that fuel college binge drinking. The
Catholic Church and Protestant allies used to control Hollywood via
the Hayes Code. Today the irreligious entertainment offered by the
corporate media is a major contributor to cultural secularism. Rupert
Murdoch’s FOX entertainment empire offers a wide array of theologi-
cally incorrect TV and film product that fuels secularization, and his
FOX News presents conservative pundits who denounce secular liberals
for de-Christianizing the culture. No entertainment program promoting
traditional religious values appears on any major television network,

largely because past shows failed to garner sufficiently high ratings.
The detraditionalization effect of mass consumerism is so powerful that
the formerly prevailing traditionalist society has been driven into a par-
allel culture that, for all its power and influence, remains a minority
cohort whose persistent attempts to recapture the majority culture over
the last half century have just as persistently failed in the face of the
stimulating enticements of the free-wheeling culture offered by the cor-
porations (contra Gilbert 2007).21
The liberating consumer culture created by the often contentious yet
highly popular collaboration between the material demands of the pub-
lic and their corporate suppliers forms the third leg of the triad of
Western nontheism, the corporate-consumer culture contribution to
democratic secularization.22
Synopsis of the Triple Threat

To review and join the three hypotheses into a coherent whole, the
first threat to mass faith is the modern science, especially evolutionary
theory, that made mass disbelief in the gods both possible and proba-
ble in those nations where the socioeconomic environment is favorable
to widespread nontheism. The second threat is the social and financial
security associated with historically benign conditions featuring long
lifespans, a middle-class majority whose financial status is ensured by
universal medical coverage, job protection, and an extensive safety net
combined with low levels of societal dysfunction that has grievously
injured faith in the strongly secular democracies. This effect is so
powerful because democratic secularization of the population tends to
be associated with, and encourages, the adoption of the progressive,
secular socioeconomic policies that encourage further secularization in
a classic sociological feedback loop. In the secular democracies socio-
economic security has combined with the third threat, the mass con-
sumer culture—in part imported from Christian America (Tomlinson
1991)—to radically reform eighteen of the nineteen wealthiest nations
away from religious devotion. Although socioeconomic circumstances
remain sufficiently primitive in the United States to encourage corre-
spondingly primitive levels of popular religiosity, the nation’s excep-
tionally aggressive corporate–consumer mainstream culture is sufficient
to push a delayed, Americanized version of the secularization process.
Religion is proving able to thrive only in populations where condi-
tions are sufficiently defective to cause the majority to resort to petition-
ing speculative supernatural powers to come to their aid. The mere act
of running a society in a competent manner causes most of the popula-
tion to lose interest in church and God. That a sufficiently benevolent
national environment is automatically antagonistic to mass faith is a core
reason why a highly religious country never has been, and probably
cannot be, socially healthy and vice versa. The tendency of conservative
theists to oppose effective policies is a contributing factor to the poor
performance of nations of faith. Can a more science friendly, liberally re-
ligious national society better cope with modernity? Although liberal
and moderate, proevolution churches tend to support progressive social
policies and values that converge with those of secularists (Wallis 2005;
Weisman and Cooperman 2006), the progressive values characteristic of
these seem too secular to inspire widespread devotion, and improving
social conditions and economic security degrades religiosity from liberal
to conservative. It follows that only voluntarily secular cultures, not reli-
gious ones of any type, can enjoy historically low levels of dysfunction
because the beneficent environment suppresses religion and because sec-
ularists favor the policies that create that environment. This pattern
explains the lack of any example of such a country.
The Naturalistic Science, Socioeconomic Security, and Corporate–
Consumer Culture Contributions combine to form the Triple-Threat
Hypothesis of Democratic Secularization. Falsification of the hypothesis
requires demonstration of the existence of a highly religious and crea-
tionist prosperous democracy that enjoys low income disparity, high
security for the middle-class majority, and low levels of societal dys-
function or the existence of a strongly secular, proevolution prosperous
democracy that suffers from high income disparity, low security for
the middle-class majority, and high levels of societal dysfunction. To
demonstrate that other factors are important contributors, it must be
shown that they provide effective explanations for the disparate levels
of religiosity in modern nations.
A thought experiment further reveals the central role played by the
human environment in setting the level of majority non/religiosity and
the nonuniversality of faith, while helping discern why theofaith arose
in the first place. Assume that from the very beginning of humanity
that every person enjoyed secure, middle class, well educated lives
broadly similar to those experienced by today’s western Europeans.
Also assume that scientific evidence for the supernatural was absent.
Considering how these circumstances have consistently suppressed
popular religiosity, it is hardly likely that extensive supernaturalism
would have ever evolved if these conditions prevailed from the start.
THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION AND THE SOCIOECONOMIC

INSECURITY HYPOTHESIS OF FAITH
That most people’s religious opinions flow primarily from benign
environmental rather than internal causes allows the origins of faith-
based supernaturalism to be broadly reconstructed. Although the
details will always be obscure because of a gross deficiency in data, the
probable basic cause of the human invention of the supernatural is not

particularly mysterious or complicated23—considering the unfavorable
circumstances they lived within it would be remarkable if early
humans never devised numinous entities. At some point in human
evolution, perhaps a few hundred thousand years ago and no later
than circa 40,000 BP (before Paleolithic), our ancestors evolved the
selectively advantageous mutations that genetically code for a
high-level imagination and the capacity to invent abstract concepts.
In addition humans do two things that other animals do: dream and
use mind-altering drugs. Ancient hunter-gatherers understandably
assumed that the bizarre experiences associated with dreams and natu-
ral hallucinogens were real and that they represented a genuine con-
nection with other realms. The early humans lived under impoverished
conditions in which over half the children died and few made it to old
age. Effective health care was not available. Nor could early humans
explain how the world came into existence or how it worked, and they
were awed by the power of storms and natural disasters. It certainly
appeared that some terrible power was easily angered and needed
appeasing. This Paleolithic stew was bound to inspire early humans,
perhaps led by drug using shamans and to invent fictional entities that
ancient peoples hoped would help them survive in, and explain, a bru-
tal world. It is plausible that internal mental factors such as fear of
death, improved group bonding, power accumulation, a neurological
bias toward seemingly transcendent thinking played subsidiary roles in
the origin of faith, but this was possible only because the archaic envi-
ronment was ideal for popular supernaturalism (Paul 2009d).
Impecunious, high-risk conditions have since been the norm for most
people. As a result organized supernaturalism developed along with civ-
ilization as religious elites exploited its popularity among the masses to
consolidate power, and persists in the Second and Third Worlds where
conditions are sufficiently dysfunctional to support popular faith. The
proposition that adverse environmental conditions encourage mass reli-
giosity may be compatible with the hypothesis that high parasite loads
promote higher levels of religious diversity (Fincher and Thornhill 2009).
Ergo, religion is a superficial primitive and dysfunctional condition, and
popular rejection of fictional supernaturalism is the advanced and less
pathological human state. The theory of why religion arose and has been
popular is the Socioeconomic Insecurity Hypothesis of Faith.
MATERIALISM: THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN CONDITION

The primary selective advantage of the high level cognition that inci-
dentally invented religion on the side is that it gives humans the
capacity to conceive the real world material tools and goods that are
truly genetically integral to the human mind, i.e., materialism. Although
nongenetically coded religion can and has disappeared as a majority

opinion in a number of societies, materialism is so core to the human
mind that it is a feature of every major population. Stone Age peoples
went to great effort to produce and accumulate items of value and
adornment that satisfied both practical needs and vanity and enhanced
status. The fascination with material goods characterizes all civiliza-
tions, which are a means to expand, acquire, and display worldly pos-
sessions. Small groups that choose impoverishment are scarce fringe
elements, and societies that even partly reject materialism are even
rarer. Those that do, such as the Mennonites, not only must resort to
heavy societal pressure to enforce conformity, but they remain signifi-
cantly materialistic: the Amish own, operate, produce, and sell high-
quality goods, clothes, livestock, farms, and small factories. Although
there has always been an ideological struggle between the forces of the
material and the spiritual, even much religious activity is actually an
excuse for more materialism, from countless religious trinkets to mega-
structures. Atheistic communism tried to redistribute wealth, not elimi-
nate it, and the key reason it imploded was a failure to better satisfy
material desires. The materialist compulsion has been taken to an
extreme by religiously neutral industrial capitalism, but the genetic pre-
disposition is proving so strong that many are unable to resist the com-
pulsion to devote entire lives accumulating wealth far beyond logical
needs; it is the DNA-ingrained desire for the material that has made the
corporate project to promote the consumer culture at the expense of re-
ligion so successful. Because materialism is about as ubiquitous as lan-
guage, the great percentage of humans spend much more time dealing
with material than religious matters.
THE NATURES OF POPULAR THEISM, NONTHEISM,

AND THE CULTURE WAR
The popularity of faith in all dysfunctional nations never religiously
cleansed by communism, the casual ease with which hundreds of mil-
lions of financially secure, well-educated Westerners have cast off reli-
gious devotion, and the much greater genetic predisposition for the
material rather than the spiritual, establish the following. For the major-
ity religiosity is a superficial, fear-driven psychological means to allevi-
ate the chronic stress and anxiety created by an adverse or insecure
societal environment and is readily and normally cast off when socio-
economic conditions are sufficiently benign. To put it another way,
most persons are religious only when their financial situation is defec-
tive enough for them to look for help from the beyond. So theosuperna-
turalism is predominantly self-aggrandization rather than a self-sacrifice
either noble as doctrines propose or as contraadaptive as Dawkins
(2006), Dennett (2006), and Dunbar (2006) proffer. Nor is religion
generally as deeply held as Dennett (2005), Bloom (2007), and Boyer

(2008) presume. The mundane quality of mass theofaith makes sociolog-
ical and psychological sense. What most people are really interested in
are not erudite concepts and doctrine or in spending extended segments
of their time communing with the gods for the sake of some cosmic
connection, but how their daily lives are going and what can be done
to improve the situation if necessary. When their situation is deficient
or insecure, the mental and social pressure to seek relief by imagining
that one has magical friends on one’s side can be overwhelming. So, far
from being either universal or integral to human minds, most religious
faith is a casual opinion of convenience. The popular premise that faith
in a creator represents a deep, transcendent connection with supernatu-
ral reality is correspondingly refuted; it is a paranormal creation of the
human mind broadly similar to belief in ghosts and other spirits.24
The yawning gap between the more than four in ten Americans who
profess to believe in the Genesis story and the now less than a third
who claim to be Bible literalists exposes that for tens of millions popu-
lar young earth creationism is not a firmly held belief, but has the char-
acteristics of a superficially held protest opinion.25 The American rise
of right-wing religious political activism since the 1960s has been a re-
actionary protest against the secularization of the culture (Numbers
2005; Lienesch 2007). It began with the introduction of evolution into
public education following the Sputnik scare, gained speed with the
ban of official school prayer, accelerated in angry reaction to the emer-
gence of the counterculture, and has been sustained by the evolution of
the latter into the extreme consumer culture developed by the theocon-
servative’s corporate allies. The religious elite perpetually complain
that the religiosity of followers is generally shallow (Barna 2003; Sider
2005; Prothero 2007). This superficiality is not limited to theoliberals.
Only a small percentage of theoconservatives bother to live a strict Bib-
lical lifestyle (Barna 2003), half their marriages fail, and although polls
show that the theoconservative third of the population disapproves of
premarital sex, surveys reveal that more than eight in ten theoconser-
vatives engage in it (Finer 2007).26
Even though popular nontheism involves a high level of conversion
from theism, the former is no more integral to the human condition
than is the latter. Nor is it likely that most atheists and agnostics base
their decision to not believe in the gods on a careful, rational analysis
of the pertinent philosophical and scientific arguments. As noted ear-
lier Europeans score about as poorly on tests of scientific knowledge as
do the more religious American population. The common perplexment
of rationalists that so many people are superstitious is psychosociologi-
cally na€ive; most people do not care all that much about scientific
rationalism, which explains why three quarters of Americans and
many other Westerners believe in something paranormal aside from
gods (Sjodin 2002; Gallup 2005a). A growing body of research indicates

that humans are not a predominantly rational species; intuitive think-
ing based on inadequate information being the norm (Pinker 2002;
Marcus 2008), this mental limitation is in accord with the tendency of
human minds to automatically prefer either religious or scientific
explanations (Preston and Epley 2009). It seems that most nonreligious
Westerners raised in religious surroundings simply lost interest in the
supernatural when their lives became sufficiently pleasant and ensured
and drifted away from church with relatively little thought about the
matter (in accord with the results of Zuckerman 2008).
The casual nature of both religious and nonreligious opinion accords
with the quiet, laissez-faire nature of the reduction of the popularity of
religion in most Western countries. This reality leads to the fact that
the cultural war for popular opinion between faith and secularism is
not what many think it is: a grand ideological battle of ideas in which
the side that does the best job convincing the body politic wins. The
philosophical struggle is largely limited to partisan activists and the in-
tellectual elite. The United States is the sole Western democracy where
the theocultural war involves a major portion of the population, only
because the socioeconomic environment inspires a large minority to be
religious militants. Because popular opinion on religion is actually a
more humdrum side effect of the scientific, social, economic, and com-
mercial environment a population happens to dwell in over a period of
decades, it is difficult for partisans on either side to mold popular
opinion in the manner they desire, in which case educational and prop-
aganda efforts should always have limited impact.
LIMITATIONS OF THE HYPOTHESES HEREIN

Even though the environment centered Socioeconomic Insecurity
Hypothesis portion of the New Synthesis of Popular Religion and Secu-
larism explains the core questions concerning popular non/religion, its
explanatory power is not universal because it does not apply to all
aspects of religiosity, some of which may stem from internal mental fac-
tors. The hypothesis does not cover the competition between faiths
within the context of a human environment that favors mass religiosity,
such as why Christianity and Islam have become the most success-
ful theofaiths at the expense of polytheistic alternatives. It is plausible
that the eternal paradise promised by Christo-Islam is operative. Nor
does the socioeconomic hypothesis deal with many individual circum-
stances, including the continuing religious devotion that persists among
a minority of those who enjoy secure prosperity, including the minority
of scientists who publicly proclaim their unverified belief faith in the
supernatural. The hope for perpetual life may be operative here as well.
Unfortunately these questions are difficult to test and in some cases
may require a deeper understanding of brain function. Nor is it yet

known just how antisupernaturalist an advanced society can become.
PREDICTIONS
Because materialism is a much deeper part of the human psyche
and a more stable feature of human societies than is religion, the per-
petual hope by theists that a profound human need for spirituality
inevitably forces a revival of faith is unsubstantiated. The Triple Threat
to Hypothesis of Democratic Secularization predicts that the future
course of religion versus secularism will continue to be determined
mainly by the scientific, social, economic, and commercial environmen-
tal conditions populations live in. Organized religion has never faced
anything as hazardous as the Triple Threat before, and their ability to
directly challenge the forces of modernity appears to be minimal.
That evolutionary science makes disbelief in creator deities possible
explains why the theoconservative elites are desperate to destroy evo-
lutionary science, but they lack realistic prospects of doing so since
advanced research is likely to only reinforce the theory.27 If the gap
between Genesis literalists and Bible literalists continues to grow—and
considering the consistent decline of the former for the last three de-
cades this is likely, then the erosion of the Bible literalist base will
apply growing pressure that should undermine young youth creation-
ism, leaving it increasingly vulnerable to sudden collapse.
Although the half-century-old alliance of the religious right with cor-
porate powers under the umbrella of the Republican Party has
increased the theoconservative’s political power (Frank 2004; Phillips
2006; Hedges 2007; Paul 2008c), the cultural secularization effect of the
corporate consumer culture is so extensive that the alliance is doing the
cause of faith more harm than good while capital gets the better results
from this arrangement (Frank 2004). The concern of some (Gilbert 2007;
Hedges 2007) that the conservative church–corporate alliance is conspir-
ing to impose a theocracy is incorrect in view of the mercantile forces
preference for an irreligious, materialistic citizenry.28 The theoconserva-
tive leadership is boxed in; if they abandon their collaboration with the
corporations they lose most of what political power they have, and—
being dependent on member charity and other revenue streams that
amount to only tens of billions a year—the churches cannot hope to
match the tens of trillions commerce wields to promote the exciting
‘‘hip’’ and ‘‘cool’’ aspects of modern consumerism that persistently
trump the dull, ‘‘square’’ values associated with cultural traditionalism.
The American theoconservative movement as a whole has been badly
damaged by its inevitable inability to run the government, the incompe-
tence stemming from the inherently impractical nature of faith-based ide-
ology, one that believes it is not possible for government to be run well in
the first place, mixed with unavoidable rampant corruption. As a result

the ability of the right to convince the majority that they will use godly
morality to reform American society has disappeared. Surveys indicate
that the increasingly secular American population increasingly favors the
pragmatic programs, including universal health care, that spur the socio-
economic secularization feedback loop that once underway is so difficult to
stop that has yet to be reversed (Judis and Texeira 2002; Sager 2006; Pew
2007; Zogby 2008). Even large segments of born-agains are shifting from ide-
ological wedge issues toward more centrist social, economic, and political
policies, and much of their youth cohort is socially tolerant (Mendenhall
2006; Pew 2007; Mead 2008; Paul 2008b; Rossi 2008)—further evidence that
conservative Christianity as a sociopolitical force is weakening.
It follows that American secularization should continue, and may
accelerate, until America is much less religious, perhaps no more than
other advanced nations. Nor is there compelling evidence that secularism
will not hold its ground and even make gains in the latter countries;
Euroyouth is especially nonspiritual (Bruce 2002; Norris and Inglehart
2004; Savage et al. 2006). If correct then the thesis that religiosity and poli-
tics are strongly cyclical as theistic traditionalism and secular modernity
alternately gain the upper hand is inflated; as long as socioeconomic con-
ditions remain reasonably good it is unlikely that First World nations will
return to the more conservative social mores of the 1950s or even the late
1900s, when the idea of gay marriage was barely imaginable rather than
legal as it increasingly is in parts of the West (Paul 2008b). The theists’
best and probably only hope for a massive Western religious revival is a
long-term economic reversal that degrades the majority’s sense of comfort
and security to the point that most abandon rationalism in favor of irra-
tionalism. The Great Depression partly reversed the cultural revolution
that began in the booming 1920s and resumed during the subsequent
Great Prosperity, but Western culture was markedly less traditionalist
even in the late 1930s than it had been prior to the ’20s. The failure of re-
ligion to make great strides in most formally communist states suggests
that once a population has become highly nontheistic it may be resistant
to returning to the primitive level of supernaturalism.
On a planetary scale, if the majority of the planet’s inhabitants
achieve a degree of secure, middle-class prosperity characteristic of
strongly secular democracies, then global religion should deteriorate to
the same magnitude already seen in the West. If the bulk of humanity
remains mired in inadequate socioeconomic circumstances, then reli-
gious supernaturalism will continue to enjoy considerable success.
CONCLUSIONS
Combining past research with the analysis contained in this chapter,
the following conclusions ensue.
Determining the primary causes of popular religiosity versus secu-

larism is predominantly a scientific sociological procedure based on
quantitative analysis of population statistics on opinion and socioeco-
nomic conditions.
Over the last century no major religion has been able to achieve sig-
nificant growth as a portion of the global population via conversion
from another theofaith or nontheism.
The Popular Religiosity Versus Secularism Scale confirms that the
secularization of the First World is a real phenomenon in which spon-
taneous conversion has strongly favored popular nontheism over mass
theism and creationism. Although the most religious and creationist
First World country, the United States is undergoing a delayed and
rapid secularization, and the rise of the nonreligious incorporates a
surge in nontheists supplemented by unchurched believers. The histori-
cally unprecedented organic secularization of hundreds of millions pro-
vides the statistical data needed to solve the problems of majority
opinion on theosupernaturalism.
The casual abandonment of theofaith by a large portion of the First
World population, up to majorities in some nations, falsifies natural or
supernatural causes internal to the human brain whether they be adap-
tative or pathological as leading causes of mass religiosity, although
this may apply to a minority of humans. The primary causes of belief
and disbelief in the gods are environmental.
By removing the need for a creator modern science has allowed and
encouraged the appearance of widespread nontheism when other envi-
ronmental conditions are also favorable to popular secularism.
The Successful Societies Scale demonstrates that there is a strong and
progressive correlation between socioeconomic conditions and non/
theism in the advanced democracies. The results falsify all versions of
the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis in favor of the secular-
democratic socioeconomic hypothesis, as well as the socioeconomic
security hypothesis of democratic secularization.
Unless valid studies confirming the validity of the moral-creator
socioeconomic hypothesis in the context of First World nations appear
in the legitimate scientific literature, continuing to promote to the pub-
lic the unsubstantiated hypothesis that religion is critical to individual
and societal health constitutes manipulative propaganda and is intellec-
tually and ethically fraudulent.
Rather than being a godly ‘‘Shining City on the Hill,’’ the United
States is the only First World nation to retain primitive Second and
Third World levels of popular religiosity because it is the only one to
retain the primitive Second and Third World levels of socioeconomic
dysfunction that are needed to sustain mass theism. Conversely, it is
not a coincidence that religiosity is low in every First World nation with
universal health coverage: there is a direct cause and effect mechanism
in which pragmatic secular progressive socioeconomic policies that use

government assistance to modulate capitalism suppress mass faith by
suppressing the economic and societal disparity and insecurity that
mass religion depends on. As a result the least socioeconomically dys-
functional nations in history are consistently the most secular First
World nations in history.
Because the faith-based American socioeconomic system produces
inferior overall conditions and because nontheists suffer from discrimi-
natory national attitudes, those who do not belong to religious organi-
zations providing compensating services may suffer poorer outcomes.
The superior general circumstances extant in secular progressive
democracies reduce the advantages of religiosity.
The traditional, dogma based socioeconomic policies favored by the Re-
ligious Right directly contribute to an array of societal ills, so the theocon-
servative ideology that a democracy can have it all in terms of using
economic liberty and high levels of faith-based activity and charity to
achieve socioeconomic success is incorrect. The theoliberal premise that a
progressively religious nation can be socioeconomically successful is also
errant because the latter suppresses theofaith across the sociopolitical
spectrum. This explains why no socioeconomically healthy theistic coun-
try has ever existed and why it is probably not possible for one to appear.
The concept of socioeconomic spiritual capital is falsified; secular
capital appears to be operative.
Contrary to widespread hope and opinion, the sociological and psy-
chological evidence indicate that scientific and religious opinions are
normally antagonistic in minds and societies. Evolutionary science, for
example, does not encourage theism, and because levels of creator
belief are consistently low in socioeconomically healthy nations, high
rates of acceptance of bioevolution are not compatible with elevated
levels of religiosity in the First World even if the latter is proevolution.
(Whether this always applies to noncommunist Second and Third
World nations is not clear since they never have the socioeconomic se-
curity needed to suppress mass faith, nor is sufficiently reliable data
on opinion on evolution available.)
The core original and sustaining cause of high levels of mass belief in
and worship of supernatural deities has been the sufficiently dysfunc-
tional and insecure socioeconomic environments that have existed since
the Paleolithic and still dominate most of the globe including the United
States. Popular secularism has suddenly appeared only because suffi-
ciently healthy and secure socioeconomic environments have recently
evolved in the rest of First World nations. Simply put, insecurity breeds
religion and creationism, and security promotes casual rationalism.
Because theofaith is usually a psychological coping mechanism used
to alleviate stress and anxiety ensuing from insecure and pathological
socioeconomic conditions, for most persons religion is a casual and
superficial form of self-aggrandizement in which alleged supernatural

entities are called on to provide services regarding aid and protection
concerning earthly matters in exchange for following sets of rules that
demonstrate loyalty. It follows that for most theists their faith is not a
form of self-sacrifice, and theism is readily cast off by large numbers of
people when circumstances favor the adoption of the alternative. Like-
wise being a result of environmental conditions in most cases, nonthe-
ism typically is not based on careful, rational analysis either. It is not
yet known how readily people will abandon nontheism under the pres-
sure of an increasingly dysfunctional socioeconomic environment.
Because the majority chose to be religious or nonreligious on casual
grounds driven by environmental conditions the culture war is not pri-
marily an ideological struggle between competing worldviews ardently
held by most citizens, so the ability of partisans on either side to influ-
ence popular opinion is limited. The introduction of universal health
coverage should do more to further drive secularization and acceptance
of evolution in the United States than any level of advocacy; conversely
retention of highly inequitable health care is vital to slowing the pace
of de-Christianization.
The lack of truly intense popular interest in either theism or nonthe-
ism helps explain why the Western churches have not succeeded in
stopping much less reversing the slide in faith and creationism despite
their efforts and why a large grass roots organized atheistic movement
never has and probably never will emerge.
Materialism is far more integral to human nature, probably via
genetic influence on the function of the mind, than are spirituality and
religiosity.
The evolution of the mass corporate consumer culture made possible
by modern science and technology has exploited the human propensity
toward materialism to the detriment of popular theofaith. A probable
secondary contributor to nontheism in the secular democracies, it is
powerful enough in the United States to overcome socioeconomic inse-
curity and initiated a sharp decline in American religious devotion and
activity.
Having effectively lost the culture war, the theoconservative alliance
with the corporations is correspondingly self-defeating in the long
term, but the churches lack a superior alternative strategy. Dependent
on member charity and other revenue streams that amount to only tens
of billions a year, the churches cannot hope to match the tens of tril-
lions commerce wields to promote the popular counterculture, which
is popular because it enjoys greater majority appeal.
The secularization feedback loop appears to be continuing to operate
in the First World, including the United States, so religion should con-
tinue to lose ground despite the occasional minirevival of theosuperna-
turalism. If so then a major Schlesingerian cycle29 back toward theism
is unlikely. The Karl Rovian project to play the political margins to es-
tablish a faith-based permanent Republican majority was correspond-
ingly as sociologically and politically na€ive as it was doomed.30
Because the churches lack workable mechanisms to defeat the Triple
Threat to First World theofaith as long as egalitarian democratic pros-
perity remains extant. The best hope for a Great Revival in the West is
a similarly great economic reversal, but corporate interests are likely to
continue to promote cultural secularization. Religion should continue
to thrive in the faith-friendly dysfunctional environment of Second and
Third World nations.31
The statistical analyses presented herein were conducted by Peter
Nardi. Special thanks also are given to Phil Zuckerman for discussions
on the subject and the invitation to contribute this chapter.
NOTES
1. Four in ten Americans believe in haunted houses (Gallup 2005a), and the
occultist Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Coming of the Fairies.
2. Creationism includes all forms of belief that disfavors natural explana-
tions of the origins and evolution of the universe and its contents (Paul 2005).
3. The widely held fear of death, free market of religion, and socioeconomic
hypotheses are all plausible, but only the last is compatible with the available
data.
4. However, the Republican 2008 presidential nominee was not particularly
religiously active nor creationist.
5. The seeming jump of support to majority status for special creation in a
Gallup survey (2006b) was due to a one-time change in wording.
6. Stark (2008) selected a very small portion of available survey data since
WWII to claim that nonbelievers have remained a consistently small minority.
He included only two Gallup surveys from the 1940s, ignoring the 1950s data
showing extremely few nonbelievers, and all recent Gallup or Harris results
showing much higher rates of disbelief (see Figure 6.2; Paul 2009c). The poorly
documented conclusion by Finke and Stark (1993) and Stark (2008) that U.S.
church membership has risen since the 1950s is likewise contradicted by con-
sistently gathered Gallup results (see Figure 6.2, Paul 2009c).
7. Even this may be somewhat elevated considering the disinclination to
admit nontheism to pollsters (Taylor 2003). Note that absolute belief in a per-
sonal God is not the same and is a subset of absolute belief in a God whose
characteristics are not defined by the pollster. Also note that almost all those
who express absolute belief in a personal God must include the nearly equal
number who believe in the recent creation of humans.
8. Dawkins (2006) is an example of the many who remain mystified by this
novel event.
9. Since the discussion of the history of this hypothesis in Paul (2005),
recent proponents of the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis include the
best selling Boyle (2005), Coulter (2006), O’Reilly (2006), and D’Souza (2007),
the widely released (but not highly successful, Paul 2008a) 2008 intelligent
design documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the TV program
Darwin’s Deadly Legacy broadcast in 2006 on a nationwide Christian cable chan-

nel and about 200 hundred broadcast stations, the new and successful funda-
mentalist Answers in Genesis Museum near Cincinnati, and Gruber and
Hungerman (2006). Proponents of spiritual capital are Fogel (2000), Malloch
(2003), Barro (2004), Templeton Foundation (2004). Although these polemics
contribute to making atheism a societal fear factor in America (Edgell 2006),
the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis has yet to be supported by the nec-
essary comprehensive technical assay (that Paul 2005 set a challenge for).
10. New advocates of the prosecular hypothesis include Harris (2006), Daw-
kins (2006), and Hitchens (2007).
11. Note that the United States scores so poorly even though it scores well
in factors that were included even though their ability to establish dysfunction
is dubious, such as fertility and marriage (see Appendix 1).
12. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States possesses a
quarter of the global financial assets and uses a similar portion of the planet’s
energy production. No other First World country has such a financially ineffi-
cient health care system, which wastes as much as a trillion dollars or $3,000/
person each year (Paul 2008e).
13. The tendency to attribute slavery and the apartheid lynching culture at
least in part to a virulent expression of racist social Darwinism (Dray 2003) is
misplaced because of the late appearance of the philosophy, which itself was
founded on a heritage of Christian bigotry.
14. With the exception that the Bible literalism correlation is no longer sig-
nificant with the United States excluded, a reflection of the consistent lack of
significant conservative theism in the secular democracies.
15. In scientific terms it is therefore fortunate that the American Anomaly
exists: if the United States were not so religious we would not have the means
to realize that a simple rise in prosperity does not automatically suppress mass
religiosity in favor of popular nontheism.
16. As late as the 1970s Ireland and Spain were impoverished bastions of
Catholicism. Nowadays the hi-tech boom ‘‘Celtic Tiger’’ and progressive Spain
are typically Eurosecular. Spain has become so progressive that divorce and
even same sex marriage are legal.
17. America’s apparently high level of mental illness (Bijl et al. 2003) may
reinforce this suggestion.
18. It is pertinent that the covenant marriage promoted by conservative
evangelicals in three states has attracted only a few thousand couples over the
last few years.
19. Although there has been a recent tendency for gains to plateau out (Paul
2005, 2008d).
20. Hence the spokesperson for American Express is the nation’s most popu-
lar lesbian, Ellen Degeneres, whose popular talk show hosted presidential can-
didate John McCain who was looking for the socially tolerant youth vote and
was followed by Laura and Jenna Bush, promoting the latter’s book.
21. That Gibson’s hyperviolent Passion of the Christ, a film that could not
have been produced under the Hayes Code that many traditionalists laud, was
so popular with Christian theoconservatives exposes how they fail to realize
the depth of their defeat in the culture war or their accommodation to the tri-
umphant counterculture.
22. It is ironic that capitalism is a major contributor to the loss of mass faith that
Marx predicted would result from antisocially Darwinistic egalitarian communism.
23. The speculative and overly elaborate explanations by Dennett (2006),
Dunbar (2006), and King (2007) do not incorporate the primary roles played by
the prehistoric socioeconomic environment. The multimillion Templeton/Oxford
University collaboration to investigate the origin and popularity of theofaith
(www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2008/000219.html) appears redundant.
24. The common opinion expressed by Chris Hedges (on Book TV) that
‘‘those who fail to fully explore the religious impulse, the ability to connect
with those transcendent forces, are not fully human’’ is correspondingly
exposed as both inaccurate and casually bigoted.
25. This effect is supported by the highly inconsistent response of Americans
to questions on evolution and creationism depending on whether they are
framed in scientific or religious terms (NORC 2008).
26. A large portion of the population switches religions (Pew 2008) in a
manner that suggests it is more a cursory consumer product subject to being
dropped than a deep set and unshakeable devotion.
27. It is ironic that the faith-based traditionalist opponents of Darwinian sci-
ence have allied with the Darwinian social economic powers, the latter being a
radical and crucial part of modernity that constitute the greatest force ever seen
for radically transforming First Worlders into hypermaterialist members of the
cultural revolution that theoconservatives despise.
28. The architect of the wedge strategy to make intelligent design a part of
mainstream academe, Phillip Johnson, has lamented the project is not proceed-
ing as envisioned (Apsell 2007).
29. Schlesinger (1986).
30. Judis and Texeira (2002) appear more prescient.
31. Lester (2002), Longman (2006), Shah and Toft (2006), and Griswold (2008)
observe that the flourishing of faith in unstable nations can be pathological.
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APPENDIX 1
Measuring Popular Religion versus Secularism and
Socioeconomic Conditions in the First World
The nations sampled are seventeen of the nineteen most prosperous
First World democracies (per capita income at least $23,000 circa 2000)
with a population of about 4 million or more that have not recently
experienced systemic ethnic violence such as Northern Ireland; Belgium
and Finland are excluded as explained below, and their absence is
unlikely to significantly alter the results. This sample limitation is similar
to that of other studies (such as Panchaud et al., 2000; Singh and
Darroch, 2000) and is a recommended procedure because it minimizes
extraneous variables that are associated with dramatic differences in edu-
cation and income levels as well as political systems (Neapolitan 1997;
Jowell 1998; Paul 2005, 2009d), contra Jensen (2006). Because all but
Japan are share Western cultures with a predominantly Euro-Christian
heritage this variable is also minimized, whereas the inclusion of the
Asian Japanese culture adds a potentially informative variation. The limi-
tation to advanced nations also maximizes the size and quality of the
data set; sociological statistics from Second and Third World nations are
often unreliable if they are available at all (Gartner 1995; Neapolitan
1997; Jowell 1998; Paul 2005, 2009d). The next most comprehensive mea-
sure of national conditions is limited to only three variables because
quality statistics are not available for most of the large number of coun-
tries included in their sample (Marks et al. 2006). Also, by definition only
First World nations have the potential for the great majority to be socio-
economically healthy in critical factors such as life spans and financial
prosperity. Nor is it advisable for an advanced democracy like America
to look to Second and Third World nations, many of which are not dem-
ocratic, as examples for the highest standards of societal success yet
reached. The prosperous democracies comprise a mass epidemiological
experiment consisting of 800 million citizens.
Because the competing hypotheses center on popular opinion regard-
ing religiosity on the one hand as opposed to secularism on the other,
relations between church and state are not pertinent to this type of anal-
ysis (contra Moreno-Riano et al. 2006).1 Mass opinion is measured by
absolute belief in a supernatural creator deity, which is a superior mea-
sure of religious devotion than general belief in God because the latter
includes the following: partial doubters; Bible literalism, which is a
proxy for the conservatism of mass faith; frequent attendance at reli-
gious services and frequency of prayer that measure religious activity;
belief in an afterlife; agnostics and atheists; and acceptance of human
descent from animals, which is also a measure of creationist opinion
(Appendix 2). In order to maximize data uniformity, most plotted data
for popular religiosity is from the International Social Survey Program
(ISSP) 1998 Religion II poll. The ISSP statistics for western and eastern
Germany were combined in accord with their respective populations.
That the ISSP sampled absolute belief in a creator is another reason it
forms the database for this study, although this excludes Belgium and
Finland because they are not members of the consortium. Because the
ISSP did not ask the Japanese their opinion on the Bible, the nation’s
small percentage of Christians was divided by two to arrive at an
approximation of the probable figure. The high rates of church activity
for the Swiss reported by the ISSP are anomalous compared to other
indicators and are excluded. To test the hypothesis examined by Jensen
(2006) that ‘‘benevolent’’ versus ‘‘malevolent’’ religious cosmologies
impact societal conditions, ISSP sampling on absolute belief in heaven
and hell is analyzed separately. International data on acceptance of
human descent from animals is from the ISSP 1993, and values from
the Eurobarometer Europeans and Science and Technology of 2005 sur-
veys are averaged when the same country was sampled by both polls.
That polling on evolution is very limited outside the First World is
another reason to focus on the prosperous democracies. Data on opin-
ion on evolution in regions of the United States is from the National
Opinion Research Center General Social Survey.
In order to approximately measure the overall cumulative level of
popular religiosity and secularism, the absolute data values for each in-
dicator that are available for each nation are normalized by scoring
them on a 0–10 scale, with zero being applied to the most religious
value present in a given sample of prosperous democracies and 10 to
the most secular value. The average score on the 0–10 scale is then cal-
culated for each nation, less any data gaps, creating its cumulative Pop-
ular Religiosity Versus Secularism Score for each nation that are used
to construct the Popular Religiosity Versus Secularism Scale (PRVSS)
for First World nations.2
Because the ISSP Religion II poll was conducted around the turn of
the century, social indicators from the same time period were favored
over more recent data sets, which differ little from the former because
there has not been sufficient time for major change. The indicators cho-
sen provide a broad overall measure of societal and economic conditions
in each nation because they include the major categories that are based
on sufficiently reliable data. The primary indicators examined are homi-
cide, incarceration, juvenile mortality, lifespan, adolescent and all age
gonorrhea and syphilis infections, adolescent abortion, adolescent births,
youth and all age suicide, fertility, marriage, marriage duration, divorce,
life satisfaction, alcohol consumption, corruption, income, income dispar-
ity, poverty, employment, work hours and resource exploitation base
(Appendix 2). This totals 25 specific factors within 21 primary socioeco-
nomic indicators; four of the primary indicators include two specific fac-
tors. It will be difficult to build a significantly broader data set that more
comprehensively measures socioeconomic conditions. Of the 10 indica-
tors also used in Paul (2005) the same data sets are used except for hom-
icide. Scatter plots for some of the correlations not included here are in
Paul (2005, 2009d). The indicator comparisons were statistically analyzed
with Pearson correlations (Appendix 3). Because the United States is of-
ten a strong outlier, the correlations were run both with all 17 nations
sampled and also with the United States excluded. To add a historical
perspective some longitudinal information is included.
Homicide data (from the rigorous tallying by Barclay and Taveres
2003) is reliable because it is based on forensic analysis and body
counts. A comparison of nonlethal crime data is more a comparison of
rates of inconsistent reportage by victims and recording of crime
according to differing official criteria rather than of actual acts and
should not be used for direct quantitative assessments (as per Paul
2005, 2009d, contra Jensen 2006).3 As Neapolitan (1997) states, homi-
cide ‘‘is generally regarded as the most valid and reliable of official
cross-national crime indicators. . . . In general, violent crimes other than
homicides—such as rapes, assaults, and robberies—should probably not
be compared cross-nationally, unless there is substantial improvement in the
quality of the data [italic emphasis added]. Indications are that defini-
tional, reporting, and recording differences are too great for these
crimes to be suitable for analysis. This is particularly true for sexual
offenses and rapes. Thus, cross-national comparisons of violent crime
should probably be restricted to homicides.’’4 Barclay and Taveres

(2002), who calculate criminal act rates only for homicide, agree that
‘‘comparisons between the recorded [nonviolent and nonlethal violent]
crime levels in different countries may be misleading. . . . [S]ince the
definition of homicide is similar in most countries, absolute compari-
sons are possible.’’ (Also see Zimring and Hawkins 1999, OECD 2001,
Beeghley 2003, and Farrington et al. 2004). That using nonlethal crime
data for cross-national purposes would garner severe criticism from
criminologists is fortuitous in that murder is the most extreme crime
and contributes to societal fear and insecurity more than any other (Nea-
politan 1997; Zimring and Hawkins 1999; OECD 2001; Beeghley 2003; Paul
2005; Jensen 2006).
Murder was astonishingly common in crime-rampant medieval
Christian Europe (Lane 1997; Neapolitan 1997). Homicide levels in the
United States have always been elevated well above the rates in the
more secular democracies where murder rates have long been low and
relatively stable, perhaps representing the minimum practically possi-
ble (Lane 1997; Neapolitan 1997; Beeghley 2003). During the Jim Crow
era public spectacles featuring brutal vigilante murders were events
common to the strongly religious culture (Dray 2003; Messner and
Zevenbergen 2005; Budiansky 2008). Despite a recent decline from an
extreme peak in the 1980s, homicide rates are still many multiples
higher in the United States than in any other First World nation (Lane
1997; Neapolitan 1997; Doyle 2000; Barclay and Taveres 2003; Beeghley
2003; Paul 2005; Jensen 2006). In some locations 10 percent of American
males are murdered before age 35, and street crime–ridden cities like
Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and New Orleans are
not found in the other advanced nations (Barclay and Taveres 2003).5
Even when U.S. white-only rates are considered homicide remains
above the general secular democracy levels (Lane 1997; Neapolitan
1997; Zimring and Hawkins 1999; Doyle 2000; OECD 2001; Barclay and
Taveres 2003; Beeghley 2003; Paul 2005). The United States suffers from
an unusually high level of school shootings (Hall 2008). The correlation
is very strong in favor of secularism entirely because the theistic and
creationist United States is a strong outlier. Among the hypotheistic
democracies homicide levels are consistently low, and with the United
States removed there is no significant correlation. However, the lowest
homicide levels are found among some of the most secular democra-
cies; it may be impractical to achieve lower rates. The Interpol and
International Crime Victims Survey data suggests that the United States
is a high-crime nation and is not superior to other First World nations
in terms of nonlethal transgressions (Neapolitan 1997; OCED 2001; Bar-
clay and Taveres 2003), so inclusion of the latter would probably not
significantly alter the cumulative SSS results in favor of the United
States.
Incarceration levels are reliably recorded (ICPS 2006). No other

country, even much more populous China, has so many inmates as
does the United States, more than 2 million. Following a steep climb in
recent decades, the theoconservative United States has half a dozen
times more inmates per capita than the Western norm. The correlation
of more than 0.6 in favor of secularism is strong entirely because the
United States is a strong outlier. With the United States removed there
is no significant correlation because incarceration rates are consistently
low in the rest of the countries sampled, although the lowest incarcera-
tion levels are found among some of the most secular democracies.
Suicide data is robust because it is based on forensic analysis and
body counts (WHO 2001). Despite the reservations about including all
age suicide cited in Paul (2005), these statistics are included in order to
test whether inclusion of the data significantly improves the societal
status of the United States as suggested by Jensen (2006). The theocon-
servative United States is fairly typical in youth suicide, but most of
the highly secular democracies perform even better, and the correla-
tions marginally favor secularism whether the United States is included
or not. The United States performs better in all-age suicide, and the
correlations moderately favor religious countries in this case whether
or not the United States is included. Note that the belief that the non-
religious Scandinavian nations exhibit exceptional levels of suicide is
exaggerated, nor is Japan particularly extreme.
The implication by Jensen (2006) that it is appropriate to compare a
number of specific causes of death is incorrect because this leads to an
arbitrary competition between the multitude of lethal mistakes humans
are vulnerable to; therefore, basic levels of juvenile and adult mortality
are examined (UN 2000). Historical juvenile mortality rates were 50 per-
cent or more and average lifespans were just 20 years in Christian
Europe and America (Paul 2008d). Since then enormous science- and
technology-driven gains in reducing mortality have been achieved, but
no prosperous democracy loses children as rapidly as the United States,
whose mortality in infants and young children is almost twice as high
as achieved by some of the most secular countries. It may not be possi-
ble to further reduce mortality rates with current technologies. Some
Second World nations have juvenile mortality rates little above the U.S.
level (UN 2000). Being above 0.7 whether the United States is included
or not, the r correlation in favor of secularism is remarkably strong. The
strength of the relationship is reinforced by the progressive nature of
the correlation in which higher religiosity is associated with higher
losses of children and vice versa. The theoconservative United States
has among the lowest life expectancy among the sample, whereas highly
secular Japan enjoys the longest. Even though the differential is not very
large in total years, the situation for the United States is actually more
serious than it seems. Although national life expectancy continues to
rise, the United States is not keeping up with the general Western pace
and now suffers from the lowest life expectancy in the First World
(OECD 2007). This slippage is attributable to an actual decline in aver-
age lifespans in some regions (Ezzati et al. 2008), a disturbing failure
occurring in none of the secular democracies.6 With hypotheistic
Denmark exhibiting low life expectancy, the correlation in favor of secu-
larism is modest with the United States included and not significant
with the United States excluded. Nor is there a compelling historical,
mass epidemiological or clinical evidence that high rates of prayer are
associated with lower levels of mortality and illness; if anything, the
reverse may be true (Paul 2005, 2008e; Blumenthal et al. 2007).
Gonorrhea and syphilis infections are recorded sufficiently well to
be compared cross-nationally, albeit only in a limited number of West-
ern nations according to the source utilized herein (Panchaud et al.
2000); information for HIV, chlamydia, genital herpes, and human pap-
illoma virus is grossly inadequate for quantitative cross-national com-
parisons. STDs ravaged old Europe, and high infection rates promoted
national campaigns to suppress rampant prostitution in America in the
later 1800s and early 1900s (Brandt 1987; Aral and Holmes 1996). After
being suppressed by post-WWII campaigns, STDs became epidemic in
the 1970s in the First World. Since then there has been a general
decrease in Western nations, but syphilis and especially gonorrhea
remain at epidemic levels in the theoconservative United States, includ-
ing middle-class whites for the latter (Aral and Holmes 1996; Panchaud
et al. 2000). Teen gonorrhea infection rates, for example, are dozens to
literally hundreds of times higher in the United States than in secular
western Europe and Canada, and gonorrhea and syphilis have been
nearly exterminated in the highly secular Nordic countries and France.
The correlations are very strong in favor of secularism with the United
States included in all cases. They are strong in favor of secularism with
the United States excluded for gonorrhea. For syphilis the correlation is
not significant for youth and is moderate in favor of religiosity in the
all age case. Because the sample size is limited some caution is neces-
sary, but it is unlikely that addition of additional prosperous democra-
cies will markedly alter the results. The data that are available suggest
that the infection rates of other STDs are not lower in the United States
relative to more secular prosperous democracies (Aral and Holmes
1996; Panchaud et al. 2000), so inclusion of the latter would probably
not significantly alter the SSS results in favor of the United States.
The degree to which abortion is a societal problem is controversial,
but it often signals a failure to use contraceptives. Sufficiently robust
adolescent abortion rates are available for only a portion of the nations
examined (Singh and Darroch 2000). Abortion rates are persistently
high even when illegal (Sedgh et al. 2007). After a modest reduction
over time, youth abortion rates remain markedly higher, up to a factor
of two, in the religious and creationist United States than in the more
secular advanced democracies. The correlation favoring secularism is
very strong whether or not the United States is included, and the corre-
lation is strongly progressive in either case.
Youth birthrate data is generally well recorded (Singh and Darroch
2000); this indicator is compared in an age cohort where marriage is
infrequent. Despite previous declines, birth rates among teens who are
not married are two to dozens of times lower in the secular democra-
cies than in the United States. The correlation is very strong in favor of
secularism with the United States outlier included, it remains moderate
with the United States excluded.
Low national birth rates may in part reflect a high perception of per-
sonal security and may be a societal positive in nations that lack
adequate habitable land area and at a time when the global population
is rapidly approaching 7 billion. Because this reliably recorded indica-
tor (UN 2005) is often cited by advocates of the moral-creator socioeco-
nomic hypothesis as important to societal health, it is included to
discover whether it substantially improves the cumulative status of the
United States. The theoconservative United States is matched in fertility
only by moderately secular New Zealand, but highly secular France in
not far behind. Strongly secular Japan and Germany have very low fer-
tility rates, but so do the four most religious western European nations.
The Pearson correlation is not significant with the United States
included and is even less so with it removed.
Marriage versus cohabitation is a lifestyle choice, and there is little
evidence that the much lower rates of marriage in secular democracies
is adversely impacting the children of unmarried couples (Reid 2004).
Because this dependably recorded indicator (UN 2001) is often cited by
proponents of the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis, it too is
included.
The marriage rate in the religious and creationist United States is so
high that it is a strong outlier compared to the more secular countries.
With the United States included, the correlation is moderate in favor of
religiosity; with the United States excluded the correlation is not signif-
icant. Divorce laws are inconsistent between democracies, so the statis-
tics on marriage duration before divorces among married couples
reflect both legal as well as social differences (Divorce Reform 2002;
OECD 2001). The United States performs poorly in marriage duration
and divorce, being uniquely low in the former and edged out in the
latter only by highly secular Sweden. With the United States included,
the correlations are not significant. With the United States excluded the
correlation for marriage duration is moderate in favor of more religious
democracies, and for divorces this correlation is strong; but these
results may be skewed by restrictive divorce laws in some of the more
religious examples.
After the massive use of opiates to alleviate pain in wounded Civil

War soldiers, the United States developed a mass drug culture that the
legal war on drugs initiated in the early 1900s has never succeeded in
suppressing (Gallinger 2003; Siegal 2005). Data for illegal drug use is
not sufficiently dependable to statistically analyze (Bloss 2005). Because
alcohol is usually sold under government regulation, levels of con-
sumption are reasonably well recorded (WHO 2004), and use of this
drug is included following the suggestion by Jensen (2006). De Tocque-
ville (1835) observed that alcohol consumption rates were extraordinar-
ily high in the new American nation, inspiring the Prohibition
Movement that after backfiring lead to a new wave of excessive con-
sumption well into the post-WWII era (Gately 2008). Currently the the-
istic and creationist United States has fairly low levels of alcohol
consumption, but the next most religious nation Ireland has very high
levels of consumption, whereas some of the most secular examples are
below the United States level. With the United States included the cor-
relation is insignificant, and with it excluded the correlation marginally
favors secularism.
Corruption statistics are estimated with reasonable albeit inexact
reliability by Transparency International (2000). The level of corruption
is fairly typical in the theistic United States as well as Ireland, is very
high in less theistic Italy, and is both high and very low in the least
theistic democracies. Regardless of whether the correlations include the
United States, the trend very marginally favors secularism.
Comparing societal contentment is valuable since the moral-creator
social hypothesis predicts that those who do not believe in a creator
are at risk of suffering from the chronic malaise of living a meaningless
life terminated by final death. Life satisfaction (Marks et al. 2006) is
considered a more robust measure of this factor than is happiness
because it is somewhat less subjective, reflecting long-term fulfillment
rather than transitory feelings of the respondent (Diener et al. 1999;
Inglehart and Klingemann 2000; Marks et al. 2006; Nettle 2005). The
theoconservative United States is typical in life satisfaction, as is some-
what less religious Ireland, and the factor is both very high and very
low in the most secular examples. The statistical correlation is insignifi-
cant both with and without the United States included.
Economic statistics are generally robust. Adjusted per capita gross
national product, poverty statistics, and GINI income equality coeffi-
cient are from UN (2004). Because unemployment figures often do not
include those who are out of but not searching for work, employment
as a percentage of the working age population is the superior measure
of this indicator (OECD 2001). Average hours worked by each civilian
in a year are included because the more free time a person has the
more potential they have to engage in parenting and other family and
neighborhood activities, to reduce stress through leisure activities, and
because the combination of hours worked and per capita income is a

measure of worker productivity (Rosnick and Weisbrot 2006). Resource
exploitation base or ecological footprint, the average planetary surface
area needed to support each citizen within a nation, can be used to
gauge the efficiency at which a nation transforms resources into benefi-
cent societal conditions (Marks et al. 2006).
The overall, cumulative socioeconomic conditions of the First World
nations were calculated using the same basic procedures for the PRVSS,
with zero being applied to the most dysfunctional value present in a
given sample of prosperous democracies and 10 to the healthiest, creating
its cumulative Societal Success Score for each nation.7 The latter were
used to construct the Successful Societies Scale (SSS) for First World
nations. No attempt was made to differentially weigh the various indica-
tors for the SSS or PRVSS. In part this is because of the difficulty of
assessing their relative value. Is homicide, for example, twice on an order
of magnitude as important than fertility levels? Also, the absence of other
crime statistics suggests that giving extra weight to homicide alone is not
appropriate, and the same applies to the STDs included when others
could not be included. In any case the results are sufficiently robust that
weighing the indicators would not significantly alter the outcome.
The number of foreign born is sufficiently determinable (OECD
2001). Measuring the diversity of a national population is much more
difficult due to inherent definitional problems, the sole recent attempt
to assay this dynamic is Fearon (2003), who tabulated both ethnic and
cultural fractionalization. The two factors parallel one another, and cul-
tural fractionalization was utilized in this inquiry in accord with the
advice of Fearon (2003).
Because there is no significant difference in the correlations, the hy-
pothesis that levels of belief in heaven and hell have differing impacts
on socioeconomic conditions (Barro and McLeary 2003; Jensen 2006) is
not supported by this examination of First World nations.
APPENDIX 1: NOTES
1. The authors of this criticism of Paul (2005) are faculty at Cedarville Uni-
versity, a fundamentalist institution that hosted a research conference promot-
ing the belief that the Genesis creation story that the earth is a few thousand
years old is literally true (www.cedarville.edu/departments/er/geology).
2. When scores for more than one country differ slightly when the original val-
ues listed are the same is because the latter were rounded off during tabulation.
3. Interpol merely gathers and reports nonlethal crime statistics provided by
member nations without standardizing or vetting them (Neapolitan 1997; Bar-
clay and Taveres 2002, 2003). For example, assaults are reported at a rate about
six times higher in Australia and Sweden than in Canada and France, but this
level of disparity is suspect. Rates of theft are reported to be twice as high in
Sweden as in France. Are the former actually twice as larcenous as the French,
or are the latter twice as unlikely to file a report, or is the reality somewhere
in-between? Similarly suspicious discrepancies exist in International Crime Vic-
tims Survey results.
4. Reported rates of rape are two to twenty times higher in the United States
than in other First World nations (Jay 2004; MASA 2003), but this only means
that American females report being raped at far higher rates, not that Ameri-
can males are more prone to committing sexual assaults.
5. Seemingly very high homicide rates for some European cities in UN
(2000) are inflated by the inappropriate inclusion of attempted homicides
(Barclay and Taveres 2003; Barclay, personal communication).
6. The United States has lost its stature as a nation of exceptionally tall citi-
zens, a probable reflection of problems in providing health care (Komlos and
Lauderdale 2007).
7. See Note 2.
APPENDIX 2
Cross-national data sets and scores
Absolutely believe
in Goda Bible literalistsa Religious servicesa Prayera
b
Country PRVSS score % Score % Score % Score % Score
Sweden (W) 9.3 12 8.6 5 9.0 7 9.5 14 9.7

Japan (J) 9.2 4 10 2 10 4 10 11 6.9
Denmark (D) 8.8 14 8.4 8 8.0 7 9.5 17 9.1
France (F) 8.5 20 7.3 4 9.2 13 8.6 21 8.3
Germany (G) 8.3 19 7.4 8 7.7 17 8.1 13 10
Great Britain (E) 7.6 23 6.9 5 8.9 17 8.0 24 7.6
Norway (N) 7.5 18 7.6 11 7.0 9 9.6 20 8.5
Holland (H) 6.6 26 6.2 9 7.4 18 7.9 30 6.4
Australia (A) 6.1 29 5.8 6 8.5 21 7.4 31 6.1
New Zealand (N) 5.9 31 5.4 10 7.1 21 7.5 28 6.8
Canada (C) 5.5 39 4.1 10 7.3 29 6.4 30 6.4
Spain (S) 5.4 46 2.9 13 5.9 36 6.7 29 6.5
Switzerland (L) 5.2 28 5.9 11 6.9 — — 35 5.2
Austria (R) 4.9 32 5.2 14 5.6 33 5.8 31 6.1
Italy (T) 3.9 48 2.5 26 1.6 44 6.3 34 5.5
Ireland (I) 2.3 50 2.2 23 2.7 73 0 45 3.1
United States (U) 0.9 63 0 30 0 39 4.9 60 0
APPENDIX 2 (continued)
Absolutely believe in
afterlifeb Agnostics and atheistsb Acceptance of evolutionc
Absolutely
believe in Absolutely
heaven believe in
Country % Score (%)b hell (%)b % Score % Score
W 22 9.2 12 7 35 9.1 82 9.7

J 9 10 7 6 31 8.3 81 9.5
D 16 8.6 14 8 31 7.8 83 10
F 26 6.7 14 10 37 10 80 9.2
200
G 17 8.4 15 9 36 9.6 73 7.4

E 25 6.8 23 14 25 6.1 78 8.8
N 24 7.0 18 10 24 5.7 70 6.7
H 31 5.6 23 13 29 7.5 63 4.9
A — — — 24 5.7 55 2.8
Z 37 4.4 33 23 20 4.3 66 5.6
C 38 4.3 36 26 17 3.5 68 6.2
S 28 6.3 25 18 16 3.0 69 6.4
L 32 5.3 22 14 16 3.2 62 4.6
R 30 5.8 19 13 15 2.8 57 3.3
T 41 3.6 34 30 9 1.9 67 5.9
I 44 2.9 50 27 6 0 64 5.1
L 59 0 67 55 8 1.6 44 0
Suicide, age Mortality, under
Homicidesd Incarceratione 15—24 yearsf Suicide all agesf 5 yearsg Lifespanf
SSS Per Per Per Per Per
Country score 100K Score 100K Score 100K Score 100K Score 1000 Score Years Score
W 7.1 1.11 9.7 78 9.7 8.3 7.7 14.2 4.7 4 10 78.6 6.7
J 6.0 1.05 9.8 60 10 8.5 7.5 18.8 1.1 4 10 80.0 10
D 7.3 1.02 9.8 77 9.7 7.9 8.0 17.5 2.1 5 7.5 75.7 0
F 5.8 1.73 8.3 88 9.6 8.9 7.2 19 0.9 5 7.5 78.1 0.6
G 5.7 1.15 9.7 97 9.4 8.2 7.7 14.2 4.7 5 7.5 77.2 3.5
E 6.2 1.61 8.6 141 8.8 6.7 8.9 7.4 10 6 5.0 77.2 3.5
N 8.0 0.95 10 68 9.9 12.6 4.4 12.1 6.3 4 10 78.1 5.6
201
H 6.9 1.51 8.8 127 9.0 7.9 8.0 7.9 9.6 5 7.5 77.9 5.1
A 4.8 1.87 8.2 120 9.1 18.5 0 14.3 4.6 5 7.5 78.3 6.0
Z 5.0 2.5 6.6 181 8.2 15.1 2.6 15.3 3.8 6 5.0 76.9 2.8
C 6.2 1.77 8.3 107 9.3 13.7 3.6 12.3 6.2 6 5.0 79.0 7.7
S 5.0 1.12 9.7 140 8.8 5.3 9.9 8.6 9.1 6 5.0 78.0 2.4
L 5.7 1.12 9.7 81 9.7 15.3 2.4 20.2 0 5 7.5 78.7 7.0
R 5.4 1.23 9.4 108 9.3 12.9 9.3 19.2 0.8 5 7.5 77.0 3.0
T 5.6 1.50 8.8 97 9.4 5.2 10 8.2 9.4 6 5.0 78.2 5.8
I 5.3 1.42 9.0 85 9.6 15.2 2.5 11.3 7 7 2.5 76.4 1.6
U 2.9 5.56 0 724 0 11.1 5.6 11.3 7 8 0 76.7 2.3
Gonorrhea, 15–19 Gonorrhea, all Syphilis, 15–19 Syphilis, all Abortions, 15–19 Births, 15–17
yearsh agesh yearsh agesh yearsi yearsi
Per Per Per Per Per Per
Country 100K Score 100K Score 100K Score 100K Score 1000 Score 1000 Score
W 1.8 10 2.8 10 0.6 9.0 0.8 8.3 17.2 8.1 2.7 9.5
J — — — — — — — — — — 1.1 10
D 5.0 9.9 3.4 9.9 0.8 8.8 0.4 9.3 14.4 10 2.2 9.7
F 7.7 9.9 8.4 9.6 — — — — — — 3.5 9.3
G — — — — — — — — — — 4.4 9.0
E 77 8.7 22 8.4 0.2 9.7 0.2 9.8 18.6 7.2 14.6 5.9
202
N 6.7 9.9 4 9.9 0 10 0.1 10 18.7 7.1 4 9.1

H — — — — — — — — — — — —
A — — — — — — — — 23.8 3.6 10.6 7.1
Z — — — — — — — — 20 6.2 19.2 4.5
C 59 9.0 17 9 0.6 9.0 0.3 9.5 21.2 5.4 13.6 6.1
S — — — — — — — — — — — —
L — — — — — — — — — — — —
R — — — — — — — — — — 5.8 8.5
T — — — — — — — — — — — —
I — — — — — — — — — — 6.6 8.3
U 57 20 125 0 6.4 0 4.3 0 29.2 0 33.8 0
Marriage Alcohol Life
Fertilityj Marriagesk durationl Divorcesm consumptionn satisfactiono
Per Liters/
Country Rate Score Per 1000 Score Years Score 1000 Score year Score Value Score
W 1.6 4.3 4.0 0 12 4.8 55 0 6.9 8.7 7.7 7.5

J 1.3 0 6.3 5.3 10 3.1 30 5.5 7.4 8.2 6.2 0
D 1.8 7.1 6.6 6.0 11.5 4.3 45 2.3 11.9 3.0 8.2 10
F 1.9 9.3 4.8 1.9 13 5.8 38 3.7 13.5 1.1 6.6 2.0
G 1.3 0 5.2 2.8 12 4.4 39 3.5 12.9 1.8 7.2 5.0
E 1.7 5.7 5.1 2.6 11.5 4.3 43 2.7 10.4 4.7 7.1 4.5
203
N 1.8 7.1 5.3 3.0 13 5.5 40 3.2 5.8 10 7.4 6.0

H 1.7 5.7 5.6 3.7 11.5 4.3 38 3.7 9.7 5.5 7.5 6.5
A 1.7 5.7 6.0 4.7 7.5 0.3 43 2.7 9.2 6.4 7.3 5.5
Z 2.0 10 5.3 3.0 14 6.8 50 1.1 9.8 5.4 7.4 6.0
C 1.5 2.9 5.0 2.3 13.5 6.3 37 4.0 8.3 7.1 7.6 7.0
S 1.3 0 6.3 5.3 — — 15 8.8 12.3 2.5 7.0 4.0
L 1.4 1.4 4.9 2.1 12 5.1 26 6.5 11.5 3.4 8.2 10
R 1.4 1.4 4.8 1.9 11 3.5 42 2.6 12.6 2.2 7.8 8.0
T 1.3 0 4.7 1.6 17 10 10 10 9.1 5.8 6.9 3.5
I 1.9 8.6 4.9 2.1 — — 15 8.9 14.5 0 7.6 7.0
U 2.0 10 8.3 10 7 0 54 0.1 8.5 6.9 7.4 6.0
Corruptionp Per capita Incomeq Income inequalityq Poverty indexq Employment levelsl
Country Value Score U.S., $K Score Index Score Score Value % Score
W 9.4 9.2 26.1 3.0 25 9.9 6.5 10 73 7.5

J 6.4 3.5 26.9 3.6 24.9 9.9 11.1 5.1 69 6.0
D 9.8 10 30.9 6.2 24.7 10 9.1 7.2 7 8.8
F 6.7 4.0 26.9 3.6 32.7 6.3 10.8 5.4 60 2.7
G 7.6 5.8 27.1 3.7 28.3 8.4 10.3 5.9 65 4.6
E 8.7 7.9 26.2 3.1 36 4.8 14.8 1.1 72 7.1
N 9.1 8.7 36.6 10 25.8 9.5 7.1 9.4 78 9.4
204
H 8.9 8.3 29.1 5.0 30.9 7.2 8.2 8.2 71 6.8

A 8.3 7.1 28.3 4.5 35.2 5.2 12.9 3.1 68 5.8
Z 9.4 9.2 21.7 0.2 36. 4.7 — — 70 6.4
C 9.2 8.8 29.5 5.3 33.1 6.2 12. 3.9 70 6.5
S 7.0 4.6 21.5 0 32.5 6.4 11 5.2 54 0.5
L 8.6 7.7 30.0 5.6 33.1 6.2 — — 78 10
R 7.7 6.0 29.2 5.1 30 7.6 — — 68 5.8
T 4.6 0 26.5 3.3 36 4.8 11.6 4.5 53 0
I 7.2 5.0 36.4 9.8 35.9 4.9 15.3 0.5 63 3.7
U 7.8 6.2 35.8 9.4 46.6 0 15.0 8 74 7.9
Average hours workedr Resource exploitation bases
Cultural
Hours/year Score Hectares/person Score Foreign born (%)l fractionalizationt
W 1550 5.6 7.0 4.4 5.7 0.189

J 1760 1.3 4.3 9.1 1.5 0.012
D 1520 6.3 6.4 5.4 4.9 0.128
F 1430 8.1 5.8 6.5 6.5 0.251
G 1440 7.9 4.8 8.2 8.5 0.09
E 1620 4.2 5.4 7.2 4.0 0.184
N 1340 10 6.2 5.8 3.9 0.098
H 1350 9.8 4.7 8.4 4.4 0.077
205
A 1760 1.3 7.7 3.2 23 0.147

Z 1750 1.5 5.5 7.0 20 0.363
C 1760 1.3 6.4 5.4 17.5 0.499
S 1800 0.4 4.8 8.2 2.0 0.263
L 1540 5.8 5.3 7.4 19 0.418
R 1500 6.7 4.6 8.6 9.0 0.1
T 1610 4.4 3.8 10 2.3 0.04
I 1650 3.5 6.2 5.8 3.0 0.157
U 1820 0 9.5 0 9.9 0.271
— = not available.
Source: aISSP; bPRVSS; cISSP/Eurobarometer; dBarcley and Taveres 2002; eICPS 2006; fWHO 2001; gUN 2000; hPanchaud et al. 2000; iSingh and
Darroch 2000; jUN 2005; kUN 2001; lOECD 2001; mDivorce Reform 2002; nWHO 2004; oMarks et al. 2006; pTransparency International 2000; qUN
2004; rRosnick and Weisbrot 2006; sMarks et al. 2006; tFearon 2003.
APPENDIX 3
Pearson correlation coefficients for correlation of secularism
with social and economic circumstances
1U.S.* 2U.S. N = (1U.S.)
PRVSS compared to
SSS 0.705 0.534 17
Homicides 0.611 0.262 17
Incarceration 0.606 0.273 17
Suicides, 15–24 years old 0.326 0.379 17
Suicides, all age 0.322 0.297 17
Mortality, under 5 years old 0.835 0.746 17
Life expectancy 0.304 0.198 17
Gonorrhea infections, 15–19 0.937 0.676 7
years old
Gonorrhea infections, all age 0.938 0.643 7
Syphilis infections, 15–19 years old 0.886 0.213 6
Syphilis infections, all age 0.856 0.596 6
Abortions 15–19 years old 0.938 0.825 8
Births, 15–17 years old 0.716 0.443 13
Fertility 0.188 0.038 17
Marriages 0.310 0.197 17
Marriage duration at divorce 0.148 0.354 15
Divorces among married couples 0.298 0.639 17
Alcohol consumption 0.174 0.345 17
Life satisfaction 0.202 0.233 17
Corruption indices 0.280 0.312 17
Adjusted per capita income 0.390 0.205 17
GINI income inequality 0.813 0.707 17
Human poverty index 0.682 0.572 14
Employment levels 0.205 0.392 17
Average hours worked 0.422 0.283 17
Resource exploitation base 0.299 0.157 17
% of population who are foreign born 0.174 0.178 17
Cultural fractionalization 0.296 0.257 17
Accept human descent from animals 0.837 0.754 16
Accept human descent from animals 0.739 0.612 16
compared to absolutely believe
in God
SSS compared to
Absolutely believe in God 0.709 0.551 17
Bible literalists 0.549 0.256 16
Attend religious services at least 0.536 0.530 17
several times a month
Pray at least several times a week 0.711 0.484 16
Absolutely believe in an afterlife 0.669 0.417 16
Absolutely believe in heaven 0.725 0.447 16
Absolutely believe in hell 0.706 0.429 16

Agnostics and atheists 0.547 0.434 17
Accept human evolution from 0.690 0.501 17
animals
Adjusted per capita income 0.053 0.464 17
GINI income inequality 0.822 0.688 17
Human poverty index 0.778 0.717 14
Foreign born 0.333 0.395 17
Cultural fractionalization 0.308 0.278 17
þU.S. = United States included; U.S. = United States excluded. N = number of countries.
PRVSS, Popular Religiosity versus Secularism Scale; SSS, Successful Societies Scale.
Pearson r correlations are represented by the following typefaces: boldface when socio-
economic conditions or other factors improve or rise with increasing secularism, regular
type when factors deteriorate or decrease with increasing secularism. Significance of cor-
relations is represented by the following underlines: no underline = correlation not signifi-
cant, single underline = correlation moderate, double underline = correlation strong, and
single or double boldface underline = correlation very strong.
Chapter 7
Atheism, Secularity, and Gender

Inger Furseth
Issues of feminism, gender, and religion have received a great amount

of scholarly attention during the past three to four decades.1 However,
little research has been conducted on atheism, secularity, and gender.
This is surprising given the fact that women’s roles in the Western
world have changed drastically during the same period. Indeed, in
this part of the world women have entered the labor force in great
numbers and stayed there, thus, challenging traditional perceptions of
feminine and masculine roles and identities. In addition, the advent of
feminism and the liberalization in sexual attitudes and behavior have
posed major challenges for Christian religiosity.2
During the modern era up until the late 1960s, traditional gender roles
tended to link religiosity with femininity and the work sphere with mas-
culinity. Because women’s primary roles were in the domestic sphere as
housewives and mothers, they were also seen as the main carriers of reli-
gion. In contrast, men’s primary roles were in the work sphere as pro-
viders, and religion and work were often seen as two more or less
mutually exclusive categories.3 Therefore, men were often perceived to
be somewhat more secular or reluctant to religion than women were.
The cultural and religious changes of the 1960s and ’70s challenged these
notions. As a growing number of women began to participate in the
labor force, the location of their identities expanded to include more than
home and religion, and as men took on more responsibilities in the
home and for their children, the representations of their identities
became more flexible. The sexual revolution also led many women to
challenge traditional moral restrictions on women, often religiously
legitimated. They wanted to make their own choices about their lives
and their bodies and desired more egalitarian sexual relationships inside
and outside marriage.
In addition, second-wave feminism posed challenges to the traditional
link between religion and femininity. One common theme was the focus
on patriarchy as a concept or theory on gender power and gender differ-
ence. Many feminists viewed traditional religion to be patriarchal and
oppressive.4 Some decided to stay in their religious communities while
they redefined and renegotiated their religious traditions. Indeed, several
feminist theologians criticized Christianity and attempted to form a fem-
inist spirituality and theology.5 Other women joined new religious
movements and alternative spiritual communities. Some feminist theolo-
gians rejected traditional religion and turned to feminized versions of
spiritualities, such as the Goddess movement and Wicca.6 Yet, other
feminists rejected all forms of religion, left religious institutions, and
became secular. These women were often involved in full-time and pro-
fessional careers. Leaving could be due to profound disagreements with
traditional religion, especially when it came to its teachings on sexual pi-
ety, abortion, and homosexuality and its focus on marriage and wom-
en’s role as caretakers. Many feminist women found it hard to remain
within traditional religion.7 Leaving religion was, however, not a phe-
nomenon that only took place among women. The radicalism of the
1960s and ’70s also led to disaffiliation from traditional forms of religion
among men.
In general, the sociological research on atheism and secularity has
been slim. In the 1960s and ’70s, some sociologists of religion
attempted to analyze irreligion as a social phenomenon. During the
first International Symposium on Unbelief, held in Rome in 1969, sociolog-
ical programs for the study of nonbelief were outlined.8 Later, British
sociologist Colin Campbell proposed a more systematic sociology of
irreligion.9 More recently, this body of research has been growing.10
Nevertheless, social scientific studies of irreligion tend to focus on the
secular society11 or secular movements12 rather than affirmatively irre-
ligious individuals. They also tend to ignore gender. In contrast, this
chapter will address the subject of women and men who have moved
away from religion and see themselves as nonreligious.
ATHEISM AND GENDER IN GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN,

THE NETHERLANDS, AND SWEDEN
Social scientific studies on gender and worldviews show that women
score higher than men on most measures of religiosity, such as interest
in religion, religious faith, and church attendance. This pattern tends to
be consistent for different phases of life, various types of religious or-
ganization, and in several parts of the Western world.13 Findings from
the European Value Studies and the International Social Survey
Atheism, Secularity, and Gender 211
Program (ISSP): Religion, 1992, confirm a higher score on religious val-

ues among women than men in Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and
Denmark.14
Conversely, data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP):
Religion, 1998, show that men in Germany, Great Britain, the Nether-
lands, and Sweden tend to be more irreligious than women are (see
Table 7.1). This study distinguishes between West and East Germany, in
spite of the fact that Germany was united in 1990. Although the East
German respondents are far more secular than the West German
respondents in 1998, there is a tendency for men to be more irreligious
than women in both places.
When we first take a look at atheist views, we find that more men
than women agree with the statement ‘‘Do not believe in God’’ in West
Germany (15 versus 10 percent), East Germany (61 versus 50 percent),
Great Britain (14 versus 8 percent), the Netherlands (22 versus 13 per-
cent), and Sweden (23 versus 11 percent).
Likewise, when we look at the percentages who reply ‘‘No, defi-
nitely not’’ when they are asked if they believe in the afterlife, more
men express this view than women do in West Germany (21 versus 18
percent), East Germany (75 versus 63 percent), Great Britain (25 versus
13 percent), the Netherlands (30 versus 20 percent), and Sweden (29
versus 14 percent).
So far, we have looked at atheist values. By turning our attention to a
common religious practice, namely praying, we see that the two gen-
ders continue to be different. More men report that they never pray
than women do in West Germany (39 versus 24 percent), East Germany
(78 versus 64 percent), Great Britain (45 versus 24 percent), the Nether-
lands (48 versus 38 percent), and Sweden (48 versus 29 percent). These
Table 7.1
Secular beliefs and practices according to gender
West East Great

Germany Germany Britain Netherlands Sweden
M F M F M F M F M F
Don’t believe 15 10 61 50 14 8 22 13 23 11
in God
Definitely no 31 18 74 63 25 13 30 20 29 14
faith in the
afterlife
Never pray 39 24 78 64 45 24 48 38 56 37
Values are percentages. M, male; F, female.
Source: International Social Survey Program: Religion, 1998.
data show that there is a relatively wide pattern at play where men tend
to score higher than women on atheist values and practice in several
European countries.
THE CASE OF NORWAY

In order to explore the issue of gender and secularity further, we
will take a more detailed look at one country located in what has often
been termed ‘‘the secular Northern Europe,’’15 namely Norway. Here,
the data from the same survey as mentioned above, ISSP: Religion,
1998, will be combined with a more detailed narrative analysis of the
life stories of two Norwegian secular humanists, one woman and one
man. Both informants are in their forties and represent the well-
educated Norwegian baby-boomer generation. The woman is a mem-
ber of the Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund),
whereas the man is nonaffiliated. The article examines the situation of
these two informants’ lives and the diversity of their views. In particu-
lar, it analyzes the gender difference between them.
During the 1960s and ’70s, Norway underwent similar changes to
those that took place in other countries in the West. Large groups of
high school graduates were able to enter colleges and universities,
largely due to free public education and state subsidized loans. Many
young couples decided not to marry but to live together. Married and
nonmarried women with young children began to enter the labor mar-
ket, taking part-time unskilled jobs or jobs within the health and social
services. In the 1980s, the number of working women with young chil-
dren (ages 3–6) increased from 47 to 74 percent. The majority of these
women were well educated and worked full-time.16
From the early 1970s to the late ’90s, the religious landscape
changed, as the membership rate of the Church of Norway dropped
from 92 percent of the population to 86 percent. There was a growing
defection from the Church, and several defectors joined the Norwegian
Humanist Association (formed in 1956). This organization first
arranged secular confirmations in 1951, and it grew from 10,000 mem-
bers in 1981 to almost 80,000 in 2007.17 Parts of these changes implied
a turning away from traditional religion to secular humanism.
Just as the surveys from West Germany, East Germany, Great Brit-
ain, the Netherlands, and Sweden show that secularity is gendered, the
question remains whether this is true for Norway as well. In addition,
we want to explore how men and women organize their discourse on
secularity. Do their secular worldviews play the same role in their
lives? Also, as women and men turn toward secular humanism, are
their roads in this direction the same? We want to know if gender
identities are related to secular identities. For example, how important
are the feminist movement and new roles for women in defining
women’s secular outlook on life? These are some of the issues analyzed
here. The turn toward secularity can be a turn toward an identity as ‘‘a
skeptic,’’ or it can be a totalizing attempt at ‘‘creating my own life.’’ It
is the issue of how gender informs our understanding of secularity that
we want to discuss further.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODS

The following analysis is divided into two parts. The first part con-
sists of a brief overview of the major findings from the analysis of the
survey ISSP Norway: Religion, 1998, regarding gender and secularity.
Here, we will look at gender differences regarding atheist beliefs. The
second part consists of an in-depth analysis of the life stories of two
professed humanists, one woman and one man. The following ques-
tions are asked: (1) What types of secular worldview do they present?
(2) What images of self are found in their stories?
The data for this study were collected in two stages: (1) general sur-
vey and (2) life story interviews. The general survey ISSP Norway: Reli-
gion was conducted in 1998.18 This sample included 2,500 persons from
across the country. On the instructions of KIFO Centre for Church
Research, an additional sample of 1,500 persons was drawn, 500 from
each of the counties Vest-Agder, Oppland, and Troms, which were
selected to maximize regional variation. These respondents were asked
if they would consider taking part in an additional study based on life
story interviews. The overall response rate of the main sample of 2,500
persons was 61.3 percent. The results of the main survey are, thereby,
based on a net sample of 1,532 persons between the age of 18 and 79.19
The response rate for the additional sample, consisting of 1,500 persons,
was 56.5 percent, which resulted in a net sample of 848 persons. The
second phase, an in-depth life story interview, was conducted with 72
of the respondents from the additional sample. The selection of these
cases was not made on any strictly random basis, but in such a way
that it would be practical to conduct the interviews.
The two humanists selected for in-depth analysis took part in the
quantitative and the qualitative study. The man, here called Jan, lives
in Troms County in Northern Norway and the woman, Bente, lives in
Vest-Agder County in Southern Norway. Although both informants are
professed humanists, Bente is a member of the Norwegian Humanist
Association, whereas Jan is not. Both informants were in their forties at
the time of the interview. They attended either college or university in
Southern Norway and today they work in the educational sector. Here,
we treat them as representatives of the baby-boomer generation in Nor-
way, who grew up during times of economic growth and attended col-
lege and university during the radical 1970s. As members of the same
generation who share ‘‘a common location’’ in the social process20
and have common, unifying social experiences, it is of particular inter-

est for us to see if and how gender shapes their secular worldviews.
The selection of two informants for in-depth analysis raises ques-
tions about generalizations. A common strategy in life story analysis is
to interview people until the field is filled, meaning that interviews are
conducted until no new information is acquired. In presenting and ana-
lyzing specific cases, the idea is to present typical cases, which are
viewed as representative of other cases.21 Following these considera-
tions, Bente and Jan were selected on the basis of their gender, age,
and worldview. In a Norwegian context, the narratives of the well-
educated, middle-aged educators who are professed humanists seem
familiar. In this way, they represent typical cases when it comes to sec-
ular people in their generation, and the analysis of their stories locates
them in historical and social contexts that are not unique for them.
Life stories are often unreliable as factual reproductions of the past.22
A life story is subject to the individual’s selection of events, and there is
a tendency to produce continuity through a selective memory. Rather
than being a weakness, however, this might also be their strength,
because the errors, myths, and inventions lead us beyond facts to their
meanings. Therefore, life stories are particularly useful in studies of
worldviews, including secular ones.23
In the following, I will first present the major findings in the survey,
before we turn to Jan and Bente’s life stories. Toward the end, I will
look at the similarities and differences between these two humanists
and attempt to detect what their stories reveal about gender difference
and secularity.
ATHEISM AND GENDER

The data from 1998 show that only a minority of Norwegians can be
labeled ‘‘atheists.’’ Of the total sample, 12 percent report that they ‘‘Do
not believe in God,’’ and 12 percent say that they ‘‘Can’t find out.’’ In
contrast, three of four say that they believe in God or a higher power.24
Nevertheless, consistent with the findings from Germany, Great Britain,
the Netherlands, and Sweden, Norwegian men also score higher than
women on atheist beliefs. For example, more men agree with the state-
ment ‘‘Do not believe in God’’ than women do (17 versus 8 percent).
More men also harbor doubt and agree with the statement ‘‘Can’t find
out’’ than women do (16 versus 9 percent).
Men also score consistently lower than women on various forms of
religious beliefs. Table 7.2 shows that the gender difference is some-
what smaller when it comes to beliefs in hell and miracles and beliefs
in the Bible as the word of God or inspired by God. Although men
score lower than women on all of these measures of religious beliefs,
the gender difference is most drastic when it comes to the view of the
Table 7.2
Religious beliefs according to gender
Religious beliefs Women Men
Life after death 52 35a

Heaven 41 27a
Hell 18 15
Miracles 32 28a
The Bible is the word of God/inspired by God 41 36a
No. of respondents 829 703
Values are percentage of all (‘‘Yes, absolutely’’ and ‘‘Yes, probably’’).
a
The difference between women and men is significant at the 0.05 level.
Source: International Social Survey Program: Religion, 1998.
afterlife, where 27 percent of men believe in heaven and 41 percent of

women do so. When it comes to religious practice, 50 percent of Nor-
wegians report that they never pray or pray less than once per year.
Although the data show that men pray less than women do on an an-
nual, monthly, weekly, and daily basis, the most drastic gender differ-
ence is among those who are the most secular. Altogether 60 percent of
men report that they never pray or pray less than once a year, whereas
40 percent of women do so.
Empirical studies of New Age beliefs in the Nordic countries show that
there is a smaller representation of men who support these values than
women.25 By looking at one indicator of New Age beliefs, faith in reincar-
nation, we see that only 14 percent of Norwegians respond ‘‘yes, quite cer-
tain’’ and ‘‘yes, but uncertain’’ to the statement that ‘‘people have lived
before and will get a new life.’’ Again, gender makes a difference as more
women respond this way (respectively, 17 versus 9 percent), whereas more
men respond ‘‘no, quite certain’’ than women do (53 versus 41 percent).
One may assume that men’s lower score on most measures of religiosity
can be explained by their level of education. However, the data show that
men consistently score lower than women on beliefs in God, frequency of
prayers, and church attendance even when education is controlled for.
The data from this study show that atheists constitute a minority in
the Norwegian population, but that more men harbor secular values
than women do. It is to the topic of gender difference regarding secu-
larity that we now turn as we take a closer look at the life stories of
Jan and Bente.
I AM A SKEPTIC: JAN’S LIFE STORY

Jan lives by himself in his childhood home in a small coastal village
in the northern region. The area gives the impression of desolate
remoteness with small, poor farms scattered far away from each other.
Jan’s story portraits a baby boomer born in the early 1950s who grew
up in the post-World War II era. His narrative contains information
about the historical context of his life and its impact upon his life
course. Jan grew up in the rural periphery as one of three children of
parents who only had elementary school educations. Yet, he could look
at higher education as a matter of course. He attended the country’s
largest university in Oslo during the 1970s and ’80s. This was a time of
political activism and a growing skepticism toward church and reli-
gion, which became shaping influences in his life. After obtaining a
Master’s degree, he decided to move back to his childhood home in
the North, where he works as a high school teacher.
During Jan’s childhood, no one in his family demonstrated much in-
terest in religion. His parents were members of the Church of Norway,
but they only went there if there was a confirmation or other types of
ritual events. Today, Jan is not affiliated with any church or worldview
organization. He marks in the questionnaire that he does not know
whether God exists and that he does not believe that there is any way
to find out, which 16 percent of the men report. He used to have a reli-
gious faith, but not anymore. Jan does not believe in life after death,
although he is not quite sure, which 21 percent of the sample and 25
percent of the men state. He absolutely does not believe in heaven,
hell, or in miracles. For him, the Bible consists of old legends, an
answer given by 45 percent of the sample and 50 percent of the men.
Jan has a negative view of religion. He defected from the Church of
Norway when he was a teenager and today he characterizes himself as
‘‘strongly nonreligious,’’ a response 11 percent of the men gave in the
quantitative study. He believes that religious people tend to be intoler-
ant and that the world would be a better place if religion had less influ-
ence. Jan never prays and he never attends church, except during rites
of passage. He is quite sure that he does not believe in reincarnation,
horoscopes, or that people can foresee the future or have contact with
those who have gone before us. He is somewhat open to alternative
medicine, although he has doubts. By looking at the percentages of the
total sample and the men who give the same response as Jan does in
the questionnaire, we find that Jan is more secular than the majority of
the total sample as well as the men, but that his lack of religious prac-
tice is similar to that of the majority.
Jan belongs to the leftists and votes for the Left Socialists (SV). Con-
sistent with his political orientation, he has ‘‘relatively high trust’’ in
the parliament, the judicial system, and the educational system, but
less so in the Church of Norway and religious organizations, and
hardly any in private enterprise. As the large majority in this study,
Jan believes that sex before marriage is not at all wrong. Indeed, he
thinks that it is a good idea for people to live together before they get
married. He does not see sex between two people of the same sex as
wrong, a view found among 38 percent of the total sample and 32 per-
cent of the men. However, Jan has a strict view on abortion. For him,
abortion is almost always wrong, including the situation where the
woman does not want to have a child. Jan is relatively supportive of
gender equality. He strongly disagrees with the statement that ‘‘men
should work and women should stay home with the family.’’ Only 28
percent of the men share his view on this issue. Yet, he is not sure
whether he should agree or disagree with the statement that ‘‘the fam-
ily suffers when women have full-time work.’’
There is a tension in Jan’s narrative between the rural boy who suc-
ceeded in obtaining an academic degree and returning to his home
community as a high school teacher and the outsider and the reclusive
man who seeks gratification and meaning in solitude. In many ways,
this tension has to do with tension between consistency and skepticism,
involvement and distance.
Atheism, Agnosticism, Secular Pietism, and an Ambiguous Self

Jan marks in the questionnaire that he used to have a religious faith,
which he also tells us in the interview. He describes his childhood faith
as ‘‘the type of faith people grew up with, a little simple, perhaps a na-
ive, nonreflective faith. It’s based on God as a creator, and the content
of Christianity.’’ By describing his childhood faith as ‘‘the type of faith
people grew up with,’’ he generalizes his faith to become a universal
type of faith that all people have during childhood. In this way, he
paints the picture of himself as person who is a member of a larger
group, with which he identifies himself. As an adult looking back, he
is quick to say that this came to a halt as soon as he entered puberty.
Jan was confirmed: ‘‘I was fourteen years old and it was perhaps a
border phase, but perhaps there was still some faith left. I was not con-
firmed because I believed in renewing the baptism covenant, but
because the others got confirmed, and I was not so critical that I chose
to break away when it came to confirmation.’’ In the late 1960s confir-
mation was no longer solely a matter of tradition in this northern, rural
community, but it had become a matter of choice. Some of Jan’s friends
decided not to be confirmed, but being part of the group was impor-
tant for him, so he did as most of ‘‘the others.’’ In doing so, he demon-
strated that he was part of the majority group. Indeed, it was a group
setting that led him to change his worldview. When we ask him when
and how he developed his worldview, he replies:
It must have been during the period when I began in high school and
studied at the university. I developed an antipathy to the propaganda
I heard, and I became quite anti-Church, anti-Christian in many ways,
but that was partly because I thought the Christianity I heard in school
was so extreme. I actually think it was during junior high school when I
took a standpoint, under the influence of friends who were not Christian.
His move away from faith was not a process where he as an individual
broke away from the group and opposed the views accepted by those
around him. Instead, he refers to his group of friends and claims that
their views affected him. Once again, he demonstrates that he was part
of the group by adopting its accepted views.
Although Jan seemed to be group-oriented in his approach to reli-
gion, this was not so when it came to education. He finished high
school and decided to attend the University of Oslo. This was not a
common path for a boy in rural northern Norway, who usually ‘‘went
to sea.’’ In this area, Jan broke away from the group and went out on
his own. Yet, in his narrative he presents the picture of a young man
who more or less passively follows the opportunities laid before him.
He says: ‘‘I sort of continued in school; it was that which existed. I
applied to the University of Oslo without any conscious decision to
become a teacher.’’ The educational opportunities were just there, and
as doors opened, Jan entered.
Nevertheless, compared to a commonly expected life course for baby
boomers, Jan is atypical. Upon finishing his Master’s degree, he decided
to return to his home village and work there. At the time of the inter-
view, he is divorced and not involved in any long-term relationship,
and he has no children. Jan seems to live at the margins of social life.
He gives little information about friends or people with whom he inter-
acts. His professional life is also a topic that is almost absent in his nar-
rative. This is atypical for a male life story, which tends to focus on the
work life career.26 One possible explanation is found toward the end of
the interview when Jan reveals that he has been on sick leave for one
year without a diagnosis. He believes he has chronic fatigue syndrome,
characterized by headaches, dizziness, and general fatigue. Being unable
to work may pose a threat to Jan’s masculine identity, especially because
his illness is one associated with women more so than men. The picture
of the man suffering from a typical ‘‘women’s illness’’ represents a
breach with the picture of the successful male high school teacher.
As most men of his generation, Jan believes that both women and
men should pursue their careers. Yet, he has a notion of women as
more emotional and easily misled than men. When asked about alter-
native medicine, he says: ‘‘persons of the opposite sex, whom I have
the impression act more and believe in such, whereas I shake my head
and fret.’’ Jan is a professed rationalist, who states in the questionnaire
that he strongly disagrees with the statement that ‘‘we do not trust
faith and emotions enough.’’ For him, rationality is masculine, whereas
emotionality is feminine. He affirms his masculinity through his belief

in rationality and his nonemotional approach to life.
In the questionnaire, Jan reports that he characterizes himself as
‘‘strongly nonreligious.’’ He compares himself with ‘‘other people,’’
whom he sees as more religious than himself, and he defines himself as
‘‘not Christian.’’ He explains: ‘‘I think that many people in Norway
attend Church without thinking anything about it. If a person says that
‘‘I’m a Christian,’’ it must mean something for them personally, because
it’s a way of life, that’s what I demand of a personal Christian.’’ Jan
believes that rituals are empty. This is not surprising, given the lasting
influence of Pietism upon Norwegian culture. Pietism argued against
‘‘meaningless rituals’’ and emphasized individual Christian piety and
practice. For him, rituals belong to the sphere of external action, and
are irrelevant. In contrast, he exalts the inner experience and the inter-
nal states of mind in combination with everyday practice. In this way,
Jan represents a type of Pietism devoid of its original religious content.
Jan sees himself as ‘‘either an atheist or an agnostic.’’ He continues
I don’t believe, but I can’t say that there’s no form of god. I don’t believe
in the god described in the Bible, but I can’t exclude the existence of the
creative power of god, although I don’t see any evidence that there’s
something that rules, I can’t see that there is a god who personally inter-
venes in people’s lives.
Over the years, he has changed:
During one phase of my life, as a student, I looked at myself as an athe-

ist, anti-Christian, and I’m still skeptical towards religion. However, I no
longer believe in absolutes. I can’t be the only person who has found the
truth. There are many views. I don’t believe that the sole truth can be
found in one religion.
Jan describes a transition in his life from being a hard-core atheist to

becoming more of an agnostic. In spite of his change of heart, it is difficult
for him to leave his absolutism behind. He attaches great importance to
consistent belief systems, which fits his ideal of ‘‘the true believer.’’ This
is evident when he discusses gay clergy. Although he supports their right
to be clergy, he sympathizes with those who oppose them: ‘‘If they find
out that the Bible doesn’t accept it [homosexuality], why should one
accept that they [gay clergy], as teachers of the Church, should live in
something the Bible possibly says is sinful?’’ Because he believes that con-
sistency of beliefs is more important than the issue itself, he concludes
that the view voiced by the opponents of gay clergy is ‘‘quite reasonable.’’
The continuing dialogue and conflict Jan expresses between consis-
tency and content of beliefs produce a type of ambivalence that does not
easily fit into the political and religious landscape of Norway. His anti-
Christian position would initially lead one to expect that was a member
of the Norwegian Humanist Association, which he is not. He explains
I felt that this [joining] would replace one congregation with another con-
gregation who is a competitor to Christianity. Without doubt, I sympa-
thize with their views, but I don’t care much for being a member of such
permanent movements, neither political nor religious.
He sees the humanist association as one type of community, comparable

to that of a Christian one. With his notions of ‘‘the true believer’’ and
the emphasis he places on consistency of beliefs, Jan could only have
joined this association if he fully supported their program and partici-
pated in their organizational activities. Although he supports their pro-
gram, a membership will not provide the type of space needed for his
ambivalence. Because he cannot be a ‘‘true believer’’ in this community,
he chooses to remain outside.
Jan has a somewhat ambiguous view of life. He reports in the ques-
tionnaire that he is ‘‘relatively happy.’’ When we ask him if there is
anything in his life he wants change, he says: ‘‘I’m fairly skeptical
towards everything. One can ridicule and become ironic and cynical.’’
He admits that he has a negative view of life. By shifting from the per-
sonal ‘‘I’’ to the general ‘‘one,’’ he describes his emotions as typical,
which gives him a basis to formulate a morality, namely that skepti-
cism leads to cynicism. There is a conflict in Jan’s narrative between
his skepticism and his demand for being a true believer. Whereas he
has an admiration for the believer who is willing to make sacrifices in
order to be true to one’s beliefs, Jan chooses the stand of the skeptic:
one who keeps his distance and does not get involved.
Jan’s life story operates on two levels. On one level, it is a linear nar-
rative about his social mobility: from being a rural boy from the periph-
ery to becoming a high school teacher. On another level, the narrative is
about the tension between his longing for consistency and a realization
of the dilemmas that aiming for consistency involves. His move back to
the village is an example of how he is trying to create and maintain
continuity and consistency in his life. He expresses a modern self, who
defines himself in relation to others, but at the same time he sees him-
self as an observer who lives on the margins of social life. Thus, there is
a tension between his group orientation and his individualism.
Jan’s concept of self embodies a sharp distinction between the inside
and the outside with a desire to harmonize the two. His life story
reveals distinct categories of people who are outsiders and insiders,
‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them.’’ His claim for consistency and moral integrity is
demonstrated in his discussion of religious categories. By demanding
harmony between consistency and content of one’s beliefs, he ends in a
type of absolutism, which creates an unresolved ambivalence. On the

one hand, Jan gives the impression of a man who is in control of his
life. He paints the picture of himself as a man characterized by mascu-
line, nonemotional rationality. On the other hand, Jan struggles with
his distance and cynicism, as he is unable to live up to his demands of
others to be true believers. Therefore, he resolves his own ambivalence
by keeping a distance from other people.
CREATING MY OWN LIFE: BENTE’S LIFE STORY

Bente is about the same age as Jan, but she lives in a town in south-
ern Norway. Unlike her mother, she could look at higher education as
a matter of course. She attended a teacher’s training college during the
1970s, a period of new consciousness for women, which impacted her
life profoundly. It was during her student years that she met her part-
ner. As many students at the time, they opposed the institution of mar-
riage and decided to live together. By now, they have been together for
almost twenty years and have two teenage girls. Bente has always com-
bined family obligations with work. As she and her partner are strug-
gling with careers, raising teenagers, and incipient middle age, their
relationship is going through a difficult time.
Bente and her partner are members of the Norwegian Humanist Asso-
ciation. In her childhood home, her parents attended the Church of Nor-
way less than once a year. Bente marks in the questionnaire that she does
not believe in God and has never done so, a view she shares with only
20 percent of the sample and 15 percent of the women. She has never
participated in any religious organization, and she left the Church in her
late teens. She characterizes herself ‘‘strongly nonreligious,’’ which only 9
percent of the sample and 7 percent of the women do. She also believes
that there is little truth to be found in any of the world religions.
However, Bente reports that she is quite sure that some people are
able to foresee the future, a view she shares with 16 percent of the
sample and 19 percent of the women. She also believes with some
uncertainties that it is possible to have contact with those who went
before us, which 12 percent of the sample and 13 percent of the women
state. Bente says she never prays, although she would like to practice
yoga and meditation. Altogether, Bente has a more negative view of
traditional religion than the majority in the sample and the women.
Yet, she is open to some aspects commonly associated with New Age,
which are views found among more women than men.
Bente is a woman of strong moral convictions. She supports the
Labor Party, and she agrees with Jan that it is more important to protect
the environment than developing new industry. She voices trust in the
government, the legal system, the public school system, but less so in
the Church, and not in private enterprise. She also agrees with Jan that
sex before marriage is not at all wrong, and neither is sex between two
persons of the same sex. However, sex with someone else than your
spouse is almost always wrong. Although she strongly supports free
choice, she believes that abortion, in many instances, is morally wrong.
Bente’s life story is characterized by her belief that human beings
create their own lives. According to her, life has meaning, not because
of the existence of a god, but because human beings are part of the life
cycle. She has a positive view of life and she believes that people have
choices in life. Nevertheless, there is a tension in Bente’s story between
her hopefulness toward others and her own unhappiness. As she grap-
ples with adult life, she attempts to create consistency between her life
experiences and her fundamental beliefs.
Agnosticism, Humanism, the Life Cycle, and Harmony with

Her Inner True Self
Bente relates childhood religion to her paternal grandparents, who
were actively involved in the Church. ‘‘One had to go to church when
one visited their place,’’ she recalls, ‘‘because that was proper.’’ She
admits that it was her father who put pressure on the rest of the family
to attend church when they visited his parents. Indeed, conflicts over
religion in Bente’s childhood and early adolescence seem to appear in
her relationship to her father. In her early teens, Bente mentioned at
home that she ‘‘really did not want to be confirmed in the Church.’’
This was totally unacceptable to her father. Bente resolved the conflict
by agreeing to be confirmed there. As an adult looking back, she does
not interpret her adaptation as a passive act, but an active choice. ‘‘I
was the one who chose to let myself be influenced by that pressure,’’
meaning the pressure to be confirmed.
Conflicts over religion also appeared in Bente’s life when she was
around 11 years old. Her family moved from the more tolerant eastern
region to the Bible belt in the South, where people were perceived as
either very religious or very secular. Bente sees herself as belonging to
a group that perceive themselves to be ‘‘in the middle.’’ She says: ‘‘For
me it’s ok that people believe in a god of some sort, but I didn’t recog-
nize myself in that.’’ When Bente reflects upon acceptance and rejection
of religious beliefs, she uses the expression ‘‘to recognize herself,’’
implying that she has an authentic self. Acceptance or rejection of reli-
gion is not related to its claim for truth, but it is related to a harmony
between her authentic self and the religious worldview offered to her.
For her, the acceptance of new ideas was based upon their quality of
fitting in with her authentic self.
In the 1970s, when Bente was still in high school, she and other
women took the initiative to form a local women’s liberation group,
Kvinnefronten (The Women’s Front), a political left-wing group that
worked to extend the rights of women. She says: ‘‘I wanted very much
to do something. Not just to think or have ideas, but to demonstrate
how it could be done, or what could be changed. I wanted to partici-
pate and have an effect.’’ For her, ideals or theories were viewed as
negatives, unless they were demonstrated in everyday life. She also
joined the protests against the European Union. The fact that the grass
root mobilization actually affected the end result of the referendum in
1972, where the opponents won, became a sort of evidence to her that
it was action and not ideas that changed the world.
When we ask her about her perceptions of the meaning of life in her
youth, Bente recalls that her high school years ‘‘were a time when I had
a need to put things together. I knew my own views, but I wanted to
see if I could find a larger ideological or moral frame around them.
When I made up my mind that I will leave the Church, I was 17.’’ Bente
actively searched to create and formulate her own individual worldview,
where she could ‘‘recognize herself’’ and ‘‘feel at home.’’ In many ways,
her worldview is similar to the one Jan harbors. However, her approach
is strikingly different. Rather than seeking to formulate an individual
meaning system, which Jan largely attempts to do, Bente searches for a
ready formulated meaning system where she can ‘‘fit in.’’ In her attempt
to integrate her view of life within a larger frame, she tries to make a
system whereby she harmonizes different aspects of her life.
At the time of the interview, Bente works within the school system.
It is a striking feature in her story that she directs very little attention to
her career. In spite of the fact that she is a full-time professional, she
gives little information about her professional life. It becomes obvious
that her identity is to a very small degree connected to work and career.
Instead, her story centers on her family, friends, and close relationships.
Bente’s two children are not baptized. At the time when they were
born, it was not yet common to arrange secular ‘‘name-giving’’ ceremonies
among irreligious couples. Therefore, Bente and her husband had no rit-
uals or ceremonies that celebrated the birth of their children, which Bente
misses. Because the children were not baptized, they were not members of
the Church of Norway and would therefore, not normally be confirmed
there. However, Bente’s oldest daughter chose to be baptized and con-
firmed in the Church two years ago. Bente admires her daughter’s inde-
pendence in this matter, resisting the tradition of her secular family. In
many ways, she seems to fulfill Bente’s ideal of the independent person.
Bente’s identity is related to her definition of herself as a humanist. She
does not see herself as an atheist, which she defines as ‘‘one who denies
that there’s something beyond oneself, meaning that there’s nothing reli-
gious or a divinity beyond.’’ Instead, she sees herself as an agnostic:
I do perceive things that are beyond, meaning I do have connections with

others whom I can’t see. I register that things are happening, and I’ve
experienced this in relatively specific ways, that there are some commu-
nications or some presence. I don’t believe in something religious or a
god or anything, but I can’t prove that it doesn’t exist.
When Bente is trying to formulate and elaborate upon her perceptions

of herself as a humanist, she says: ‘‘I believe more in people.’’ For her,
life is a cycle, consisting of a beginning and an end, that gives life
meaning. When we ask her about the most important events in her life,
Bente’s answer is ‘‘to give birth to my children.’’ She explains: ‘‘It’s
related to being able to create. It is fantastic to be able to create human
beings, that in itself.’’ Because the life cycle gives life meaning, giving
birth was one of the most important events of her life. Her life is part
of a greater life cycle, which bestows her individual life with meaning.
Bente attempts to create a view of life where she harmonizes her ideas
of humanness, meaning, and love.
However, there is a tension in her story between her view of life
and her life experiences. She and her partner are going through a diffi-
cult time in their relationship at the time of the interview. She has also
experienced that a close relative committed suicide. These experiences
challenge her positive outlook on life.
On one level, Bente’s life story is a narrative of a woman with a posi-
tive view of life, where she perceives herself and others as having
choices in life. On another level, the story is about the experiences in
her life that make her unhappy. Her story can be interpreted as a way
of striving for consistency between her life experiences and her funda-
mental beliefs. Bente’s self is typically modern, as she celebrates her
individual self. Yet, she does not admire fragmentation or multiple
identities. In contrast to Jan, who attempts to formulate an individual
worldview, she strives for a larger frame of reference where different
ideas fit together in wholeness. She defines herself in relation to other
people, but she is at the same time the individual who leaves the group
to create her own life.
Bente’s life story illustrates the conflict between conformity and indi-
vidualism or between self-realization and community. She attempts to
define her own space and form her own life. When doing so, she is not
purely individual. Instead, she operates within the frames of Norwe-
gian culture, and she consciously seeks other existing ideologies that
she finds there, within which she attempts to fit her own. In this way,
she has a collective orientation where she tries to conform her individ-
ual interpretation of life to parts of the larger culture.
Bente’s discussion of her family life expresses both a longing for a
consistency and a realization of the dilemmas that aiming for consis-
tency implies. On the one hand, she chose her partner and formed a
family. She cannot blame others for her choice; it is her responsibility.
On the other hand, as a mother, her choices no longer affect only
herself, but also her children. As she strives to save her family, she has
to put herself aside. And as she attempts to create her own life, she is
also dependent on the lives of those with whom she interacts, and their
choices. There is, thereby, a celebration of consistency as well as a real-
ization that consistency between ideals and life experiences is not
always possible.
CONCLUSION
The fact that secularity is gendered in Norway is expressed in sev-
eral different ways. Our analysis of the data from ISSP Norway: Reli-
gion, 1998, shows that Norwegian men score higher than women on
several measures of secularity. Norwegian women and men reveal a
similar pattern to the ones found in Germany, Great Britain, the Neth-
erlands, and Sweden. The two life stories confirm the picture of gen-
dered worldviews, and they provide information about some of the
ways in which gender structures these worldviews.
Jan and Bente organize their discourse on secularity in different ways.
As Bente describes her worldview, she focuses on the meaning that it
provides in her life. This is revealed in her language of ‘‘finding a larger
ideological frame.’’ Bente’s search for meaning led her to the humanist
association. In contrast, Jan’s discourse centers on morality. He focuses
on the behavior that he believes religious people should have. For him,
meaning does not constitute a major theme, but morality does.
Bente and Jan also speak about their experiences differently. Bente’s
worldview reflects her position as a woman and mother of two. For her,
it is a direct connection between giving birth and her idea of being part
of the great cycle of life. Bente emphasizes issues relating to personal
relationships and emotions. She speaks of her worldview as a search for
‘‘an ideological frame’’ that harmonizes with her inner, true self. Her
quest is not to find some sort of truth, but to find something to which
she can ‘‘relate’’ or ‘‘recognize’’ herself. The emotional and relational
aspects are also evident in her perceptions of some sort of unexplainable
reality. She uses words such as ‘‘connections’’ or ‘‘communications.’’ In
contrast, Jan as a single man attempts to formulate his worldview by
picking and choosing from different theoretical traditions. When he
describes his beliefs, he speaks about truth and a ‘‘creative power.’’ For
him, his secular worldview is not discussed in terms of emotional fulfill-
ment or personal relationships, but in terms of its truth and power.
In complex ways, the secular identities of Jan and Bente are related to
their gender identities. Even if Jan’s story shows that his male identity
does not lie in the work sphere, it is located in his education or status as
an ‘‘academic.’’ His story points to the importance of higher education
in personal and intellectual fulfillment. For him, gender is also related to
his secular worldview. It is his identity as an academic with his
emphasis on masculine rationality that led him away from religion. For
him, a male identity excludes a religious identity. Bente’s story suggests
that the feminist movement and new roles for women lead to changes in
the role that religion plays in women’s lives. Bente’s aim to find whole-
ness brought her on a quest for a worldview that would combine the dif-
ferent aspects of her life. Her search led her away from religion to
secular humanism. Here, she found a worldview that brings together
her identity as a mother, partner, working woman, and political activist.
This study has attempted to show that Norwegian women and men
not only differ on measures of secularity, but that gender structures
the ways in which they speak about their secular worldviews and the
role that secularity plays in their lives. The analysis is tentative and
more studies are needed in the study on gender and secularity.
NOTES
1. See for example, Young, Serinity, ed. 1999. Encyclopedia of women and
World religion, Vol. I–II. New York: Macmillan Reference; Aune, Kristin, Sonya
Sharma, and Giselle Vincette, eds. 2008. Women and religion in the West. Chal-
lenging secularization. Aldershot: Ashgate.
2. Vincett, Giselle, Sonya Sharma, and Kristin Aune. 2008. Introduction:
Women, religion and secularization: One size does not fit all. In Women and re-
ligion in the West. Challenging secularization, ed. Kristin Aune et al., 1–19. Alder-
shot: Ashgate.
3. Furseth, Inger. 2006. From quest for truth to being oneself. Religious change
in life stories. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
4. See Woodhead, Linda. 2003. Feminism and the sociology of religion:
From gender-blindness to gendered difference. In The Blackwell companion to
sociology of religion, ed. Richard K. Fenn, 67–84. Oxford: Blackwell.
5. Daly, Mary. 1978. Gyn/ecology. The metaethics of radical feminism. Boston:
Beacon Press; Ruether, Rosemary Radford, ed. 1974. Religion and sexism. Images
of women in the Jewish and Christian traditions. New York: Simon and Schuster.
6. Berger, Helen A. 1998. A community of witches: Contemporary neo-Paganism
and witchcraft in the United States. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press;
Finley, Nancy J. 1994. Political activism and feminist spirituality. In Gender and
Religion, ed. William H. Swatos, Jr., 159–172. New Brunswick and London:
Transaction; Salomonsen, Jone. 2002. Enchanted feminism: Ritual, gender and di-
vinity among the reclaiming witches of San Francisco. New York: Routledge.
7. Aune, Kristin. 2008. Singleness and secularization: British evangelical
women and church (dis)affiliation. In Women and religion in the West. Challeng-
ing secularization, ed. Kristin Aune et al., 57–70. Aldershot: Ashgate; Furseth.
From quest for truth to being oneself; Sharma, Soya 2008. When young women
say ‘‘yes’’: Exploring the sexual selves of young Canadian women in Protestant
churches. In Women and religion in the West. Challenging secularization, ed. Kristin
Aune et al., 71–82. Aldershot: Ashgate.
8. Caporale, Rocco, and Antonio Grumelli, eds. 1971. The culture of unbelief.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
9. Campbell, Colin. 1971. Toward a sociology of irreligion. London: Macmillan.

10. Flynn, Tom, ed. 2007. The new encyclopedia of unbelief. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books.
11. Fenn, Richard K. 2001. Beyond idols. The shape of a secular society. Oxford:
12. Cimino, Richard, and Christopher Smith. 2007. Secular humanism and
atheism beyond progressive secularism. Sociology of Religion 68: 407–424.
13. Aune et al. 2008. Ibid.; Furseth. From quest for truth to being oneself; Miller,
Alan S., and John P. Hoffman. 1995. Risk and religion: An explanation of
gender differences in religiosity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34(1):
63–75; Ozorak, Elizabeth Weiss. 1996. The power, but not the glory: How
women empower themselves through religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion 35(1): 17–29.
14. Botvar, Pål Ketil. 1993. Religion uten kirke [Religion without church]. Oslo:
Diakonhjemmets høgskolesenter; Gundelach, Peter, and Ole Riis. 1992. Dan-
skernes Vrdier [The values of the Danes]. København: Forlaget sociologi.
15. Zuckerman, Phil. 2008. Samfund uden Gud. En amerikaner ser på religion i
Danmark og Sverige (Society without God. An American looks at religion in Denmark
and Sweden). Højbjerg: Univers.
16. Benum, Edgeir. 1998. Overflod og fremtidsfrykt: 1970–. In Aschehougs
Norgeshistorie (Aschehoug’s history of Norway), Vol. 12, ed. Knut Helle, Knut
Kjeldstadli, Even Lange, and Sølvi Sogner. Oslo: Aschehoug.
17. Ormestad, Solveig Bonde. 1981–1982. Human-Etisk Forbund 1956–1981
(The Norwegian Humanist Association 1956–81). Oslo: Human-Etisk Forbund; Sta-
tistics Norway. 2007. Kulturstatistikk (Cultural statistics) [online]. Iski: Statistisk
sentralbyrå. Available from: www.ssb.no/trosamf/tab-2008-01-07-01.html (in
Norwegian; accessed 1 September 2008).
18. Undersøkelse om religion 1998 is part of an international survey, Religiion
II, initiated by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Norsk Samfunns-
vitenskapelig datatjeneste (NSD) had the overall responsibility for the Norwegian
survey. NSD bears no responsibility for the analyses and interpretations in this
article.
19. Lund, Monica. 1998. Undersøkelse om religion 1998 (Study on religion 1998).
Bergen: Norsk samfunnsvitenskapelig datatjeneste.
20. Mannheim, Karl. 1952. Essays on the sociology of knowledge, ed. Paul
Kecskemeti. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
21. Plummer, Ken. 1990. Documents of life. London: Unwin Hyman.
22. Ibid.
23. Furseth. From quest for truth to being oneself.
24. Furseth. From quest for truth to being oneself, 59–60.
25. Gundelach, Peter, and Ole Riis. 1992. Danskernes vrdier (Values among
Danes). København: Forlaget Sociologi; Lunestad, Jorun. 1999. Nyreligiøsitet—
konkurrent eller supplement? Religion 1998 om nyreligiøsitet. In Tallenes tale
1999 (Numbers speaking 1999), Rapport nr. 12, ed. Ole Gunnar Winsnes, 27–42.
Trondheim: Tapir.
26. Vilkko, Anni. 1992. ‘‘Att skaka med hanskar på.’’ Kvinneliga
alvbiografier och tolkarens position. In Sj€alvbiografi, Kultur, Liv (Autobiography,
sj€
culture, life), ed. Christoffer Tigerstedt et al., 107–126. Stockholm: Brutus
€
Ostlings Borkf€
orlag Symposion.
Chapter 8
Freethinkers and Hell Raisers:

The Brief History of American
Atheism and Secularism
Daniel Cady
American history has not been kind to atheists, agnostics, and secularists.
To examine the unfolding of the country’s history through the standard
accounts of nontheists in American history textbooks is to present a very
short study indeed. In fact, from a student’s point of view, the narrative
simply does not exist. Due in large part to the overwhelming success of
the Christian establishment to both formally and informally censure the
act of history writing, the traditions of atheism, agnosticism, and secular-
ism in America have been generally supplanted by myth, mischaracter-
ized by historical revision, and silenced through scholarly omission.
In this chapter I will attempt to unearth the hidden history of
American atheism, agnosticism, and secularism from its burial under the
weight of popular myth and its obstruction at the hands of historical
censors. From era to era, persona to persona, America has been home to
countless nonbelievers who have faced relentless persecution from the-
ists, particularly Protestant theists. Sometimes the attacks originated
with the state and other times they flowed from an agitated populous.
More often than not, antiatheist activity came from a combination
of state-sponsored scapegoating and reactionary populist hysteria.
At different times these forces targeted nonwhites, nonconformists,
intellectuals, socialists, and scientists. Atheists—or those accused of
atheism—found themselves imprisoned, ostracized, and in some cases
exterminated. Yet, within this continuum of unabashed hostility reside
pockets of tolerance and the flowering of freethought. By excavating
elements of Colonial and Revolutionary America, nineteenth-century

intellectuals, and twentieth-century nonconformists (and regressive
trends), I will illustrate how an oft-hidden nontheistic world impacted
the development of American history. The bulk of this chapter will be
devoted to the grand American myth of national religiosity and fabled
origins. That battle begins with the Pilgrims and ends with the death of
the founders, and its details deserve special attention.
In 1987, President George H. W. Bush proclaimed his unofficial doctrine
on the issue of atheists in American culture. When posed with a question
on the atheists’ civil rights, he retorted, ‘‘I don’t know that atheists should
be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is
one nation under God.’’ Such marginalization has been standard fare for
atheists as evidenced in some of the earliest written histories of North
America. More of a criminal charge than a description of one’s belief, the
accusation of atheism was as misused in early America as ‘‘communist’’
and ‘‘terrorist’’ have been in the last sixty years. Now, historically speak-
ing, one must be clear about what constituted atheism before the mid-
nineteenth century. As James Turner argues in Without God, Without Creed,
atheism in America before the Civil War was essentially unheard of. Much
of the worldview of preindustrial people was anchored in the notion that
the earth was the product of a creator.1 With the influence of rational
Enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century, this view shifted
towards a god of nature and away from a Christian god, but was usually
confined to an educated elite. That true atheists were as common as uni-
corns in early America hardly stopped accusations of disbelief. These
charges also illustrate the limited spectrum of acceptable religious expres-
sion and suggest the often dire consequences of such pronouncements.
COLONIAL AMERICA
Christian European America was initially sown in the native soil of
disbelief. From the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the turn of the
eighteenth century, only a handful of European Christians lived among
hundreds of thousands of non-Christian Natives.2 In a world where
even slight deviations from Christian denominational orthodoxy would
result in cries of atheism, American Indians presented a special chal-
lenge to the Protestant English. Even before the first permanent English
colonies took root, Anglo writers identified the profound religious defi-
cit of the continent’s natives. In early Virginia colony booster Richard
Hakluyt’s Discourse on Western Planting (1584), he warned potential set-
tlers that North America was bursting with ‘‘infidells,’’ and that Eng-
lish Christians needed to work for
the gayninge of the soules of millions of those wretched people, the

reducinge of from darkenes to lighte, from falsehoodde to truthe, from
Freethinkers and Hell Raisers 231
the dombe idols to the lyvinge God, from the depe pitt of hell to the
highest heaven.3
Often characterizing themselves and their colonization of America in

Old Testament terms, many of the English settles landed in ‘‘New
Canaan’’ with a profound sense of mission and an even greater sense
of superiority. Some scholars have argued that the melding of English
nationalism and religion before the eighteenth century served to char-
acterize the English as the apex of civilization looking down on all
others. At the nadir of this model resided Indians (and Africans), who
the English oft referred to as savages, heathens, or pagans. This designa-
tion proved vital to the both the English looking to convert Indians
and to those bent on enslaving or killing the native population.4 True
to the biblical story of the Israelites in Canaan, invaders with a divine
contract occupied a new territory and subjugated its people and did so
because of the vanquished ‘‘detestable practices’’ (Deut. 18:9–13). In
early America, as in later periods, the charge of atheism became a
rationalization for the denial of basic human rights.
Nowhere in the course of early American history did piety and
intolerance play a greater role than in colonial New England. Despite
the uncritical acceptance of the national holiday Thanksgiving, when
English newcomers allegedly broke bread with natives on equal terms,
the relationship between Anglo immigrants and indigenous peoples
was rife with conflict. Again, the incapacity of the English to under-
stand Indians beyond a rigid Christian worldview led the newcomers
to characterize Indians as either evil or under the spell of evil. In 1660,
English theologian William Hubbard argued that the atheistic condition
of New England’s Indians was rooted in their evil origins:
His conceit is, that when the devil was put out of his throne in the other
parts of the world, and that the mouth of all his oracles was stopped in
Europe, Asia, and Africa, he seduced a company of silly wretches to fol-
low his conduct into this unknown part of the world, here he might lie
hid and not be disturbed in the idolatrous and abominable, or rather dia-
bolical service he expected from his followers; for here are no footsteps
of any religion before the English came, but merely diabolical.5
As wretches controlled by Satan, native New Englanders found them-

selves in the unenviable position of enemies of the new Anglo theoc-
racy. Puritans developed a policy for dealing with the Indians based
on the model of the Israelites in Canaan—with the natives playing the
role of Canaanites. Fearing the contamination of their saintly souls and
bodies by native influences, Puritans actively fought to occupy Indian
land not merely for purposes of personal enrichment, but as a bulwark
against contamination.6 Additionally, within this particular cosmology,
the near extermination of the natives, like the conquest of the Canaan-
ites, was seen as a gift from God to his chosen people. For instance, as
natives died in mass after exposure to smallpox, Puritan leader John
Winthrop thanked the creator for more free land. Reading the pox as a
providential sign, Winthrop penned, ‘‘God hath consumed the Natives
with a great Plauge in those partes, soe as there be few Inhabitants
lefte.’’7 All things beneficial to the Puritans were deemed ‘‘providen-
tial,’’ while acts against them were often characterized as tied to the
influence of accused nonbelievers.
Natives were not the only ones, however, to suffer because of their
visible heterodoxy in the face of Puritanism. Scores of European immi-
grants among the America’s self-proclaimed saints found themselves
open to punishment at the hands of Puritan authorities. Stocks, brand-
ing, whipping, and dunking were common forms of remediation for
religious transgressions. Those beyond repair were either cast out or
executed. In both lethal and non lethal cases, charges of atheism were
as common as they were imprecise. In the Puritan worldview, atheism
described all religious expressions incompatible with Puritanism. Thus,
Quakers, Catholics, and Jews fell into the same general category as Indi-
ans and witches.
One of the earliest accusations of atheism was levied within a dec-
ade after the Pilgrims first arrived. The accused, Thomas Morton, con-
sidered himself an aristocratic bon vivant, with little in common with
Puritans other than English birth. Morton arrived in New England in
New England 1624 and soon found himself at odds with the Puritan
authorities. Establishing an outpost outside of the established English
perimeter, Morton infuriated Puritans by undercutting established
trade, fraternizing with Indians, and erecting a Maypole in the middle
of his compound. A literate and adventurous man, Morton rejected
Puritan rule and instead established his Indian trading post and chris-
tened it Merry Mount. There, Morton, his Anglo comrades, and Indian
men and women imbibed, danced, and sang bawdy songs—much to
the chagrin of local, town-dwelling leaders. In 1628, Massachusetts Bay
Colony Governor William Bradford had Merry Mount sacked and
eventually burned to the ground. In his History of Plymouth Plantation,
Bradford recounts the ‘‘the beastly practices of mad Bachanalism’’ at
play in Morton’s compound and claimed that Morton was the ‘‘lord of
misrule, and maintained (as it were) a schoole of Athisme.’’8 Morton
was arrested, held, and eventually deported to England.
Perhaps the most significant element in New England’s role in the
history of religion, secularism, and atheism in America is the near uni-
versal acceptance of the region’s place in the founding of America. This
ahistorical account posits the notion that religious principles motivated
the colonization of America’s eastern seaboard. The tale is often enacted
in the public sphere in two ways: the Thanksgiving story and the
metaphor of America as a ‘‘city on the hill.’’ Both of these narratives

place Puritan New England at the forefront of American history, and
both are imbued with a sense of divine intentionality. The feast of
Thanksgiving was a singular rather than annual event from 1621 when
English separatists from the Church of England (later named Pilgrims)
shared in an autumn festival with local Wampanoag Indians. Evidence
shows that for the next 200 years the tradition remained fairly—but
informally—rooted in the Massachusetts area. Not until the mid-
nineteenth century did Americans suggest that this regional New
England tradition become an official American holiday. Only after the
Union Army’s victory at Gettysburg—and the confidence that the
Confederacy would eventually rejoin the Union—did Abraham Lincoln
designate a national day of thanksgiving in November (though evidence
suggests that he did not author the piece). In his 1863 ‘‘Proclamation of
Thanksgiving,’’ Lincoln attempted to fashion a unifying myth based on
the presumed belief that God had chosen and blessed America despite
the 620,000 war dead. For another seventy-eight years the holiday’s
observance depended on a yearly presidential proclamation. Finally,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt made it permanent two weeks after the
bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Thus, the history of
Thanksgiving shows how an informal and often unrecognized holiday
based on the temporary convergence of Anglo-Indian cultures was
manipulated to create a sense of American social unity in times of crisis.
The result of this has been the perpetuation of the myth of America’s
New England origins and a highlighting of that region’s religiosity.9
The other great New England myth used to promote America’s special
relationship with a Christian god to contemporary citizenry deficient in
historical literacy is the city on a hill model. Found in John Winthrop’s
sermon, ‘‘Modell of Christian Charity,’’ the image of early New England,
and a later United States, as a city on a hill permeates the American con-
sciousness. Simply, the city on a hill concept has been used to promote
the idea that America has been chosen by God and granted a covenant
similar to one that bound the creator to the ancient Israelites. In its own
time, the sermon was understood as a call for obedience to religious and
social authority, as well as a reminder of the Puritan mandate to cleanse
the Church of England of all things Catholic. Hence when Winthrop
penned ‘‘wee shall be as a citty upon a hill,’’ and that ‘‘the eies of all peo-
ple are uppon us,’’ he assumed an exclusive contract with God (not even
open to the vast majority of Christians) dependent on strict social control.
He in no way intended his sermon as a metaphor for a socially mobile,
pluralistic society grasping for a unifying theme.10
In Ronald Reagan’s tenure as California’s governor and later as the
president of the United States, he often employed Winthrop’s metaphor,
but within a presentist’s context. In his ‘‘Farewell Address’’ of 1989, Rea-
gan’s city on a hill transformed from a haven for socially static religious
separatists to a ‘‘city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept,

God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony
and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and crea-
tivity.’’ Besides expanding Winthrop’s model city beyond the spirit of its
original meaning, Reagan took even greater liberties with Winthrop him-
self. According to Reagan, Winthrop was ‘‘an early freedom man’’ who
came to America ‘‘looking for a home that would be free.’’ Characteriz-
ing Winthrop as a man bent on an egalitarian sense of freedom misrep-
resents America’s past and further exaggerates the importance of
Puritanism to development of the United States.11
The constant invocation of the Thanksgiving story and the city on a
hill by politicians and traditionalist historians serves to perpetuate the
myth of America’s religiously inspired founding. Yet if one looks back
to the first permanent English settlement in America, one could not
begin with religiously intolerant Pilgrims. That designation belongs to
the entrepreneurs of the Jamestown settlement. Established in 1607 by
the Virginia Company of London, Jamestown began not as a refuge for
religious zealots, but a profit-making venture. Religiously, the residents
of Jamestown identified themselves as members of the Church of
England, but according to one notable American historian, religious
concerns were ‘‘never at the forefront of the Virginia enterprise,’’ and
all piety was ‘‘thoroughly overridden by the race for tobacco profits.’’12
In many ways Virginia rather than Massachusetts serves as a model of
development for the country that followed. The Virginians were more
secular, individualistic, and materialistic, experienced more social fluid-
ity, and willingly exploited people and resources to a greater degree.
Virginia also looms large in the history of the American Revolution.
The writing of the Declaration of Independence and the American Con-
stitution were dominated by Virginians; four of the first five presidents
came from the colony. Only in the nineteenth century during the rise
of sectional conflict did Massachusetts supplant Virginia as America’s
birthplace. By the early twentieth century and the surge of immigra-
tion, the unifying myth of the city on a hill in place of a shared histori-
cal experience most efficiently emblematized the American past.
In popular American colonial history, the story of American secular-
ism and nontheism has been effectively removed. The New England
experience, though an anomaly in the world of British colonial
development in the Americas, still dominates the discourse. Every
November, school children sit at long tables, facing each other and mas-
querading as Pilgrims or Indians. There, they relive an origin myth
divorced from both fact and geography. The consequences of that thea-
ter and its message of providence has been the empowerment of con-
servative religious forces to shape the basic history of the United States.
As Ronald Reagan said as he left office, ‘‘we’ve got to teach history
based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important: why the Pilgrims
came here.’’13 This false history and imaginative context also frames
current views of revolutionary history, the motives of the founders, and
the meaning of the U.S. Constitution.
REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA
Americans still rage over the presumed beliefs of the founders.
Pseudohistorian David Barton typifies the nonacademics who have
attempted to recast American history as the history of Christians in
America. Asking his audience to ‘‘discover our nation’s godly history,’’
Barton has recast the country’s founders as a cohort of evangelicals
attempting to forge a modern state from a premodern religious text. In
his mind, the course of American history has been steered by orthodox
religion from the first moment Europeans made land.14 In this context,
the fact that the American political system’s founders intentionally and
systematically strayed from religious orthodoxy rings of falsehood.
How could the most influential people of their time and the paragons
of elite society reject religion amid a populous of dogmatic believers?
The answer, of course, is that they were not anomalies, but representa-
tive of their time and status. The principle founders of the constitu-
tional government of the United States were not atheists, but they were
not Christians either. They were Deists. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin,
and Madison all tended to understand religion in its pragmatic appli-
cation in social control and rejected supernaturalism, but held to the
notion of a creative force in society. They believed, though some to a
greater degree than others, in an unobtrusive supreme being who cre-
ated the universe, but paid scant attention to earth’s occupants. In their
views, this ‘‘clock-maker’’ did not suspend natural law, answer pray-
ers, or magically procreate with virgins.
Thomas Jefferson towers above all other early political figures as the
most secular and perhaps the most influential. Jefferson, the author of
the Declaration of Independence, the third U.S. president (and in that
capacity refused to proclaim a day of thanksgiving), and the founder of
the University of Virginia, rejected ‘‘demoralizing dogmas of Calvin’’ in
favor of a natural religion based on reason and charitable human inter-
action.15 Jefferson, who wrote knowing that his words would later be
scrutinized, left a clear paper trail on his unorthodox religious beliefs.
Though somewhat reticent in his official writings, his correspondences
and library shelves paint a picture of a man with a distain for dogma,
orthodoxy, and superstition. In his letters to John Adams, Jefferson dis-
puted the Trinity, bashed Protestantism, and mocked the apostles. In
spiritual matters, Jefferson aligned himself with pre-Christian Greeks
such as Epicurus, who believed in the existence of gods, but insisted
that divine beings ignored the humans altogether. To his friend and
mentee, William Short, Jefferson identified himself as an ‘‘Epicurean,’’
persuaded by the ‘‘moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left
us.’’ Jefferson broke his official silence on the topic of religion in his
only published book, Notes on Virginia. Here, he argued against a singu-
lar tradition within a narrative highly critical of Christian proselytizing:
Millions of innocent men women and children, since the introduction of

Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have
not advanced one inch towards uniformity.16
Unlike the majority of living Americans, Thomas Jefferson was not

biblically illiterate. According to a recent Gallup poll, over half of
American adults and two-thirds of American teenagers are unfamiliar
with the Bible (even though the majority believes it to be the true word
of God). Jefferson had the opposite problem: he mastered the Bible and
could read it in Latin and Greek, but rejected the text’s divinity. In
order to highlight the teachings of Jesus—within whom Jefferson recog-
nized a model of civility—divorced of superstition, Jefferson rewrote
the New Testament. In his The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, or
‘‘Jefferson Bible,’’ he attempted to expunge all miracles and superflu-
ous details from the story of Jesus. In doing so he reduced the volumi-
nous text to a handful of pages; for without miracles, really very little
remains. For instance, the twenty verses of recounting Jesus’ previously
miraculous birth were reduced to two verses:
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished
that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son,
and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;
because there was no room for them in the inn.17
No angels coming and going from heaven, no unexplainable lights,

and no sheepherding interlopers. The Jefferson Bible was soon sup-
pressed by his offspring and only introduced publically at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century.
Jefferson’s most lasting achievement in the history American secular-
ism comes from his efforts to reduce the influence of clerics on the
state and the limit the state’s authority on matters of faith. Inasmuch,
he showed no religious preferences. Jefferson fought for the rights of
all religious minorities as well as all Christian denominations. In his
1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson established the ‘‘wall of
separation’’ between church and state, and further clarified the reli-
gious clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Thus, when
the founders penned ‘‘Congress shall make no law respecting an estab-
lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’’ they did
not presuppose that the government and its people were of one com-
mon Christian mind, if Christian at all.
Although some scholars have refashioned Jefferson as a more or less

normative Christian, other founders have been simply erased from the
record. For instance, how is it that the most prolific writer of the revo-
lutionary period is still a virtual stranger to American students?
Thomas Paine not only wrote Common Sense—the single most influen-
tial text of the American Revolution—but was also among the first to
argue in print against slavery, against cruelty to animals, for women’s
rights, and the first to ever pen the name ‘‘United States of America.’’18
Through Common Sense (a pamphlet which sold 500,000 copies in the
1770s), Paine was able to galvanize support for the American Revolu-
tion among a previously ambivalent population. In his time, Paine’s
contribution to the founding of the country was universally recognized.
Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe personally interceded in Paine’s
affairs during times of crises on account of the pamphleteer’s essential
‘‘services to this county.’’19 Yet by twentieth century, Paine had been
relegated to the dustbin of history or characterized as aberrant. Far
from the accolades of the first cadre of presidents, Teddy Roosevelt
referred to Paine as a ‘‘filthy little atheist.’’20
Paine’s path from patriotic icon to filthy atheist is marked by reli-
gious intolerance. Although Common Sense established Paine as an
American hero during the Revolution, his later works inspired a con-
servative backlash. At the dawn of the twentieth century, American poet
Ella Wheeler Wilcox observed that Paine had been effectively removed
from the national narrative. ‘‘For a century,’’ she wrote, ‘‘the world has
ignored his brilliant mind. Indeed, Paine’s name has been branded by
bigots and fanatics with all imaginable obloquy.’’21 Paine first published
his antimonarchical Rights of Man (1791), which defended the French
Revolution and made little impact in America. His next book, The Age of
Reason (1794, 1795, 1807), infuriated the increasingly religious American
populous. Written in France during the ‘‘Great Terror,’’ The Age of
Reason was seen as a straightforward defense of deism by educated
American elites—who had, in great part, adopted the natural religion of
deism over the supernaturalism of Christianity—and as an attack
against Christianity by clergymen and commoners. Forever the gadfly,
Paine disputed the central tenets of Christian mythology and mocked
the very notion of belief in ‘‘fables’’ of the Bible. Upon arrival Paine
found the once receptive American public suddenly truculent. In 1802,
shortly after Paine’s return to the county he named, a Philadelphia journal-
ist referred to ‘‘loathsome’’ Paine as ‘‘a drunken atheist and the scavenger
of faction.’’22 Friends abandoned him for reputation’s sake, strangers
cursed him as an infidel, and one passerby even took a shot at him.
When Paine died in 1809, only a handful of mourners attended his
funeral. Much of the inattention to his death was the public’s repay-
ment for attempting to introduce Deism to a general audience in a
time of nonelite religious revival. The democratic nature of American
religion provided a movement for the masses. Though some historians

of the subject emphasize the link between the religiosity of the early
nineteenth century and the advent of reform movements, one cannot
forget the role of religious revival as a call for order during periods of
vast changes. Americans witnessed a bloody revolution, broke with the
logic of monarchical deference, and found themselves increasingly
mobile and subject to the whim of advancing industrialization. Hence,
it was not only a conspiracy of the intolerant who moved Paine to the
margins, but also the mere circumstances of the early republic’s social
development. In other words, not only did the market for the Jefferson
Bible and The Age of Reason dry up, but the mere mention of the texts
would incite cries of ‘‘infidel!’’
Buried under the weight of revivalism and 200 years of revisionism
lies the real beliefs of the founding generation. Washington, Franklin,
Adams, Jefferson, Paine, and Madison all defy easy religious categoriza-
tion, and their collective views would certainly be seen as blasphemous
by many contemporary Americans. Rather than creating a ‘‘godly’’
country based on ancient Hebrew laws or within a Calvinistic system of
election and providence, the most influential founders actually laid the
foundation for American disbelief. Much of the secular narrative was
lost in the first few generations of the nineteenth century, due in large
part to the post-Revolution conservatism and the revival of emotional
Christianity during the Second Great Awakening.23 The people that
once made heroes of Jefferson and Paine either vilified them or recast
them as traditional believers. One need look no further than the Treaty
of Tripoli, as signed by John Adams and ratified by the United States
Senate, as evidence of the secularism of the early republic:
As the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on

the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the
law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen; and as the states never have
entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohometan nation, it
is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinion
shall ever produce an interruption of harmony existing between the two
countries.24
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Arguments concerning the beliefs of the founders continue to rage.
Yet on issues of religion and public memory in nineteenth century, one
hears very little. Like the myth of the Pilgrims and founders, the prin-
ciple figures of the nineteenth century are often spoken of imbued with
a nostalgic sense of religiosity. The age itself has been characterized as
the movement of religious revivalism running headlong into Victorian-
ism. In this narrative, the evangelism of the first half of the century
settled into the normative, disciplined piety of the latter. On the first
end of this equation, this early evangelism has profoundly imprinted
American religious consciousness. During the Second Great Awakening
(1790–1840) Americans discarded strict Calvinism in favor of a more
democratic form of religious expression. Though uneven and chrono-
logically staggered, the era’s revivalism stressed personal faith as key
to salvation coupled with anti-intellectual emotionalism. Denomina-
tions battled for souls, and new religions arose while established tradi-
tions accommodated those who cried for change. The result was a
complex mix of sometimes reformist, sometimes otherworldly churches
with the innate ability to transform during times of crises and always to
appeal to one’s heart rather than head.25
From the vulgar to the urbane, America’s nineteenth century then
shifted—in the public imagination—to Victorianism and the rise of the
middle class. According to scholars, Americans increasingly retreated
into the privacy of their own homes during a period of accelerating in-
dustrialization. Gender roles became more defined as men engaged in a
competitive business world and women settled into the domestic realm.
Within the walls of the Victorian home women found a new identity as
homemakers. Purity, submissiveness, and piety defined the house-bound
woman, and within this role she bore the responsibility of maintaining a
religious household and raising the next generation of spiritually devout
children. Although this ‘‘cult of domesticity’’ and ‘‘self-made man’’
model only serves as a limited conceptual framework for the study of
the nineteenth century, it remains a powerful paradigm for the ‘‘tradi-
tional’’ family as advocated by contemporary American conservatives.26
When taken together as the singular dominant paradigm for under-
standing the nineteenth century, revival to Victorianism (while a bit
prude) allows theistic historians the opportunity to claim the era’s pro-
gressive social movements. For instance, it is commonly understood
that social reform emerged as the byproduct of the Second Great Awak-
ening and found its greatest advocates amongst the emerging middle
class. In this context, abolitionism and women’s rights are thus seen as
the result of the era’s religiosity and millennial zeal. Americans can look
back to the age of Garrison, Lincoln, and Susan B. Anthony and illus-
trate how religious belief inspired these few but important generations
to expand the rights of marginalized people while secularists and athe-
ists (if they even existed in the period) sat on the sidelines. However,
the people and events of the nineteenth century defy such simple cate-
gorization. The people we now celebrate as orthodox then were less so,
and many who would be considered infidels now (if we considered
them at all) then were among America’s most popular figures.
As Susan Jacoby has shown in Freethinkers, some nineteenth-century
American icons adopted by the current religious right were suspi-
ciously unorthodox. Chief among them is Abraham Lincoln. No doubt,
the view that Lincoln led his life as an archetypical frontier Christian is
axiomatic among believers, but evidence shows that his religiosity has
been perhaps overstated.27 Lincoln never joined a church, did not
believe in revealed truth, and saw no reason for prayer in his own
life.28 Biographers have strongly disputed the characterization of
Lincoln as a Christian. Soon after Lincoln’s death his long-time friend
and personal security guard, Ward Hill Lamon, presented The Life of
Abraham Lincoln to an unreceptive American reading public. In it,
Lamon asserted that Lincoln was a man of great conviction and spirit-
ual want, but alas, a man of little faith. ‘‘Mr. Lincoln’’ he wrote, ‘‘was
never a member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of
Christ, or the inspiration of the Scriptures in the sense understood by
evangelical Christians.’’ Lamon even quotes Mary Todd as stating,
‘‘Mr. Lincoln had no hope, and no faith, in the usual acceptance of those
words.’’ In the 1880s, one of Lincoln’s long-term associates opened up to
the Louisville Times on the subject of the former president’s beliefs:
He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but
so far as I have been able to find he remained an unbeliever. . . . I asked
him once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twittered him about
being an unbeliever in what was published. ‘‘Oh,’’ said he, ‘‘that is some of
[secretary of state] Seward’s nonsense, and it pleases the fools.’’29
Yet the myth persists as to Lincoln’s religiosity. Due to the myth of the
‘‘Great Emancipator’’ and Lincoln’s status as the country’s most
beloved leader, many Americans refuse to accept Lincoln’s ambiva-
lence towards religion.
Like Jefferson and Paine, one can either recast significant Americans
or erase them. The same can be said of Lincoln (the most popularly rec-
ognizable figure in abolitionism) and Elisabeth Cady Stanton, the for-
gotten mother of women’s suffrage. Schooled by Lucretia Mott while
fighting for the abolition of American slavery, Stanton, by the 1840s,
redirected her energy away from abolitionism and devoted herself (as
did Mott) to women’s suffrage. Though she did not live to see the Nine-
teenth Amendment, her contributions to the cause are unparalleled. She
was the principal author of the first popular call for women’s rights in
America, the Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled after Jefferson’s Declara-
tion of Independence, the document was signed in 1848 at the first
women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. In 1869, she
founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association with Susan B.
Anthony. Stanton argued not only for women’s suffrage, but more
broadly for women’s rights. Many of her radical views, including a call
to liberalize divorce laws and her acceptance of interracial marriage,
ultimately caused fissures in the women’s movement. But Stanton truly
raised the ire of conservatives when she criticized Christianity. She
made the mistake, it appears, of letting her private views influence her
public discourse. In 1880, she summed up her view of Christianity in a
letter to her son: ‘‘How anyone in view of the protracted sufferings of
the race,’’ she penned, ‘‘can invest the laws of the universe with a tender
loving fatherly intelligence, watching, guiding and protecting humanity, is
to me amazing.’’30 Like the other historical figures, Stanton retained some
loose sense of faith, but rejected organized religions altogether.
In 1895 Stanton published the Women’s Bible, a text that amounted,
according to one historian, to a ‘‘sustained ideological assault on reli-
gious orthodoxy.’’31 Stanton had already earned a grand measure of
hostility by supporting resolutions before suffrage organizations con-
demning all religions, but by focusing her gaze on the structural sex-
ism of Christianity, she found herself marginalized from the movement
she helped found. Such utterances as ‘‘[T]he Bible and the Church have
been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipa-
tion’’ alienated Christian suffragettes.32 As the women’s movement
gathered steam at the beginning of the twentieth century, the next gen-
eration of suffragettes distanced themselves from Stanton. Christian
and pious, these women argued that their presence would bring moral-
ity to politics. They cared little for full equality and even less for irreli-
gious criticism. The result of this shift to the new generation was the
virtual disappearance of Stanton from the pantheon of women’s rights.
That the only consequence of Stanton’s public lambasting of Christi-
anity was marginalization rather than demonization speaks to the insur-
gent trend of American freethinking in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Figures like Mark Twain, William James, and Stanton’s compa-
triot Susan B. Anthony all questioned the existence of a Christian god
to some degree and suffered little public scorn. But what had changed?
Because of a series of scientific discoveries, a generation of post-Civil
War freethinkers and unbelievers joined the public discourse on reli-
gious subjects. Pointedly, after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Spe-
cies (1859) all things in nature that had once only been explainable
through the model of a divine hand now fell within a the realm of sci-
ence. Science intruded into a space previously reserved for the creator.
Although this somewhat complicated the Deist (or later transcendental-
ist) notions of divine nature, it directly contradicted the static world of
the Bible. Before the popular release of Origin of a Species, the musing of
the educated elite as to the process of human development was rarely a
concern of the general public. Darwin, however, wrote lucidly enough
for a general audience to comprehend his theory, thus ensuring its
popularity, dissemination, and even tacit acceptance. The country, it
appeared, was moving toward a tentative embrace of freethought.
In American history, the first popular anti-Christian figure arrived
in the form of a Civil War veteran and Midwestern lawyer with a flair
for public speaking. Robert Ingersoll was the son of a Presbyterian
preacher who honed his nontheism by reading the works of Voltaire

and Paine and reliving the long hours spent sitting through his father’s
monotonous Sunday sermons.33 By adulthood, Ingersoll had become
one of Illinois’ leading Republican figures and one of the most sought
after public speakers. His list of speeches reveals varied interests from
Shakespeare to farming to currency debates, but he is best remembered
for his talks on agnosticism—earning him the title of ‘‘the Pagan
Prophet.’’ Ingersoll referred to himself as an agnostic, then a recent
term, coined in 1869.34 He profitably toured the country gently mock-
ing the Bible and proclaiming the absurdity of faith and doing so to
venues packed with curious middle-class Americans. Ingersoll’s orator-
ical skills kept his audience in their seats for hours, and his message
compelled the listening public towards greater skepticism. In one lec-
ture, ‘‘On Gods,’’ Ingersoll ridiculed the politically sanctified marriage
between religion and nationalism:
Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his cre-
ators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and was inevitably
found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic,
and detested all nations but his own. All of these gods demanded praise,
flattery and worship. Most of them were pleased with sacrifice, and the
smell of innocent blood has ever been considered the divine perfume.35
Ingersoll’s work, however, cannot be reduced to the insightful cynicism

of Ambrose Bierce or ‘‘Scopes era’’ H. L Mencken. Like Paine and
Jefferson, Ingersoll never suggested an empty deicide, but a rational
replacement of a tradition of superstition with what we now commonly
call secular humanism. Ingersoll provoked the religious, but did so in
the advancement of human liberty.36 He believed that America was
progressively moving away from the faith based on ignorance and fear,
toward a rational understanding of the world based on the scientific
method. He saw an America where those who occupied the church
pews held a greater understanding of the world than those at the pul-
pit. ‘‘The idea is abroad,’’ he wrote, ‘‘that they who know the most of
nature believe the least about theology. . . . The pulpit is losing because
the people are growing.’’37
The growth of the people is evident in the diverse voices of ag-
nosticism within this window of freethinking. From Ingersoll’s late
nineteenth-century lectures, to the early twentieth-century calls for
human rights in place of the rigid authority with a religious cover, pub-
lic figures boldly subverted tradition. In the African American commu-
nity, W. E. B. DuBois eschewed the spiritualism of the era’s major black
churches and studied religion as a sociological pursuit. Looking to its
transformative power rather than its spiritual mandate, DuBois was the
perpetual outsider within the walls of the church—more ethnographer
than participant. Arguably the most important intellectual figure in

African American history, DuBois saw black religion as an important
element in the quest for civil rights. In his personal life, however, he
had jettisoned his belief in its spiritual power and occupied himself
with its organizational potential. In one instance he clinically described
a ‘‘Southern Negro revival’’ replete with the holy spirit passing over his
vessel and entering the woman next to him. While watching a preacher
who ‘‘swayed and quivered,’’ a ‘‘gaunt-cheeked brown woman beside
me suddenly leaped straight into the air and shrieked like a lost soul . . .
a scene of human passion such as I had never conceived before.’’38 Like
many, DuBois had been educated out of his religion during his time at
Harvard and the University of Berlin. By the end of his days he openly
labeled religion as oppressive and Christianity as creating ‘‘moral disas-
ter’’ through the perpetuation of ‘‘fairy tales.’’39
Jewish immigrant and devout anarchist Emma Goldman also proves
that there was an audience for the message of unbelief in an era of Vic-
torian piety. Denouncing religion and advocating free love, Goldman
remained a popular lecturer from the economic Panic of 1893 to her
deportation to Russia in 1918. Far from being universally shunned, in
1910 she spoke 120 times, in thirty-seven cities to 25,000 listeners.40
Unlike the gently prodding Ingersoll or the scholarly DuBois, Goldman
was a fierce revolutionary who rarely minced words. Like both Inger-
soll and DuBois, she viewed all religions as most often the tool of the
powerful. The distribution of that power, she believed, would only be
possible after the dismantling of the religious order. ‘‘Atheism,’’ she
said in 1916, ‘‘in its negation of the gods is at the same time the strong-
est affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, pur-
pose, and beauty.’’41 She also believed, again like Ingersoll, that the
march of science would eventually crush superstition under the weight
of its rational methods. God as a concept, she claimed, ‘‘or whatever
term the essence of Theism may have found expression, has become
more indefinite and obscure in the course of time and progress.’’42
Thus, the human mind would soon outgrow its need for fairy tales.
Scholars of American atheism, secularism, and agnosticism charac-
terize this era as the calm before the storm of government oppression
(i.e., Comstock law and Palmer raids). Though true, the battle over the-
ology originated not in the statehouse, but at the very pulpits that
Ingersoll saw crumbling. There is a sociotheological explanation as to
why Stanton, DuBois, Ingersoll, and Goldman could speak and write
with relative impunity in years between Reconstruction and World
War I. This is also the period of time that historians of American reli-
gion call ‘‘the Great Reversal.’’ Around the turn of the century, scholars
argue, American evangelicals left the public sphere of worldly politics
and focused instead on personal salvation. Much of this shift was the
consequence of popular but overtly liberal ‘‘Social Gospel’’ theology
(Christian do-gooders) and the desire of conservative Christians to dis-

tance themselves from their progressive brethren. The relative silence
by the historically vocal revivalists, allowed for only a temporary flow-
ering of freethought.
TWENTIETH CENTURY
In a variety of public venues, atheists, agnostics, and secularists
made great gains in the twentieth century. In court, cases for the strict
separation of church and state and against the reciting of Bible verses
in public schools opened the door for greater atheistic expression. The
century also witnessed the emergence of atheist organizations such as
the American Atheist Association founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair
in 1963. After launching the lawsuit that ended the practice of Christian
prayer in public schools, O’Hair established a cable television program
and subsequently saw her organization’s mailing list reach 50,000.43
Yet the marginalization of unbelievers continued throughout the cen-
tury, and at some points the fight against the ‘‘enemies of God’’ reached
a near hysterical pitch. The story of atheism, secularism, and agnosti-
cism in the last century is less about the personas of freethinkers and
more the tidal wave of religious intolerance and government complicity.
The sleeping giant of fundamentalism, being somewhat inactive during
the first two decades, stirred during the Scopes trail, awakened with the
Cold War, and became fully animated with the rise of the New Right.
During the Great Reversal (1900–1930), American religion dramati-
cally changed. Social reformers such as Jane Addams still applied the
social gospel to modern problems, but concurrently another—and even-
tually stronger—movement took shape in southern tent revivals and
northern Bible colleges. Antimodern fundamentalism made its way from
the academic realm and into northern congregations. Churches subse-
quently split along liberal versus conservative theological lines in most
major denominations. In many ways this new religious expression in the
North resembled white southern religiosity: an emphasis on personal
salvation, belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, and a distrust of modern-
ism. Melded together as a national religious bloc, the marriage of north-
ern fundamentalism and dominant southern revivalism served as a
potentially powerful counterbalance to the trend towards unbelief.44
The fundamentalist-inspired backlash of the 1920s presaged the role
of the New Right in the latter part of the twentieth century. Most point-
edly, proponents of traditionalism boldly attacked science—the very
thing that Ingersoll and Goldman believed would lift humans out of the
dark ages of superstition. The Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, gave
Americans the first real inkling of what to come. Waking from their
slumber, fundamentalists reentered the political realm in an effort to
block the teaching of evolution in public schools. High school teacher
John Scopes defied the state of Tennessee by knowingly teaching a

theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in
the Bible . . . [or] that man has descended from a lower order of ani-
mals.’’45 The American Civil Liberties Union supplied vocal agnostic
Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes, while the eminent and deeply reli-
gious William Jennings Bryan grabbed the chance to prosecute. At the
time, Darrow was the most famous agnostic in the United States. Bryan,
the champion of the underclass, was a perennial Democratic presiden-
tial candidate and served in Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet. In the minds of
participants and spectators, the trail served as a venue for a national
referendum on science, religion, and the place of God in public life. It
pitted the educated against the uneducated and believers against skep-
tics, or, as H. L. Mencken said of the trial, ‘‘The so-called religious
organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution
are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man
against his betters.’’46 Perhaps the most famous moment of the trial
came when Darrow called Bryan to the witness stand as an expert on
the Bible. In his line of questioning, Darrow exposed Bryan as biblically
literate but pedantic and entirely ignorant to the world of scientific
thought. In the process he also revealed the inherent absurdity of bibli-
cal inerrancy and divine creation.
At the time, liberals—particularly in the North—viewed the trial as the
last gasp of a backwardly religious rural proletariat. The yokels had been
humiliated, defeated, and dismissed. H. L. Mencken, however, warned
the learned that ‘‘Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn back-
waters of the land’’ waiting to attack civilization like Huns at the gates.47
Some prematurely pronounced the victory of reason over superstition,
only to see the latter gain strength as the century wore on. The conse-
quences of the Scopes trial have profoundly impacted the American
assessment and acceptance of atheism. Coming at the end of freethought’s
‘‘golden age,’’ the seeming defeat of fundamentalists was actually a strate-
gic victory for the forces of conservative religion. Quiet but for a moment,
fundamentalists reorganized through a network of religious schools, Bible
colleges, youth groups, radio programs, and highly mobile ministers.
Unwilling to jump into the national spotlight over science, by the 1950s
these entities coalesced around anticommunist crusades.
Many of the organizations born of antievolution rematerialized dur-
ing the Cold War. Like science in the 1920s, the Godless communism
of the 1950s threatened to undermine the traditional foundations of
American culture. The United States had officially battled communism
from the end of World War I, and it was this initial push that sent
Emma Goldman to the Soviet Union. The stakes grew higher with the
beginning of the atomic age. On August 29, 1949, the Soviets detonated
an atomic bomb at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and dashed the hopes
of an open dialogue for American atheists. McCarthyism and the new
Red Scare crept into every facet of American life and solidly linked
communism and atheism in the American mind. Communism, it was
argued, extolled collectivism and atheism as the logical objective of all
modern societies. The Soviet Union for its part, would invade all free
countries by force or subterfuge in order to crush capitalism, freedom,
and religion. Thus, those adhering to liberal and secular principles was
deemed suspect. In 1954 the government inserted ‘‘under God’’ into
the flag salute (originally written by a nineteenth Christian socialist)
and in 1957 placed ‘‘In God We Trust’’ on American paper currency.
In an age of paranoia, an allegiance to the American Christian God
became a patriotic litmus test.
Evangelical minister Billy Graham in particular pitted American
Christian nationalism against foreign atheistic communism. Arguably
the most influential American clergyman of the twentieth century,
Graham cut his teeth on anticommunism. In 1951 Graham argued for a
more militant approach towards godless communists. A 1962 advertise-
ment for an essay called ‘‘Billy Graham Speaks’’ reads:
A controversial movement is picking up steam. If it succeeds the Bible

will be removed from courtrooms. Public-school prayers will be banned.
And IN GOD WE TRUST will be taken off our coins. Billy Graham
speaks out against this trend—and tells why he thinks atheists play into
Communist hands.48
Other ministers propagated postmillennial notion of the battle

between communism and America as the precursor to ‘‘end times.’’
Viewing the world through the lens of Revelation, a number of minis-
ters declared Russia the ‘‘antichrist,’’ and placed non-Christians under
the spell of evil and the light of suspicion.49
The ebb and flow of American history is undeniable. After the
humiliation of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater’s trouncing in
1964, America witnessed a creative explosion in the arts, an explosive
civil rights movement, and loosening of the authoritarian structures
crafted during the early Cold War. But as the hippies walked through
Golden Gate Park and entertainers pushed the boundaries of obscenity
laws in metropolitan nightclubs, a new movement emerged from the
ashes of McCarthyism and in the suburbs of the Sunbelt. White subur-
banites embraced antistatism, feared for America’s moral integrity, and
flocked to what would later be labeled ‘‘mega-churches.’’ The New Right
lifted arch-conservatives to the White House and did so with the support
of a younger generation of fundamentalists. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson,
and James Dobson urged religious Americans to battle the agents of sec-
ularism in the statehouse, in the streets, and in public memory.
In 1980, the New Right helped place one of their own—Ronald
Reagan—into the White House. Taking his words about teaching the
Pilgrims to students of American history, the grassroots Right took it

upon themselves to scrutinize public school textbooks and purge American
history ‘‘of all materials that they consider antifamily, anti-American and
anti-God.’’ The most successful textbook reviewers, Texas’s Mel and
Norman Gabler stopped major textbook publishers from selling objection-
able history books to some of the nation’s largest school districts. According
to the New York Times, ‘‘The trouble with most of the textbooks, the Gablers
contend, is that they are written from the perspective of people who do not
believe in God or an absolute value system. This perspective, they say, is a
religion called secular humanism, which permeates every aspect of contem-
porary society and teaches youngsters to lie, cheat and steal.’’50 By the
1990s, this ilk of social activism anchored the New Right’s ‘‘culture war’’
battle plan. Atheists, agnostics, and secularists were the first targets for
engagement.
In the 2008 North Carolina senate race, incumbent Elizabeth Dole
accused her Democratic opponent Kay Hagen of being an atheist. This
last ditch effort, however, failed to persuade voters to abandon
Hagen, the contest’s eventual winner. Like the residents in the union’s
other states, North Carolinians simply could not conceive of a nonreli-
gious public figure and scoffed at the allegation. Hagen quickly
responded with a proclamation of faith and a libel suit. She then
charged Dole of willfully breaking the ninth commandment (thou
shall not bear false witness). Few people considered the fact that
unbelief is not a crime, and despite what former presidents have
uttered, atheism is not implicitly unpatriotic. In eighteenth-century
New England, women confessed to cavorting with the devil in order
to avoid execution on charges of witchcraft; in twentieth-century
America, charges and countercharges of ‘‘communist’’ destroyed
careers and ruined lives. With the rise of the Christian Right in the
post-Cold War world, the accusation of atheism holds the same power
as these earlier scare tactics in its ability to send public figures scram-
bling for religious cover. Despite a shared past filled with the good
words and deeds of nonbelievers, Americans cling to a myth of unim-
peachable religiously from the first colony to the ‘‘end times.’’ To
question the veracity of this myth is tantamount to resigning from
public life. Those who do not heed this advice, such as Thomas Mor-
ton, Thomas Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Robert Ingersoll, find
themselves in the dustbin of history.
NOTES
1. James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 2–4.
2. Michael R. Haines and Richard Hall Steckel, A Population History of North
America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 23–24.
3. Richard Hakluyt, Discourse on Western Planting (1584), quoted in Avihu

Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to
America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 97.
4. Winthrop D. Jordon, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the
Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 44–98.
5. William Hubbard, General History of New England from Discovery to
MDCLXXX, 2nd ed. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1848), 26.
6. John Canup, Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity
in Colonial New England (Middletown: Wesleyan Press, 1990), 79–85.
7. John Winthrop, ‘‘Reasons to be considered for justifying the undertakers
of the intended Plantation in New England, and for encouraging such whose
hearts God shall move to join with them in it,’’ reprinted in Alan Heimert and
Andrew Delbanco, The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985), 73.
8. William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston: Massachusetts
Historical Society, 1856). Also see: William Heath, ‘‘Thomas Morton: Form
Merry Old England to New England,’’ Journal of American Studies 41 (April,
2007): 135–68.
9. Elizabeth Pleck, ‘‘Making the Domestic Occasion: The History of Thanks-
giving in the United States,’’ Journal of Social History 32 (Summer 1999): 773–789.
10. Edmund S. Morgan, ‘‘John Winthrop’s ‘Modell of Christian Charity’ in a
Wider Context,’’ Huntington Library Quarterly 2 (Spring 1987): 145–151.
11. Ronald Reagan, ‘‘Farewell Address,’’ January 11, 1989. http://www.
ronaldreagan.com/sp_21.html.
12. Jack P. Green, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern
British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1988), 11.
13. Reagan, ‘‘Farewell Address.’’
14. David Barton, America’s Godly Heritage (Aledo Texas: Wallbuilder Press,
1993).
15. Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June 16, 1822.
16. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Lilly and Wait,
1832), 167–168.
17. ———, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (New York: N. D. Thomas
Publishing Co., 1902), 20.
18. C. P. Farrell, ed., The Works of Robert Ingersoll, Dresden Edition, Volume
III (New York: Dresden Publishing, 1901), 389.
19. George Washington to Thomas Paine, September 10, 1783; quoted in
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (London: Watts & Company, 1906), 119.
20. Theodore Roosevelt, Gouverneur Morris (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1888), 289.
21. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, ‘‘Lest We Forget: A Tribute To Thomas Paine,’’ The
Story of Thomas Paine and the Nation’s Debt to His Memory (New York: Thomas
Paine National Historical Association, 1914).
22. Quoted in Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
(New York: Owl Books, 2004), 60.
23. See Donald G. Mathews, ‘‘The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing
Process, 1780–1830: An Hypothesis,’’ American Quarterly, 21 (Spring 1969), 23–43.
24. Quoted in Peter M. Rinaldo, Athesits, Agnostics, and Deists in America:

A Brief History (New York: DorPete Press, 2000), 42–43.
25. See Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan
Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
26. Carol Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 129–163; Mary P. Ryan,
Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
27. Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our
Most Admired President (New York: Howard Books, 2008).
28. Jacoby, Freethinkers, 104–124.
29. Quoted in John E. Remsberg, Tom Paine: The Apostle of Liberty (New York:
The Truth Seeker Co., 1917), 110–112.
30. Quoted in Turner, Without God Without Creed, 207.
31. Maureen Fitzgerald, ‘‘The Religious Is Personal Is Political,’’ forward to
the 1993 Edition of The Women’s Bible, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s
Bible (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), viii.
32. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought Magazine (September, 1896).
33. Ingersoll fought at the battle of Shiloh and was later captured by future
Ku Klux Klan founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
34. Rinaldo, Athesits, Agnostics, and Deists in America, 80–94.
35. C. P. Farrell ed., The Works of Robert Ingersoll, Dresden Edition, Volume I,
(New York: Dresden Publishing, 1901), 7.
36. Jacoby, Freethinkers, 173.
37. C. P. Farrell ed., The Works of Robert Ingersoll, Dresden Edition, Volume
VI, (New York: Dresden Publishing, 1901), 8.
38. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin Books, 1989
[1903]): 154–155.
39. ———, The Autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing my
Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: International Publishers,
1968), 43.
40. Alix Kates Shulman, ed., Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches
by Emma Goldman (New York: Random House, 1972), 15.
41. Emma Goldman, ‘‘The Philosophy of Atheism,’’ in Red Emma Speaks, 202.
42. Ibid., 195.
43. Rinaldo, Athesits, Agnostics, and Deists in America, 133–134.
44. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006): 164–195.
45. Quoted in Arthur McCalla, The Creationist Debate: The Encounter Between
the Bible and the Historical Mind (New York: Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2006), 161.
46. The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925.
47. ———, July 18, 1925.
48. Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1962.
49. Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American
Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 157–166.
50. New York Times, July 14, 1981.
Chapter 9
Defining Religion and

Modifying Religious ‘‘Bodies:’’
Secularizing the Sacred and
Sacralizing the Secular
Jay Demerath III
Over the years, most of the real action in church–state matters has
involved members of the judiciary. Even those few academics who are
interested tend to be relegated to the sidelines and that is almost always
the case with those of us who profess disciplines other than the law
itself. Occasionally, however, opportunities arise for scholars in the aca-
demic hinterland to play a role in the judicial spotlight. One such role
involves that of an expert witness in a court proceeding. Here I want to
report on my first and only experience in this capacity. After describing
the case in question, I shall share my written testimony and its re-
sponse, describe the results of the case, and then discuss further the
major issues involved in developing a definition of religion that bears
up under both judicial and social scientific scrutiny and does not veer
too far toward either secularizing the sacred or sacralizing the secular.
But first consider the following self-description drawn from a branch
of the religious organization on which I was asked to pass judgment:
[This church] is a non-denominational congregation that teaches owner-

ship over our own . . . [selves]. The Church’s purpose is . . . to harmo-
niously return to . . . spiritual roots that have been forgotten. We are not
here to offer spirituality to you as much as we are here because of the
spirituality that is already in all of us. . . . [This] is an inter-faith church
whose members practice an assortment of ancient . . . rites which we

believe are essential to our spirituality. . . . It is our belief that by . . .
engaging in rituals . . . we strengthen the bond between mind, body, and
soul, and ensure that we live as spiritually complete and healthy individ-
uals. . . . [The Church] is the spiritual hub in which modified individuals
around the world will find strength, and procure the respect from society
as equal, intelligent, feeling human beings. . . . [and] no longer be dis-
missed as a minority in our world. . . . This is our birthright.
Does anything seem amiss? I suspect not. But after briefly describing
the case, I shall fill in the ellipses and ask again.
The case involved a young woman, Kimberly Cloutier, who began
working in September 1997, for a Costco retail outlet, where her duties
ranged from food handling in the deli to ‘‘front-end’’ duties as a cash-
ier. In March 2001, she was informed of the company’s new dress code,
which banned employees from displaying any form of facial adornment
such as tattoos, scarification, piercings, or jewelry other than earrings.
Although her clothing covered several hours of bodily tattoos (hours
are the preferred measure of quantity because tattoos are often covered
over), Ms. Cloutier’s one offending adornment was a small, thin gold
ring through a pierced eyebrow. Once personally confronted with the
store’s new policy, she declined to remove the ring but volunteered to
cover it with a Band-Aid. The store declared this unacceptable and soon
acted to terminate her employment. Ms. Cloutier indicated for the first
time that this would violate her freedom of religion. When the store
manager asked what religion that might be, she replied that she was a
member of the Church of Body Modification (CBM).
At this point in my oral accounts of the case, a pause for laughter is
required. (Even during the case’s initial court hearing, the judge made
light of the CBM with joking references to the body in both senses of
the term.) Once the guffaws subside, it is necessary to explain that such
an organization is both very real and quite serious, though one of its
many Web sites does refer to it as the ‘‘blingdom of God.’’ Here it is
worth reconsidering the CBM’s earlier self-description with the missing
material replaced:
The Church of Body Modification is a non-denominational congregation

that teaches ownership over our own bodies. The Church’s purpose is
for our modified bodies to harmoniously return to their spiritual roots
that have been forgotten. We are not here to offer spirituality to you as
much as we are here because of the spirituality that is already in all of
us; often expressed through what we do to our own bodies . . . The
Church of Body Modification is an inter-faith church whose members
practice an assortment of ancient body modification rites which we
believe are essential to our spirituality. . . . It is our belief that by practic-
ing body modification and by engaging in rituals of body manipulation
Defining Religion and Modifying Religious ‘‘Bodies’’ 253
we strengthen the bond between mind, body, and soul, and ensure that
we live as spiritually complete and healthy individuals. . . . The Church
of Body Modification is the spiritual hub in which modified individuals
around the world will find strength, and procure the respect from society
as equal, intelligent, feeling human beings, modified individuals will
no longer be dismissed as a minority in our world. . . . This is our
birthright.
Not long after the events described above I received a call from
Michael Shea, an attorney who had agreed to represent the young
woman and take her case to U.S. District Court following affirmation
by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on May 8, 2002.
He asked me to serve as an expert witness in support of the Church of
Body Modification’s status as a constitutionally legitimate ‘‘religion.’’
As the affidavit attests, I agreed to serve, but only after some explora-
tion of the matter (and after a younger brother who is the head of liti-
gation for a major law firm in a large Midwestern city warned that
questions asked of me were not invitations for fifty-minute lectures). In
any case, my first obligation as a witness was to prepare an ‘‘Expert
Witness Report’’ (see Appendix 1) to alert the judge and opposing
counsel to my bona fides and my position on the issues in question.
Frankly, I was proud of this first dip into legal waters, and I confess
that I was expecting compliments. Certainly I was not prepared for the
onslaught that ensued. Much to my surprise, I had violated a basic rule
of the witness role by presuming to instruct the court on matters of
law rather than remaining within the narrow confines of my nonlegal
expertise.
The judge was so unhappy that he leaked word to court bystanders
and the press that I was likely to be disqualified. Opposing counsel
described me as ‘‘an affront to the Court,’’ and formally moved ‘‘to
strike’’ me as a witness. However, the plaintiff’s attorney was able to per-
suade the judge to consider a second memo from me in response to his
concerns and those of opposing counsel. Chastened, I went back to work
and produced Affidavit of N. J. Demerath III in Response to COSTCO’s
Motion to Strike Plaintiff’s Expert Witness Designation and as Supplemental
Report (see Appendix 2).
For whatever reason, the judge relented. In the aggressive language
of the court, I narrowly avoided being ‘‘struck,’’ and now I was to be
‘‘deposed.’’ On September 22, 2003, Lynn A. Kappelman, a lawyer
from the opposing law firm, made the two-hour drive from Boston to
examine, test, and challenge me as a witness with the plaintiff’s attor-
ney, Michael Shea, also present in a conference room that he provided.
Once I was sworn in, the deposition took more than three hours.
Attorney Kappelman apparently did her job well; she took the offensive
from the start and was alternately combative and dismissive throughout.
She began by tempting me to reclaim the kind of legal expertise that

had landed me in trouble earlier; later she challenged my written state-
ment that behavior could be deemed ‘‘religious’’ even if not formally
required by a religious body, though she later backed down when
‘‘my’’ lawyer showed her a copy of the pertinent 1997 Commonwealth
of Massachusetts statute and volunteered to make a copy for her. She
questioned my scholarly credentials and sought rifts within the consen-
sus I claimed among other social scientists. When she asked about my
own religion, I suspect I told her more than she really wanted to know
about the considerable diversity within my extended family.
After deriding my investigation of the Church of Body Modification,
Attorney Kappelman spent the lion’s share of the deposition testing
how far I was willing to go in extending the mantel of ‘‘religion’’ to a
range of hypothetical groups and behaviors: ‘‘What about a Church of
Naked Persons’’ or ‘‘a Church of People in Black Clothes?’’ ‘‘What if
the body modification involved [various grotesque extremes of mutila-
tion, such as suspending oneself by transdermal or subcutaneously
implanted hooks and then pulling]?’’ I repeatedly answered yes on the
condition that my three-pronged criteria were satisfied. Apparently
frustrated, she rose from her seat at two junctures and strode dramati-
cally towards the door while declaring, ‘‘Alright! This witness is being
uncooperative and I am going to call the judge.’’ In each instance, she
returned to her chair after plaintiff’s attorney Shea came to my defense
and charged her with misleading and badgering his witness.
Following the deposition, I returned home to await the trial, but as
so often happens in legal dramas, the trial never came. Opposing coun-
sel asked the judge for a Summary Judgment to dismiss the case, and
on March 4, 2004, the judge allowed it. However, it was allowed not on
grounds that the Church of Body Modification had no religious stand-
ing or that Ms. Cloutier’s religious convictions were not sincere. The
judge held that at least a prima facie case had been made on both these
problematic matters. He then allowed counsel’s motion for reasons
stemming from conventional employment law. After considerable to-ing
and fro-ing and a delay of some three weeks after termination, Costco
had informed Ms. Cloutier that she could cover her eyebrow ring with
either a Band-Aid or a clear plastic retainer and return to work. Even
though she refused the concession, the Judge deemed it a ‘‘reasonable
accommodation.’’
Not yet finished, the plaintiff’s attorney Shea appealed the District
Court decision to the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. On December
1, 2004, the Court affirmed the summary judgment requested by the
Costco counsel, but not on the same grounds as the District Court
judge. Although the Court of Appeals made an even stronger point of
fully accepting the religious claims in the case, it argued that ‘‘reasona-
ble accommodation’’ was unnecessary because the plaintiff’s request
for dispensation—however well grounded—would constitute an

‘‘undue hardship’’ on Costco, and in these matters employer hardships
trump employee privileges, although both seem to be more preferable
grounds for judicial decisions than religion with all of its ambiguity.
Finally, this Appellate Court’s decision was referred to the U.S.
Supreme Court, where it was denied certiorari, hence affirmed.
Costco v. Cloutier is the kind of judicial acorn from which mighty oaks
may grow—or not. Even though the case proved infecund here, it does
introduce a range of issues that have long plagued judicial treatments of
American religion. While the case is now moot and it is likely that the
Church of Body Modification’s religious status and Ms. Cloutier’s reli-
gious claims would have been accepted even without my inexpert testi-
mony, in the final analysis, it also seems clear that at neither the U.S.
District nor Appellate levels was there any inclination to join a religious
fight. This is especially so when the very definition of religion continues
to be left to de facto diffusion and confusion as opposed to de jure specific-
ity. In what follows, I discuss some of the implications and alternatives.
ESCAPING THE DEFINITIONAL QUANDARY

The United States is hardly the only country in which judicial or leg-
islative definitions of religion have been scarce and elusive. After
reviewing international law on the topic, Jeremy Gunn (2003) character-
izes the ‘‘quest for a legal definition of ‘religion’ ’’ as ‘‘understandable,
but misguided.’’ While I am more sanguine, I am certainly not oblivi-
ous to the problems, especially as revealed in a brief history of the
American situation (Wilson 1987; Adams and Emmerich 1990).
For its first 175 years, the religion clauses of the U.S. First Amendment
had only moderate impact. For one thing, the meaning of its ‘‘establish-
ment clause’’ (‘‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion’’) now appears to have had a very different original meaning
as essentially assurance to the eight remaining original states with estab-
lished religions of their own that the new federal government would not
interfere (Stepan 2000). Indeed, it was not until 1940 that the Bill of
Rights applied to the states. And if religion sometimes seemed to require
a definition, as it did in Davis v. Beason in 1890, the result came peril-
ously close to Mr. Thwackum’s oft-quoted formulation in Henry Field-
ing’s (1749) English novel, Tom Jones: ‘‘When I mention Religion, I mean
the Christian Religion, and not only the Christian Religion but the Prot-
estant Religion; and not only the Protestant Religion, but the Church of
England.’’ More than two hundred years later, U.S. jurists still took it for
granted that at least a belief in the supernatural was essential.
As in so many other facets of American life, change came in a rush
in the 1960s. As described briefly in my Witness Report, U.S. v. Seeger
(1965) grabbed the definitional issue by its neck and shook hard.
Pressured during the very unpopular Vietnam War by candidates for

conscientious objector status ‘‘without a belief in God, except in the
remotest sense’’ and convinced that the Establishment clause forbids
granting authority to established religions or their beliefs, the Seeger
court noted that ‘‘while the ‘truth’ of a belief is not open to question,
there remains the significant question whether it is ‘truly held.’ ’’ It
held that a satisfactory equivalent to religious belief was ‘‘sincerely
held’’ moral convictions that occupied ‘‘a parallel place’’ in the life of
the holder that is occupied by God in the life of the religious believer.
The boundaries of such a definition were at best uncertain, but accord-
ing to Claborn (2007, 37), ‘‘That diversity would find its limit in 1968,
in U.S. v. Kuch as the Neo-American Church, whose church key is a
bottle opener and whose motto is ‘Victory Over Horseshit,’ was denied
the same tax immunities as other religious traditions.’’
The Seeger decision was upheld by U.S. v. Welsh (1970), and ‘‘sin-
cerely held beliefs’’ began to gain influence as an alternative criterion,
albeit slowly and often implicitly. The federal courts have been loathe
to confront or grapple with the definition or even cite it. This is also
true of the two most important legislative actions concerning religion
over the past twenty years. After Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S.
872 (1990) lifted the burden on government to justify limits placed on
the free exercise of religion by presumably religiously neutral laws, a
broad religious movement succeeded in generating massive congres-
sional support for quick passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act (RFRA) in 1993. And yet the act basically deferred the question as
what ‘‘religion’’ or ‘‘religious exercise’’ might entail: ‘‘the term ‘exercise
of religion’ means the exercise of religion under the First Amendment
to the Constitution.’’ Nor was the matter much amplified in the bill
that followed after RFRA had been struck down by the Supreme Court
for exceeding Congressional powers relative to the Court. However,
the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 did
take at least a small leaf from the Seeger book by specifying that, ‘‘The
term ‘religious exercise’ includes any exercise of religion, whether or
not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.’’
Clearly the Seeger departure had not gone unnoticed. For example, as
noted in my earlier expert witness report, at least a version of it became
a matter of Massachusetts state law in 1997, though largely for political
reasons. When two Catholic women employees of a greyhound racing
track refused to work on Christmas Day despite earlier notice that this
was the track’s busiest day of the year and were therefore fired, the
largely Catholic state legislature sought to rescue them and elude the
establishment clause by giving each individual the ‘‘religious holiday’’
of their choice and their definition. More recently Hammond et al.
(2004) have even proclaimed the advantages of replacing the freedom
of religion altogether with freedom of conscience.
The definitional changes experienced over the past forty years have
been major. But they also leave major questions in their wake. There is
no doubt that constraints on free exercise have been substantially loos-
ened, and this can only be a gain for adherents of movements such as
the Church of Body Modification. But beyond my allegiance as an
expert witness, I have a gnawing sense of solutions begetting problems.
Accordingly, I want to conclude by considering three potential problem
areas involving first, a looming reassessment of the relationship
between establishment and free exercise clauses; second, a needed shift
from a psychological to a more sociological conception of the sacred;
and third, the implications of moving not only from ‘‘religion’’ to the
‘‘sacred’’ but ultimately from the sacred to the ‘‘secular.’’
Establishment vs. Free Exercise Redux

Not long ago an often-mentioned but never tapped candidate for the
U.S. Supreme Court was asked after concluding his after-dinner
remarks before a small faculty gathering what would happen if mem-
bers of his faith achieved sufficient power in Congress and the Execu-
tive Branch to make their faith the nation’s official religion. ‘‘Well, this
is a democracy, and in a democracy majority rules.’’ Rolling eyes were
almost as audible as the coughing. Wasn’t the judiciary the one branch
of government intended to serve the Constitution and protect minor-
ities against such majorities? And even if a majority is entitled to exer-
cise its religious freedom politically, doesn’t the (anti) establishment
clause set limits?
Although the United States is known worldwide for its ‘‘separation
of church and state,’’ the First Amendment’s initial establishment clause
remains little known and little duplicated around the globe even though
its second clause concerning religious free exercise is a constitutional
staple even among countries who honor it more as a rhetorical nod than
a matter of policy (Demerath 2001; Krislov 1985). Even in the United
States, it is the second clause that dominates the amendment in the
public’s mind. Nor is this surprising, because there has always been a
latent conflict between the two clauses (Drackman 1991). When taking
on a religious case, the first decision a lawyer must often make is
whether to treat it as an establishment issue or a free exercise matter.
And as the example at hand suggests, the free exercise of religion may
easily challenge establishment constraints, just as these same constraints
have been portrayed as violations of religious freedom.
The latent conflict is now becoming manifest. We have yet to reach
the point where a constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of reli-
gion is itself unconstitutional as a violation of the establishment clause
because of the unique standing it gives religion in comparison with
other institutions. But there may come a time when simply treating
religion as a special case is ipso facto a constitutional violation. As the

definitional quandary itself suggests, concerns about conferring estab-
lishment legitimacy and official entanglement to any form of existing
religion—or to religion generally—requires a definition of religion that
is neither proreligious nor antireligious but essentially a-religious—as
Gunn (2003) puts it, more ‘‘polythetic’’ than ‘‘essentialist,’’ and in more
sociological terms, more ‘‘functional’’ than ‘‘substantive,’’ i.e., more a
matter of what is done than what does it.
Psychological vs. Sociological Models

The currently reigning (if still implicit) definition of ‘‘religion’’ traces
back to U.S. v. Seeger (1965) and casts the widest possible net by leaving
the choice of religion, if any, up to the ‘‘sincerely held beliefs’’ of an
individual. It basically endorses a psychological conception of religion,
one that is consistent with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s
(1926) dictum that ‘‘religion is what the individual does with his own
solitariness.’’ In fact, it has applied particularly to prison inmates,
including those experiencing solitary confinement, hence the title of the
aforementioned 1997 U.S. statute: Religious Land Use and Institutional-
ized Persons Act. In recent decades, judges at every level have been
plagued by inmate petitions claiming religious justifications for every-
thing from culinary preferences to conjugal sex.
As important as individual sensibilities are to religion, it is also
important to note that these occur in social contexts. The psychology
and sociology of religion are complementary rather than mutually
exclusive. This is the reason why as a witness I offered and defended
not a simple one-dimensional conception of religion, but rather a three-
pronged model involving ‘‘any shared sense of sacred meaning that is
ritually enacted and communally reinforced through a like-minded
group or organization.’’ The model includes the current standard of a
‘‘sincerely held . . . belief,’’ though it substitutes ‘‘sacred’’ for ‘‘reli-
gious’’ belief and it specifies that the belief must be shared with others
rather than concocted on one’s own. In addition, the model requires
that there be a ritual enactment of that belief that is presumably also
shared and that it adds the critical communal dimension involving a
‘‘like-minded group or organization.’’ However, this need not include
formal membership; just a sense of affiliational identity will suffice.
After all, the most common form of religion itself is what has been
called ‘‘cultural religion’’ on the part of people who don’t believe the
doctrine or practice most of the rituals of their faith but still feel a
kinship to it as the legacy of their forbears. (Demerath 2001).
This is not the place to provide the scholarly development of such a
model, though my second affidavit (Appendix 2) to the court provides
some of the obligatory references, not including the last two lines of a
bit of personal rhyming: ‘‘Perhaps what is sacred—as well as our

hatred—has little to do with re-ligion; the real source of it all—including
our fall—may instead be our we-ligion.’’ But scholarship (and dog-
gerel) aside, the model also helps the judiciary avoid two major prob-
lems. On the one hand, the threefold model avoids crossing the
establishment line because it does not insist on the legitimacy or exem-
plar of conventional religion. On the other hand, it also avoids the
problem of individuals manufacturing their own beliefs opportunisti-
cally in response to their circumstances of the moment. The require-
ment of shared beliefs, collective rituals, and a communal attachment
not only gives the definition the critical social dimension it has recently
lacked but should cut down on the self-serving petitions that have
been so difficult to process because they often seem so arbitrary. And
yet this would fall short of obviating all problematic claims and deci-
sions. It should serve as a well-justified filter for the more egregious
cases, but it will hardly rule out the need to draw lines between the
serious, the visionary, the whimsical, and the outrageous.
Secularizing the Sacred and Sacralizing the Secular

It was the turn-of-the-20th-century French sociologist, Emile
Durkheim, who first suggested a difference not just between the sacred
and the secular, but between religion and the sacred, noting that the
former is only one form of the latter and that neither necessarily quali-
fies as the other. In 1912, he asked: ‘‘What basic difference is there
between Christians celebrating the principal dates of Christ’s life . . .
and a citizen’s meeting commemorating the advent of a new charter or
some other great event of national life? ’’ Durkheim went on to aver
that old forms of both religion and the sacred often lose their urgency
and are replaced by new forms: ‘‘In a word, the old gods are growing
old or already dead, and others are not yet born. . . . It is life itself and
not a dead past which can produce a living cult.’’ (Durkheim 1912,
429). Of course, Durkheim was aware that religion generally concerns
some form of transcendence (though not necessarily to the supernatu-
ral) and other forms of the sacred do not. But precisely because religion
is therefore a special case of the sacred given special constitutional
standing and boundaries, it must steer clear of receiving establishment
endorsement in a way that need not concern sacredness as a whole.
However, it seems unlikely that we can expect a change in the wording
of the First Amendment to ‘‘the free exercise of the sacred.’’
Over the past forty years American history has followed Durkheim’s
logic. Old forms of religion have been subject to continual change, and
many adherents have moved away from religion altogether, thus con-
firming the long standing post-Enlightenment theory of secularization.
But that theory predicted only part of the Durkheimian story and its
prophecy ultimately left people normatively depleted and gasping for

meaning. It made little room for what has been called ‘‘sacralization’’
(Demerath 2007) whereby people find new sacred commitments in sec-
ular spheres ranging from politics and civic causes to musical groups
and sports teams, to name but a few possibilities. Nor did seculariza-
tion theory make sufficient allowance for the return to some religions,
the intensification of other religions, and the development of new
religions—all other forms of sacralization.
As American history has gone, so has the history of the American
First Amendment where religion, the sacred, and the secular are con-
cerned. Beginning with a sense of religion that virtually ignored the
establishment clause, decisions since the 1960s have gradually come to
embrace the clause. They have not only shifted from a narrow concep-
tion of religion to a broad view of the sacred, but they have even made
more than ample room for the secular in sacred guise. In the process,
the free exercise of religion threatens to become a hard workout if courts
continue to honor the judicial theory and definitions now in vogue. But
of course, that is a big ‘‘if.’’ Theory and definitions are only one of many
influences affecting judicial decision-making (Claborn 2007).
CONCLUSION
This chapter began with the confessions of an inexperienced expert
witness in a case involving an employee who claimed a violation of her
freedom of religion because she was required to remove a facial adorn-
ment despite her involvement in the Church of Body Modification.
I agreed to testify that the CBM qualified as a religion despite its seem-
ing unconventionality. As it happened, both the church’s and the plain-
tiff’s religious status were accepted, though the defense was ultimately
granted summary judgment by the First Circuit Court of Appeals on
the grounds that the accommodation requested of the employer would
have constituted an ‘‘undue hardship.’’ A further appeal to the U.S.
Supreme Court was not heard.
In reflecting on the case and its implications, my conclusions as an
analyst differ somewhat from my position as a witness. In both roles, I
find that the CBM qualifies for free exercise. But as an analyst I have
reservations about the definitions that have guided the courts over the
past forty years. Although I certainly approve of the increasing respect
granted the First Amendment’s establishment clause, I have two reser-
vations about the extent to which the door has been opened to free
exercise: one, because the implicit psychological model of ‘‘sincerely
held belief’’ needs to be placed in social—and dare I say it, sociologi-
cal—context; the other because decisions may soon be reaching not
only beyond narrow religion to the broader category of the deserving
sacred but also beyond the genuinely sacred to the still broader but
much less deserving category of the secular. At the end of the day and
the end of this chapter, I should declare my grudging respect for the
courts’ apparent determination to leave definitions implicit. Judicial
discretion can be an important precondition for wise decisions.
REFERENCES
Adams, Arlin M., and Charles Emmerich. 1990. A nation dedicated to religious
liberty: The constitutional heritage of the religious clauses. Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press.
Berger, Peter. 1967. The sacred canopy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Christiano, Kevin, William Swatos, and Peter Kevisto. 2002. The Sociology of reli-
gion: Contemporary developments. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira.
Claborn, David. 2007. Can the states increase religious freedom if they try? Judicial
and legislative effects on religious actor success in the state courts. Ph.D. Disser-
tation. Dept. Of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Demerath, N. J., III. 1965. Social class in American protestantism. Chicago: Rand
McNally.
———. 1992. A bridging of faiths: Religion and politics in a New England city.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2001. Crossing the Gods: World religions and wordly politics. New Bruns-
wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
———. 2007. Secularization and sacralization deconstructed and reconstructed.
In Handbook for the sociology of religion. eds. James Beckford and
N. J. Demerath, III. London: Sage Publishing.
Demerath, N. J., III., and Phillip E. Hammond. 1976. Religion in social context.
New York: Random House.
Demerath, N. J., III., and Rhys Williams. 1984. ‘‘The separation of church and
state: Notes on a mythical past and an uncertain future.’’ Society 21/4
(June-July): 3–10.
Drackman, Donald L. 1991. Church-state constitutional issues: Making sense of the
establishment clause. New York: Greenwood Press.
Durkheim, Emile. 1912 (1995). The elementary forms of the religious life. Trans. by
Karen Fields. New York: Free Press.
Farnsley, Arthur E., III, N. J. Demerath, III, et al. 2004. Sacred circles and public
squares: The multicentering of American Religion. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Glock, Charles Y., and Rodney Stark. 1967. Religion and society in tension. Chicago:
Rand McNally.
Gunn, T. Jeremy. 2003. The complexity of religion and the definition
of ‘‘religion’’ in international law.’’ Harvard Human Rights Journal 16:189–
215.
Hammond, Phillip E., David Machacek, and Eric Mazur. 2004. Religion on trial:
How Supreme Court trends threaten the freedom of conscience in America. Wal-
nut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.
Hargrove, Barbara. 1979. The sociology of religion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing.
Krislov, Samuel. 1985. Alternatives to the separation of church and state in

countries outside the United States. In Religion and the state: Essays in honor
of Leo Pfeffe, ed. James E. Wood, Jr., Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
McGuire, Meredith. 2002. Religion: The social context. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing.
Robbins, Thomas. 1988. Cults, converts, and charisma. London: Sage Publishing.
Robbins, Thomas, and Dick Anthony, eds. 1981. In gods we trust. New Bruns-
wick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Stark, Rodney, and William Bainbridge. 1985. The future of religion. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Stepan, Alfred. 2000. Religion, democracy, and the ‘‘twin tolerations.’’ Journal of
Democracy 11 (4): 37–57.
Whitehead, Alfred North. 1926. Religion in the making: The Lowell lectures. New
York: Macmillan.
Wilson, John F., ed. 1987. Church and state in America: A bibliographic guide.
2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Yinger, J. Milton. 1970. The scientific study of religion. New York: Macmillan.
APPENDIX 1
Expert Witness Report
On May 1, (2003), attorney Michael Shea contacted me about the
possibility of serving as an expert witness in the case of Kimberly Clout-
ier vs. COSTCO. He needed to know more about my experience and
credentials, and I briefly reviewed them for him. I was unaware of the
case, and he briefly reviewed it for me. Subsequently, I sent him a copy
of my curriculum vitae (c.v.). He sent me materials bearing on the case,
including pertinent documents from the Church of Body Modification,
U.S. District Court, and the Massachusetts Commission against Dis-
crimination, plus a letter and motions from the defendant’s attorneys
Seyfarth and Shaw dated 9/20/01, 1/17/03, and 1/21/03; Kimberly
Cloutier’s letter to the U.S. EEOC as of 10/16/2001 (and the EEOC’s
determination of 5/8/02) and her plaintiff’s affidavit to U.S. District
Court of 1/28/03.
On Wednesday, May 7, we agreed that I would join the case for a
fee of $100 per hour, and I have not billed or received a retainer on this
case to date (n.b. nor did I ever collect a fee). In what follows, I shall
briefly review my experience and expertise in the area, indicate my
acquaintance with the Church of Body Modification and the principals
involved, and state my position on the matters at issue. In addition to
attaching my c.v., I should also note that I have not served as an expert
witness in this or any other area during the last four years.
Personal Qualifications: For the past 40 years, I have been an active
scholar and teacher in the field of sociology. My publications include sev-
eral scores of published articles, and I have been author or co-author—
editor or co-editor—of some eleven books with another due next year.
I have served two terms as chair of my department. I have also been an

active leader in various scholarly associations, serving three as president.
Most of my scholarly research has been concentrated in the sociology
of religion. Here I have focused especially on religion’s relation to its
wider secular, political, and legal contexts and how religion might be
viewed in a way that bears scrutiny from these various perspectives
and holds up to cross-cultural variation around the world. Over the past
20 years, I have given special attention to what Americans call ‘‘First
Amendment issues’’ and the interface between religion and the state. I
have investigated these issues not only close to home (my 1992 book on
religion and politics in New England) but far afield (my 2001 book on
‘‘world religions and worldly politics’’ in some fourteen countries
around the globe).
In preparing for this assignment, I have examined the Church of
Body Modification and the plaintiff’s involvement in it. I have read the
CBM’s ‘‘Presentation of Church Planning’’ from 6/29/2001. I have also
consulted its voluminous Web site. The Web site contains a wealth of
information including a general account of ‘‘Who Are We?,’’ an overall
mission statement, rosters of leaders, a lengthy list of answers to fre-
quently asked questions, news of past and future meetings, brief sum-
maries of pertinent information in the media about various forms of
modification, a modest catalog of items from the church ‘‘store,’’ and a
financial presentation. In addition, I have had telephone conversations
with both the president of the Church of Body Modification, Rev. Richard
Frueh of Medora, Illinois, and the plaintiff, Ms. Cloutier.
Opinions to Be Expressed: In defining religion, the courts have generally
sought to steer a course between an undue dependence on the specifics
of particular faiths, on the one hand, and an unanchored vagueness when
religion is left to the individual’s private and sometimes opportunistic
choice, on the other hand. In framing the U.S. Constitution’s First
Amendment, the nation’s founding fathers understood the problem and
went a long way towards solving it. The amendment’s first clause that
‘‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,’’
indicates a sense of impartial neutrality that avoids entanglements with
present faith traditions while leaving the future open to new and differ-
ent faiths. They also saw the state as a level playing field for the more
philosophical competition between religion and non-religion. Meanwhile,
the amendment’s second clause held that Congress shall make no law
‘‘prohibiting the free exercise’’ of religion. This indicated their commit-
ment to a widespread religious tolerance in keeping with the country’s
new democracy. But here a loose end was left dangling. Without being
able to rely upon the conventional churches of the day as examples and
exemplars lest they confer an established status upon them, it gradually
became easier to understand what is ‘‘free exercise’’ than what is ‘‘reli-
gion.’’ Over time, the boundaries of acceptable religion expanded and
changed. While the courts seemed to know intuitively that there had to
be some limits, it was difficult to know where to draw them, and there
was no clear legal definition of religion on which to lean.
Recently a solution has emerged from social scientific research on
religion. In emphasizing what religions ‘‘do’’ rather than what religions
‘‘are,’’ it asks about the chief functions that all religions fulfill for their
followers and what binds followers to the practices and traditions that
compel them. Reflecting a consensus among social scientists in this
area, religion may be defined as ‘‘any shared sense of sacred meaning
that is ritually enacted and communally reinforced through a like-
minded group or organization.’’ Clearly this describes more than a
purely individual conviction. It places individuals within a community
whose commitments are shared and whose sense of mutual support
offers important affirmation. The criteria of sacred meaning, ritual
activity, and communal belonging can be found in every faith, ranging
from the most traditional and familiar churches to less conventional
forms that are no less saliently sacred for their members.
On the basis of the evidence at hand and based on my education
and experience, I find to a reasonable degree of social scientific certainty
that the Church of Body Modification qualifies as a religion. Like many
other non-conventional religions, CBM does indeed nurture shared
sacred meanings that depend upon members’ participation in common
rituals such as body piercing and tattooing. Although formally only
some four years old, the national organization and its local groups now
have approximately 1,000 members. According to its president, its
members often voice two common sentiments. The first reports a ‘‘spir-
itual inner peace’’ provided by experiencing the modification process
and displaying its results; the second expresses a sense of ‘‘strong per-
sonal support’’ that comes from involvement in the church itself. It is
also important to note that Ms. Cloutier’s membership in the CBM pre-
dates her employment termination and subsequent events.
Still, it is not unusual for outsiders to find the practices of religious
groups strange and even threatening. In fact, this is more the rule than
the exception for new religious movements. It certainly characterized
the struggles of the first Christian sect at the hands of generally hostile
bystanders. Moreover, the physical body is commonly implicated in
religious rituals, and bodily modification itself has taken myriad forms
in various religions. These forms may include the long-term effects of
extreme fasting and sensory deprivation, circumcision (both male and
female), celibacy and its various techniques, ritual hair and beard styl-
ings, body building, hook swinging, flagellation, scarification, amputa-
tions, and even suicide, including memetic crucifixions.
Although it may seem difficult to imagine that a U.S. legislative body
might have a group like the CBM in mind when crafting statutes con-
cerning religion, both the First Amendment’s establishment clause noted
above and current Massachusetts law [G.L.c.151B & 4(1A)] prohibit

using such conventional and ‘‘established’’ religious imagination as a
criterion. The same is true of traditional dictionary definitions of religion
that specify a belief in the supernatural. Such beliefs are by no means
universal among the great faiths such as Buddhism or Confucianism.
There are also exceptions within the Judeo-Christian fold such as Unitar-
ianism, and it has become increasingly clear that there are members
(and clergy) within many conventional churches who remain in good
standing despite either considerable doubt about or actual disbelief in
the supernatural even though other aspects of their traditions remain
sacred. As noted in U.S. v. Welsh (1970) re: conscientious objector status
during the Vietnam War, a wide range of beliefs may qualify as reli-
gious so long as they ‘‘. . . occupy in the life of that individual ‘a place
parallel to that filled . . . by God’ (cf. U.S. v Seeger, 1965) in traditional
religious persons.’’ Thus, any form of religion should meet the ‘‘sin-
cerely held . . . belief’’ standard stipulated by the Massachusetts legisla-
ture in 1997. And although the social scientific definition goes further to
include some form of communal group or organization, this surely need
not be ‘‘an established church or other religious institution’’ of the sort
proscribed as a model by the same law.
Meanwhile, it is important to understand what constitutes discrimina-
tion against ‘‘religious free exercise’’ in employment law. Two condi-
tions apply. First, there must be a satisfactory demonstration that the
behavior in question is genuinely religious. Until the 1997 statute
referred to above, Massachusetts had an unusual stipulation that dis-
crimination could only occur when it involved denying behavior for-
mally ‘‘required’’ by a plaintiff’s religion. But the requirement restriction
was both vague and overly demanding. Not only did the term ‘‘reli-
gion’’ imply an establishment model, but the term ‘‘required’’ was
unclear about just how stringent an expected or desirable mode of con-
duct must be to qualify. Virtually every faith provides exemptions for
circumstances that make religious practices impossible. Worship and rit-
ual are generally most fulfilling when they are ‘‘freely exercised’’—a
phrase whose meaning resonates both legally and theologically. Some
religious behavior is gratifying in its public display, such as the wearing
of certain garments or jewelry. Moreover, some types of sacred body
modification such as tattoos and body piercings are not easily donned
and doffed from one day (or part of the day) to the next. Although the
plaintiff in this case initially volunteered to use Band-aids to cover her
eye ring while at work, the offer was refused.
Fortunately, the operative terms ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘required’’ were
replaced in the 1997 statute by a definition of religious belief (and
implicitly behavior) that stipulates, ‘‘. . . without regard to whether
such beliefs are approved, espoused, prescribed or required by an
established church or other religious institution or organization.’’
[G.L.c.151B & 4(1A)]. With this discussion in mind, a claim of violated

religious rights appears warranted.
Meanwhile, a second condition of religious discrimination is that the
religious behavior in question precludes the employer from making a
‘‘reasonable accommodation’’ without ‘‘undue hardship.’’ Here it is
important to note that the case at hand differs from most of the cases
that have required adjudication in this area. The most common sce-
nario involves an employee’s request for dispensation to be absent
from work in order to participate in a religious observance. By contrast,
the current situation began with no request for dispensation, and the
employer initiated the chain of action rather than reacting to events
already underway. There appears to be little recent case law for such
situations in Massachusetts. But when an employer makes no attempt
at an accommodation and yet claims no undue hardship in maintain-
ing the services of an employee terminated for reasons that interfere
with the plaintiff’s religious freedom, the law suggests that religious
discrimination has occurred.
In sum, I respectfully submit my findings that a) the Church of Body
Modifications fits within a definition of religion that is in accord with
both the law and social science research, b) the plaintiff has been a
member of the church in good standing since before her employment
was terminated.
_____________ ________________
Date N. J. Demerath III
Professor of Sociology
UMass, Amherst
APPENDIX 2
Affidavit of N. J. Demerath III in Response to COSTCO’s
Motion to Strike Plaintiff’s Expert Witness Designation and
as Supplemental Report
I, N. J. Demerath III, do depose and say the following, based on my
personal knowledge, information, and belief, which I believe to be true.
Specifically, I respectfully disagree with all four basic premises on
which the motion rests; namely, questions of fact, of methodology, of
law, and of prejudice.
1. Questions of Fact: The defense asserts that any expertise I might
have would be unnecessary because whether a practice is religious is a
matter of ‘‘common sense’’ and ‘‘nearly every citizen . . . [is] familiar
with the concept of religion and is readily able to determine whether a
given set of beliefs constitutes a religion.’’ With all due respect, I dis-
agree on three counts. First, religion is not just a matter of ‘‘beliefs’’ as
the quote indicates. Adherents often hold to patterns of meaning even
without the kind of cognitive conviction that the term ‘‘belief’’ implies.
Moreover, belief is only one aspect of religion, and understanding reli-
gion requires an appreciation of how its several dimensions relate to
each other, as in the core social science definition provided in my ini-
tial report and repeated below. Second, in assessing such matters, com-
mon sense alone can be more of a problem than a solution. Most
citizens have a view of religion that is highly colored by the types of
religions to which they have been exposed––for example, Christians by
Christianity, Protestants by Protestantism, and even particular sect and
cult members by the particular sects and cults they have experienced.
Third, assuming that a social scientifically grounded knowledge of the
rich variety of experiences that are genuinely ‘‘religious’’ is preferable
to a conception of religion that is constrained by a layman’s familiarity,
I offer assistance based on forty years of research and scholarship in
the field. I have studied a wide breadth of American faiths and prac-
tices, including some that are new and some that are old, some that
are large and some that are small, and some that originated in this
nation and some that have come from elsewhere to find a home here.
In addition to analyzing various forms of both Catholics and Protes-
tants in the U.S., I have devoted special research to groups ranging
from the American Ethical Culture Society to the Buddhist Soka Gokai
Movement that began in Japan and spread westward.
2. Questions of Methodology: The defense suggests that any claim I
might have to expertise is obviated by my lack of any scientific method-
ology and that my interpretations are purely matters of personal option
‘‘premised not on any sociological principle, but on a 1997 amendment
to M.G.L. c. 151B.’’ Here too I respectfully disagree. First, as I was
at pains to indicate in my earlier report, my judgment rests on well-
established sociological principles, including a consensual definition of
religion that emphasizes what religions ‘‘do’’ rather than what religions
‘‘are.’’ This definition invokes three basic criteria that constitute a meth-
odology of assessment, and I went on to show how sacred meanings, rit-
ual enactment, and communal support are all present in the Church of
Body Modification. It is important to understand that my definition and
its criteria represent a summary statement of a very large body of social
scientific work on religion that has converged upon such a ‘‘functional’’
definition over the past half-century. I myself contributed to the devel-
opment in my 1976 co-authored text, ‘‘Religion in Social Context.’’ But
there are many works worth citing, some of which I drew upon in the
work above, others which I have benefitted from more recently, most of
which begin with a discussion of definitions, and all of which reflect
general agreement on the basic conception of religion at issue. A repre-
sentative list would include Charles Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion
and Society in Tension (Rand McNally, 1967); Peter Berger, Sacred Canopy
(Doubleday, 1967); J. Milton Yinger, The Scientific Study of Religion
(Macmillan, 1970); Barbara Hargrove, The Sociology of Religion (AHM

Publishing, 1979); Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, eds., In Gods We
Trust (Transaction Books, 1981); Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge,
The Future of Religion (California, 1985); Thomas Robbins, Cults, Converts,
and Charisma (Sage, 1988); Lorne L. Dawson, Comprehending Cults
(Oxford, 1998); Meredith McGuire, Religion: The Social Context (Wads-
worth, 5th edition, 2002); and Kevin Christiano, William Swatos, and Pe-
ter Kevisto, eds., Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (Alta
Mira, 2002).
Second, throughout my career, I have been careful to base my judge-
ments on research methods well-established in the field. These have of-
ten involved statistical analyses of sample surveys (see, for example,
my first book, Social Class in American Protestantism, 1965, and my sub-
sequent articles on ‘‘religious dissidence,’’ ‘‘religious switching’’ and
American ‘‘culture wars’’—all listed in the vita that accompanied my
earlier report); ethnographic case studies (see my early article on
‘‘organizational precariousness and American irreligion’’ and my forth-
coming co-authored work on religious groups in Indianapolis, Indiana,
Sacred Circles and Public Squares), historical analysis (see the first two
chapters in my co-authored book on Springfield entitled A Bridging of
Faiths), and cross-cultural comparative analysis (see my recent book,
Crossing the Gods on religion, politics, and the state in some fourteen
countries around the globe in addition to the U.S.). Largely because
these works involve central methodologies and well-tested conclusions,
they have all been very positively refereed before publication and well
reviewed afterwards. In fact, the last named above won the 2002
Distinguished Book Award of the Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion—the world’s largest and most prestigious organization of
anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists
doing research on religion.
3. Questions of Law: First, let me say at the outset that I am perfectly
prepared to restrict my testimony to the purely social scientific matters
referred to above. Moreover, I do not intend to give an opinion on
whether discrimination exists in this case. It is true that I am not a lawyer
and make no pretense to a lawyer’s expertise. But second, I should add
that I have spent a good deal of the past twenty years developing my
knowledge in the sociology of law with special reference to the First
Amendment clauses concerning religion—a complex area that is now at
best an elective rather than required course at most law schools and an
area where few lawyers now claim expertise for themselves. I have
learned a good deal from lawyers who do specialize on the topic and
with whom I have attended conferences and exchanged writings. I am
proud of the relationships I have developed with many experts in this
small but important corner of the law, including law faculty and legal
historians at such institutions as Cardozo, Harvard, Notre Dame,
Princeton, Wisconsin, and Yale. I have also conducted my own research

in the sociology of law. For example, this has resulted in my 1984 article
on ‘‘The Separation of Church and State: Notes on a Mythical Past and
an Uncertain Future,’’ which discusses some long-term trends; the afore-
mentioned book, A Bridging of Faiths, where a lengthy chapter on ‘‘Corner
Church and City-State’’ features a questionnaire survey on the attitudes
of Springfield citizens towards religion and the First Amendment, and
the also aforementioned work, Crossing the Gods, which includes a major
chapter on misapprehensions of American church-state law at home and
abroad and the sometimes tragic consequences that follow.
4. Questions of Prejudice: Here the defense argues that I am ‘‘poten-
tially prejudicial’’ because, instead of providing ‘‘testimony helping the
trier of fact accurately determine a fact in issue. . . . [my] expert testi-
mony may unduly influence the fact finder’s decision.’’ The passage is
followed by yet another assertion that ‘‘the determination as to
whether the Church of Body Modification is a religion . . . is largely a
matter of common sense.’’ I have already noted the dangers of relying
on common sense alone in these matters. The central issue in this case
turns less on a disagreement over facts than on the appropriate frame-
works within which to interpret the facts. Here one might think an
expert’s scholarly judgment would be a boon rather than a bane, espe-
cially in the midst of court proceedings that are designed to be adver-
sarial throughout. Frankly, I suspect it is true that if the case is left
purely to common sense as the defense would have it, this may be
prejudicial to the plaintiff and to the larger and yet more subtle issues
at stake. In my forty years of teaching about various marginal groups
similar to the Church of Body Modification, I have found a tendency
for students to greet the first accounts of such groups with laughter
and derision. It is only after the ‘‘facts’’ are placed in legal and social
scientific context that balanced and unprejudiced assessments become
possible. Those are precisely the sorts of assessments I pride myself in
offering as a professional social scientist. My sole interest in this case is
to provide an expert’s un-common knowledge as a way of insuring
that an informed common sense will prevail in achieving a fair deci-
sion, whatever that might be.
I hope these remarks are helpful in responding to the motion at
hand. I continue to stand by to offer my assistance in any way and on
any terms that may please the court.
Signed under the pains and penalty of perjury on this twenty-third
day of June, 2003.
________________
N. J. Demerath III
Index
Abortion, 194 Anthony, Susan B., 240, 241

Adams, John, 235, 238 Anthropological atheism, 5
Addams, Jane, 244 Anthropology, 2
The Age of Reason, 237, 238 Anti-Discrimination Support
Agnosticism, 219, 223, 242; and Network, 92
atheism, 8–10; attitudes towards Antimodern fundamentalism, 244
homosexuality, 95–98; demographics Argumentative atheism, 5
and religious behaviors, 94–95; as a Aristotle, 119
method, 8, 9; as not a position, 9; Ascetic standards, 76
Victorian, 120 Asser, S. M., 127
Alcohol consumption, 196 Atheism. See also individual entries:
Alcorta, C. S., 129 and agnosticism, 8–10; American.
Algeria, 122 See American atheism;
Allport, Gordon, 80 anthropological, 5; conversion to
Altemeyer, Bob, 48, 79 theism, 5; and gender. See gender
Altruism, 130, 131; and religiosity, and atheism; impact on family
127–28 and children, 19; meaning of, 1;
American atheism, 229; colonial negative, 5, 7; new, and future,
America, 230–35; nineteenth 13–17; notion of, 81; positive, 5–6,
century and, 238–44; revolutionary 8; and secularism, 10–13; and
America, 235–38; twentieth theism and atheistic religions, 2–3;
century, 244–47 and vicissitudes, 5–8
American Atheist Association, 244 Atheism: The Case against God, 14
American Civil Liberties Union, 245 Atheism Advanced, 14
American Exceptionalism, 152 Atheists. See also atheism; family and
American Humanist Association, 35 children, impact of atheism and
American Psychiatric Association, 94 secularism on; hard-core, 16; as
American Religious Identification immoral, 101; meaning of, 2;
Survey, 26 natural, 4–5, 7; recovered, 5, 7;
Amnesty International, 133 and sexuality, 90–92; soft-core,
Animatism, 3 16; trusting the, 114–15,
Animism, 3; intuitive, 5 134–35
272 Index
Australia, 6, 134, 151, 157, 163 Clendenen, Margaret A., 89

Austria, 126 Cloutier, Kimberly, 252
Coles, Robert, 22
The Bahamas, 126 Colonial America and atheism,
Balzac, H. de, 123 230–35; city on a hill model,
Barker, Dan, 14 233–34; New England and, 231–32;
Barron, Frank, 80 role of Puritans in, 231–32
Barton, David, 235 Common Sense, 237
Batson, C. D., 127 Communism, 245–46
Bayle, Pierre, 114 Confucianism, 11
Beecher, Henry Ward, 125 Coontz, Stephanie, 24
Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin, 79, 90, 113 Cooperation, 130
Belgium, 125 Corporate–consumer popular culture,
Bell, Daniel, 119 166–67
Bering, J. M., 129 Corruption, 196
Bhutan, 126 Council for Secular Humanism, 48,
Bocock, R., 130 91
Bork, R. H., 118, 121 Crossing the Gods, 268, 269
Bork, Robert, K., 119 Cultural religion, 258
Bradford, William, 232 Cultural secularization, 166, 173
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Cultural war, 172
Phenomenon, 14 Czech Republic, 125
A Bridging of Faiths, 268–69
Brights’ movement, 99, 102, 103, 104, Darley, J., 127
105; coming-out stories in, 106–7 Darrow, Clarence, 245
Brights Network, 92 Darwin, Charles, 118, 241
British Humanist Association, 50 Davies, C., 119
The Brothers Karamazov, 114 Davis v. Beason (1890), 255
Brown, D. E., 117 Dawkins, Richard, 14, 99
Brunei, 126 Declaration of Sentiments, 240
Bryan, William J., 245 Decline, and secularization, 12
Buddhism, 11, 32, 117 Deism, 237
Bush, G. H. W., 230 Demerath, Jay, III, 251, 269
De Natura Deorum, 113
Cady, Daniel, 229 Denmark, 125, 126, 134, 152, 211
Campbell, Colin, 50, 210 Dennett, Daniel, 14, 99
Camp Quest, 37 Desacralization, and secularization,
Canada, 126, 134, 151, 157, 163 13
Center for Atheism, 92 Differentiation, and secularization, 12
Center for Naturalism, 90 Discourse on Western Planting, 230
Christian Coalition, 125 Disengagement, and secularization,
Christianity, historical role of, 123–24 12
Christian morality, conservative, 21 Disgust, and morality, 117
Church of Body Modification (CBM), Dobson, James, 246
252–53, 260, 269 Do Children Need Religion?, 22
Cicero, 113 Dole, Elizabeth, 247
Cimino, Richard, 91, 92, 104, 106 Dollar, Kreflo A., 126
City on a hill model, 233–34 Dostoyevsky, F., 114
Clark, Thomas, 90 Driberg, J. H., 11
Index 273
Drug use, illegal, 196 Finke, Roger, 24

Du Bois, W.E.B., 242, 243 Finland, 125, 126, 134
Dunant, Henri, 133 First Humanist Society of New York,
Duriez, B., 127 36
Durkheim, Emile, 259 Fischer, Claude S., 90, 95
Focus on the Family, 21, 36
Economic enterprise and religion, in France, 125, 152, 195
United States, 125–26 Franco, Francisco, 121
Edgell, Penny, 81, 91, 106 Free Inquiry, 48, 90, 91
Eliot, T. S., 118 Freethinkers, 35–37, 46–47
Eller, Jack David, 1 Freethinkers, 239
Employment Division v. Smith (1990), Freethought movement, 92, 99, 241
256 Freethought Society of Greater
The End of Faith, 14 Philadelphia, 92
Enlightenment: meaning, 132; Freud, Sigmund, 120
morality, 133 Fundamentalism, 244
Environmental Justice Network Furseth, Inger, 209
(EJN), 38 Futrell, Mynga, 99
Erikson, E. H., 131
Estonia, 125 Gabler, Mel, 247
Ethical essentials, 75 Gabler, Norman, 247
Eurobarometer Europeans and Geisert, Paul, 99
Science and Technology, 191 Gender and atheism, 209, 214–15;
European Value Studies, 210 atheistic values and, 211; life
Evangelical Christians, 34 story, 215–25; in Norway, 212–13,
Expert witness report and religion, 215–21; research questions and
261–66 methods, 213–14
Generalization, and secularization,
Falwell, Jerry, 89, 246 12–13
Family and children, impact of General Social Survey (GSS), 90, 92,
atheism and secularism on, 19; 93
affiliation variation, 35–38; A General Theory of Secularization, 11
children, 24–25; family structure, Germany, 125, 195, 211
22–24; freethinkers, 35–37; lack of Gerteis, Joseph, 91
data of secular families, 25–26; Glasner, Peter, 12
naturalism, 29–31; pluralism, Glazer, N., 119
31–32; pure secularism, 28–29; The God Delusion, 14, 100
religion and family, perceived God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons
connection between, 20–25; Everything, 14
religion and positive childhood Goldman, Emma, 243, 245
outcome, causal link between, 25; Gonorrhea infection, 194
religious indifference, 32–35; Graham, Billy, 246
socio-political organizations, 38; Great Britain, 39, 119, 125, 211
variation in secular families, 26–27 Great Reversal, 243, 244
Family Channel, 21 Greenpeace, 133
Fay, Martha, 21, 22, 39 Group affiliates, secular, 43; age,
Feminism, 210 47–49; cultural background, 51–53;
Ferguson, N., 121 death, attitudes about, 73–75;
Fielding, Henry, 255 education, 50–51; gender, 49;
274 Index
inconsistencies and tolerance, 56, Humanist Community of Silicon

60–61; life, meaning and purpose Valley (HCSV), 36–37
of, 70–73; religion and religious, Human rights, 124, 133, 231, 242;
attitudes about, 69–70; religious/ suppressing, 161
philosophical upbringing, 54–56; Human Rights Watch, 133
samples and methods to find, Hungary, 125
44–47; socioeconomic status, 51; Hunsberger, Bruce, 48, 79
spirituality and, 66–69; upbringing Huxley, Thomas, 8
and worldview development,
53–54; value systems and living, Iceland, 126, 134
75–79; vocation, 51; worldview Impersonal force, 64
complexity and diversity, 61 Incarceration, 193
Ingersoll, Robert, 241, 242
Hagen, Kay, 247 International Social Survey Program
Haggard, Ted, 89 (ISSP), 190, 210–11
Haidt, J., 116, 117, 118 International Symposium on Unbelief,
Hakluyt, Richard, 230 210
Hall, G. Stanley, 120 Interpol and International Crime
Harris, Sam, 14, 29 Victims Survey, 184
Hartmann, Douglas, 91 Ireland, 152, 196
Haught, John, 16 Irreligion, 44
Hauser, M. D., 118 Islam, 10, 11, 12, 15, 151
Hegel, G. W. F., 118 Italy, 152, 196
Highland Park Unitarian Universalist
Congregation, 37 Jacoby, Susan, 239
Himmelfarb, G., 119, 120 James, William, 115
Hinduism, 32 Japan, 121, 126, 151, 152, 163, 195
History of Plymouth Plantation, 232 Jefferson, Thomas, 235, 236
Hitchens, Christopher, 14 Jefferson Bible, 236, 238
Hitler, Adolf, 118, 121 Jensen, G. F., 128
Hoffman, John P., 90 Johnson, Benton, 129
Homicide, 191–92 Judaism, 31–32
Homosexuality, 89; atheists’ and Judeo-Christian tradition and human
agnostics’ attitudes towards, rights, 124
95–98; demographics and religious Jukurrpa, 6–7
behaviors of atheists and agnos- Justified true belief, 6
tics, 94–95; discussion forum
analysis, 99; findings, 94–99; Kappelman, Lynn A., 253, 254
lesbian, gay, or bisexual sexual Kass, Leon, 119
behavior (LBG), 98–99, 104–108; Kimberly Cloutier vs. COSTCO (2004), 262
methods, 92–94, 99–100; morality Kim Il-Sung, 121
of, 101–2; religious discrimination Kohlberg, Lawrence, 132
of, 102–4; results, 100–108; Kosmin, Barry, 80
secondary analysis, 99 Kouchner, Bernard, 133
Hout, Michael, 90, 95 Kristol, I., 118, 119, 120
Hua, 11 Kurtz, Paul, 91
Hubbard, William, 231
The Humanist, 90 Lamon, Ward Hill, 240
Humanist community, 35 Laumann, Edward O., 90
Index 275
Leibnitz, 120 immorality, among irreligious, 113;

Lesbian, gay, or bisexual sexual lessons of history, 123–24; new
behavior (LBG), 98–99, 104–8 public, 132–34; Noble Lie tradition,
Letter to a Christian Nation, 14 120–21; of naturalists, 30; of
Leuba, J. H., 120, 125 pluralists, 32; of pure secularists,
Lewis, Sinclair, 126 29; ontogenesis of, 131–32;
Life stories, 214 prosocial behavior, 127–28;
The Life and Morals of Jesus of religious and secular domains of,
Nazareth. See Jefferson Bible 115–21; secularization and western
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, 240 society, 118–19; tolerance and
Lincoln, Abraham, 233, 239, 40 prejudice, 127; transatlantic
Linneman, Thomas, J., 89 experiment, 124–26
Locke, John, 114 Moral preferentials, 75
Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Moral relativism, 32
Atheist, 14 Morton, Thomas, 232
Louisville Times, 240 Mott, Lucretia, 240
Mugabe, Robert, 121
Maher, Bill, 82 Mussolini, Benito, 121
Manning, Christel, 19
Mao Zedong, 121 National Framework for Religious
Marriage, 195–96; and cohabitation, Education, 39
195 National Opinion Research Center,
Martin, David, 11 92
Marty, Martin, 10 National Opinion Research Center
Materialism, 169–70, 173 General Social Survey, 190
McCullough, M. E., 129, 135 National Women’s Suffrage
McGrath, Alister, 16 Association, 240
McTaggart, John Mitchell, 48, 54 Natural atheism, 4–5, 7
Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), 133 Natural Atheism, 14
Mencken, H. L., 245 Naturalism, 29–31; morality of, 30;
Methodism, 4 Native American culture as model
Middleton, Russell, 76 for, 31
Miller, Alan, S., 90 Nature spirits, 3
Minnesota Mosaic Project, 91 Negative atheism, 5, 7
Moon, Dawne, 104 The Netherlands, 125, 134, 211
Moore, B., Jr., 122 New atheism, 14; criticism of, 16;
Moral capital, 119 future of, 16–17; problems with,
Moral-creator socioeconomic 14–15
hypothesis, 158 New Canaan model, 231
Morality, 33; atheist dictators and, New England and atheism, 231
121–23; of community, affiliation New Right, 246–47
with, 36; crime, serious, 128; New Testament, 117, 127, 161, 236
divisions of, 116; of Environmental New York Times, 247
Justice Network, 38; evolution of, New Zealand, 134, 151, 157, 163, 195
130–31; evolution of religion and, Nielsen, M. E., 130
128–30; exemplary moral behavior Nietzsche, F. W., 16, 17
and moral rehabilitation, 126–27; Noble Lie tradition, 120–21
hedonistic offenses, 128; Hindu, 32; Nobus, D., 126
of homosexuality, 101–2; and Nontheism, 171–72. See also atheism
276 Index
Norenzayan, A., 129, 130, 135 Reed, Ralph, 125

North Texas Church of Free Thought, Religion. See also individual entries;
35–36 definition of, 264; nonuniversality
Norway, 125, 211 of, 150–55; traditions and current
Norwegian Humanist Association, political ideals, continuity
212, 220, 221 between, 124
Notes on Virginia, 236 Religious/philosophical upbringing,
54–56
O’Hair, Madalyn M., 244 Religious affiliation, 25, 26
Old Testament, 117, 122, 123, 161 Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Oliner, P. M., 128 (RFRA) (1993), 256
Oliner, S. P., 128 Religious indifference, 32–35
Origin of Species, 241 Religious Land Use and
Institutionalized Persons Act
Paine, Thomas, 237 (2000), 256
Panhuman moral ideals, 118 Rights of Man, 237
Parsons, Talcott, 115 Robertson, Pat, 246
Pasquale, Frank L., 43 Robinson, Gene, 89
Paul, Gregory S., 149 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 233
Personal essence, 64 Roosevelt, Teddy, 237
Pew Forum, 52 Rossano, M. J., 129
Pew survey, 21, 153 Rothman, S., 119
Phelps, Fred, 89, 103 Rousseau, Jean-Jaques, 120
Piaget, Jean, 132 Routinization, and secularization, 12
Pietism, 219 Russia, 115, 125, 246
Plato, 120
Pluralism, 31–32, 34 Sacralization, 260
Politics, 119 Salazar, Antonio, 121
Pol Pot, 121 Santayana, George, 121
Popular Religiosity versus Secularism Saradijan, A., 126
Scale (PRVSS), 175, 190 Scopes, John, 245
Positive atheism, 5–6, 8 Second Great Awakening, 239
Pruyser, Paul, 44 Second-wave feminism, 210
Psycholinguistics, 15 Secular capital, 165
Psychological vs. sociological models, Secular humanism, 242, 247
258–59 Secularism. See also gender and
Pure secularism: declaring religion as atheism: and atheism, 10–13, 19;
irrational and misleading, 28; mo- and children, 24–25; dichotomy of
rality of, 29; right action and, 29 sacredness and, 11, 12; evolution
Puritanism and native Indians, of popular religiosity and, 149;
231–32 family structure and, 23–24; group
Purity rules: food taboos and, 116; affiliates and. See group affiliates,
and sanctity, 117 secular; lack of data of families
Putney, Snell, 76 with, 25–26; organized, and
Euro-American activity, 52;
Randolph-Seng, B., 130 popular religion versus, and First
Reagan, Ronald, 233, 234, 246 World socioeconomic conditions,
Recovered atheists, 5, 7 189–97; pure, 28–29; and
Red Cross, 133 secularization, 13, 118–19; and
Index 277
sexuality, 89; variation in families Switzerland, 126

with, 26–27; versions of, 12–13 Symington, Neville, 118
Segmentation, and secularization, 13 Syphilis infection, 194
Self-control, 132
Self-deception, 29 Teen birth rates, 195
Self-realization and community, Thanksgiving, 231, 233
222–24 Theism, 2–3; default, 3–4
Self selection, 24 Theoconservatives, 164, 166, 173–74,
Sexuality and secularism. See 186 194, 195
homosexuality Theofaith, 170–71, 176–77;
Shariff, A. F., 129, 130, 135 abandonment of, 174, 175
Shea, Michael, 253, 254, 262 Theosupernaturalism, 150, 170
Shinto, 11, 121 Thrower, James, 43
Short, William, 235 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 16
Shweder, R. A., 116, 117, 118 Tiso, Jozef, 121
Singapore, 134 Todd, Mary, 240
Smith, Christian, 24, 34 Tom Jones, 255
Smith, Christopher, 91, 92, 104, 106 Transcendent entity, 64
Smith, George, 14 Transformation and
Smith, J. Z., 124 secularization, 12
Social activism, 38, 247 Transparency International,
Social capital, 165 134, 196
Social critics, 119 Treaty of Tripoli, 238
Socialization, 131 Turner, James, 230
Social standards, 76 Twain, Mark, 123
Socioeconomic insecurity hypothesis,
of faith, 168–69; limitations of, 172 Ultimate purpose, 64
Socioeconomic security hypothesis, Unbelief, 44
158–66; causal mechanism of, Unitarian Humanists, 46, 48
162–63 Unitarian Universalism, 36, 37, 48
Sosis, R., 129 Unitarian Universalist Society in
South Africa, 123 New Haven (UUNH), 36
South Korea, 126 United States, 123, 125, 152, 195, 196
Spencer, Herbert, 118 Universal Declaration of Human
Spiritual capital, 158 Rights (UNUDHR), 133
Stalin, Joseph, 121 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey
Stanton, Elisabeth C., 240 2008, 52
Stark, Rodney, 24, 131 U.S. v. Kuch (1968), 256
Steinfels, Peter, 80 U.S. v. Seeger (1965), 255–56, 258
Stewart, M., 120 U.S. v. Welsh (1970), 256, 265
Strauss, Leo, 120
Successful Societies Scale, 175 Varese, F., 128
Suicide, 193 The Varieties of Experiencing
Supernaturalism, 168–69. See also the- Irreligion, 44
osupernaturalism; hypothesis, Victorianism, 239
155–56; organized, 169; rejecting, Victorian Protestants, 23
114, 235; religious, 174 Vietnam, 122, 123
Swan, R., 127 Voltaire, 114
Sweden, 125, 126, 134, 152, 196, 211 Von Hentig, H., 134
278 Index
Washington, George, 114 Willoughby, B. L. B., 129, 135

Wesley, John, 4 Winthrop, John, 232, 233, 234
Western faith, threat to: Without God, Without Creed, 230
corporate–consumer popular Women’s Bible, 241
culture, 166–67; modern science, World Map of Happiness, 126
evolution, and education, 157–58;
and prediction, 173; societal and Yaish, M., 128
economic security, 158–66
Whitehead, Alfred North, 258 Zen Buddhism, 121
Wilcox, Ella W., 237 Zuckerman, Phil, 90
About the Editor and Contributors
EDITOR
Phil Zuckerman is an associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College.

He is the author of Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations
Can Tell Us about Contentment (2008) and Invitation to the Sociology of
Religion (2003), and he is currently on the editorial board of the journal
Sociology of Religion. He lives in Southern California with his wife and
three children.
CONTRIBUTORS
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi is professor of psychology at the University

of Haifa and senior research associate at the Institute for the Study of
Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecti-
cut. He is the author of numerous books, chapters, and articles on the
psychology of religion, social identity, and personality development. In
1993 he was the recipient of the William James Award (Division 36 of
the American Psychological Association) for his contributions to the
psychology of religion.
Daniel Cady is assistant professor of history at California State Univer-

sity, Fresno, and director of the Central Valley Institute for Regional
and Historical Studies. He has published work on the Ku Klux Klan,
the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and W. E. B. Du Bois. He is
currently researching southern music and interregional migration.
Margaret A. Clendenen is a sociology and religious studies double

major at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
280 About the Editor and Contributors
She is particularly interested in studying feminist and lesbian, gay,

bisexual, and transgender social movements, evangelical culture, and
the relationship between religions and sexualities. At William and
Mary, she has worked as a research assistant for sociologists Thomas
Linneman and Kathleen Jenkins.
Jay Demerath III is recently retired as the Emile Durkheim Distin-

guished Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. A past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Re-
ligion and the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the three most
recent books among his many publications are Crossing the Gods: World
Religions and Worldly Politics (2001); Sacred Circles and Public Squares: The
Multicentering of American Religion, with Arthur Farnsley et al. (2004);
and the Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, coedited with James
Beckford (2007).
Jack David Eller is assistant professor of anthropology at the Commu-

nity College of Denver. He has conducted fieldwork on Australian
Aboriginal religion among the Warlpiri people of central Australia and
is the author of Introducing Anthropology of Religion (2007). He has also
published a number of articles on atheism and secularism, as well as
two books: Natural Atheism and Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a
Freethinker, both with American Atheist Press.
Inger Furseth is professor/research associate at KIFO Centre for

Church Research in Oslo and at the Center for Religion and Civic Cul-
ture at the University of Southern California. Some of her books
include A Comparative Study of Social and Religious Movements in Norway,
1790s–1905 (2002), From Quest for Truth to Being Oneself (2006), and An
Introduction to the Sociology of Religion (2006, with Pål Repstad). Her
research centers on religious diversity, gender issues, social and reli-
gious movements, and social theory.
Thomas J. Linneman is associate professor and chair of sociology at

the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he
teaches courses on social change, sexualities, and statistics. He is the
author of Weathering Change: Gays and Lesbians, Christian Conservatives,
and Everyday Hostilities (2003). He also has published in the journals
Men and Masculinities, Sociological Perspectives, American Journal of Sociol-
ogy, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, and Contemporary Sociology.
Christel Manning is professor and director of the graduate program in

the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart
University. She teaches courses and has published books and articles
on religion as it relates to issues of gender, sexuality, and family. She

is the mother of a young child and lives in Connecticut.
Frank L. Pasquale is a cultural anthropologist engaged in research and

writing on the worldviews, personal behavior, and organizational life
of secularists in the American Northwest and the United States. He is a
research associate with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Soci-
ety and Culture, Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut). He has been a
research fellow at the East-West Center (Honolulu, Hawaii) and has
lived and given cultural education programs in several Pacific Rim
countries.
Gregory S. Paul is an independent researcher with interests in the evo-

lution of life, human cultures, and technology, including the interaction
of religion, science, societal conditions, economics, and politics. Author
of Dinosaurs of the Air, his academic studies related to religion have
appeared in the Journal of Religion and Society, Journal of Medical Ethics,
Pediatrics, and Philosophy and Theology.
Volume 2
Global Expressions
Edited by
PHIL ZUCKERMAN
Praeger Perspectives
PRAEGER
Copyright 2010 by Phil Zuckerman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Atheism and secularity / Phil Zuckerman, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-313-35181-5 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-
35182-2 (ebook) — ISBN 978-0-313-35183-9 (hard copy vol. 1 : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-313-35184-6 (ebook vol. 1) — ISBN 978-0-313-35185-3 (hard copy
vol. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-35186-0 (ebook vol. 2) 1. Irreligion and
sociology. 2. Atheism. 3. Secularism. I. Zuckerman, Phil.
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Contents
Introduction: The Social Scientific Study of Atheism and Secularity

Phil Zuckerman vii
Chapter 1: Atheism and Secularity in North America
Bob Altemeyer 1
Chapter 2: Atheism and Secularity in Modern Japan
Michael K. Roemer 23
Chapter 3: Atheism and Secularity in the Former Soviet Union
Leontina M. Hormel 45
Chapter 4: Atheism and Secularity in Ghana
Kwasi Yirenkyi and Baffour K. Takyi 73
Chapter 5: The Triumph of Indifference: Irreligion in British Society
Samuel Bagg and David Voas 91
Chapter 6: Atheism and Secularity in the Arab World
Jack David Eller 113
Chapter 7: Atheism and Secularity in India
Innaiah Narisetti 139
Chapter 8: Atheism and Secularity in the Netherlands
Loek Halman 155
Chapter 9: Atheism and Secularity: The Scandinavian Paradox
€chau
Peter Lu 177
Chapter 10: Atheism and Secularity in China
Liang Tong 197
Index 223
Introduction:
The Social Scientific Study
of Atheism and Secularity
Phil Zuckerman
In 1972, almost forty years ago, Colin Campbell, then a lecturer at the
University of York, published a book titled Toward a Sociology of Irreli-
gion.1 The inside jacket cover dubbed it ‘‘the first serious study of the
social phenomenon of the rejection of religion.’’ In this groundbreaking
treatise, Campbell observed that sociologists have ‘‘entirely ignored irreli-
gion.’’2 He sought to vigorously address this major lacuna by calling for a
new focus of study within sociology, that is, the study of people who live
their lives indifferent to, without, or in opposition to religion. Campbell
began his work by pondering why it is that sociologists have ignored sec-
ularity over the years, and he then went on to broach a variety of signifi-
cant topics ripe for inquiry and attention: the role antireligious and/or
humanist movements play in spreading secularization within society; the
various forms and definitions of irreligion; irreligion and morality; irreli-
gion and politics; the social functions of irreligion, and so on. Campbell’s
work remains significant for its insights, its thoughtfulness, and its incon-
trovertible prescience. But what is perhaps most striking about the work
is this: it fell on deaf ears. Campbell’s call for a widespread sociological
analysis of irreligion went largely unheeded.
The publication of this two-volume set seeks to redress that regretta-
ble outcome, to hear and to heed Campbell’s call, and to finally take
seriously the social scientific task of exploring, investigating, document-
ing, and analyzing various aspects of atheism and secularity. The
authors of the chapters contained in this collection have attempted to
viii Introduction
do just that and thereby offer studies of irreligiosity with the same
level of interest and rigor that social scientists have devoted to study-
ing the topic of religiosity for well over a century.
While bemoaning the dearth of scholarship on atheism, irreligion,
and secularity that has typified the social sciences,3 it must also be
acknowledged that a significant amount of academic writing and scholar-
ship has in fact been devoted to the topic of secularization—the historical
process whereby religion weakens, fades, or loses its hegemonic domi-
nance or public significance. A plethora of scholars have been aggres-
sively debating secularization for years.4 Despite the impressive amount
that has been published on secularization, nearly all of it—at least that I
am aware of—is generally theoretical, typological, or broadly historical in
nature, and doesn’t actually deal with secular life or atheism as they are
actually lived, expressed, or experienced by irreligious men and women
in the here and now. Nor does the cottage industry of scholarship on or
about secularization entail a direct focus on the social, anthropological,
and/or psychological particulars of how secularity actually manifests
itself or ‘‘plays itself out’’ in the contemporary world.
As with work on secularization, when it comes to the advocacy of
atheism—or the debunking of religion—there’s also a lot out there, to be
sure. Thousands of books, essays, and articles have been published since
the days of David Hume (1711–1776) and Baron D’Holbach (1723–1789),
which argue against theism, critique the Bible, deride religion, harangue
clergy, and/or promote naturalism, materialism, agnosticism, humanism,
freethought, and so on. Most recently, a spate of best sellers have been
published in this formidable vein, including The End of Faith: Religion,
Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004) by Sam Harris,5 God Is Not Great:
How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) by Christopher Hitchens,6 and The
God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins7—the last of which has sold over
1.5 million copies as of this writing. These books, however, are not studies
of atheists and/or secular people, per se. They are distinctly polemical
works with the expressed goal of convincing people that theism is false
and/or that religion is a bad or harmful thing. Such endeavors, however
thought provoking, are not social science. Nor are they meant to be. Lest
the reader be confused, this point bears stressing: the advocacy of atheism
and/or the urging of secularity are not to be mistaken for the social-
scientific study of atheism and secularity—just as one wouldn’t confuse
works that advocate faith and religion with those that seek to study,
explain, or analyze faith and religion. And as stated above, when it comes
to the advocacy of atheism and secularity, one finds a rich, diverse, and
undeniably copious corpus of work. But when it comes to the study and
analysis of atheism and secularity, one doesn’t find much. As William
Sims Bainbridge recently lamented, ‘‘we know surprisingly little about
Atheism from a social-scientific perspective.’’8
Introduction ix
That said, for one to suggest that absolutely no social science has
been undertaken devoted to the study of atheism or secularity since
Campbell’s call would be untrue. In fact, several years just prior to the
publication of Campbell’s book, N. J. Demerath wrote what may very
well be the first sociological investigations of irreligion ever published
in academic journals; one, coauthored with Victor Thiessen and pub-
lished in 1966, was an article on the Freie Gemeinde, a small free-
thought movement in Wisconsin and the other, published in 1969, was
an article on the Society for Ethical Culture and the American Rational-
ist Federation.9 Also in 1969, Armand Mauss published an article on reli-
gious defection among Mormons.10 And one year prior to the publication
of Campbell’s book, Rocco Caporale and Antonio Gumelli edited a vol-
ume titled The Culture of Unbelief, which was an assemblage of papers
delivered at a symposium held in Rome on the very topic of the lack of re-
ligious belief in the contemporary world. Most of the papers in this publi-
cation, however, tended to be highly tentative and/or speculative, for as
one contributor noted, there is an ‘‘appalling lack of empirical data on
unbelief’’ and ‘‘we do not know enough about the phenomenon of unbe-
lief to formulate even a minimum inventory of validated propositions
that may constitute the basis of further analysis.’’11 While a slew of stud-
ies emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with a focus on apostasy,12 aside from
these and a few additional disparate books and articles,13 in the words of
Talal Asad, ‘‘social scientists . . . have paid scarcely any attention to the
idea of the secular.’’14
That sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have largely
neglected the study of secularity is truly remarkable, especially given
the fact that secular, irreligious, nonreligious, and antireligious men
and women have always existed.15 Even Rodney Stark and Roger Finke
can admit that atheism is ‘‘probably as old as religion.’’16 Today, we know
that atheists and secular folk represent a large slice of humanity; one
recent (and conservative) estimate of nonbelievers in God places the num-
ber somewhere between 500 million and 750 million people worldwide.17
And if the category were to be widened to include those who self-identify
as simply ‘‘nonreligious’’ or ‘‘unreligious,’’ these numbers would no
doubt increase dramatically. The fact is, the portion of humans who reject,
have no interest in, or are indifferent to belief in God and/or religion is
not limited to some miniscule batch of angry deviants or disgruntled ‘‘vil-
lage atheists.’’ On the contrary, for if our estimates are correct, non-
believers in God as a worldwide group come in fourth place after
Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism in terms of the global ranking of com-
monly held belief systems. Put another way, there are 58 times as many
nonbelievers in God as there are Mormons, 35 times as many non-
believers in God as there are Sikhs, and twice as many nonbelievers in
God as there are Buddhists.
x Introduction
Granted, in most nations, the irreligious may represent but a small

minority.18 However, in many other nations—such as Sweden, the Czech
Republic, and Japan—the nonreligious or irreligious most likely consti-
tute a majority of the population.19 In the United States, over 15 percent of
Americans (approximately 35 million people) claim ‘‘None’’ as their reli-
gion when asked by pollsters; of those 35 million, one study reports that 4
percent self-identify as atheists and another 6 percent as agnostics, with
most of the remaining people simply saying that they have ‘‘no reli-
gion.’’20 Some estimates of irreligious Americans are even slightly higher;
according to the 2008 U.S Religious Landscape Survey carried out by the
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, more than 16 percent of Ameri-
cans identify as ‘‘unaffiliated.’’21 This is quite an increase in irreligiosity,
for back in the 1950s only 3 percent of Americans claimed ‘‘none’’ as their
religion.22 Thus, the percentage today (15 or 16 percent) represents a
quadrupling of ‘‘none’s’’ in one generation. And just to give readers some
perspective, these percentages mean that there are more unaffiliated or
‘‘none’s’’ in the United States than there are African Americans. When it
comes to God-belief specifically, a recent Harris poll from 2008 found that
10 percent of Americans do not believe in God, with an additional 9 per-
cent who said ‘‘not sure.’’23 That means that nearly one American in five
is either an atheist or possible agnostic. We’re talking about 60 million
Americans who are nontheists. These numbers and percentages render
any suggestion that secular folk are atypically unhappy, alienated, elitist,
or otherwise unwell or unnatural manifestly untenable, if not downright
quaint.
Whether atheists and secular folk represent a very small minority of
a nation’s population (as in the case of, say, Ghana or Zimbabwe), or a
very large percentage (as in the case of, say, the Netherlands or
France), the bottom line is that, in the succinct and understated words
of Darren Sherkat, ‘‘not everyone desires religious goods.’’24 Such irreli-
gious women and men—their identities, worldviews, associations, and
experiences—deserve to be studied. Of particular interest for social scien-
tists is how atheism, and/or secularity, intersects with, is influenced by,
and in turn influences other aspects of the social world.
Fortunately, it appears as though a new day is dawning for the
social-scientific study of atheism and secularity. In addition to the
founding in 2005 of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society
and Culture—the first of its kind to be established in North America—
a growing body of research and scholarship has begun to emerge that
focuses specifically on the irreligious. Some of the more noteworthy,
pioneering efforts include Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s
Nonbelievers by Hunsberger and Altemeyer,25 Secularism and Secularity:
Contemporary International Perspectives edited by Kosmin and Keysar,26
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism edited by Michael Martin,27 my own
Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about
Introduction xi
Contentment,28 and finally, this publication. The essays in this two-volume

set have been assembled and published in a concerted effort to not only
begin filling a major lacuna within the social sciences, but more hopefully,
to inspire further social-scientific research on irreligiosity in all its numer-
ous dimensions and varied manifestations.
NOTES
1. Colin Campbell, Toward a Sociology of Irreligion (New York: Heider and
Heider, 1972).
2. Ibid., 8.
3. In the words of Benjamin Beit-Hallhami: ‘‘Those who shaped the modern
human sciences have been preoccupied with explaining the phenomena of reli-
gion and religiosity. Accounting for the absence of religious faith has never
been of much concern to them.’’ Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, ‘‘Atheists: A Psycho-
logical Profile,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 300.
4. For some major works on secularization, see Karel Dobbelaere, Seculari-
zation: An Analysis at Three Levels (Bruxelles: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002); William
Swatos and Daniel Olson, The Secularization Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000); Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford,
UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2002); Peter Berger, ed., The Desecularization of the
World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1999); David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (New York:
Harper and Row, 1978); Peter Glasner, The Sociology of Secularization: A Critique
of a Concept. (London: Routledge of Kegan Paul, 1977); Peter Berger, The Sacred
Canopy (New York: Anchor, 1967).
(New York; W.W. Norton, 2004).
6. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
(New York: Twelve, 2007).
7. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
8. William Sims Bainbridge, ‘‘Atheism,’’ Interdisciplinary Journal of Research
on Religion 1 (2005): 3.
9. N. J. Demerath and Victor Theissen, ‘‘On Spitting against the Wind:
Organizational Precariousness and American Irreligion,’’ The American Journal
of Sociology 7, no. 6 (1966): 674–87; N. J. Demerath, ‘‘A-Religion, and the Rise of
the Religion-less Church: Two Case Studies in Organizational Convergence,’’
Sociological Analysis 30, no. 4 (Winter 1969): 191–203.
10. Armand Mauss, ‘‘Dimensions of Religious Defection,’’ Review of Religious
Research 10, no. 3 (1969): 128–35.
11. Rocco Carorale and Antonio Grumelli, eds., The Culture of Un-Belief
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971), 3–4.
12. Including David G. Bromley, ed., Falling From the Faith: The Causes and
Consequences of Religious Apostasy (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988);
David Caplovitz and Fred Sherrow, The Religious Drop-Outs: Apostasy among
College Graduates (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1977); Roger Louis
xii Introduction
Dudley, ‘‘Alienation from Religion in Adolescents from Fundamentalist Reli-

gious Homes,’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17, no. 4 (Dec. 1978):
389–98; Bruce Hunsberger, ‘‘Apostasy: A Social-Learning Perspective,’’ Review
of Religious Research 25 (1983): 21–38; Bruce Hunsberger, ‘‘A Re-examination of
the Antecedents of Apostasy,’’ Review of Religious Research 21 (1980): 158–70.
13. J. Russell Hale, The Unchurched (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row,
1980); W. Feigelman, B. S. Gorman, and J. A. Varacalli, ‘‘Americans Who Give
up Religion,’’ Sociology and Social Research 76 (1992): 138–44; Bon Altemeyer and
Bruce Hunsberger, Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others
Abandon Religion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997); Michael Hout and
Claude S. Fischer, ‘‘Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Poli-
tics and Generations,’’ American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 165–90.
14. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 17.
15. Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History (New York: Harper Collins,
2003); James Thrower, Western Atheism: A Short History (Amherst, NY: Prome-
theus Books, 2000).
16. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2000), 13.
tics Worldwide (New York: Cambrdige University Press, 2004).
20. http://www.trincoll.edu/secularisminstitute/.
21. http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations/.
22. C. Kirk Hadaway and Wade Clark Roof, ‘‘Apostasy in American
Churches: Evidence from National Survey Data,’’ in Falling From the Faith: The
Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy, ed. David G. Bromley (Newbury
Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988).
23. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=982/.
24. Darren E. Sherkat, ‘‘Beyond Belief: Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theistic
Certainty in the United States,’’ Sociological Spectrum 28 (2008), 438.
25. Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, Atheists: A Groundbreaking
Study of America’s Nonbelievers (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).
26. Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, eds., Secularism and Secularity: Con-
temporary International Perspectives (Hartford, CT: Institute for the Study of Secu-
larism in Society and Culture, 2007).
27. Michael Martin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
28. Phil Zuckerman, Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can
Chapter 1

in North America
Bob Altemeyer
How many Americans do not believe in God? Not very many, according
to the polls. The 2006 General Social Survey (GSS) found that 2.2 percent
of its respondents declared they ‘‘do not believe in God,’’ and 4.3 percent
stated they did not know if God exists. A 2008 Pew Research Center sur-
vey reported that atheists accounted for only 1.6 percent of the sample
and agnostics 2.4 percent. So nonbelievers embody but a little of the
American population. Furthermore, the masses are hardly swarming to
their ranks. In 1988–1991, when the GSS first asked the question, 1.9 per-
cent said they did not believe in God, compared to 2.2 percent 15 years
later, and 4.1 percent were agnostics, compared with 4.3 percent in 2006.
Secularism, the disregarding of religious concerns whatever one’s
belief about the supernatural, runs a bit thicker, with 6.3 percent of the
PEW sample saying they had no religion at all and could care less.
Another 5.8 percent also had no affiliation but stated they were reli-
gious in some way. And the number of unaffiliated ‘‘Nones’’ has been
growing over time. Five percent of first GSS, conducted in 1972, said
they were Nones. In 2006 the figure topped 16 percent. This tripling of
people stiff-arming organized religion signals a noteworthy shift in
American religious attitudes.
Furthermore, some of the ‘‘religiously affiliated’’—by far the largest
group in the polls—affiliate in name only. Many people call themselves
‘‘Protestant,’’ ‘‘Catholic,’’ or ‘‘Jew’’ for cultural or family reasons, but
scrupulously avoid going to church, showing up for only the most im-
portant religious holidays and for marrying and burying. The 2006 GSS
found that most Americans (53 percent) seldom or never attend
2 Global Expressions
religious services. In counterpoint, only about a third (31 percent) say

they attend regularly (and some of them must be varnishing the truth,
since studies find churches rather emptier than these numbers indicate).
But for all of the current disconnect with organized religion, the vast
majority of American adults do believe in God and probably in the tra-
ditional Judeo-Christian God. In fact, 63 percent of the 2006 GSS sam-
ple said they had ‘‘no doubts’’ whatsoever about God’s existence.
People are not leaving churches because of theological misgivings, but
for other reasons that we shall discuss later.
After centuries of religious preeminence, Canada has morphed into
a largely secular society in just two generations. In the 1950s Canadian
churches were packed fuller than American ones. Now, according to a
2006 Ipsos-Reid Survey, only 17 percent of Canadians attend religious
services every week—about half the figure for the United States. In
turn, the number of nonbelievers has multiplied. A 2008 Harris-Decima
Survey found 23 percent of Canadian adults do not believe in God,
many times the level of disbelief in America. As in the United States,
the Nones are growing faster than any other ‘‘religious group.’’
Correspondingly, evangelical Christians make up only 10 percent of
the Canadian population, compared with about 30 percent of Ameri-
cans. And Canadians attach relatively little stigma to atheism, although
in some parts of the U.S. atheists have to hide their religious views for
fear of social retribution. Indeed, a 2007 Gallup Poll found Americans
would rather have a black, Jewish, female, Hispanic, Mormon, Muslim,
or gay president than an atheist. In fact most (53 percent) of the sample
said they would vote against an atheist. In Canada, only 32 percent
said they would not want an atheist prime minister.
DEMOGRAPHIC TENDENCIES AMONG NONBELIEVERS

Studies almost universally find that nonbelievers tend to be men rather
than women: the flip side of the oft-noted tendency of women to be more
religious. Atheists and agnostics also tend to be better educated than
believers, have higher socioeconomic status, are more likely to live in urban
than in rural communities, and strongly prefer liberal political parties. They
also tend to be younger than the general population. Does this mean disbe-
lief is a ‘‘phase’’ young people go through before accepting their parents’
ways? Or does it merely show that secularism is becoming more common
as generations move on? Let us consider how people become nonbelievers.
THE ORIGINS OF NONBELIEF AND THE PERSONALITIES OF

NONBELIEVERS: ACTIVE AMERICAN ATHEISTS
National polls tell us how many atheists and agnostics walk among
us and a few things about them. But polls are not usually designed to
Atheism and Secularity in North America 3
yield much psychological insight into nonbelievers’ minds, and how

they got that way. So we now turn to research that digs deeper—albeit
into less representative samples—to figure such things out.
One study sent a long questionnaire to members of cooperating athe-
ist clubs in the San Francisco Bay area in 2002 and then followed that
up with a similar survey of Alabama and Idaho atheists. The 281 partic-
ipants obviously do not represent the several million atheists in the
United States. They belonged to the sort of atheist organizations that
launch court cases about mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance,
but their answers can tell us what such ‘‘hard core’’ atheists are like.
Were They Really Atheists?

Some of the respondents disliked the name ‘‘atheist’’ and called
themselves ‘‘humanists.’’ But the survey asked them in seven ways if
they believed in a supernatural power, a deity:
1. That is a thinking, self-aware being, not just some physical force like the
‘‘Big Bang’’?
2. That is almighty: that can do anything it decides to do?
3. That is eternal: that always was and always will be?
4. That intentionally created the universe for its own purposes?
5. That is constantly aware of our individual lives and hears our prayers?
6. That is all-loving and all-good?
7. That will judge us after we die, sending some to Heaven and others to
Hell?
Virtually all (99.5 percent) of the answers came back ‘‘No.’’

Then the survey directly asked about belief in the traditional concept
of God in our culture. Three answers were provided:
1. ‘‘I am an atheist. I do not believe in the existence of this traditional God.

I believe it does not exist.’’
2. ‘‘I am an agnostic. I do not believe in the existence of this traditional
God, nor do I disbelieve in it.’’
3. ‘‘I am a theist, a believer. I believe in the existence of this traditional God.’’
All of the 281 respondents said they were atheists.

Going yet further, the survey asked, ‘‘If you do not believe in the ‘tra-
ditional’ God, is there any sense in which you do believe in ‘God’? If so,
would you please describe what kind of God or supernatural being or
supernatural force you DO believe in? Does this being play an active
role in human lives (If so, how?)?’’ Only 6 percent of the atheists said
they believed in any kind of supernatural power, and their names for it
(e.g., ‘‘Nature,’’ ‘‘Life Force,’’ ‘‘Laws of the Universe’’) imply that even
these are not supernatural entities in the usual sense. Thus the active
American atheists denied the existence of any sort of divine being.
Origins of Their Atheism

Like most atheists, these were predominantly male (68 percent) and
well-educated (with 17 years of schooling on the average), and they
overwhelmingly preferred the Democratic Party over the Republicans.
But they averaged nearly 60 years of age—much older than the atheists
found in American polls. So young atheists do not appear to be joining
atheist clubs.
The great majority of the active atheists, about 75 percent, came from
nonreligious backgrounds. Does this mean their parents were atheists?
No, only 30 percent had an atheist or agnostic mom or dad. Instead, the
parents usually believed in God, but otherwise had no interest in reli-
gion. If you (correctly) believe that very religious offspring tend to come
from very religious upbringings, you can see why a nonreligious back-
ground can lead to nonbelief. Socialization usually works.
But what about the 25 percent who became atheists despite religious
(and occasionally very religious) childhoods? They not only failed to
follow in their parents’ footsteps, they went to the opposite extreme.
They did not just backslide into a lax association with the faith of their
fathers, they did not just become ‘‘unaffiliated seculars,’’ and they did
not ‘‘just’’ become atheists. They became the kind of atheist who chal-
lenges religious practice in court and mocks it in public events like the
Bible-throwing Contest held on the summer solstice in San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Park. How on earth did socialization in very religious
homes produce that?
The researchers asked the atheists to describe their journey to disbe-
lief. Surprisingly the solid majority, from both nonreligious and reli-
gious backgrounds, had believed in God at some point in their lives.
After all, it is natural to wonder where everything came from, and reli-
gions give answers that can permeate a culture. The respondents with
nonreligious parents said they picked up their belief in the traditional
God from peers, grandparents, teachers, and so on. Moreover, the non-
religious parents did not mind. They were not hostile toward religion,
just uninterested. So belief sprung up in some rather unlikely, unin-
tended, and untended soil.
But challenges to God and the Bible also crop up in our culture. An
awful lot rides on how the believer deals with those challenges. Studies
of Canadian university students reveal that, just as almost everyone
believes in God at some point in her life, almost everyone begins to
wonder about God’s existence too. Typically the doubts arise in the
middle-teen years. Some students then make a very one-sided search of
the issues. They take their questions to their parents, to their religious
friends, and to their minister. They pray for guidance and read the
Bible. Not surprisingly, almost all their doubts are allayed—if not
directly answered.
Other students take a more two-sided approach to the issue. They
too seek out believers, but they also talk to disbelieving peers and
teachers, and they read up on scientific findings and Bertram Russell.
Most of all, they seem determined to hammer out a real decision, to
make up their own minds on the matter, whereas the ‘‘one-siders’’
appear mostly searching for reassurance so they will not have to con-
front the issue. When all is said and done, many two-siders continue to
believe in God. But some do not. Almost all the students who became
nonbelievers had made two-sided searches.
Amazing Apostates
Why do some ‘‘two-side searchers’’ stop believing in God? We can get
insight from interviews of ‘‘Amazing Apostate’’ Canadian students. Like
some of the active American atheists we are trying to understand, they
had come from very religious backgrounds, and yet they had rejected the
family faith and become nonbelievers by the time they entered college.
The decision had often cost them plenty, even shunning and disownment
by their families, losing their best friends, and becoming social pariahs in
their communities. Why on earth then did they do it?
Over and over again, these students said they wanted to believe what
their families believed, but they could not make themselves do it
because ‘‘It’s too unbelievable!’’ What made it so unbelievable then?
After all, almost everyone else accepts it!
The disbeliefs basically arose ‘‘internally’’ from the student’s knowl-
edge of his religion. The Bible seemed to overflow with contradictions—
sometimes in successive verses. It hardly smacked of a competent editor,
much less a supreme being. Furthermore the classic arguments for the
existence of God crumbled when given a good shake. The reasoning
behind the Uncaused Cause, for example, turned out to be circular, self-
contradictory, and incapable of demonstrating even a conscious god,
much less a benign one. The ‘‘argument from order’’ assumed that
because some things obviously had a conscious builder, all things must,
and so on. Furthermore, so much of the religion’s teachings flew in the
face of scientific discovery.
When the Amazing Apostates brought these concerns to their
parents, teachers, or ministers, they were given unsatisfying stock
answers. Or the elders told them to have faith, that unquestioning faith
was the highest virtue. Or the grown-ups chastened them for even hav-
ing the thoughts. It was wrong to ask questions; Satan was obviously
working on them. They must not let others know they had wondered
about such things.
The problem was that they had usually been told their religion
topped all others because it was the true religion. Their teachers had
made quite a point of that; everything they taught was so deeply, so
totally, so fundamentally true, they said. So truth was the bottom line,
not the teachings. In these students such instruction had, it seemed,
sparked a desire for the truth that became more important, ultimately,
than all the pressures to have faith. When their religion failed by the
criterion it had itself established, these students felt almost helpless to
do anything but reject it. In short, the Amazing Apostates had taken
their religion too seriously, been influenced by it too much, to continue
believing in it. Socialization had trumped itself.
What was different about the Amazing Apostates?

The interesting question then emerges, why do most people believe
in God if the evidence is so flawed? Several things stood out about the
Amazing Apostates. First, they had usually been devout members of
their religion, following its rules and practicing its rituals more faithfully
than their peers. They had thus been praised for their integrity, and that
drive for personal consistency put them between a rock and a hard
place when religion failed the test. They could not simply settle for reas-
surance and go with the flow. Attending church, saying prayers, pre-
tending to believe when they did not—these things ate away at them.
Second, the Amazing Apostates were usually highly intelligent and
had typically been ‘‘A’’ students in high school. They could spot the prob-
lem with the Bible saying Cain worried that anyone might kill him as he
wandered the earth. They would do the background reading in biology
that verified evolution. They were not afraid to read books by philoso-
phers. They had been rewarded all their lives for getting the ‘‘right an-
swer’’ to questions and consequently may have been less willing than
most to settle for something that, upon examination, did not seem right.
Third, when asked why their siblings had not also become non-
believers, they commonly answered their brothers and sisters might
have their doubts too, but they were too afraid to take the next step—
not just because of their parents, but because the next step took one off
a cliff, into the Unknown. Believing intensely in a religion brings an
enormous number of rewards. You know who you are, you know what
life is about, you know what you are supposed to do, you know you
will have friends all of your life, you know you will never really die,
and you know you will rejoin all the loved ones who die before and af-
ter you. It is all laid out for you. In contrast, most of the Amazing
Apostate students did not have a clue what to ‘‘believe in’’ now, only
that it would have to make sense. They usually felt alone and misun-
derstood, facing the abyss people warned them would be there if they
turned their backs on God. They also were hounded by the thought,
deeply planted in them, that if they abandoned God they would burn
forever in the hottest flames of Hell. So they said they would love to
return to the bosom of Abraham, but they just could not make them-
selves do it. It takes an uncommon amount of courage to take that
stand, and that is probably another reason why disbelief is so rare.
(Incidentally, this study also investigated ‘‘Amazing Believers’’: stu-
dents with no religious background who nonetheless became very fer-
vent Christians. In contrast to the Amazing Apostates, the Amazing
Believers typically joined a religion to meet emotional needs. For exam-
ple, they became terrified of death or became depressed over the mess
they had made of their lives. Also unlike the apostates, who typically
worked things out alone in their own minds, the Amazing Believers
were usually ‘‘brought to God’’ by peers who belonged to church
youth groups. The feeling of acceptance, love, and community support
led them to join the religion, not a voice from above, Pascal’s Wager,
or an airtight syllogism. Indeed, often they did not know much about
what the religion taught and had to learn what they now believed.)
Comparing Loss of Faith by the Amazing Apostates and

the Active Atheists
Few of the Amazing Apostates will ever become active in atheist
causes. Canadian nonbelievers have comparatively little to protest about.
But one can find parallels to their lives in the much older active Ameri-
can atheists. Almost all of the latter’s doubts arose, they reported, over
cerebral issues: religion versus science, inconsistencies in the Bible, and
teachings that made no sense. Their atheism did not have emotional
roots, such as the death of a loved one. Anger, fear, lust, and unhappi-
ness did not trigger their quest, but rather (like the Amazing Apostates)
the intellectual basis of their faith collapsed when poked and probed.
Also like the Amazing Apostates, the active atheists had usually
worked things out on their own, doing a lot of reading and thinking,
determined to discover the truth. And ultimately they found what they
held unholdable, and they dropped it. As one wrote, ‘‘My mother
believes with all her heart that Satan turned me away, but it was the
Bible. Nobody brainwashed me or led me into a cult. I studied my
church’s teachings and that’s what made me stop believing.’’
The final decision to become an atheist took a long time: six years
on the average in the San Francisco sample, and fourteen years in
Alabama and Idaho, where atheism could prove hazardous to one’s
social standing and bank account. And most of the active atheists
reported that being a nonbeliever had produced difficulties in their
lives—even in San Francisco. When asked why they then had chosen
to join a vilified group, they gave the Amazing Apostates’ answer: they
had no other choice; they could not believe what was so unbelievable.
The Personalities of Active Atheists

Dogmatism
The San Francisco, Alabama, and Idaho study also provided data on
various aspects of the active atheists’ personalities. For example, dog-
matism was measured in three different ways. These active atheists
scored rather highly on a dogmatism scale that has items such as,
‘‘Anyone who is honestly and truly seeking the truth will end up
believing what I believe,’’ and ‘‘I am absolutely certain that my ideas
about the fundamental issues in life are correct.’’ In a second test they
were asked how they would react to the hypothetical discovery of a
scientifically verified ‘‘Roman file’’ on Jesus’ life that closely supported
the Gospels, including his death and resurrection. Two-thirds of the
atheists said this would make no difference at all in their strong (dis)-
belief that Jesus was the son of God. Finally, about half (51 percent) of
the respondents also said they could not think of anything that could
happen which would lead them to believe in the traditional God. So
some of the active atheists appeared to be rather dogmatic.
Zealotry
Active atheists might also be very zealous, attempting to convince
others there is no God. Indeed, their opponents commonly speak of ‘‘the
atheist agenda,’’ perceiving challenges to school prayer and so on as part
of a vast, long-range effort to destroy religion in the United States. So
the survey had three measures of missionary zeal. In one, the atheist
was asked what he would do if a Christian teenager experiencing reli-
gious doubts came to him for advice. Most (62 percent) responded they
would have thumped the drum for atheism—some softly (‘‘I would
have told her why I became an atheist’’), some loudly (‘‘I’d tell her reli-
gion was ridiculous.’’). Most (51 percent) would have wanted the teen to
become an atheist, but a smaller number (42 percent) said they would
actually try to convert the teen to atheism.
The second measure of zealotry simply asked the atheists what they
had taught their own children regarding religion. About 20 percent
said they had directly tried to pass on their disbelief in God. The rest
said they wanted their children to make up their own minds, not just
copy them. So here the atheists looked positively nonzealous.
The third measure of zealotry involved school prayer in which
the atheists were asked to react to the following proposition. ‘‘Suppose
a law were passed requiring strenuous teaching in public schools
against belief in God and religion. Beginning in kindergarten, all
children would be taught that belief in God is unsupported by logic
and science and that traditional religions are based on unreliable
scriptures and outdated principles. All children would eventually be
encouraged to become atheists or agnostics. How would you react to

such a law?’’
This proposal would seem to be the centerpiece of an atheist agenda.
Yet 76 percent of the active atheists said this would be a bad law. Most
of these committed atheists thought it would be just as wrong for
schools to teach their opinions as it would be to teach Christianity. The
people who launch court cases against public prayer do not want their
views crammed down other people’s throats instead.
All in all, the three measures indicate active atheists have little ‘‘mis-
sionary zeal.’’
Religious ethnocentrism
The active American atheists were also asked to rate various reli-
gious groups on a 0–100 scale. Not surprisingly, they gave their highest
marks (90) to atheists and their second-highest (60) to agnostics. On the
other hand, they give very, very low ratings (0–10) to religious funda-
mentalists, be they Christians, Jews, or Muslims. The data reveal a
strong streak of ‘‘Us versus Them’’ ethnocentrism in the active atheists,
which is hardly amazing given how often they battle fundamentalists
over various issues.
Happiness, joy, and comfort

Studies of the parents of Canadian university students have found
that traditional religious beliefs bring far more happiness, joy, and
comfort to people than logic and science do. Very religious people, in
fact, said they get almost nothing from logic and science. Perhaps the
active atheists would.
Accordingly the San Francisco atheists were asked to say, in sixteen dif-
ferent ways, how much happiness, joy, and comfort they derived from
logic and science. Generally speaking, they highly endorsed these
approaches. They especially agreed with, ‘‘[Logic and science] provide the
surest path we have to the truth,’’ ‘‘They enable me to search for the truth,
instead of just memorizing what others say,’’ and ‘‘They give me the satis-
faction of knowing that my beliefs are based upon objective facts and logic,
not an act of faith.’’ But overall the active atheists did not derive nearly the
joy and happiness from this approach to life that highly religious people
did from their beliefs, who endorsed to the max statements such as, ‘‘[My
religion] reveals how I can spend all of eternity in heaven with God,’’ ‘‘It
brings me the joy of God’s love,’’ ‘‘It tells me I shall rejoin my loved ones
after we die,’’ and ‘‘It has brought the forgiveness of my sins.’’
However, this cannot be too surprising, given the findings we
reviewed earlier. Logic and science are not intended to satisfy one
emotionally. They are ‘‘cold’’ endeavors, cerebral and intellectual, that
one should pursue dispassionately. And ultimately science may show

us the universe is a purposeless accident that will eventually become a
very big cloud of low-level energy pockmarked here and there with
dead stars. That is not the sort of thing that gets people jumping out of
bed in the morning, compared to promises of salvation and eternal
bliss. Yet nonbelievers are willing to chuck all the good stuff because
they believe it is a fairy tale and take instead the poor bargain of logic
and science because their quest for the truth matters more.
MORE ORDINARY NONBELIEVERS

‘‘Ordinary’’ Atheists
So far we have been talking about Americans who belong to atheist
organizations. Although they command one’s interest, they comprise
only a small part of the atheist population in North America. What are
more ordinary atheists like?
The most comprehensive answer comes from studies of parents of uni-
versity students in central Canada. Such parents provide powerful data
because they have lived most of their lives and most have made their
final decisions about religion. Furthermore, studying parents will not
only tell us about more ordinary atheists, but also allow comparisons
with agnostics and with theists of varying commitment (from inactive
believers to very active fundamentalists) who answered the same sur-
vey.1 We shall spend the rest of this chapter considering these results,
getting a better picture of why people end up believing what they do
about God, and how certain aspects of personality vary with how reli-
gious people are.
Origins of Ordinary Atheists

Comprising but 5–6 percent of the parent samples—about the same
figure found in national polls in Canada, the atheistic parents were
largely (61 percent) male and (like all the other subgroups in these stud-
ies) averaged about 48 years of age. But the atheists had more extensive
educations than the other groups, with a median of 15 years. All said
they were atheists, and like the active American atheists, 99 percent of
their answers to the ‘‘Seven Attributes of God’’ questions were ‘‘No.’’
Compared to the other parents, the atheists had received the least
religious upbringings. But they were not usually reared by nonbeliever
parents; only 12 percent said they had been raised in ‘‘no religion.’’
Nevertheless, like the active American atheists, they had usually
received little religious instruction from their theistic parents and had
minimal experience in church. Only 6 percent of the atheists came from
highly religious backgrounds and could be called Amazing Apostates.
The parent atheists scored as highly on the Religious Doubts scale

as the active American atheists had, displaying a thunderous rejection
of religious faith. They too castigated religion on cerebral grounds:
There is no proof that God exists; religious accounts of creation do not
square with scientific evidence; the Bible hardly seems to be the work
of a supernatural being; teachings do not make sense. Emotional rea-
sons played little or no role at all.
Personalities of parent atheists

Being an authoritarian follower. The parents answered a personal-
ity test that measures one’s tendency to be an authoritarian follower.
Persons who score highly on this scale tend to submit extensively to
established authority, aggress in the name of that authority, and insist
that others live by the social conventions their authorities endorse. Au-
thoritarian followers tend to be fearful and to memorize the beliefs of
the powerful people in their lives rather than think things out for
themselves. They consequently have disorganized, unintegrated minds
packed with stereotypes, logical inconsistencies, and double standards.
They often act in hypocritical ways, but are highly defensive and blind
to themselves. Authoritarian followers tend to accept uncritically false
ideas that come from trusted sources and reject out of hand true facts
that come from ‘‘outsiders.’’
How do you think atheists would score on this measure of authori-
tarianism? Atheistic parents scored very low, lower than any other
group in the sample.
Hostility toward homosexuals. The measure of authoritarianism

predicts many other things about a person’s beliefs and behavior. For
example, because of their conventionality authoritarian followers often
attack persons who violate their notions of respectable behavior, such
as homosexuals. Because atheists are very unlike authoritarian fol-
lowers, we would expect them to be more accepting of homosexuals
than most people. And indeed the atheists in the parent sample scored
lowest of all the groups on a measure of hostility toward homosexuals
that asked for reactions to statements such as, ‘‘Homosexuals should
be locked up to protect society’’ and ‘‘Homosexuals should never be
given positions of trust in caring for children.’’
Ethnic and racial prejudice. Authoritarian followers, like the lead-

ers they obey, tend to be highly prejudiced against many minorities. So
again we expect atheists to be less prejudiced and more accepting of
diverse ethnic/racial groups than most people are. And once again the
data support this, with atheists scoring lower than any other subgroup
among the parents on a scale that contains items such as, ‘‘Certain
races of people clearly do not have the natural intelligence and ‘get up
and go’ of the white race,’’ and ‘‘Black people as a rule are, by their
nature, more violent than white people are.’’
Religious ethnocentrism. People are also sometimes prejudiced

against others based on their religious affiliations. We saw earlier that
active American atheists gave fundamentalists a very low rating and their
own group, ‘‘atheists,’’ a very high one on the 0–100 scale. But the parent
atheists responded quite differently to this question, showing only a small
preference for atheists (50) over fundamentalists (30)—amounting to the
second-smallest preference of all the groups in the study. This reinforces
the findings above that ordinary atheists, however rejecting they may be
of various ideas, are relatively accepting of other people.
The parents also answered a scale that measures religion-versus-
religion prejudice. It contains items such as ‘‘Our country should
always be a Christian country, and other beliefs should be ignored in
our public institutions,’’ and ‘‘All people may be entitled to their own
religious beliefs, but I don’t want to associate with people whose views
are quite different from mine.’’ The scale focuses on Christianity versus
other faiths, and atheists would have little reason to favor one religion
over another. But atheists also posted low numbers on items about
wanting to avoid people with ‘‘other’’ religious beliefs, whatever they
were. Overall, atheists had lower scores on this measure than any other
group, so again they appear to be relatively tolerant of others.
Dogmatism. The parents also answered the three measures of dogma-

tism used in the American survey. They scored much lower than the
active atheists on the dogmatism scale. Like the Americans, 64 percent
said they would be unmoved by a scientifically verified ‘‘Roman file’’ that
confirmed the Gospels. And more of them (57 versus 51 percent) said they
could not think of anything that would lead them to believe in the tradi-
tional God. So the parent atheists appear about as dogmatic overall as the
active American atheists. But among the parents as a whole, the atheists
usually had the second-lowest group scores on these measures.
Zealotry. Almost none (8 percent) of the atheist parents indicated

they would tell a questioning Christian teen that his parents’ beliefs
were wrong. Only about a third (35 percent) stated they would want
the teen to have their beliefs. And only a sixth (16 percent) said they
would try to convert the teen to atheism. Correspondingly, only one in
seven (14 percent) reported that they had tried to raise their children to
be atheists; instead they had emphasized making up one’s own mind.
In all of these measures, the atheists slid under the rather low totals
posted by the American atheists and had the second-lowest proselytiz-
ing scores in the whole sample.
Parent atheists were also asked if they would like to see nonbelief
taught in public schools. None of them said he would. And the parents
also answered a Zealotry scale, which asks people how much they pro-
mote their basic outlook on life through items such as, ‘‘I try to explain
my outlook to others at every opportunity,’’ and ‘‘I think every sensible
person should agree with this outlook, once it has been explained.’’
Atheists had the second-lowest score in the sample.
Group cohesiveness. People vary in how much they want to belong

to groups and to conform to a group’s standards and insist that others
conform too. This was measured by a Group Cohesiveness scale, which
contains such items as ‘‘For any group to succeed, all its members have
to give it their complete loyalty,’’ and ‘‘There is nothing lower than a
person who betrays his group or stirs up disagreement within it.’’
Atheists had the second-lowest average of all the religious groupings
in this study. They pretty much take a pass at being a ‘‘good team
member.’’
Belief in a dangerous world. Authoritarian followers post big num-

bers on a scale that measures fear that the world is becoming so dan-
gerous and degenerate that civilization will soon be destroyed. Some of
the items say God will do the destroying. But other statements make
no mention of a divinity, such as ‘‘It seems that every year there are
fewer and fewer truly respectable people, and more and more persons
with no morals at all who threaten everyone else.’’ Atheists scored sec-
ond-lowest of all the subgroups in the sample.
Willingness to revoke Canada’s ‘‘Bill of Rights.’’ Being easily

frightened, authoritarian followers look for someone to ‘‘take charge’’
and ‘‘stomp out the rot’’ that they think is ruining society. They are
not inclined to let something like constitutional guarantees of individ-
ual freedoms get in the way. Thus they support the revocation of the
Bill of Rights in the United States and the Charter of Rights and Free-
doms in Canada. When parents in the present study were presented
with arguments for abolishing this Charter, some agreed and most dis-
agreed. Atheists showed very little inclination to agree and had the
second-lowest score in the study.
Giving to charity. The Canadian parents were also asked what per-
cent of their income they gave to charities. (The question said not to
count gifts to one’s church or to church activities such as tuition to
church schools or support of missionary work—but they could count
gifts to religion-sponsored aid programs.) According to their reports,
atheists gave the least (1.7 percent of their income) to social charities of
all the groups in the study.
Happiness. Finally, parents were asked how happy they were in gen-
eral, on a 0–6 scale. Atheists had the lowest self-rating of happiness of
all the groups (3.6, between ‘‘moderately’’ and ‘‘pretty’’ happy.)
Summary. One cannot assume that these results would apply to per-
fectly ordinary middle-aged Canadian atheists, much less American
ones. But they do provide a point of comparison for the findings on
active American atheists. The atheist parents seem as dogmatic as the
active Americans. They showed even less inclination to proselytize,
and the parents proved much less religiously ethnocentric. Within the
Canadian parent sample, the atheists scored low on all these measures.
The parent studies used a broader range of measures than the
American survey and suggest what atheists in general might be like.
First they are very uninclined—as most people would surmise—to fol-
low the established authorities in society. Compared with others, athe-
ists show little prejudice against traditional targets of discrimination.
They do not see the world as a scary place and cannot be easily pan-
icked into supporting the destruction of constitutional freedoms. They
(obviously) have little inclination to conform to group norms. In many
respects, they seem to be good democratic citizens. But in two ways at
least they do not shine: they are not very charitable, and (as was sug-
gested in the studies of the active American atheists and Amazing
Apostates), they are not particularly happy.
Ordinary Agnostics
Many agnostics appeared in the Canadian parent samples—more
than three times the number of atheists, which again corresponds to
the results obtained in national polls. How did they become agnostics,
and what are they like?
Origins of agnosticism
Agnostics, like atheists, tended to be guys (54 percent), and they had
14 years of education compared with the atheists’ 15. When asked, they
declared they were agnostics rather than atheists or theists. Their 85 per-
cent ‘‘no’’ answers to the Seven Attributes of God questions show they
clearly do not believe in the traditional God; but the residual 15 percent
‘‘yes’’ answers show they maintain a little wiggle room on the issue.
Only 11 percent of the agnostic parents had come from nonreligious
homes, and overall they had experienced only slightly more religious
upbringings than the future atheists had. So the agnostics, like the
atheists, usually had theistic parents who seldom went to church,
prayed as a family, and so on. But more than twice as many agnostics
as atheists (16 versus 6 percent) had highly religious backgrounds.
Persons leaving a strong religious tradition may well find agnosticism

a more comfortable landing place than atheism.
Predictably, agnostics did not doubt the existence of God as strenu-
ously on the Doubts scale as the atheists did. Nor did they doubt the
divine origin of the Bible quite as much, nor were they as troubled by
inconsistencies in the Bible and religious teachings. They were less put
off than the atheists by the bad things religions had done in the past, by
the intolerance of some religious people, and by ‘‘the way faith made
people blind.’’ They did have significant doubts about all these counts,
but did not see things as strongly black-and-white as the atheists did.
Personalities of agnostics
In general, agnostic and atheistic parents mustered very similar
scores on the personality tests. On all of the measures described earlier,
when the atheists came in lowest on a trait, the agnostics finished sec-
ond lowest. When the atheists scored second lowest, it was the agnos-
tics who beat them out. Usually the differences were trivial and not
‘‘statistically significant.’’ Recall, for example, that 0 percent of the
atheist parents wanted nonbelief taught in public schools. Well, only 1
percent of the agnostics did. You cannot get a more trivial difference
than that.
Bigger gaps existed however and should be noted. Atheists scored sig-
nificantly lower in being authoritarian followers than agnostics did. This
makes sense, because atheists take a bigger step away from the estab-
lished, authority-blessed norm than agnostics do. Atheists also notched
significantly lower scores on prejudice against homosexuals and ethnic/
racial minorities. Agnostics in turn proved significantly less dogmatic
than atheists on all the measures used. For example, although 64 percent
of the atheists said they would be unmoved by ancient scrolls supporting
the Gospels, only 38 percent of the agnostics said this. This also makes
sense, as agnostics have not declared there is no God. And although par-
ent atheists appeared markedly nonzealous, the agnostics predictably
wound up even lower. One does not find many ‘‘Agnostics Clubs.’’
Agnostics, like atheists, reported giving 1.7 percent of their income
to social charities. They also appeared a little happier, with an average
of 4.0 (‘‘Pretty happy’’) on the 0–6 percent scale.
Summary. Atheists and agnostics differ in their certainty that God

does not exist, which may jointly flow from atheists’ lesser authoritari-
anism and agnostics’ lesser dogmatism. But when one examines their
backgrounds and personalities, the two groups have a great deal in
common, as evidenced by their consistent 1 to 2 standings on almost
all the measures used. But how isolated are these dissenting camps in
a culture where the vast majority believes in God?
THEISTS
Inactive Theists
Origins of believing in God yet being ‘‘unchurched’’
Inactive theists, who say they believe in God but almost never go to
church, made up the largest group in the parent sample—again reflect-
ing a result found in national polls. In fact, if you throw in the 20–25
percent who were atheists or agnostics, you have accounted for about
60 percent of the survey. Thus most of the parents were nonbelievers
or believers who for most purposes might as well be nonbelievers.
Nonbelievers do not stand nearly as isolated as one might think.
Most (57 percent) of the inactive theists were females, and they went
to school for 12 years on the average. They said they believed in the
traditional God, with 74 percent of their answers to the Seven Attrib-
utes questions being yes, compared with only 15 percent for the agnos-
tics and 1 percent for the atheists. What was their biggest hesitation
about the deity? Nearly half did not think God would judge them after
they died, which may have helped them sleep in on Sundays.
The inactive theists had notably more religious upbringings than the
atheists or agnostics. A sizeable number of them (27 percent) even came
from highly religious homes. So why did they end up Nones or at best
names on the parish roll who would not even get a participation award?
The ‘‘inactives’’ almost never went to church—which they made
clear on the Doubts scale—because of the people they encountered
there. Some lay persons and clergy members pressured others to
believe what they believed and often seemed to be hypocrites and prej-
udiced. Religion thus did not appear to make people better; if any-
thing, it seemed to provide springboards for being worse. The church
experience itself drove these members out of the congregation.
These disclosures by the inactives reinforce the results of an earlier
study that focused on parents who decided not to raise their children
in the family religion—and thus to break a tradition that usually went
back many generations. Most of these religious dropouts said they quit
because of problems with their churches, not because doubts arose
about God. Most of all, they spotted too much hypocrisy in the church
community. People talked a good game on Sunday and put on a pious
display, but then they acted otherwise the rest of the week—sometimes
before they even exited the church parking lot. Also, many parishion-
ers and some of the clergy were intolerant of others on racial, ethnic,
religious, and sexual orientation grounds, as well services became bor-
ing, it seemed the church was always asking for money, the social
norm of going to church every week was fading away, and so on.
The dropouts’ dissatisfaction with the religious experience had usu-
ally begun in their teen years. Obviously they had not just been going
through a youthful ‘‘phase,’’ for now in their late forties, they seldom
darkened a church door. Most of them doubted they would ever
become religious again. And of course, as a direct consequence of their
loss of interest, nearly all of their children had secular upbringings: the
rich seedbed for agnosticism and atheism.
The personalities of inactive believers

We saw that the atheists and agnostics had the lowest scores on all
of the traits measured in these studies. The inactive believers almost
always logged the next lowest ones, which made them the least authori-
tarian, the least antigay, the least racially prejudiced, the least dogmatic,
the least proselytizing, the least group-cohesive, and the least religiously
ethnocentric subgroup among the theists. Continuing another trend,
they gave a bit more to charity (1.8 percent) and were slightly happier
(4.1 percent) than the agnostics.
Modestly Active Theists

Some of the parents who believed in God said they attended church
up to twice a month. Mainly female (56 percent), they had 13 years of
education on the average. They had a more traditional view of God
than the inactive believers we just considered, with 82 percent of their
answers to the Seven Attributes questions being Yes.
The parents who attended services now and then came from more
religious backgrounds than the inactives, with 30 percent of them hav-
ing a very religious upbringing. They had spotted a little less hypocrisy
and intolerance in the pews than the inactives did, and overall they
had slightly fewer doubts about religion. Their stronger beliefs presum-
ably led them to church on a regularly irregular basis.
The data from the personality tests continued the trend. On almost
every measure the infrequent church-goers had the fourth highest
scores, after the atheists or agnostics and then the inactive theists. They
gave 2 percent of their income to charity and were ‘‘Pretty happy’’
(4.0 percent).
Regular Church-Goers
Origins
A little over a quarter of the parents said they attended religious
services at least three times per week, qualifying as regular church
goers. Again 56 percent were women, and the regularly attending
parents had gone to school for 13 years on the average. They had the
most traditional view of God, with 88 percent of their answers to the
Seven Attributes questions being Yes. They came from more religious
backgrounds, by far, than any other group in the sample. Most of them
(58 percent) had very religious upbringings. They also had the fewest
doubts of any of the subgroups.
Personalities of regular church-goers

Without exception the regular church-goers piled up the highest
scores on all of the personality measures in the survey. They had more
authoritarian followers than any other group, and they were the most
dogmatic on all the tests used, the most zealous on all the measures, the
most religiously ethnocentric, the most hostile toward homosexuals, and
the most prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities. Many of them
accordingly matched the description of the intolerant hypocrites who
had driven other members of their congregation away. However, they
gave the most (3.1 percent) to charity and posted the highest happiness
score (4.5 percent, halfway between ‘‘Pretty happy’’ and ‘‘Very happy’’).
A Comparison of Atheists Parents with Very High

Fundamentalist Parents
The data block out a remarkable progression, do they not? As one
moves from nonbelieving parents to believing ones, and as one moves
through the ranks of believers from the religiously inactive to regular
church goers, the scores on our various personality assessments march
up and up, step by step, almost without exception. The more ‘‘reli-
gious’’ the parents were, the more authoritarian, dogmatic, prejudiced,
and so on they tended to be. This generalization, of course, has many
individual exceptions. One can find some bigoted atheists, for example,
and some breathtakingly tolerant regular church goers. But the course
of the overall numbers can hardly be missed.
One can grasp the disparity that results by comparing the groups on
the extreme ends of the religiosity dimension. Fifty-one atheists served
in the biggest parent study, and their answers can be compared to the
51 parents who chalked up the highest scores on a measure of religious
fundamentalism. These groups have very opposite opinions about reli-
gion. How similar, or different, might they be as people?
Authoritarianism
Scores on the scale that measures a tendency to be an authoritarian
follower can range from 20 to 180. The atheists averaged 51, and the
fundamentalists placed over twice as high at 135.
Prejudice against minorities could also vary from 20 to 180. A smaller
difference emerged between the two groups here, 64 versus 84—but an
unflattering one for fundamentalists. Hostility toward homosexuals could

go from 12 to 108. The atheists averaged 23, and the fundamentalists 70.
The dogmatism scale runs from 20 to 180. The atheists posted a
65, and the fundamentalists 126. Both groups were asked to respond
to hypothetical ‘‘ancient scrolls’’ that challenged their beliefs. Sixty-
four percent of the atheists indicated they would be unmoved by
scientifically validated evidence that supported the Gospels. But
93 percent of the fundamentalists said a validated scroll showing
the Gospels had originally been part of a Greek myth that predated
Jesus by 200 years would have no impact whatsoever on their belief
in the divinity of Jesus. Fifty-seven percent of the atheists indicated
nothing could change their belief that God does not exist; 100 percent
of the fundamentalists said nothing could change their belief that
God does exist.
Only 8 percent of the atheist parents said they would tell a question-
ing Christian teen that his parents’ religious beliefs were wrong; 88
percent of the fundamentalist parents replied that they would tell a
questioning atheist teen that his parents’ beliefs were wrong. Would
these groups like the teen to adopt their views? Thirty-five percent of
the atheists stated they would, compared with 96 percent of the funda-
mentalists. Would the two sets of parents try to convert the teen? Only
16 percent of the atheists said they would, whereas 98 percent of the
fundamentalists would try to change him.
In a follow-up to this study, Canadian students were asked if would
be morally wrong for an atheist to try to convert a questioning teen who
had been raised in a strongly Christian family. Most atheists (64 percent)
declared it would be wrong, as did most (75 percent) fundamentalists.
Other students responded to the mirror-image situation of a questioning
atheist who seeks advice from a highly religious Christian. Again, most
atheists (75 percent) said it would be wrong for the Christian to try to
convert the atheist, but 85 percent of the fundamentalists asserted there
would be nothing wrong with it—a huge double standard.
Only 14 percent of the atheist parents reported that they had tried to
raise their children to be nonbelievers; the other 86 percent said they
wanted their children to make up their own minds. Ninety-four per-
cent of the fundamentalists wrote that they had raised their sons and
daughters to believe what they believed. Only 6 percent wanted their
children to investigate and decide.
The religious ethnocentrism scale can produce scores from 16 to 144.
The atheists averaged 38, and the fundamentalists 103.
When asked to rate various religious groups on a 0–100 scale, the
atheists gave ‘‘Atheists’’ a rating of 50 and ‘‘Christian fundamentalists’’
a score of 30—a 20-point gap. The fundamentalists rated ‘‘Christian
fundamentalists’’ at 90, and ‘‘Atheists’’ at 30—a 60-point gap showing
three times as much ethnocentrism.
When atheist parents were asked if they wanted atheism taught in

the public schools, none of them (0 percent) said yes. They thought it
was wrong for any religious beliefs, including their own, to be taught
in tax-supported institutions. When the fundamentalist parents were
asked if they favored teaching their beliefs in public school, 84 percent
answered yes.
(It had previously been established that most Christian fundamental-
ist parents supported a proposed law that would require Christian
prayer and readings from the Bible in public schools, as part of an
effort to get students to eventually accept Jesus Christ as their personal
savior. Their main argument went, ‘‘The majority rules. This is a Chris-
tian country, and its beliefs should be taught in public schools.’’ But
when presented with a parallel situation of Christian children in an
Arab country, or Israel, being indoctrinated in Islam or Judaism in the
public schools, most Christian fundamentalists opposed the idea, argu-
ing that minority rights must be protected.)
The fundamentalists reported giving substantially more to charity
(3.8 percent of their income) than the atheists did (1.7 percent) and
were markedly happier (4.7 versus 3.6 percent).
Summary
The data make it clear that, within this population at least, atheists
and strong fundamentalists are cut from very different cloth. As well,
do not the findings challenge the common notion that belief in God is
necessary for moral behavior? True, the fundamentalists did give more
to charity, and while nonbelievers can probably live with the realiza-
tion that they would be happier if they became deeply religious, it
would be interesting to see how they explain the difference in charita-
ble giving. But on the other hand, one might be interested in seeing
how fundamentalists deal with the fact that, when tested, atheists
showed more integrity, open-mindedness, acceptance of others, inde-
pendence, and so on than fundamentalists did, who showed instead
double standards, closed-mindedness, prejudice, and authoritarianism.
OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE

What does the future hold for disbelief in God and secularism in
North America? Growth, it would seem. More and more adults in the
United States and Canada are becoming religiously inactive, ending up
as unaffiliated Nones, or church members in name only. They do not
usually become atheists or agnostics, but they likely adopt a secular
outlook on life. Their children in turn will very likely end up secular
theists as well, or even disbelievers. These predictions are based on the
simple fact, long recognized by religions themselves, that if the parents
do not raise their children to be religious, the children will probably

not become active members of the church.
Even when parents emphasize the family religion, the effort often
fails. Looking at the Canadian parents whose family religion was
emphasized to them, by the grandparents, less than half (47 percent)
were attending services regularly by the time they were in their late
forties. Fifteen percent attended occasionally, and twenty-six percent
had lapsed into inactive status. Eleven percent had settled for agnosti-
cism, and 1 percent had become atheists. A lot of the apples fell sur-
prisingly far from the tree, given that we are talking about adults who
had a solid religious childhood. Religions do gain some active mem-
bers who had nonreligious backgrounds, but in general North Ameri-
can faiths are working against a strong outgoing tide nowadays that is
carrying their members away and seriously threatening their relevance.
One can imagine events that would reverse the trend. If a planet-
destroying asteroid came hurtling toward Earth, the churches might fill
up again. A pandemic might bring lost sheep running back to the flock.
So might major changes in the behavior of various ‘‘religious’’ people,
but barring such dramatic developments, secularism seems the future.
NOTES
1. Several studies are involved. Most of the findings reported in this chapter
came from a 2002 survey answered by 836 parents of introductory psychology
students at the University of Manitoba. These results are summarized on page
127 of Atheists, by Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer. A second study
involved 638 similar parents who answered a booklet in 2005. It included the
Zealotry Scale, the Group Cohesiveness Scale, the Dangerous World Scale, sup-
port for abolishing the Charter of Rights and Liberties, and the measures of
giving to charity and happiness. As well, a 1999 study of 634 parents provided
the data on religious dropouts reported toward the end of the chapter.
REFERENCES
Altemeyer, Bob, and Bruce Hunsberger. 1997. Amazing conversions: Why some
turn to faith & others abandon religion. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
General Social Survey (GSS). 2006. National Opinion Research Center (NORC),
University of Chicago. http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website/ (accessed Au-
gust 27, 2009).
Hunsberger, Bruce, and Bob Altemyer. 2006. Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of
America’s Nonbelievers. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Pew Research Center for People & the Press. 2008. Pew Forum on Religion and
the Public Life. http://religions.pewforum.org/ (accessed August 27, 2009).
Chapter 2
Atheism and Secularity in

Modern Japan
Michael K. Roemer
In 2003 I interviewed a Japanese woman in her 60s who described her-

u kyo wa nai). During our conversation she got
self as ‘‘nonreligious’’ (sh
up to prepare some offerings for her home Shint o shrine (kamidana)
and ancestor altar (butsudan). Meanwhile, she proceeded to tell me that
she does not do anything religious. When I asked her whether what
she was doing was ‘‘religious,’’ she paused. ‘‘I never thought of it that
way. You’re right, you’re right,’’ she replied. ‘‘Well, I guess I’m Bud-
dhist,’’ she continued, ‘‘because I believe in that [pointing to the ances-
tor altar] but not that [referring to the shrine].’’ I asked her why she
makes offerings to the kami (briefly, Shinto gods, spirits, deities) of the
shrine if she does not believe in kami. ‘‘Oh!’’ she laughed, ‘‘I don’t
believe in the kami, but I’m scared that if I don’t make these offerings
the kami will punish me.’’
In Japan, scenarios such as these are not uncommon. Most identify
themselves as nonreligious but make a point of carrying out a variety
of private and public rituals that connect them with kami, buddhas, or
ancestors. Secularity and atheism on some levels are, therefore, difficult
to research. In this chapter, I examine processes of secularization and
examples of atheism in modern Japan. Both topics have received rela-
tively little academic attention in Japan. Overall, I argue that seculari-
zation at the macro level is relatively obvious and clearcut. Evaluating
secularity at the cultural or individual levels, however, is more compli-
cated. Nonetheless, it is evident that certain beliefs and practices
remain quite common and that atheism—the belief that supernatural or
mystical beings do not exist—is rare.
Although few scholars adhere to the fatalist interpretation that mod-

ernization will inevitably bring an end to religion, even very recent
publications reveal that in many of the most modern and industrialized
nations, religion appears to have less influence than before at the
macro, mezzo, and micro levels (e.g., Bruce 1996; Norris and Inglehart
2004). Today, Japan is one of the world’s leading societies and since
the 1980s, has become globally influential economically, politically, and
(to a lesser—but important—extent) militarily. Like other advanced
societies, in recent decades religious organizations in Japan have lost a
great deal of authority over the government and the people. As is the
case elsewhere, though, we cannot conclude from this that Japan is
becoming a ‘‘secular’’ nation.
I begin this chapter by explaining how recent differentiation processes
have led to a weaker presence of religious organizations in Japanese
society. This approach allows us to compare the secularization process
in Japan with that of other nations. The next section offers an introduc-
tion to atheism in contemporary Japan. There are very few studies on
atheism, and there is less to report. This dearth of research is, no doubt,
a result of cultural differences concerning ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘atheism’’ in
Japan versus the United States, most of Europe, and elsewhere and
because of a lack of social and academic interest in the topic. In Japan,
there is an abundance of gods, spirits, and deities that have been incor-
porated into their mythological history and mainstream culture. Unlike
societies that are dominated by monotheistic religious traditions—where
one is either a believer in one God or not and there is very little room
for vacillation—Japanese have always had a choice concerning which
God, god, or gods they acknowledge. Moreover, there is less social con-
cern over whether one ‘‘believes in’’ the existence or efficacy of one or
more gods. So, first it is unlikely that one disavows the existence of all
supernatural beings, and second it is simply not very important to most
Japanese. Consequently, few scholars have addressed atheism in Japan.
My analysis of both subjects is based on a combination of qualitative
research and international, domestic, and regional survey data. The
quantitative data allow us to explore trends over time with large sam-
ples. The qualitative data are historical and ethnographic, and they fill
in some of the blanks missing in survey research.
JAPANESE RELIGIOUSNESS
Though this is not the place for a detailed description of contempo-
rary Japanese religiousness, we cannot discuss atheism or secularity
without mentioning some of the core characteristics of what it means
to be religious in Japan.
For many scholars of religion in Japan, the most common aspects
include (1) a focus on practices and rites over doctrines, theology, or
Atheism and Secularity in Modern Japan 25
meaning (Reader 2001); (2) concern for this-worldly benefits, particularly

individual and collective well-being (Reader and Tanabe 1998; Traphagan
2004); (3) ancestor veneration (Klass 2005); and (4) beliefs in the existence
and efficacy of a pantheon of abstract kami and buddhas (Kawano 2005).
Japanese religiousness is a syncretistic blend of, mainly, Buddhist, Shinto,
and folk traditions, practices, and beliefs. It is important to recognize,
however, that despite the multitude of sacred beings, they are not the
focus of attention for most Japanese. Often, religiousness is more about
the doing and the act of worship than the meaning behind the rituals or
the specific objects of veneration or consideration.
Another important aspect of religiousness is the lack of individual
religious affiliation. Most Japanese describe themselves as ‘‘not reli-
gious’’ (mush ukyo), and though religious organizations remain influen-
tial in mainstream culture (e.g., weddings and funeral ceremonies,
local festivals, and certain taboos and beliefs), few claim to be Bud-
dhist, Shinto, Christian, or a member of a ‘‘New Religion.’’1 Elsewhere
I described this phenomenon in detail (Roemer 2009), and despite mis-
leading figures published by the Japanese government that indicate
that the number of religious adherents is more than the total popula-
tion, it is more likely that approximately 10 percent claims to be indi-
vidual affiliates of a religious organization.
This statistic is highly relevant here because to identify as ‘‘not reli-
gious’’ in Japan does not mean the same thing as being an ‘‘atheist.’’
These individuals are also unlikely to refer to themselves as ‘‘spiritual’’—
a term that has even less meaning for the average Japanese. The word
ukyo) is still viewed negatively by many Japanese. Christian-
‘‘religion’’ (sh
ity and more indigenous religions such as Shinto, Japanese Buddhism,
and New Religions have all suffered from social stigmas in the past cen-
tury because of their associations with repressive governments, excessive
recruitment strategies, or social violence or because of their foreignness
(Tamaru and Reid 1996). For these reasons, many Japanese think of reli-
gion as something to be feared (‘‘kowai shu
kyo,’’ Omura 1996).
In Japan religious institutions most commonly affect individuals via
religious traditions that are used to mark important life cycle events.
For example, it is not uncommon for a child to be purified at a Shinto
shrine soon after its birth, later get married in a Christian church, and
then be buried with a Buddhist funeral ceremony (Reader 1991). Other
important folk and Taoist traditions, such as ancestor veneration and
special ceremonies during an individual’s ‘‘unlucky’’ years (yakudoshi),
are also typical. Annual festivals get locals involved as well, and major
urban festivals can attract crowds of hundreds of thousands. Still, it is
not the religious organization that matters for many—or even the reli-
gious nature of the event (Roemer 2006). Indeed, it is arguable that
many religious beliefs and practices have become so engrained in the
mainstream culture that it can be difficult to separate the religious from
the not religious, or the sacred from the profane. For example, many
describe acts such as ancestor veneration and visits to Shinto shrines or
Buddhist temples as ‘‘traditions’’ or ‘‘customs’’ (Fitzgerald 2003;

Omura 1996), so it is difficult to categorize them as religious or not. As
expected, this confounds the study of secularity and atheism in Japan,
and I address these concerns throughout the chapter.
SECULARITY IN MODERN JAPAN

Previous Research
As in the West, the few scholars who have examined secularism in
Japan are divided: some insist that Japan is very secular and others are
unwilling to commit to that conclusion. For example, noted Japan
scholar Edwin Reischauer claimed that secularism in Japan extends over
300 years, and he writes, ‘‘Clearly religion in contemporary Japan is not
central to society and culture’’ (1988, 215). Similarly, Bryan Wilson
asserts that religion is a ‘‘remnant’’ in modernity because of the break-
down of communities, and he extends this assumption to all modern
nations, including Japan (1976, 266). Max Eger admits that, though cer-
tain religious practices and beliefs remain important socially, they no
longer have any ‘‘inner meaning’’ for many Japanese (1980, 21).
Others see Japanese religion as having secular characteristics, though
not as being ‘‘secular’’ per se. Shinto, Buddhism, New Religions, and
many indigenous Christian denominations in Japan focus on this-
worldly goods; thus many scholars have interpreted them as secular
(e.g., Koizumi 1979). As Reader and Tanabe point out Buddhism and
Shinto have been criticized heavily for such ‘‘superstitious’’ characteris-
tics (1998, 3). Still, these secular aspects are by no means new to the
religions of Japan, so their presence today does not indicate a process
of secularization.
In one of the first extensive English language examinations of this
topic, Jan Swyngedouw (1976) interprets secularization as the extent of
differentiation on multiple levels and argues that religions have less
authority in modern Japan than in the past. However, as I discuss
below, he also limits this differentiation to the organizational level, not
the cultural or individual ones. Ultimately, he concludes that Japan is
undergoing religious changes—at all levels—that are inevitable because
of modern challenges to traditional values (also Earhart 1974).
More recently, Hitoshi Miyake (2001) claims that folk religion
remains highly influential in the lives of contemporary Japanese via
worldviews and ritual practices. In fact, he argues that many ‘‘feel inse-
cure’’ without these practices, indicating strongly the persistent and
important social function of religion in Japan today (176). Susumu
Shimazono (2006) discusses Japan’s increase in animistic beliefs,
‘‘spirituality,’’ and certain rites such as mizuko kuyo, or Buddhist cere-

monies for the unborn. Recent economic, political, legal, and cultural
changes have yielded increased attention to and participation in certain
traditional beliefs and rituals and the development of new expressions
of religion (organized and subjective).
In his book on religion in contemporary Japan, Winston Davis (1992)
concludes that although certain aspects of Japanese religiousness—
namely religious institutional influences and beliefs—have declined in
recent decades, Japan is not a secular nation. He provides a number of
examples in the Japanese context in which secularization has occurred,
such as in community festivals and ties between communities and their
local shrines and temples, yet he cites It o Makiharu as claiming that
complete secularization is not possible in Japan (p. 247). He discusses
It
o’s ‘‘logic of relative contrasts,’’ an interpretation that means that de-
spite changes that could be interpreted as secular, the ‘‘implicit’’ or
underlying motivations and reasons for the adaptations (such as parties
instead of shrine visits at New Years) remain the same: out with the
old (impure or ke), in with the new (pure or hare, 247). The concern
with this argument, as Davis aptly notes, is that it requires a reinter-
pretation of how we define and (more importantly) measure seculariza-
tion. Based on the logic of relative contrasts, simple statistics of decline
do not address the unspoken nonsecular meanings and motivations
that may remain. It begs the question: is this religion in another guise
(change) or is it a form of decline (secularization)? To answer this ques-
tion I first turn to historical data.
Political Secularity: Early Modern Japan

Most recent influential studies concerning secularization have focused
on the process of differentiation. Differentiation in this literature refers
to a decrease in the involvement and authority of religious institutions
in mainstream society, including other institutions (e.g., political, eco-
nomic, and cultural) and individuals (e.g., beliefs and practices; Chaves
1994; Gorski 2000; Marwell and Demerath 2003). In Japan, this was most
apparent in two historic periods: during the modernization period of the
late 1800s and during the Allied Occupation after World War II.
In 1868, Japan ended its isolationist shogunate and began major
social, political, and economic reforms. Ultimately, the goals were to
modernize (which meant ‘‘Westernize’’) and strengthen the nation mili-
tarily and economically. In the 1870s, the government decided to emu-
late many European nations and the United States and officially
separate religion from its state. It did so in three primary overlapping
steps: (1) the government replaced support for Buddhism with support
for Shinto, (2) Shinto and Buddhism were officially separated, (3) and
State Shinto was created to become a ‘‘nonreligious’’ patriotic practice.
From the early 1600s until 1868, the government favored Buddhism
over Shinto in terms of political connections and economic support.
Shinto, on the other hand, remained important for the (then politically
powerless) imperial family. When Emperor Meiji was given control of
Japan from a rather weak shogun in 1867, he and his advisors decided
to support Shinto instead of Buddhism. Shinto myths and legends pro-
vided support for the emperor’s right to rule by tracing his ancestry to
Japan’s alleged first emperor in 660 BCE and more importantly to the
Sun Goddess, Amaterasu no O kami. Buddhism, on the other hand,
was imported from Korea and China, and though it had been widely
accepted by the people and supported by governments past, it did not
offer the same kinds of nationalistic support that Shinto could provide.
This was also the first time that Shinto and Buddhism were officially
separated. For centuries, the two religious traditions were practiced
concurrently. Kami were considered guardians or were seen as mani-
festations of Buddhist deities at Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines
conducted Buddhist rituals for buddhas alongside worship of kami.
Thus, when the Meiji government decided to favor Shinto over Bud-
dhism, it forced the temples and shrines to choose one or the other as
their ‘‘official’’ religion.
A third major change of this period was the creation of State Shinto.
The purpose of this move was to allow the government to use the sup-
port of Shinto for nationalistic purposes while still maintaining a sepa-
ration of church and state. By officially developing a ‘‘nonreligious’’
branch of Shinto, the government created a secular means by which the
people could show their patriotism to the country and their loyalty to
the emperor. In reality, as some have argued, this secularization process
was not wholly successful, and Shinto—its priests and shrines—benefited
very little from and even disapproved of this type of political support
(Breen and Teeuwen 2000; Earhart 1974; Shimazono 2006). Shinto
priests were not always the main players in the creation of State Shinto,
and Sect Shinto (the ‘‘religious’’ branch of Shinto) ranked lower in sup-
port and influence. To make matters worse, the early Meiji period saw
serious division between several Shinto sects, and they were unable to
assert themselves as a unified voice (Murakami 1983).
Overall, these changes led to significant losses in religious authority
for both Buddhism and Shinto, and no other religious groups replaced
their influence. When Buddhism lost political and financial support,
thousands of temples were closed, priests lost their livelihoods, and
Buddhism became less socially influential. There were even attempts to
eradicate Buddhism and its teachings (Sharf 1995). Additionally, with-
out forced registration at temples,2 Buddhism lost community support,
financial and otherwise.
Shinto did not fair much better. On the surface, the creation of State
Shinto added to Shinto’s authority in Japan; however, its restructuring
as nonreligious was not well accepted by many priests, and tens of

thousands of shrines were destroyed (Sakamoto 2000, 278). Moreover,
there were not enough Shinto priests at the time to meet this newfound
social support from converts from Buddhism (Hardacre 2002). Though
bureaucratic, political, and (to a lesser degree) social influence of Shinto
increased, its religious authority did not. Buddhism and Shinto main-
tained some importance, but their authority declined significantly at
the macro level of society. Modernizing Japan meant separating reli-
gion from state—at least officially, and this resulted in the country’s
first major differentiation process in modern history.
Political Secularity: Post–World War II Japan

After Japan’s surrender in World War II, the U.S.-led occupation
forces designed a new constitution for Japan, which included new laws
concerning religion. According to one noteworthy historian of Japan,
‘‘Among all the changes brought about by the occupation forces, the
most radical and far-reaching steps were those relating to the religious
foundation of the Japanese nation’’ (Kitagawa 1987, 280). Robert Bellah
claimed that the new constitution ‘‘theoretically completed the process
of secularization [in Japan]’’ (1958, 5). These developments not only
changed the way the government and religious institutions could inter-
act, they also altered individuals’ impressions of religious meanings
and practices. The 1947 Japanese constitution disestablished State
Shinto, outlawed governmental support of any kind to any religion,
and gave individuals freedom of religion, among other changes.
The dissolving of State Shinto and increase in religious freedoms had
mixed effects on Shinto in general. On the one hand, changes from the
new constitution meant that Shinto lost the political and economic privi-
leges it especially had grown to rely on since the late 1800s. Further, the
separation of religion from politics ran counter to the ancient understand-
ing that religion and government were united (saisei-itchi). Because of its
ties to the militant government, Shinto also suffered from a ‘‘loss of the
people’s sympathy’’ (Earhart 1974, 121; also Morioka 1975). Despite
declines in community support in postwar Japan, Shinto has remained a
relatively stable force for society at large in the past half century.
Buddhism was already suffering economically from changes that took
place in the Meiji period. The new constitution made matters worse
because religious freedoms divided Buddhism into about three times
more subgroups, thus weakening the overall influence of Japanese Bud-
dhism (Kitagawa 1987). Other new laws enacted just after the war (e.g.,
the land reform of 1945–1946 and the Civil Code in 1947) also had pejora-
tive effects on Buddhist temples. Land reforms meant significant income
losses, and new family laws in the Civil Code allowed individuals to more
easily sever ties with temples—often ties that had been held for centuries
(Noriyoshi 1996). For the past 60 years especially, the main interaction
between Japanese individuals and Buddhist priests has been limited to
funeral and postfuneral services (Covell 2005; Earhart 1974; Tamaru 2000).
Since the seventh century, Shinto and Buddhism had supported and
were supported by the court, state, and aristocracy (Takayama 1998).
Japan’s modernization period has seen a distinct separation of religion
and politics, and it is clear that differentiation has occurred, particularly
in the past 140 years. Coupled with intense urbanization that began in
the 1960s and 1970s, these two major religions are still struggling—
particularly in rural areas across the country where temples and shrines
have been abandoned (Ishii 1996). Additionally, Christianity and New
Religions have not replaced Shinto or Buddhism in terms of political
influence. At the macro level, Japan has secularized significantly.
Having said that, it is worth noting a few important exceptions to
this general trend. For instance, one political party that has strong—
albeit ‘‘unofficial’’—ties with a religious organization is the New
Komeito.3 This party is affiliated with S oka Gakkai, a New Religion
that grew tremendously in the 1960s. In the 2009 elections, the New
Komeito remained the third most powerful political party in terms of
Lower and Upper Diet seats (out of seven established parties). Argu-
ably, Japan is moving closer to a two-party system, though (Govella
and Vogel 2008), and the New K omeito has not gained the kinds of
governmental ties that Shinto and Buddhism once experienced.
Another prominent exception is the recurrent link between Yasukuni
Shrine and official support from elected politicians. Yasukuni is a
Shinto shrine dedicated to war dead, including war criminals from
World War II. Thus, governmental support is interpreted by many as
both a violation of the separation of church and state mandated by the
Japanese constitution and a political offense to Koreans, Chinese, and
other nationals who suffered under Japanese control during the war.
Since 1956 various nationalist groups have been encouraging govern-
ment leaders and the emperor to rekindle their (financial and political)
ties with Yasukuni—with varying degrees of success (Hardacre 1989).
Recently, this issue returned to prominence when Japan’s Prime Minis-
ter Junichiro Koizumi (April 2001 to September 2006) made repeated
visits to the site. Though he is only one of many prime ministers who
have visited the shrine since the 1970s (Nelson 2003), Koizumi’s visits
served as a very contemporary reminder that religious organizations
continue to garner support from elected officials (also Deans 2007).
By no means are these examples exhaustive. As Hardacre (2005) has
shown, religious organizations have also been influential in very recent
attempts to make constitutional revisions. Still, these links are some-
what sporadic and almost always met with trepidation by the general
population. Distrust of religious organizations has not waned signifi-
cantly since the end of the war, and many Japanese are outwardly
concerned with official ties between religions and the government. For
these reasons, the differentiation process has been rather sweeping in
contemporary Japan at the macro level.
Social Secularity in Japan: A Qualitative Analysis

At the cultural level there are a number of rituals practiced that are
rooted in religious traditions. The most obvious examples are wed-
dings, funerals, and New Years and All Souls (Obon) celebrations
(Miyake 2001). Shinto and more recently Christian-style weddings are
extremely popular, and most funerals are conducted by Buddhist
priests. Priests also perform rituals in people’s homes and at temples
that days, months, and years later commemorate the dead. A recent
New York Times article revealed an increase in the number of secular
companies that are offering funeral services at prices lower than most
temples (Onishi 2008). Nonetheless, this is a relatively recent phenom-
enon, and it is not certain yet whether these groups will replace this
important function that has been served predominantly by Buddhist
priests for several centuries (Covell 2005; Tamaru 2000).
Both Buddhism and Shinto also remain influential in the realm of
household rituals. Ancestor veneration, for instance, dates back to the
1500s and 1600s (Miyake 2001) and is regularly practiced by Japanese
today (e.g., Klass 2005; Traphagan 2004). This includes rituals in the
home at ancestor or Buddhist altars (butsudan) and at Buddhist temples
(Morioka 1975). According to a recent study on household Shinto altars
(kamidana), approximately half of most national samples maintain these
altars in their homes and most make offerings several times a month at
least (Ishii 2004). Though there appears to be a slight decline since the
1950s, household rituals remain important parts of the culture.
Shrine and temple grounds remain significant as well. Undeniably,
rural areas have seen a decline in the number of temples and
shrines as a result of depopulation. Still, annual festivals and close and
long distance visits to these sacred spaces are frequent. Indeed, Reischa-
uer—who as mentioned previously does not view Japan as religious—
maintains that shrine festivals are what keep Shinto ‘‘most alive
today’’ (1988, 210). Festivals achieve a number of social functions,
especially uniting community members with each other and with
kami (Ashkenazi 1993; Roemer 2007). Additionally, Japanese continue
to make pilgrimages (Reader 2005; Shimazono 2006) and make shorter
visits to local and far-off shrines and temples for a variety of reasons
(Reader and Tanabe 1998). Many of these visits are for others, and
people offer prayers and buy amulets (omamori) or prayer tablets
(ema) as expressions of concern (Traphagan 2004).
At certain holidays, such as New Years and All Souls (Obon) in
August, millions of Japanese flock to temples and shrines to usher in
the New Year safely and wipe their slates clean and to pay respects to
their ancestors and the recently departed. A 1984 survey revealed that
81 percent of the sample visited a shrine or temple at New Years, and
89 percent made pilgrimages to their ancestral tombs in August (Okada
1994, 606). Other events such as Shinto rituals for the purification and
safe development of seven-, five-, and three-year-olds (shichi-go-san)
and purification rites for adults who are in particularly inauspicious
years of their lives (yakudoshi) are also popular.
Presently, data are not available to examine long-term trends con-
cerning whether or not these shrine- and temple-related activities have
declined or escalated in recent decades. The fact that they remain com-
mon, though, is a strong indicator that Japanese religious practices, val-
ues, and beliefs remain influential in society and for the individual.
Though religious organizations do not maintain the amount of political
sway they once enjoyed, they retain influence at the cultural and indi-
vidual levels.
Social Secularity in Japan: A Quantitative Analysis

In this section, I rely on several data sets to explore more specific
aspects of social or cultural secularization to add empirical support for
the more general claims above. Do people apply religion to their lives
outside of these special events? To what extent do they believe in the
efficacy of mystical beings, such as kami, buddhas, or ancestors—and
are frequencies of religious belief changing in Japan?
One measure of individual religiousness is affiliation. Figure 2.1 illus-
trates the percentage of religious adherents (Shinto, Buddhist, Christian,
and other—including New Religions) in Japan from 1950 to 2005 based
on surveys by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Despite the initial postwar losses for Buddhism and Shinto I addressed
previously, the number of religious adherents has soared since the data
was first collected in 1948. As the figures below indicate, adherence has
been relatively stable in recent decades, though the number of Bud-
dhists has declined from 95,420,000 in 2000 to 91,260,000 in 2005. Those
claimed as ‘‘Other’’ has also dropped from 10,221,000 in 2000 to
9,918,000 five years later (Statistics Bureau 2008, 747). Individuals
reported as Shinto or Christian changed little in that five-year period,
and over the long run the numbers have generally increased.
These statistics must be interpreted cautiously, however, because
they are reported by shrine, temple, and church organizations and not
by individuals. Over-reporting and multiple-reporting (i.e., the claim-
ing of the same individual by more than one religious organization)
are likely in Japan because temples and shrines often claim all resi-
dents who live in their precincts as parishioners and precincts can
overlap. Multiple reporting also occurs because Japanese are free to
Figure 2.1. Religious Adherents in Japan (1950–2005)

Source: Statistics Bureau of Japan (2008, 747)
Note: Y-axis in millions
make donations that may be recorded at a number of places of wor-

ship, regardless of the religion (Roemer 2009).
Other data sets that measure religious affiliation are the Japanese
General Social Surveys (JGSS).4 The shortcoming is that they only look
at very recent history (2000–2003, 2005; the survey was not adminis-
tered in 2004). The advantage is that responses are based on individu-
als who claim religious affiliation (‘‘belief’’—shinko—in a religious
organization) rather than being claimed by organizations—as in the Sta-
tistics Bureau data above. Again, the basic trend in these five years of
data is stability with slight, nonlinear fluctuations (Table 2.1). The over-
all average for the five years of data is 10.66 percent who claim to
believe in a religion, and most (around 70 percent) identified
Table 2.1
Religious affiliation, 2000–2003 and 2005
2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 Average
Personal Religion 9.5% 10% 9.7% 11.8% 12.3% 10.66%

Buddhist 76% 71.9% 70.9% 67.2% 70.6% 71.32%
Shinto 2.7% 2% 0.9% 0.8% 1.6% 1.6%
New Religion 9.8% 10.7% 14.2% 13.3% 10.7% 11.74%
Christian 2% 3.3% 3.1% 4.7% 3.2% 3.26%
Source: Nihonban General Social Surveys (2000–2003, 2005)
themselves as ‘‘Buddhist’’ or a Buddhist sect member (e.g., J odo Shin,

Nichiren, Zen, etc.). The data from the Statistics Bureau and the JGSS
reveal that religious adherence has been steady overall since its initial
growth period following the war; however, the JGSS data support what
most qualitative studies have shown, that few Japanese personally
identify with one or more religious organizations officially.
Another way to assess secularity at the individual level is by exam-
ining specific beliefs and practices that are more common in the Japa-
nese context. The 2001 Asian Values Survey (AVS) includes a
nationwide probability sample of 1,000 Japanese adults (Kisala 2001 for
details). The 2007 Health and Faith (H&F) survey was a survey I
designed and administered using a random sample of Japanese adults
living in Kyoto Prefecture (for details see Roemer 2008). Although both
surveys capture only one point in time, they include a number of ques-
tions on religion that are specific to Japan. Table 2.2 summarizes some
of the findings from these two surveys. Percentages in the first seven
rows represent a combination of those who selected ‘‘agree’’ or ‘‘agree
Table 2.2
Recent statistics on religious beliefs and practices
AVS H&F
N¼1000 N¼333
1. There’s a mysterious power in Nature — 71.99%
2. It is important to respect ancestors — 87.86%
3. There is something like fate that goes — 71.64%
beyond human powers
4. Kami/hotokeà protect me — 40.59%
5. Kami/hotokeà help me when I am troubled — 28.55%
6. Kami/hotokeà curse me — 24.82%
7. When I pray, I am purified and at peace — 56.70%
8. I get comfort from religion 73.70%* 25.27%
9. Kami/hotokeà exist 62.60%* 47.48%
10. There is an afterlife 46.54%* —
11. Souls/spirits (tamashii) exist 64.02%*
12. I own a kamidana (Shinto shrine) — 70.90%*
13. I own a butsudan (ancestral/Buddhist altar) — 39.70%*
14. I pray, meditate, or contemplate 27.87%* 53.74%
Notes: These percentages do not include missing data. Due to nonresponse, sample sizes
vary somewhat per question. Percentages for the H & F are weighted to reflect true popu-
lation and age ranges of Kyoto Prefecture residents in 2005.
à
Kami are loosely translated as god(s), deities, or spirits; hotoke can be translated as
ancestors or buddhas.
*
Indicates that response categories are Yes or No; otherwise, they are combined percentages
of Agree and Agree somewhat. Though kami and hotoke are not identical, it is common for
surveys in Japan to ask about both simultaneously rather than in separate questions.
somewhat.’’ An asterisk indicates that the answer categories were

dichotomous: ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no.’’
For the most part, respondents answered these statements positively.
A majority of these samples agree that supernatural beings or superhu-
man powers exist, but fewer believe in the efficacy of kami and hotoke
specifically (Table 2.2, rows 4–6). One particularly noteworthy statistic is
row 9: 47.48 percent of the H&F sample agreed that kami and hotoke
(buddhas or ancestors) exist (sonzai suru), and 62.60 percent of the AVS
sampled agreed. This slight difference may be attributable to the answer
categories (Yes or No in the AVS versus Agree to Disagree scale in the
H&F). Previous studies that have asked about ‘‘belief’’ (shinko) in the su-
pernatural have reported much lower frequencies (e.g., Davis 1992, 233;
Mullins, Shimazono, and Swanson 1993, 52), so these more recent find-
ings are important (Roemer 2006). As Table 2.2 reveals, ownership of
household altars such as kamidana and butsudan (rows 12 and 13)
remains fairly common (Ishii 2004; Kawano 2005), though only a small
percentage pray, meditate, or contemplate (row 14).
By analyzing four years of data from the World Values Survey (WVS)—
a multiyear, multinational survey, it is apparent that some of these beliefs
have declined in recent decades (for details visit www.worldvaluessurvey.
org). Table 2.3 illustrates frequencies (after deleting responses of ‘‘don’t
know’’ and missing data) in 1981, 1990, 1995, and 2000. In all four belief
measures, the percentages have declined, and this is particularly notewor-
thy with belief in kami and with those who responded positively that they
get comfort and strength from religion. Frequencies dropped by almost 10
percent in both cases. Granted, this is not a panel study so we can only
interpret these as general trends across society: trends that may be influ-
enced by changes in social interpretations of ‘‘religion,’’ kami, the afterlife,
and the relevance or importance of praying.
Based on these data, certain religious beliefs appear to have declined
since Japan has become the second largest economy in the world.
These findings raise several important questions, however. Have these
beliefs actually declined or are the lower frequency rates a sign of
changes in how Japanese interpret these ideas? And, have these beliefs
Table 2.3
Changes in beliefs over time (WVS 1981–2000)
1981 1990 1995 2000
N ¼ 1204 N ¼ 1011 N ¼ 1054 N ¼ 1362

Comfort/strength from religion 46.85% 41.61% 31.61% 35.05%
I believe in kami 62.47% 64.53% 57.39% 52.59%
I believe in an afterlife 55.60% 53.99% 48.51% 50.83%
I take moments for prayer, etc. — 41.27% — 37.72%
and behaviors been replaced with other, more outwardly secular

worldviews and practices? By addressing these questions, future stud-
ies will be able to present a more comprehensive interpretation of the
secularization process in modern Japan.
ATHEISM IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN

The Zen Atheist
In July 2007, I interviewed an 83-year-old man who was introduced
to me as someone who often attends lectures on Buddhist philosophy.
During the course of our two-hour conversation, it became clear that
his interest in these topics has very little to do with personal spiritual
or religious interests. Although he identified himself as ‘‘Zen,’’ much
of our conversation revolved around his lack of beliefs in any supernat-
ural beings and his distaste for organized religions in general.
In Japan, this seemingly dichotomous identification (a Zen atheist) is
not unusual. Mr. Suzuki (a pseudonym) only identifies himself as
‘‘Zen’’ because of his family ties to a local temple. For twenty genera-
tions, his ancestors have been buried at a local Zen temple, and twice a
year he, his wife, and his older brother visit these graves to clean them
with purified water and make offerings of flowers and incense. Other-
wise, he has nothing to do with the temple. (In fact, the temple where
he has attended Buddhist lectures is not Zen.) His ‘‘religious’’ connec-
tion has everything to do with his obligation to his ancestors—an obli-
gation he carries out with great pride and gratitude, not aversion or
disdain—and very little to do with the religion itself. Still, when his eld-
est son decided he wanted to join S oka Gakkai, Mr. Suzuki forbade it
because joining this new religion would mean ‘‘cutting his ties with his
relatives,’’ as he explained to me, and his household would no longer
be Zen. As the eldest son, it is his responsibility to carry on such fam-
ily traditions, and Mr. Suzuki forbade his son to sever these long-estab-
lished ties with their ancestors and with the temple.
Mr. Suzuki’s atheist tendencies stem from a lifelong series of events that
began before the violence he experienced as a World War II fighter pilot.
During the war, as he described, he saw dozens of men die, and these con-
stant deaths made him even more skeptical that kami or buddhas exist.
A few more recent examples he gave were the damage to shrines and tem-
ples after the major earthquake of central Japan that killed over 5,000 peo-
ple in 1995. He could not understand why the kami and buddhas of these
supposedly holy grounds would allow such destruction and losses of life.
Mr. Suzuki’s absolute disbelief in the existence or influence of supernat-
ural beings is atypical in Japan. As previously explained, though few Japa-
nese identify themselves as religious and most maintain that they have no
Table 2.4
Religious identification
AVS WVS H&F
I am religious 27.39% 26.48% 6.04%

I am somewhat religious — — 15.94%
I am not religious, but I pray and — — 48.46%
make offerings
I am not religious 57.37% 59.70% 16.75%
I am an atheist 15.25% 13.83% 12.62%
religion, many Japanese conduct certain household rituals regularly and

are willing to admit the possibility that kami and buddhas exist.
Japanese Atheists in Statistics

Table 2.4 illustrates how Japanese identify themselves religiously.
Here we see important distinctions between the 2001 AVS, 2000 WVS,
and the 2007 H&F datasets that are a result of answer categories. All
three surveys include three main answer categories: religious, not reli-
gious, and atheist. The H&F survey includes three other options to better
reflect some of the nuances of Japanese religious identification. So, if we
add the religious and somewhat religious categories of the H&F survey,
there is little difference between the ‘‘religious’’ in the AVS, WVS, and
H&F samples (27.39, 26.48, and 21.98 percent, respectively). The greatest
discrepancy lies in the more secular categories. In the AVS, 57.37 and
15.25 percent claimed to be not religious and atheist, respectively, and
59.70 and 13.83 percent in the WVS sample, but only 16.75 and 12.62
percent in the H&F data. This is very likely due to the additional cate-
gory I added to the H&F survey. After conducting in-depth interviews,
focus groups, and pretests of the survey I added a middle category (‘‘I
am not religious, but I do rituals’’), and as it turned out, this response
was selected most frequently (48.46 percent). As previously discussed,
ritual participation is often interpreted as ‘‘traditions’’ or ‘‘cultural’’ and
not explicitly as ‘‘religious.’’ Thus, I feel that the H&F survey categories
likely reveal a more accurate portrayal of religious identity in contempo-
rary Japan. Concerning atheists, we can see that approximately 13 to 15
percent of these sample populations identified as atheists.
Frankly, we know very little about what it means to be an atheist in
Japan. It is a topic that has received scant attention from the academic
community. Table 2.5 presents results from binary logistic regression
analysis to explore sociodemographic characteristics of individuals
who identified themselves as atheist in the AVS, WVS, and H&F data
sets. Interestingly, there are some important distinctions in the results
of these three data sets. There are also some noteworthy similarities.
In these models, the age category includes individuals 20 years old
and older (18 and older in the WVS), and I created two dummied con-
trols for whether respondents are married (1 ¼ married and 0 ¼
divorced, single, widowed, etc.) and whether they live in urban areas
(1 ¼ largest cities/other cities, 0 ¼ towns or villages). Education in the
AVS is measured by age ranges (14 and younger, 15–18, 19–22, and 23
years and older) at which respondents completed their formal educa-
tions (range ¼ 1–4, mean ¼ 2.43), and the other data sets report the
highest levels of education achieved (WVS range ¼ 1–9, mean ¼ 6.79;
H&F range ¼ 1–5, mean ¼ 2.59). Income measures total household
income and is also coded differently for the datasets (AVS range ¼ 1–
11, mean ¼ 5.31; WVS range ¼ 1–10, mean ¼ 4.98; H&F range ¼ 1–9,
mean ¼ 5.08). There was substantial nonresponse for this question in
the AVS (25.30 percent), so I created a new income variable that
includes the mean of the original income to replace the missing data.
An Income_miss variable is included in the AVS model to account for
this change. Except for the income in the AVS, missing values were
deleted using list-wise deletion, and the WVS and H&F models include
standardized weights.
As Table 2.5 illustrates, Japanese atheists are much more likely to be
men than women and more likely to be young than old. Based on the
odds ratios, men are 1.67 (AVS), 2.25 (WVS), or 2.54 (H&F) times more
likely than women to identify as atheists. Also, with each unit increase
in age, respondents are 18 percent less likely to be atheists in the AVS
data and 4 percent less likely in the H&F data. Age is not significantly
correlated with atheist identity for the WVS sample. Beyond that, none
of the other AVS variables are significantly related. The H&F data,
however, indicate that education is a positive predictor (OR ¼ 1.74),
and income (OR ¼ 0.61), married (OR ¼ 0.37), and urban (OR ¼ 0.36)
are negatively related. Interestingly, the urban category is positively
linked to atheism in the WVS data (OR ¼ 1.50).
Of these findings, perhaps the most surprising is that H&F respon-
dents who live in urban areas are significantly less likely than those
in smaller towns or villages to identify as atheists. Those in rural
areas tend to be more traditional in thought and action, so this find-
ing is counterintuitive. It is possible that the substantial decline in the
number of religious institutions in rural areas explains this phenom-
enon in part. It is also not clear why this varies per dataset. One ex-
planation might be that a majority of the WVS sample (53.88 percent)
reported living in cities with over 150,000 people (coded as urban),
whereas a smaller percentage (47.71) of the H&F sample live in urban
areas.
Table 2.5
Binary logistic regression coefficients and odds ratios for
predicting atheist identification in Japan
AVS WVS H&F
b OR b OR b OR
Intercept 1.62*** — 2.22*** — 1.08 —
(.49) (.53) (1.32)
Male .51** 1.67 .81*** 2.25 .93* 2.54
(.19) (.20) (.43)
Age .19** .82 .01 .99 .04** .96
(.07) (.01) (.01)
Education .15 1.17 .04 1.04 .56* 1.74
(.14) (.06) (.27)
Income .01 .99 .03 1.03 .49*** .61
(.04) (.03) (.14)
Inc_miss .03 1.03 — — — —
(.22)
Married .24 .79 .34 .71 1.00* .37
(.22) (.23) (.43)
Urban .15 1.16 .37* 1.45 1.01* .36
(.22) — (.19) — (.52) —
N 926 — 1051 — 296 —
Max-rescaled R2 .05 .06 .38
LR w2 26.28*** — 34.21*** — 69.50*** —
(7) (6) (6)
2 Log Likelihood 777.42 — 779.39 — 165.13 —
b Unstandardized coefficient (standard error)
OR Odds Ratio
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed test)
Sources: 2001 AVS, 2000 WVS, 2007 H&F
Because this is the first time multivariate analysis has been used
to examine sociodemographic correlates of atheism in Japan, these
results are important despite some of the conflicting statistics. Overall,
we can see that atheists in Japan tend to be younger men, but it is not
yet clear what other characteristics they might have. Much more
research is needed on this topic before we can make more conclusive
arguments.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In this chapter I have presented historical, ethnographic, and quanti-
tative data to provide a general overview of atheism and secularity in
contemporary Japan. I argued that secular forces have been most visi-
ble at the macro level—especially since the late 1800s—but not as much
on the mezzo or micro levels of society. As previous scholars have

noted, secularization can be as fluid and susceptible to sociohistorical
forces as religion. It is not static or absolute, and societies that begin
the process of differentiation are not destined, necessarily, to continue
on that path unchangingly. Religious organizations, their clergy, and
their lay members have the ability to reverse these trends. In Japan,
secularization at the mezzo and micro levels reversed course soon after
World War II in what some have referred to as a religious boom
(McFarland 1967). On the other hand, events such as the Aum
Shinrikyo gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 serve as a
reminder to Japanese of how damaging religion can be, and they may
fuel other secular waves.
I do not pretend to make predictions about the future of religion in
Japan. I can say confidently, however, that presently Japan is not a
wholly secular nation, despite differentiation processes that began over
140 years ago. Religious practices and beliefs remain important aspects
of daily life through cultural norms and traditions.
Concerning atheism, in this chapter I reported on what little we
know. What we can learn from secondary data analysis is that atheists
in Japan makeup approximately 7–15 percent of the population and
that men are more likely than women to claim an atheist identity.
Additionally, age is inversely related with atheism.
Compared to the situation in the United States and much of Europe,
for instance, there are some important distinctions concerning these
topics. For example, though few Japanese claim religious affiliation,
we cannot call them ‘‘spiritual but not religious’’ (e.g., Fuller 2001;
Zinnbauer et al. 1997) because the word ‘‘spiritual’’ is not common in
the Japanese vernacular. In some ways, Japan’s religious context is
more similar to Davie’s (1994) notion of ‘‘believing without belonging’’
in England (for Japan see Yanagawa 1991). Few Japanese claim to
belong to a religion. In fact, there are possibly more atheists in Japan
than those who claim personal religious affiliation. Still, a combination
of these two groups would only comprise less than one-third to 40 per-
cent or so of the population. The majority falls into what scholars often
identify as those who practice ‘‘religious’’ rituals and maintain ‘‘reli-
gious’’ beliefs (because of their connections to religious organizations,
the supernatural, or the noncorporeal) but do not, necessarily, describe
such behaviors and worldviews as ‘‘religious.’’ Instead, Japanese often
explain them as ‘‘traditional’’ or ‘‘customary.’’
If we are to translate these interpretations as examples of secularism
in Japan, then Japan is and has been for centuries a very secular nation.
On the other hand, to do so would be a misunderstanding of how the
religious and the secular intermingle seamlessly in Japan. Such behav-
iors and beliefs may indeed be traditions, but they are not the same
kinds of traditions as the ancient arts of flower arrangement or tea
ceremony, for example. Most likely, the average Japanese would not
equate ancestor veneration, festival involvement, or the belief in kami
with the tea ceremony. They are all traditional and full of rituals, how-
ever, the former more obviously include the supernatural or are linked
to religious organizations.
In Japan, belief and belonging are not absolutes, and underlying
these ‘‘traditions’’ and ‘‘customs’’ are recognizably ‘‘religious’’ sym-
bols, actions, and beliefs that continue to permeate (though often lie
latent in) Japanese society. Secularity in Japan thus becomes muddled
and difficult to research, and people like the woman I described at the
beginning of this chapter and the Zen atheist are not unusual. In Japan,
one can deny the existence of kami but fear their retribution or be an
atheist by personal choice and Buddhist by ancestral ties. Ultimately,
we should rely on how individuals label themselves—rather than place
labels upon them, and in the future we should ask what they mean by
‘‘traditional’’ and ‘‘customary’’ to understand better the extent to
which ‘‘religion’’ plays a part in these behaviors and beliefs.
NOTES
1. Japanese New Religions include those established in the past 150 years or
so. Often, they include beliefs and practices taken from Buddhism, Shinto, and
other traditions.
2. During the Tokugawa era (1603–1868), Japanese families were required to
register with a local Buddhist temple. This served as a census and was used to
reinforce the ban on Christianity because individuals had to step on an image
of Jesus Christ (fumie) and renounce Christianity (e.g., Covell 2005).
3. There is also a subgroup within Japan’s largest political party (the Liberal
Democratic Party) that has close connections with the Association of Shinto
Shrines, a secular entity that lobbies on behalf of Shinto and has been active
since 1969 (e.g., Hardacre 2005, 241).
4. The Japanese General Social Surveys (JGSS) are designed and carried out
at the Institute of Regional Studies at Osaka University of Commerce in collabo-
ration with the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo under the
direction of Ichiro Tanioka, Michio Nitta, Hiroki Sato, and Noriko Iwai with
Project Manager, Minae Osawa. The project is financially assisted by Gakujutsu
Frontier Grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science
and Technology for 1999–2005 academic years, and the datasets are compiled
with cooperation from the SSJ Data Archive, Information Center for Social Sci-
ence Research on Japan, Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo.
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Zinnbauer, Brian J. et al. 1997. Religion and spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy.
Chapter 3

in the Former Soviet Union
Leontina M. Hormel
The study of atheism and secularism in the former Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics (USSR) is a unique and complex case. At no other
time in the history preceding the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had a state
officially endorsed and enforced the promotion of an irreligious society
upon its citizens. The belief structure that was hoped to supersede that
of the traditional religions of the Soviet territory (such as Orthodox,
Islamic, Judaic, Catholic, and Lutheran faiths) was that of scientific
atheism. According to Paul Froese1 scientific atheism, ‘‘as the official
term for the Communist Party’s philosophical worldview, posited the
ultimate purpose of human existence, a moral code of conduct, and
created a collection of atheistic rituals and ceremonies that mimicked
religious ones.’’ From the outset of the USSR’s creation, leaders and
activists rigorously engaged in a variety of methods to create a society
whose people no longer needed religion to explain everyday phenom-
ena. However, efforts to strip people of religious beliefs proved compli-
cated in a society comprising diverse cultures, and the techniques for
changing the hearts and minds of people were often insensitive to local
experiences. It is among these reasons that despite the commitment to
establish the first atheist society in history, the number of people claim-
ing to believe in God appeared to substantially increase across all for-
mer Soviet Republics after the system’s collapse.
This chapter examines religious experiences across four regions: the
Baltic (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Eastern Europe and Eurasia
(Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russian Federation2), the Southern
Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), and Central Asia
(Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).

These regions comprise such a wide variety of religious and cultural
experiences that no single article can capture all of them adequately.
Thus, this study is a modest effort to highlight the patterns of religious
experience that are a result of these former Soviet societies sharing a
history in which the state officially promoted atheism. This experience
led to individuals following different strategies to preserve ways of life
and identities in the midst of a Soviet campaign to standardize them
and their relations to society. Although it was not fully successful in its
mission, the Soviet-led antireligious campaign might have had some
lasting effects, as the proportion of atheists and nonreligious in post-
Soviet societies remains quite high even in the absence of scientific
atheist propaganda and coercion.
HISTORY OF STATE IMPOSED ATHEISM

In the midst of gaining power, the Bolsheviks began an antireligious
campaign seeking to disestablish influential religions like Eastern
Orthodoxy,3 to nationalize all church property, and to transfer respon-
sibility in providing public services (such as birth, marriage, and death
registration) from church to state organizations. Seeing religion as anti-
thetical to the modern project of socialist political and economic devel-
opment, revolutionary leaders thought it necessary to disentangle
religious institutions from the state and to create conditions in which
religion was deemed irrelevant to society’s members.
The timing for an antireligious campaign seemed ripe in the late
tsarist regime as an increasing portion of the population, especially in
Russia, was disenchanted with the close role the Russian Orthodox
Church bore with the state.4 In the same year as the Bolshevik revolu-
tion of 1917, the Russian philosopher Berdyaev observed, ‘‘This empti-
ness [the rise of atheism and nihilism] is a result of slavery that lasted
too long, of a process of regeneration of the old regime that went too
far, of a paralysis of the Russian Church and moral degradation of the
ecclesiastical authorities that lasted too long.’’5
Thus, even though the Soviet regime would be the first regime ever
to devise a campaign promoting atheism, a general skepticism (at least
with regard to the Russian Orthodox Church) was already present at
the eve of the revolution.
Shortly following the Bolsheviks’ rise to power in January 1918, V. I.
Lenin crafted a decree for the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Repub-
lic (RSFSR) Constitution that set official policy separating church and
state. In the constitutional terms adopted in July 1918, religious clergy
were classified along with merchants and capitalists as second-class citi-
zens.6 Seeking immediate separation, the newly established Bolshevik
leaders provoked an antireligious campaign that often involved violent,
Atheism and Secularity in the Former Soviet Union 47
coercive actions. This initial campaign was followed by a relatively calm

period (although intimidation tactics and arrests of clerics continued),
which focused on propaganda and socialization. ‘‘Cavalry raids’’ were
common from 1917 to 1919 in Islamic regions. From 1919 to 1928,
though, Islamic leaders were able to maintain authority even as Islamic
cultural institutions were liquidated.7 Conflicts with communities seek-
ing to protect their churches and church valuables provoked harsh state
reactions, such as Lenin’s order for ‘‘the arrest and execution of as many
clergy and active laity in Shuia [a town located northeast of Moscow] as
possible.’’8 The conflicts during the Civil War era, however, were even-
tually seen as counterproductive to the cause of establishing an atheist
socialist society. Thus, most of the 1920s witnessed a shift from directly
coercive measures to gradual measures to socialize citizens as atheists.
In 1925, the Party established the Soviet League of the Militant God-
less (or, Militant Atheists) to organize a systematic program against reli-
gion. Organized in the same fashion as the Communist Party, the
League broke itself down into cells. These cells were organized most
simply at workplaces: at factory divisions, schools, and offices in urban
areas and at collective farms, machine tractor stations, and reading huts
in rural areas.9 All cells were part of a network headquartered in Mos-
cow. The League of the Militant Godless was conceived as an association
of volunteers who were committed to promoting ‘‘scientific materialism’’
through educational activities like lectures, reading circles, and promo-
tional materials. The League’s creation symbolized the Bolshevik
regime’s attempts to shift the antireligious campaign away from coercion
to socialization. However, this shift toward a more passive antireligious
campaign was not supported unanimously.
By the late 1920s, the pendulum began to swing toward a more
aggressive program. Lenin’s original 1918 decree was further elabo-
rated in 1929 when the RSFSR government adopted a comprehensive
decree, ‘‘On Religious Associations,’’ which remained in place over six
decades. The decree established a model after which the fourteen other
Soviet Republics would build their own constitutional approaches to
religion. The 1929 law set out to establish strict boundaries within
which religious organizations could conduct activities, making ‘‘all reli-
gious organization activity, except the most routine religious services
and rituals within a State-registered place of worship, subject to State
approval.’’10 This law prohibited activities like charity work and
church social events. However, the law remained vague enough in
how it applied blanket prohibitions that room remained for arbitrary
enforcement and antireligious activism.11
It is not clear the extent to which the 1929 law reflected the original
intent of Lenin’s 1918 decree (which may explain the inconsistency
endemic to the antireligious campaign throughout the Soviet era). The
ability to participate in cult practices remained possible; however, the
right to disseminate religious propaganda was explicitly prohibited.12

In contrast, the Constitution fully protected the ability to disseminate
atheist propaganda using a variety of techniques.13
Reaching a consensus around the ways to promote atheism, though,
was difficult. This chapter highlights two of the factors that compli-
cated the strategies for promoting atheism through the antireligious
campaign. One difficulty arose from early political debates concerning
the role religion played in society, which meant different factions dis-
agreed over the means for removing it.14 Another reason the antireli-
gious campaign was complicated was more obvious: the USSR’s vast
territory comprised diverse cultures and religions.15 No single, stan-
dard plan could be applied to reach the desired effect. These two
factors, among others, made it difficult for the Soviet state to impose
atheism across the USSR uniformly and with a lasting impact.
Early Soviet Debates on Religion: Creating Homo Sovieticus

Even as the campaign against religion became more centralized
under Stalin’s cultural revolution (1928–1932), Daniel Peris’s work finds
that debates still ensued over the exact reasons for, and nature of,
the antireligious campaign. A stenographic report of the June 14, 1929,
Congress of the League of the Godless (Soyuz bezbozhnikov) documents
the heated debates surrounding antireligious strategies. Peris illustrates
how two factions—the ‘‘culturalists’’ and the ‘‘interventionists’’—struggled
with one another throughout the Congress’ sessions. The culturalists,
argued that instilling atheist philosophy and values throughout the vari-
ous cultural institutions would gradually steer socialist citizens away
from religious beliefs and would most effectively diminish resistance to
atheism and Soviet modernization. Interventionists, on the other hand,
saw religion and religious sentiments at all levels to be a direct threat to
Soviet socialist development. In the arguments of the interventionists,
people who remained committed to religious beliefs and practices were
maintaining remnants of the old class system and were, thus, political
enemies to Soviet modernization. Given the perceived threat of religious
actors and groups to secularizing society, direct and swift action was
considered necessary. According to Peris both positions, and those varia-
tions existing between the two, were difficult to support unequivocally
as, ‘‘No unassailable source of wisdom in this regard existed because
such a social transformation had never before been fully thought out
or experienced.’’16 As a consequence, a battle ensued over which
position sat most squarely within Lenin’s strategies—a task that could
only be highly subjective since Lenin (and Marx, for that matter) had
not mapped out an explicit outline of how to secularize society.17
Rhetoric also reflected a desire to set concrete goals because ‘‘Many
delegates referred to integrating antireligious activity into the five-year
plan, to make antireligious achievements as much a part of the plan as

steel production.’’18
In the end, the culturalists won the debates during the June 1929
Congress, but the long-run solution became one of direct action and
coercion until World War II. From 1928 to 1941, anti-Islamic propa-
ganda intensified, thousands of mosques were closed, and Muslim cler-
ics and believers were victims of the Stalinist purges.19 In 1930, the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was forced to declare its
own liquidation, after which approximately half of its clergy was
arrested. By the mid-1930s, the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine
also saw its clergy arrested and deported, whereupon only 100 Ortho-
dox priests were estimated to still reside in the Soviet republic by the
end of the decade.20 The Russian Orthodox Church in Russia was not
decimated to the same extent; rather, Soviet authorities worked more
toward co-opting the church hierarchy. This effort was most dramati-
cally symbolized in Metropolitan Sergius’ ‘‘The Declaration of Metro-
politan Sergius’’ in 1927 that proclaimed to followers the Church’s
loyalty to the Soviet regime. The antireligious campaign was toned
down during the Second World War in an attempt to build believers’
trust and loyalty in the Soviet Union. During the same period, partly
as a result of its failure in promoting scientific atheism, the League of
the Militant Godless was dissolved.
The diminished fervor against religion as a response to WWII
remained in place until Khrushchev reinvigorated the antireligious
campaign from 1959 to 1964. During this period the number of places
of worship and theological institutions in the Soviet Union was pared
down by half.21 Legal maneuvers were also used to strip societies of
practices originating from religious teachings. For instance, Ro’i
observes, ‘‘The attack on Islam . . . perhaps reached its peak in the
1962 fatwa (Islamic legal opinion) ‘On Circumcision’ put out by the
Spiritual Board of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, which asserted that
circumcision was not obligatory for Muslims since Islam had adopted
this practice from Arabs of the pre-Islamic period.’’22
Under Brezhnev’s leadership organized antireligious efforts relaxed.
The less aggressive campaign remained in effect until Gorbachev’s
glasnost program, which marked official opening of Soviet societies to
freedom of consciousness. The only exception to this relatively calm
period arose in the early 1980s as a result of the Afghanistan conflict.
The conflict heightened suspicion that Islamic movements would try to
infiltrate Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan. As a consequence, a
reactionary anti-Islamic campaign was reinstated. The constantly fluc-
tuating waves throughout the Soviet period, waves undulating with
more and less aggressive campaign tactics, reveal that consensus was
never reached over the form and content of state-led programs promot-
ing scientific atheism.
Religious and Cultural Diversity

Living in a social environment antagonistic to religion, atheist identity
was, for some, a means to avoid scrutiny. For others, being atheist was a
means to gain status through the Communist Party, which required its
members to reject religion. These strategies’ importance varied with
one’s situation, not least of which involved one’s cultural background.
The cultural diversity represented within the Soviet Union’s extensive
territory complicated how the state could impose a singular, atheist
belief system (see Table 3.1).
Within historically Christian societies, national churches were capa-
ble of insulating themselves to some degree from the Soviet-led antire-
ligious campaign.23 As such, the presence of national churches served
as a destabilizing entity. Although it was possible for churches to be
co-opted by the Soviet state (as was apparently the case with the Rus-
sian Orthodox Church and the Moldovan Orthodox Church),24 several
incidents show churches were an instrumental force for dissent. Pedro
Ramet includes the Catholic Church in Lithuania and Ukraine, the Lu-
theran Church in Estonia, and the Orthodox Church in Georgia as
powerful entities in challenging the antireligious campaigns in these
societies.25 The most powerful role the churches played to weaken state
ideology around atheism was to advocate the rights of ethnic minor-
ities and national sovereignty. Being tightly woven into these societies’
national histories, the national churches provided a lens from which
Soviet citizens could critique the system.26 Strong national churches,
despite Soviet efforts to sanction their activities, were able to maintain
public interest in national versus Soviet identities. This was done in
various ways, such as churches ‘‘going underground’’ to continue reli-
gious rituals beyond the scope of state scrutiny and churches organiz-
ing underground dissemination of independent publications (samizdat).
Efforts to advance nationalist programs were organized by youth over
the 1960s and 1970s throughout several of the republics historically linked
to national churches. In Armenia, for which the Armenian Apostolic
Church has been the key institution of Armenian identity, several demon-
strations were organized in the 1960s and 1970s by nationalist youth
organizations seeking recognition and independence. In Lithuania, where
70 percent of young people were Catholic members, Lithuanian youth
organized investigations into the lost period of their country’s indepen-
dence from 1923 to 1940.27 These activities demonstrate how religious
identity remained part of national cultures, providing one way to separate
individual identities from the drive to sovietize all people of the USSR.
Accounts in Islamic societies paint a picture of a different relation-
ship between religious identity and Muslim identity in the midst of
Soviet modernization. Muslims, while seemingly acquiescing to social-
ist modernization, still openly maintained their identities. Muslim
Table 3.1
Ethnic composition and influential religion by country
in the former USSR
Ethnic Composition* Influential Religion
Baltic
Estonia Estonian 67.9% Lutheran
Russian 25.6%
Latvia Latvian 57.7% Lutheran
Russian 29.6%
Lithuania Lithuanian 83.4% Roman Catholic
Polish 6.7%
Russian 6.3%
Central Asia
Kazakhstan Kazakh (Qazaq) 53.4% Islamic (Sunni)
Russian 30%
Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyz 64.9% Islamic (Sunni)
Uzbek 13.8%
Russian 12.5%
other 5.7%
Tajikistan Tajik 79.9% Islamic (Sunni)
Uzbek 15.3%
Turkmenistan Turkmen 85% Islamic (Sunni)
Uzbek 5%
other 6%
Uzbekistan Uzbek 80% Islamic (Sunni)
Russian 5.5%
Tajik 5%
Eastern Europe & Eurasia

Belarus Belarusian 81.2% Russian Orthodox
Russian 11.4%
Moldova Moldovan/Romanian 78.2% Russian Orthodox
Ukrainian 8.4%
Russian 5.8%
Russian Federation Russian 79.8% Russian Orthodox
other 12.1%
Ukraine Ukrainian 77.8% Ukrainian Orthodox (three
competing divisions)
Russian 17.3%
Southern Caucasus
Armenia Armenian 97.9% Armenian Apostolic Church
Azerbaijan Azeri 90.6% Islamic (Shi’a)1
Georgia Georgian 83.8% Georgian Orthodox
Azeri 6.5%
Armenian 5.7%
*
Source for ethnic composition data CIA World Factbook Web site. Groups comprising
less than 5% of population are not included.
1
Shortly following the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, it was estimated that 75 to 85 percent of Mus-
lims in Azerbaijan were Shi’a. Shireen T. Hunter, ‘‘Azerbaijan: search for industry and new
partners.’’ In Nations & Politics in the Soviet Successor States, edited by Ian Bremmer
and Ray Taras. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 237.
identities were even maintained among those in leadership positions,

leading to apparently contradictory declarations: ‘‘I am a Muslim and a
Communist.’’28
Being the second largest religion within the Soviet territory, Islam
guided a significant portion of the Soviet population (one Soviet citizen
in five).29 The traditionally Islamic societies of Central Asia, including
Azerbaijan in the Southern Caucasus, appeared as though they cooper-
ated with the socialist modernization project. Because Muslim resistance
seemed absent (when compared to the religious and nationalist youth
movements in republics like Armenia and Lithuania), scholars have
tended to look at the nature of Islamic beliefs and practices, as well as
at the configuration of cultural and national identity that preceded the
socialist project. Islam is not structured around a clerical hierarchy, as
its members are to have a direct experience with God. Thus, it was pos-
sible for Muslims to compromise with Soviet leaders by relegating reli-
gious experiences to individual experience in exchange for social
modernization in the region. According to Froese, ‘‘This led to no theo-
logical crisis for most Muslims, who held inner spirituality as the core
element of Islam. In return, Central Asia was modernized, and many
Muslims moved into positions of political power.’’30
And, unlike the republics in which Christian beliefs prevailed, the
predominantly Islamic republics were purely a Soviet creation. The
carving of the region into separate republics did not represent how
people living there understood their own identities. In fact, Bennigsen
points out that Muslims in the Soviet Union had no prior understand-
ing of ‘‘nation’’ in the sense of a modern nation-state. Thus, the nature
of Islamic religion and the absence of nationhood marked distinctly dif-
ferent experiences from the republics Christianity largely influenced.
Officially, the Soviet state created four Spiritual Administrations (the
Ufa muftiat, the Tashkent muftiat, the Buynaksk muftiat, and the Baku
Directorate) that were designed to monitor Muslim communities. In
the mid-1970s, it was estimated that 400–500 mosques continued to
function, and approximately 5,000 mullahs (compared to 50,000 before
1917) served a population of 40 million.31 Publicly, Muslim participa-
tion in Islamic rituals (such as attending Friday prayer at the mosques)
was not great, yet Muslim festivals (such as A€id al-Fitr) experienced
massive participation across the different regions. In the near absence
of official clerics, Islamic practices became more informal, as Muslims
sought ways to affirm their faith while avoiding the attention of Soviet
authority. Evasion from Soviet detection was accomplished through a
variety of ways: assigning unofficial mullahs, erecting unofficial mos-
ques, designating tombs of mythical saints as holy places (circumvent-
ing the Soviet ban on hadj), and continuing a ‘‘Muslim way of life.’’32
The resilience of Muslim ways of life did not go undetected by
Soviet authorities who noted that intellectuals and youth were
‘‘contaminated with ‘religious prejudice.’’’33 Even during the relative

calm following Khruschev’s aggressive antireligious campaign, efforts
were intensified and refined throughout Muslim societies.34 The inten-
sified efforts could be associated in part with the conflict in Afghani-
stan. With the conflict arose concerns that the West was infiltrating
Muslim societies in an effort ‘‘to propagate religious sentiments and
mystical dogmas,’’ which ultimately undermined Soviet moderniza-
tion.35 Over the first six months of 1980 in Tajikistan, more than ‘‘4,000
lectures on atheism were held, as well as dozens of ‘practical-scientific
conferences and question-and-answer evenings,’ lecture series and film
lectures.’’36 Secularization campaigns targeted women, using various
means. Of the more popular methods of atheist indoctrination of
women, education programs were deemed rather effective. These pro-
grams strove to keep girls in school and to enlist them in Komsomol
girls’ brigades, which trained them in leadership and feminine skills
(like dressmaking). Other programs sought to educate housewives on
child-rearing techniques, household economics, and health. Seeking to
modernize girls’ and women’s attitudes (and mirroring contemporary
endeavors to modernize Muslim women), these methods were hoped
to eventually rid these societies of Muslim family practices, such as the
tradition of paying bride price.37 These observations, detailing the sus-
tained and intensified efforts to strip Muslim ways of life, suggest that
Muslims in no way conformed to atheism, but rather were adept in
preserving private practices and keeping them just beyond the reach of
Soviet regulation.
In Table 3.2, data from 1900 and 1970 show a steady growth of self-
identifying atheists in the different regions of the Soviet Union. Yet,
historical accounts in these distinct regions reveal state-imposed athe-
ism was not fully internalized or accepted. Thus, the benefits of publicly
identifying as atheist to accrue social rewards of the time while still
maintaining religious identities privately to preserve one’s culture could
very well have been common across the USSR. This helps qualify those
treatments of the Soviet campaign as being totalizing and absolute,
allowing the possibility that people in the Soviet Union were able to
think (if only privately) outside the box of Soviet propaganda.
POST-SOVIET ATHEISM AND RELIGIOSITY

Glasnost’s introduction in the 1980s under Gorbachev, and the even-
tual collapse of the Soviet Union, brought about an environment in
which religious membership and beliefs could be expressed. At the
same time, economic changes arising out of systemic stagnation starting
in the 1970s, and eventually through perestroika in the mid-1980s, led
to considerable psychological and material insecurity for populations in
several of the member countries of the USSR. Yegor Gaidar, in a recent
Table 3.2
Growth of self-identifying atheists and nonreligious in USSR,
1900–1970
% Atheist* % Nonreligious
Baltic 1900 1970 1900 1970

Estonia 0.1 23.3 0.2 30.0
Latvia 0.0 16.6 0.1 31.0
Lithuania 0.0 10.0 0.1 19.2
Central Asia
Kazakhstan 0.0 22.9 0.0 31.4
Kyrgyzstan 0.0 23.6 0.1 29.0
Tajikistan 0.0 14.3 0.2 19.4
Turkmenistan 0.0 14.6 0.1 20.3
Uzbekistan 0.0 16.9 0.0 25.1

Belarus 0.1 15.5 0.3 24.4
Moldova 0.1 22.3 0.2 29.7
Russian Federation 0.1 23.4 0.2 28.1
Ukraine 0.0 15.9 0.2 22.3
Southern Caucasus
Armenia 0.0 23.0 0.1 38.4
Azerbaijan 0.0 14.5 0.0 19.3
Georgia 0.0 16.5 0.0 36.3
*
Data derived from Barrett, David B., George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, eds. World
Christian Encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions in the modern
world, second edition [Volume 1, The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches, Minis-
tries]. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
lecture delivered to the American Enterprise Institute, pointed to the

lower prices of oil and declining output of grain during the 1980s as
key factors that led to Soviet economic crisis. Following the Saudis’ lib-
eralization of oil prices on September 13, 1985, the Soviet Union annu-
ally lost $20 billion in its oil trade.38 The dramatic reduction in trade
revenues and the decline in grain production inevitably led to rising
scarcity of consumer goods. By 1990 a food rationing system was in
place, which required that the Soviet consumer carry around talony
(coupons) for the purchase of basics, like butter, sugar, eggs, and salt.
By the winter of 1990–91, bread was sometimes unavailable for pur-
chase. The faltering economy meant the prospects for the Soviet Union
and the everyday person living there were grim.
By the end of the 1980s, the relaxed monitoring of religious life,

coupled with greater material insecurity, created an environment in
which religion could be openly explored, and it offered a space for
psychological comfort. Data from Barrett et al. estimating the number
of atheists and nonreligious from 1900 to mid-2000 indicate a marked
decline in the number of atheist and nonreligious in most of the fifteen
Soviet republics examined here. Table 3.3 lists by country the estimated
proportion of atheists and nonreligious in mid-1990 and mid-2000. The
right-hand columns depict the percentage change in atheist and nonre-
ligious populations for mid-1990 and mid-2000 compared with 1970
and 1990, respectively. Examining numbers from the year 1990 is valu-
able in that it marks the beginning of the entire Soviet Union’s collapse
and a decade of even greater social and economic insecurity. Over the
course of the decade following collapse, the proportion of atheists and
nonreligious was relatively stable.
The sharp increase in the number of people claiming to believe in
God was initially interpreted as a religious revival in the former Soviet
Union. In fact, as the numbers of believers increased by the early 1990s,
progressive laws on freedom of conscience and religion were introduced
throughout the former Soviet Union. As the 1990s progressed, though,
more restrictive amendments were introduced that either favored
national churches or stifled free flows of religious (and nonreligious)
thought. Moreover, macro-level data found that even though the num-
bers of believers seemed to grow over the previous 30 years, the behav-
iors of self-identified believers have been fraught with contradictions.
Thus, the exact number atheists and nonreligious is not clear, and the
exact nature of religious practice in the former Soviet Union confusing.
The varying legal treatments of religious freedom and the eclectic nature
of religious practice in the former Soviet Union are described below.
Legal Treatment of Religious Freedom in the Former Soviet

Union
All of the former Soviet republics adopted constitutions and laws in
the early 1990s (1990–1994) guaranteeing freedom of conscience and
the separation of church and state. These early-established laws have
been left fairly intact in the Baltic societies, especially in Estonia.
Ukraine has also consistently protected rights to religious freedom and
on April 22, 2005, the Soviet-legacy State Committee for Religious
Affairs (SCRA) was abolished through presidential decree. Religious
pluralism in Ukraine exists perhaps as a result of the ongoing competi-
tion between the three different Orthodox churches and the Ukrainian
Greek-Catholic Church to gain status as the National Ukrainian
Church.39 Furthermore, Catherine Wanner’s work on evangelism in
Table 3.3
Changes in percentage of atheist and nonreligious in former USSR, 1970–2000
Atheist Nonreligious
Mid-1990 Mid-2000 Mid-1990 Mid-2000
Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent
pop. of 1970 pop. of 1990 Percent of 1970 Percent of 1990
Baltic
Estonia 12.7 45.7 10.9 14.2 27.1 9.7 25.1 7.4
Latvia 7.4 55.4 6.0 18.9 28.4 8.4 26.0 8.4
Lithuania 1.5 85.0 1.1 26.7 13.0 32.3 10.9 16.1
Central Asia
Kazakhstan 12.0 47.6 10.9 9.2 32.3 þ 2.9 29.3 9.3
Kyrgyzstan 9.6 59.3 6.3 34.4 24.2 16.5 21.6 10.7
Tajikistan 3.8 73.4 1.9 50.0 13.2 32.0 12.0 9.1
Turkmenistan 2.5 82.9 1.4 44.0 11.3 44.3 9.0 20.4
Uzbekistan 4.9 71.0 3.5 28.6 19.0 24.3 18.1 4.7

Belarus 7.4 52.3 4.9 34.8 24.6 þ 0.8 24.0 2.4
Moldova 8.9 60.1 4.2 52.8 22.2 25.3 20.4 8.1
Russian Federation 6.1 73.9 5.2 14.7 28.8 þ 2.5 27.5 4.5
Ukraine 4.9 69.2 4.0 18.4 12.4 44.4 10.9 12.1
Southern Caucasus
Armenia 10.1 56.1 4.9 51.0 17.9 53.4 8.4 53.1
Azerbaijan 0.8 94.5 0.5 37.0 12.4 35.7 10.8 12.9
Georgia 4.4 73.0 2.7 38.6 17.2 52.6 15.3 11.0
*
Data derived from Barrett, David B., George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, eds. World Christian encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches
and religions in the modern world, second edition [Volume 1, The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches, Ministries]. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001.
Ukraine leads her to say religious pluralism is institutionalized in the

country and thus will continue to thrive.40
The experiences with religious openness in the Baltic countries and
Ukraine are not shared throughout the former Soviet Union. In fact, a
trend toward increased state restrictions and criminalization of religious
activity has prevailed in a large number of post-Soviet societies toward
the latter part of the 1990s and into the new millennium. Former Soviet
republics use different mechanisms through the laws on freedom of
conscience and religion to restrict religious activities. Countries adopt
laws that favor specific religions over others and bestow them with spe-
cial functions. Georgia, for example, granted a consultative role to the
Georgian Orthodox Church with its government in 2002. Later, in April
2005, the government established laws forbidding religious indoctrina-
tion in schools. Yet, observers claim that a large number of schools start
classes with Orthodox prayers.41 Another way laws serve to privilege
certain religions over others is through establishing distinctions between
religious ‘‘organizations’’ and less formal ‘‘groups.’’ This language is
utilized in Belarus’ legal amendments in 2002, which also limited the
scope of registered religions’ activities, limiting them to specific towns
or districts in which registration occurred.42
Establishing strict eligibility requirements to register with the state
also legally enforces religious restrictions. At least three mechanisms
are used to do this. One way is through increasing the number of con-
gregants necessary to qualify as a religious organization or group. In
Armenia, in 1997, an amendment raised the membership requirements
from 50 to 200. Russia, on the other hand, used a second mechanism in
its 1997 amendment, which required that religious groups prove their
existence in the territory of Russia for no less than 15 years preceding
registration. Marshall notes, though, that this potentially onerous
requirement has been loosely enforced thus far.43 The third mechanism,
and most frequent, is that the process religious groups must follow to
register with the state is made incredibly burdensome and bureau-
cratic. Difficult processes of registration are documented throughout
Central Asia and in Azerbaijan. Kazakhstan, in fact, requests highly
personal information for all congregational members (such as age, fam-
ily status, and ethnicity). Thus, even if it is possible for religions to be
legally active in different post-Soviet societies, processes are established
in the laws that limit and control religious groups nonetheless.
Central Asia and Azerbaijan have taken greater measures than the
other former Soviet republics to regulate religious activities. Turkmeni-
stan and Uzbekistan, considered to have among the most authoritarian
and repressive post-Soviet governments, not only make registration on-
erous for religious groups, but have also criminalized all groups who
are not registered. Uzbekistan’s National Security Service (NSS), the
country’s secret service, is one of the state agencies charged with
supervising all religious organizations. Criminal charges against

unregistered religions have, in fact, intensified over 2005 to 2006.44
Besides criminalization, governments directly control religious organiza-
tions’ activities, even those religions considered traditional to the soci-
ety. For instance, religious law in Tajikistan requires state approval for
each elected Muslim cleric. It seems that, unlike predominately Chris-
tian post-Soviet societies, restrictions on Muslim societies are intended
to regulate all religions without serving the interests of any single one.
Religiosity in the Former Soviet Union

The initial trend in which the number of atheists and nonreligious
declined throughout the Soviet Union during its collapse has been
examined to understand the effects of the antireligious campaign. In
his analysis of results from the 1991 and 1998 International Social Sur-
vey Program (ISSP), Greeley finds that older and younger generations
in Russia and the former Soviet Union have greater religious tenden-
cies than middle-age generations who were fully immersed within the
system of state imposed atheism.45 Such patterns in religious beliefs
across different generations support positions that claim religious par-
ticipation will rise as state regulation of religion diminishes. Older gen-
erations in post-Soviet societies will have lived in historical contexts in
which they experienced periods of religious freedom in their youth.
Younger generations (especially after the 1960s) will have experienced
lax regulations and growing opportunities to critique religious regula-
tion. Although Greeley believes these findings show that a religious re-
vival took place by the early 1990s, his findings also support the
possibility that those whose entire lives were spent within the Soviet
system internalized atheism. In this respect, it is possible to say the
atheist program experienced some success.
It is difficult to directly measure whether a religious resurgence has
taken place in the former Soviet Union, because it is unlikely valid
measures of religious activity exist from the Soviet era. After all, it was
in the state’s interest to underestimate the number of believers among
its citizens, and citizens were likely reluctant to indentify with religios-
ity. Thus, even if there were some confidence in the contemporary
measures of religiosity, any direct measure of whether atheism or reli-
giosity has risen or fallen over time is not possible.46 Measuring religi-
osity is also difficult, because there also remain questions around the
meanings post-Soviet people attach to claiming they believe in God.
Macro-level data are not direct measures of individuals’ relationships
between their beliefs and actions. It is possible to test the number
of believers against their practices to determine the number of truly re-
ligious in a society. However, if these comparisons offer any insights,
they serve to raise doubts that a religious resurgence has taken
Table 3.4
Percentage who believe in God and regularly attend church
Attend Church once/month

Believe in God? (%) or more? (%)
Armenia* 86 30
Azerbaijan* 98 14
Georgia* 93 27
Belarus 83 15
Russian Federation 70 9
Ukraine 80 17
Estonia 51 11
Latvia 80 15
Lithuania 87 31
Kyrgyzstan 95 24
*
1995 wave of the European Values Survey and the World Values Survey. Data for all
other countries were collected in the 2000 wave of the European Values Survey and the
World Values Survey. Source: Halman et al. Changing Values and Beliefs in 85 Countries:
Trends from the Values Surveys from 1981 to 2004. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008.
place. Patterns between belief and practice are contradictory. Among

the contradictions regularly observed is the dramatic divergence
between self-reported belief in God and attendance of religious serv-
ices. A small number of believers attends religious services regularly
(see Table 3.4).
As mentioned earlier, this could lead us to believe the rates of religi-
osity in the former Soviet Union are overstated. Bishop Alfeyev of the
Russian Orthodox Church describes from his own experiences how
these contradictions play out:
To be baptized, to be Orthodox has become a fashion. . . . I remember asking

one teenager who came, together with her mother, to be baptized: ‘‘Do you
believe in God?’’ ‘‘No,’’ was her answer. ‘‘Why then do you want to be bap-
tized?’’ I asked. ‘‘Well, everybody gets baptized nowadays,’’ she said.
Although the encounter he describes doesn’t fit the statistical trends illus-
trated in Table 3.4, it demonstrates how beliefs and actions are not neces-
sarily consistent. Eastern European scholars argue that Bishop Alfeyev’s
story is not so strange, if taking into account the historically and culturally
unique case of Soviet-led modernization. Individuals in post-Soviet soci-
eties may seek to reject communism (through baptism), yet still question
if they believe in God. Likewise, they may feel devoted to God, but not
express it in church attendance. In fact, scholars like Tomka contend that
this latter scenario only looks contradictory from Western perspectives
that rely on the use of ideal types and their own culturally-specific
understandings of religious expression.47 According to this argument,

Western frameworks are ill-equipped to accurately explain the dynamic
nature of belief (and nonbelief) in the former Soviet Union.
In a comparative analysis of Croatia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia,
Zrinscak contends that the religious dynamics observed in post-
communist European countries are related to at least three factors: the
effects of political conflict between the communist system and the old
social order, the form of social change arising after the Second World
War in these countries, and the distinctions that exist between the
countries. Moreover, in considering each one of these factors it is clear
that generational effects would contribute to fluctuations in beliefs and
practices within and between post-communist countries. For instance,
the countries that were Soviet republics before World War II, when
compared to central European countries like Hungary and Poland, will
comprise more generational cohorts exposed to the antireligious cam-
paigns (coercive and socialization tactics). Cohorts born in the 1920s in
Russia will have a different experience with religious expression than
those of the same generation born in Hungary. What is similar across
the different societies of the former USSR is a relative loosening of po-
litical regulation that began in the 1960s and beyond. Zrinscak points
out that individuals born in this period and later will have a signifi-
cantly different experience with the communist order than those born
in earlier periods. Growing up with only atheism, Larissa Titarenko
explains, individuals have no conception of how their own values and
practices can either be consistent or inconsistent with religious beliefs.
Being fully socialized in a system in which the state allowed no
religious education, individuals have no boundaries defining how they
show their belief in God, especially in specifically ‘‘Catholic’’ or
‘‘Orthodox’’ ways. In fact, post-Soviet societies still do not structurally
support religious education. The history of state-imposed atheism has
meant religiosity in the former Soviet Union tends to be eclectic. A pro-
fessed Orthodox believer can read tarot cards and horoscopes without
sensing any contradiction (a pattern of behavior not unfamiliar to
devout Christians living in the United States).48
Similar behavior is observed in Melissa Caldwell’s ethnographic
study of a small Protestant congregation in Moscow, the Christian
Church of Moscow (CCM). She describes visiting Aleksandra Petrovna,
a 75-year-old Russian pensioner who identified herself as a devout
Christian believer with a strong family heritage in Russian Ortho-
doxy.49 During her visit, Caldwell noted how Aleksandra Petrovna
used referrals from a newspaper called Tainaya vlast’ (Secret Power) that
included articles and advertisements covering a diverse range of alter-
native religions (such as homeopathic medicine and Afro-Brazilian
magic). Besides finding it peculiar that a devout Orthodox would rely on
this paper as a resource for self-help, she also found the paper included
articles discussing the ‘‘mysteries and healing powers of Orthodoxy.’’50

This was ironic, especially because the Russian Orthodox Church was
making a concerted effort to discredit these sorts of religions. For Cald-
well, Aleksandra Petrovna’s ability to be Orthodox while borrowing
from alternative religions, and the association of Orthodox religion with
supernatural power, are part of the same process. She explains
Weberian paradigms emphasise the interconnections and interpenetra-

tions of religion and economics, but maintain that the two remain dis-
tinct. In Russia, however, the two realms ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘economics’’
have become fused, while ‘‘spirituality’’ has become separated from ‘‘re-
ligion.’’ Ultimately, the implications of this commercialization of religion
mean that by disentangling personal professions of spirituality from the
institutional structures and rituals of religion, Muscovites have reinforced
the distinction between belief and practice so that irreligious spirituality
and aspiritual religiosity are both possible.
Drawing on material explanations for religious behavior, Caldwell

argues this process is part of Muscovites’ strategies to resolve the
financial and emotional insecurity part and parcel with post-Soviet life
in Russia.
Caldwell’s research highlights social conditions that are often over-
looked in the literature on religion in the former Soviet Union.
Churches play an important role in providing charity, free services,
and food to poorer strata in post-Soviet societies. This is an especially
important function given conditions in which these societies have wit-
nessed the steady deterioration of state-funded services and programs.
For example, Caldwell observes one of her informants attending sev-
eral different churches, as this informant relies on each one for the free
food and resources provided. In Ukraine, religious organizations have
become a key source for welfare and charity.51 My own observations
from ethnographic research in central Ukraine indicate that church
membership is a strategic choice for some families. In an interview
with a couple parenting five children, the husband explained how he
joined a church in the hopes of being relocated to California with his
family. According to him, he had friends who took advantage of their
church membership in this way and now lived very comfortably in a
big house in California.52 Catherine Wanner, as well, describes how
American missionaries from the Southern Baptist Church ‘‘offer free
English language classes, sometimes medical care, and often biblical
instruction to members or potential members of the church’’ at a Bap-
tist Church in Ukraine.53 Thus, although individuals may be devout in
their beliefs in God, they may also be swayed by the practical benefits
to church membership. The combination of culturally and historically
specific experiences, as well as the material conditions people live in
from day-to-day, are among the important factors shaping peoples’

relationship to religion.
ATHEISTS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

Although most studies of the former Soviet Union concentrate their
energy on the increased numbers of self-identified believers in God, it
remains impressive that the number of atheists in these societies
remain as high as they are. To put the numbers in perspective,54 the
proportion of atheists in all of the countries of the former Soviet
Union still surpass the proportion recorded in the United States
(documented as 0.4 percent of the population in 2000). Taking account
of the nonreligious, only Armenia records fewer (8.4 percent) than the
United States (9 percent). Data suggest a large number of people iden-
tify strongly with atheism, or at least remain skeptical of religion,
despite the absence of state-organized efforts to coerce people into this
position.
The relatively large number of atheists and nonreligious in these
societies is also significant if one considers there is little to be gained
in being atheist in post-Soviet societies or in remaining unsure of
God’s existence. As mentioned earlier, religious organizations are
among the main ways people access charity, free goods, and services
in post-Soviet societies. Atheist organizations are not structured to
serve in this way. And, perhaps for this reason, few atheist organiza-
tions appear to exist in the former Soviet Union. When conducting
an Internet search (which, admittedly, is not a thorough account of
atheist organizations), only one atheist organization, the Liberty of
Conscience Institute, appears to be active in Russia, and another,
Atheism in Ukraine, exists in Ukraine. Of the two, the Liberty of
Conscience Institute appears most organized and is associated with
the larger organization, the International Humanist and Ethical
Union. On its Web site the organization notes that it is interested in
advancing human rights and the full realization of the freedom of
conscience:
This issue [the constitutional right to freedom of expression and its legal
form, freedom of conscience] is largely underdeveloped in Russia, both
from scientific viewpoint as well as in the realm of constitutional princi-
ples. Hence, Russian legal system in this sphere is exclusively devoted to
regulating the activities of religious entities and their monitoring. . . .
[L]egislation, which should be directed at facilitating rights to freedom of
expression, is substituted by ‘‘particular religious’’ legislation that is
aimed at monitoring the activities of religious entities. This meets the
demands of certain power structures and the religious bureaucracy, but
not the society in general.55
The organization is not a relic of Soviet scientific atheism, for it is

not interested in erasing religious influence from society and replacing
it with scientific explanations. Rather, it seeks to advance freedom of
conscience and reduce the role of the state in regulating religious ac-
tivity. According to their mission statement, the organization seeks to
establish a ‘‘system of legal guarantees for freedom of conscience on
the regional, national and international levels.’’56 In this endeavor, it
serves as a watchdog for human rights. It has organized publicity
campaigns against constitutional amendments that sought to favor the
Russian Orthodox Church and has also sought to make the Russian
Orthodox Church more transparent about its investments in the
tobacco, banking, and petroleum industries.57 Such activities show
how atheism is no longer a state-supported belief system, and these
watchdog activities are likely to keep atheism’s relationship with the
state distant.
The Liberty of Conscience Institute’s activities demonstrate that
atheists, who once were associated with state repression, now poten-
tially serve as a progressive force in post-Soviet societies. In fact,
cross-national research finds a correlation between secularization and
higher quality of life factors. Countries with the highest rates of or-
ganic atheism rank high in human development (including life expec-
tancy, adult literacy, and per capita income).58 The correlation
between atheism and human development is not as clear in post-
Soviet societies, mostly as a result of their history with state-imposed
atheism and an unsustainable modernization program. However, these
societies were structured within a system that led people to expect a
great degree of state responsibility in securing the basic necessities for
its citizens. Because of this, the tyrannical qualities so frequently docu-
mented in Soviet and post-Soviet literature, did not simply lead to a
passive society. Not usually highlighted in research is that progressive
elements are present in social values in post-Soviet societies. Among
the more significant findings from the World Values Survey59 is that
in 1995, more than 60 percent of respondents (78 percent in Belarus,
76 percent in Estonia, 62 percent in Latvia, 63 percent in Lithuania, 79
percent in the Russian Federation, and 66 percent in Ukraine) said
they had a great deal of confidence in organizations for environmental
protection. The same year, 54 percent of U.S. respondents and 63 per-
cent of Norway’s respondents expressed a great deal of confidence in
organizations for environmental protection. When asked about their
confidence in the women’s movement, more than 60 percent of WVS
respondents from Estonia (63 percent), the Russian Federation (70 per-
cent), and Ukraine (62 percent) said they had a great deal of confi-
dence in the movement.60 Fifty-three percent of U.S. respondents and
43 percent of Norway’s respondents expressed a great deal of confi-
dence in the women’s movement. In this respect, people in some
post-Soviet societies have identified with rather progressive and posi-

tive perspectives at rates that even surpassed those in societies consid-
ered models for reform.
CONCLUSION
This chapter describes the shared history of state-imposed atheism
in the republics within the USSR and the campaign’s inconsistencies.
It has examined how the laws on freedom of religion and conscious-
ness have been treated across the former Soviet Union, as well as the
dynamic nature of belief in God and religious practice since the sys-
tem’s collapse. It illustrates how the visionaries of the revolution, and
then more specifically of the antireligious campaign, had difficulty
reconciling the differences between their ideals (especially their hopes
that people would embrace these ideals without resistance) and the
everyday realities. People throughout the territory of the USSR were
vastly different culturally. Any efforts to standardize them only
heightened peoples’ sense of desiring a unique identity. Because reli-
gion was part of the tightly woven fabric of one’s experience and
daily way of life and because some national religions were active in
promoting these ideals for independence, the Soviet state was con-
stantly forced to either assert its antireligious efforts or to temporarily
retreat. The antireligious campaign’s seemingly clumsy and erratic
application seemed highly unsuccessful, as by mid-1990 a vast num-
ber of people throughout the republics claimed to believe in God. For
onlookers, this sharp rise in believers demonstrated the resilience of
religion and that the former USSR was in the midst of a religious
resurgence. However, what was also apparent was that this belief did
not directly lead to the typical indicators of religious participation.
Rather, the unique experience of being raised in a state-imposed athe-
ist society (each having its own cultural-historical experience) seems
to have led to eclectic expressions of religiosity. This chapter con-
cludes by pointing out that the campaign to build atheism in the
Soviet Union was not necessarily a complete failure. The number of
atheists and nonreligious is still quite large relative to most other soci-
eties in the world. There is also some indication the atheism that has
remained intact is not a relic of Soviet scientific atheism, but one
which seeks to build a post-Soviet society on the principles of free-
dom of consciousness valuing human rights.
NOTES
1. Paul Froese, ‘‘Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic
Monopoly Failed.’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no. 1 (2004): 35.
2. Eurasia essentially refers to the Russian Federation in this chapter. Em-

bedded in the use of this term is a sense of the cultural richness included in
the Federation’s geographic space.
3. Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, ‘‘Atheism And Orthodoxy in Modern Russia,’’
http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/, p. 1 (accessed June 10, 2008).
4. Paul Froese, ‘‘Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic
Monopoly Failed.’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no. 1 (2004): 37; Daniel
Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998), 22; Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, ‘‘Atheism and Orthodoxy in
Modern Russia,’’ http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/ (accessed June 10, 2008): 4.
5. Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, ‘‘Atheism and Orthodoxy in Modern Russia,’’
http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/ (accessed June 10, 2008): 1.
6. Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant God-
less. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 22.
7. Alexandre Bennigsen, and S. Enders Wimbush. Muslims of the Soviet Empire:
A Guide. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 11.
8. Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant God-
less. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 26.
9. Ibid.
10. Boiter, Albert. ‘‘Drafting a Freedom of Conscience Law,’’ The Columbia
Journal of Transnational Law 28, no. 1 (1990): 158.
11. Ibid., 159.
12. F. J. M. Feldbrugge, Encyclopedia of Soviet Law (Law in Eastern Europe).
2nd ed. (The Hague, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, 1985), 107.
13. Feldbrugge cites Article 52 of the 1977 Constitution. Ibid.
14. Daniel Peris, ‘‘The 1929 Congress of the Godless,’’ Soviet Studies 43, no. 4
(1991): 711–732.
15. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John W. Strong, eds., Religion and Atheism in
the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto
Press, 1975); Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., Nations & Politics in the Soviet
Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
16. Daniel Peris, ‘‘The 1929 Congress of the Godless,’’ Soviet Studies 43, no. 4
(1991): 718.
17. Ibid., 718–719. In fact, it is ironic that both camps within this debate
developed arguments essentially prioritizing the changing of ideas (either
through socialization, or through direct ideological coercion) over material con-
ditions. Both appear contradictory to Marx’s historical materialism.
18. Ibid., 723.
19. Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush. Muslims of the Soviet
Empire: A Guide (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986).
20. Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi
Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
21. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, ‘‘Religious Dissent and the Soviet State,’’ in Religion
and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, ed. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John
W. Strong (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 60.
22. Yaacov Ro’i, ‘‘The Task of Creating the New Soviet Man: ‘Atheistic Prop-
aganda’ in the Soviet Muslim Areas.’’ Soviet Studies 36, no. 1 (1984): 28. Ro’i
cites original documentation for this can be found in Istoriya i teoriya ateizma
[The History and Theory of Atheism]. (Moscow, 1974), 160.
23. Ibid., 58. Bociurkiw prefers to define the existence of religious organiza-
tion (such as the Catholic Church in Lithuania) as evidence of dissident behav-
ior. He reasons, ‘‘religious dissent in the USSR may be defined as an overt
repudiation of the existing relationship between institutional religion and the
Soviet State, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to the legitimacy of the
norms and structures governing this relationship. . . . It also reflects the inevita-
ble ‘politicisation’ of religious dissent in the USSR resulting from the far-reach-
ing involvement of the political authorities in the conduct of internal affairs of
all officially recognized (‘registered’) religious groups, including the determina-
tion of the groups’ statutes and selection of their leaders.’’
24. Irena Borowik argues the organizational and structural traditions of the
Orthodox churches made it more difficult for them to sever links with the
Soviet state, and therefore they were vulnerable to co-optation. ‘‘Orthodoxy
Confronting the Collapse of Communism in Post-Soviet Countries,’’ Social Com-
pass 53, no. 2 (2006): 269.
25. Pedro Ramet, Cross and Commissar: The Politics of Religion in Eastern Europe
and the USSR (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 14.
26. Zrinscak, in fact, describes how she observed ‘‘people who were more
religious [in Croatia] tended not only to be more critical of the system but also
belonged to families that had undergone negative experiences of communism.’’
Sinisa Zrinscak, ‘‘Generations and Atheism: Patterns of Response to Commu-
nist Rule Among Different Generations and Countries.’’ Social Compass 51, no.
2 (2004): 221–234.
27. Hank Johnston, ‘‘Religio-Nationalist Subcultures under the Communists:
Comparisons from the Baltics, Transcaucasia, and Ukraine.’’ In Politics and
Religion in Central and Eastern Europe: Traditions and Transitions, ed. William H.
Swatos (London and Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994): 22–23.
28. Paul Froese, ‘‘ ‘I Am an Atheist and a Muslim’: Islam, Communism, and
Ideological Competition.’’ Journal of Church and State 47, no. 3 (2005).
29. Alexandre Bennigsen, ‘‘Islam in the Soviet Union: The Religious Factor
and the Nationality Problem in the Soviet Union.’’ In Religion and Atheism in
the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, ed. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John W. Strong
(Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975): 91.
30. Paul Froese, The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment
in Secularization (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2008), 103.
31. Ibid., 93.
32. Ibid., 95–96.
33. Yaacov Ro’i, ‘‘The Task of Creating the New Soviet Man: ‘Atheistic Prop-
aganda’ in the Soviet Muslim Areas.’’ Soviet Studies 36, no. 1 (1984): 27.
34. Ibid., 27–28.
35. Ibid., 32. Original quote found in an editorial piece in Pravda Vostoka
[The Truth of the East], October 23, 1981.
36. Ibid., 30.
37. Ibid., 32.
38. Yegor Gaidar, ‘‘The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil.’’ American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research, 2007. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise
Institute. www.aei.org (accessed August 15, 2008), 4–5.
39. Paul A. Marshall, Religious Freedom in the World (Lanham, MD: The Row-
man & Littlefield Group, 2008), 411. The three Orthodox churches include
Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patri-
archate, and Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate.
40. Catherine Wanner, ‘‘Advocating New Moralities: Conversion to Evan-
gelicalism in Ukraine.’’ Religion, State & Society 31, no. 3 (2003): 285. Catherine
Wanner. Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press), 246–247.
41. Paul A. Marshall, Religious Freedom in the World, 180.
42. Ibid., 91.
43. Ibid., 344.
44. Ibid., 420.
45. Andrew M. Greeley, Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers), 2003; Andrew M. Greeley.
‘‘A Religious Revival in Russia?’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 33,
no. 3 (1994): 253–272.
46. Using the World Values Survey results over the 1990s, Norris and Ingle-
hart compare generations in their study of secularism in the former Soviet
Union as one solution to this deficiency in the data. Their statistical models
suggest that secularism is still growing in post-Soviet societies, finding a linear
relationship between age and secular beliefs. The results of their work contra-
dict the hypotheses associated with religious markets theory. Pippa Norris and
Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), 2004.
47. Miklos Tomka, ‘‘Is Conventional Sociology of Religion Able to Deal with
Differences between Eastern and Western European Developments?’’ Social
Compass 53, no. 2 (2006): 251–265.
48. Larissa Titarenko, ‘‘On the Shifting Nature of Religion during the
Ongoing Post-Communist Transformation in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,’’
Social Compass 55, no. 2 (2008): 244. Interestingly, these seemingly inconsistent
behaviors are even observed in the United States. In his fieldwork in Butte,
Montana, John Mihelich has found that many Butte Catholics would have their
fortunes told. Many themselves learned different ways to tell fortunes, such as
the art of reading tea leaves. John Mihelich, ‘‘Fortune in Butte’’ Interview data
from field research in Butte, Montana. Unpublished.
49. Melissa L. Caldwell, ‘‘A New Role for Religion in Russia’s New Con-
sumer Age: The Case of Moscow.’’ Religion, State & Society 33, no. 1 (2005): 25.
50. Ibid., 29.
51. Ibid. Also, Alex Vinikov, ‘‘Freedom of Religion and Faith-Based Philan-
thropy in Ukraine,’’ Seal: on-line resource for social economy and law professio-
nals working at European level. http://www.efc.be/cgi-bin/articlepublisher.pl?
filename=AV-SE-06-03-2.html (accessed June 10, 2008).
52. Leontina Hormel, ‘‘Family with Five Children Interview: November 27,
2002.’’ Field research notes in Komsomolsk, Ukraine. Unpublished.
53. Catherine Wanner. Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global
Evangelism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 181.
54. Data derived from David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M.
Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and
Religions in the Modern World, 2nd ed., Vol. 1, The World by Countries: Religionists,
Churches, Ministries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
55. Liberty of Conscience Institute Web page. ‘‘About.’’ http://www.
atheism.ru/lci/about/?lang=eng (accessed June 10, 2008).
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid. and ‘‘Religion in Russia is Big Business—Russian Orthodox Church
Investments in Tobacco, Banking and Petroleum.’’ American Humanist Associ-
ation and the Gale Group. The Humanist 57, no. 5 (1997): 47.
58. Phil Zuckerman, ‘‘Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns.’’ In The
Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin (Cambridge UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005), 58.
59. Loek Halman et al. Changing Values and Beliefs in 85 Countries: Trends
from the Values Surveys from 1981 to 2004 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 186.
60. Ibid., 187.
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Chapter 4

in Ghana
Kwasi Yirenkyi
Baffour K. Takyi
Amid the spread of secular institutions throughout Africa, there is wide-

spread evidence to suggest that religion shows no sign of disappearing
or diminishing in the lives of the people. Indeed, as some scholars have
pointed out, many Africans of today—irrespective of where they live (in
the urban or rural hinterlands) still draw on their knowledge of African
traditional cosmologies to their lived experiences (see, e.g., Meyer 2004;
Ellis and Haar 1998). Idowu also notes that by nature, Africans are ‘‘a
people who in all things are religious’’ (1967, 11; 1973). This observation
has also been echoed by other researchers such as Opoku (1978), Mbiti
(1991), Ray (2000), and Yirenkyi (1999). Most recently Jenkins (2003) has
also reported that in the case of worldwide Christianity which seems to
be on the decline in the West (northern hemisphere), this is not the case
with respect to the southern hemisphere, especially Africa where there
has been a resurgence of the Christian faith. This view is also shared by
Barrett and John (2001, 383) who have reported that the African church
is the fastest growing in the world (see also Kiliaini 2001, 358).1
In Ghana, the growth of Christianity and its influence in the lives of
the people is quite instructive, since this nation was the first place in
sub-Saharan Africa where Europeans arrived and traded, first in gold
and later in slaves. The spread of Christianity throughout the country
has something to do with the work of Christian missionaries and their
activities during pre-colonial and colonial periods, particularly with the
establishment of schools, and the creation of African elite in the course
of time (Agbeti 1986). Not surprisingly, the areas where the Christian
faith became dominant included areas such as the Colony that came
under direct European rule. In the case of Ghana, this appears to be
the southern regions, even though in some parts of the North espe-
cially in the Dagare areas such as Nandom, Wa, and other places
where Catholic missionary activities were very prominent. Although
the great mass movement toward Christianity stopped, Christian faith
kept playing an important role in Nandom (van der Geest 2004).
Not only is Ghana a highly religious country, several studies have
also documented that religion has become a potent social force in both
public and private life.2 Pobee (1991), Kudadjie and Aboagye-Mensah
(1991), Ninsin and Drah (1987, 1991), and Yirenkyi (1999; 2000) have
examined the role of the Christian churches in the recent democratiza-
tion process in the country. Other scholars have also examined how
religion is influencing the behavior of Ghanaians, including for exam-
ple, contraceptive use (Addai 1999), HIV/AIDS behavior (Takyi 2003),
education (Takyi and Addai 2002), maternal child health behavior
(Gyimah, Takyi, and Tenkorang 2006), and fertility of couples (Gyimah,
Takyi, and Tenkorang 2008).
Even though the single largest bloc of religious adherents in Ghana
is Christian,3 some scholars have pointed to the changing religious
landscape in the country, with the traditional African Independent
Churches loosing a significant number of their members to other
denominations.4 Both Nukunya (1992) and Assimeng (1986) have sug-
gested that the growing popularity of these ‘‘new’’ Christian groups
reflect the growing disenchantment of the people with the monotony
of the mainline churches, and the fact that the new denominations
often use ‘‘healing’’ and ‘‘salvation’’ in their preaching, something that
appeal to the needs of an impoverished population who have been dis-
satisfied with their socioeconomic situation since the 1970s. Thus while
the mainline Protestant churches are relatively stable, although mem-
bers switch from churches within the Protestant denominations, the
Catholic Church in particular has lost about 2 percent of its members—
despite being still the church with most members.
Admittedly most Ghanaians consider themselves religious and
Christians; this generalization also masks the realities of the African re-
ligious landscape which is somewhat fluid and includes some people
who consider themselves as nonreligious, or atheists.5 Writing about
the religious landscape in Ghana, Pobee (1991) notes that while the reli-
gious context of Ghana for the most part consists of a combination of
various Christian denominations, Islam, and indigenous religious prac-
tices rooted in chieftaincy and family institutions, there are also some
Ghanaians who claim to be atheists, secular humanists, or agnostics.
Despite the fact that some Ghanaians self-report as unaffiliated with
any religious persuasion in the country, it is unfortunate that we know
Atheism and Secularity in Ghana 75
very little about this group of Ghanaians. This knowledge gap has some-
thing to do with the fact that most of the existing studies on African reli-
gions focus on the foreign-originated ones (Christianity and Islam), and
to some extent indigenous African belief systems, or what some scholars
refer to as African Traditional Religions (ATRs). Another possible reason
may have to do with the fact that in a highly religious society such as
Ghana, unaffiliated people may be stigmatized, hence may be less likely
to be visible as Christians and their Muslim counterparts. It is thus not
surprising that a review of the existing literature on religion suggests
that very little has been written about this population and it has been
virtually ignored in the discourse of religions in Africa. This is not
exactly the case with some parts of Europe and North America where
there is an increasing interest and a growing literature on atheism.6
Our main objective in this chapter then is to fill some of the gaps in
our knowledge about the African atheists or secular humanists in
Ghana, one of the most religious nations in West Africa. We are also
interested in exploring the magnitude or size of the atheist community
in that country. Our central questions in this chapter deal with Ghana-
ians who self-identify as atheists or non-believers. We pose some of the
following questions: How many atheists or secular people are there in
Ghana today? Have rates of atheism/secularism increased or decreased
in recent decades? Who are these Ghanaians who identify as atheist?
Are atheists most likely to come from a certain segment of society or
class? Is atheism discouraged by the government, if at all? Are there
atheists or secular organizations in Ghana? Do these organizations or
movements, if any, play a role in the political arena? Do atheists face
any challenges in the country today?
IDENTIFYING ATHEISTS: SOME DEFINITIONAL AND

OTHER CHALLENGES
Who is an atheist? One of the key issues confronting the scholar of
African religions deals with definitions and the identification of the
atheists’ population. The terms ‘‘atheism’’ and ‘‘secular humanism’’ in
the context of Ghana, and perhaps other African countries, are difficult
to define since they are understood differently by different people.
Given this limitation or constraint, we define an atheist loosely in this
paper as a person who ‘‘does not believe in the existence of God’’ or
‘‘one who claims no religious affiliation.’’ In the discussion, we will
broaden the term to include secular humanists and freethinkers.
In Ghana, there are those who do not claim any identification with
any religion and do not believe in God. They call themselves atheists
or agnostics. There are also those who claim to be Christians but reject
a belief in God and describe themselves as atheists. These individuals
may or may not be active in any church communities. For example,
some of our survey respondents in 2008 did not find any inconsisten-
cies in claiming to be Christians and at the same time stating that they
do not believe in the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. However,
there are other traditional Christians who challenge the self-identification
by these Christians who claim to be atheists. According to these critics,
how can one call himself/herself a Christian without believing in
Christ, as God incarnate, ‘‘the ground of salvation’’? While some Gha-
naians debate these definitions about who is a Christian and who is
not, others both in the country and other societies do not find the term
atheist and the claim to be a Christian objectionable. Along these dis-
cussions Ghanaians are not unique. For example, in the United States,
some Unitarian-Universalists self-identify as Christians but do not
believe in God.
Another challenge faced by Ghanaian atheists has to do with other
peoples’ attitudes toward them. For example, during the field survey,
any time we introduced ourselves to people including university pro-
fessors and students and told them about the purpose of our research,
we were frequently informed that Ghanaians are generally reluctant to
identify themselves as atheists for fear of being ridiculed or stigmatized
by others. Those who called attention to this attitude always added
that atheists or secular humanists may not be physically attacked if
they identify themselves as atheists but may be criticized or ridiculed
by the community. In explaining this attitude, the people who talked
to us stated that since the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians are
Christians, the messages from some of the pulpits of these churches
indicate an urgency to convert non-Christians and that would include
atheists. Therefore, they pointed out that the appeals or the attacks are
not specifically aimed at atheists but at people who have not accepted
Christianity as the only true way by which people are saved. In sum,
the Christians are concerned about their salvation. Whatever interpreta-
tion is given to these attitudes from theists, specifically Christians,
there is no doubt that atheists are very concerned about the protection
of their freedom of expression, the protection of their democratic rights
as citizens, and their ability to make their own choices. We also learned
that the government has no stance on this issue and does not interfere
or harass atheists, or any religious groups for that matter. They all
agree that there are constitutional protections for all religions in the
nation. On the whole, Ghanaians generally believe that they have free-
dom to worship. Therefore any harassment, subtle or not, becomes a
matter of concern for those who see themselves as victims, especially
in a very democratic society like Ghana.
There is another view that claims that the whole idea of atheism is
foreign to Africans leading to the accusation that Ghanaian atheists
have been influenced by western culture. What these Christian critics
have ignored in their argument or fail to notice is that Christianity itself
is a foreign religion, influenced heavily by the same western culture. In

response Christians counter this criticism by arguing that though it is
an imported religion Christianity was established in some North and
East African countries including Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mo-
rocco, Sudan, and Ethiopia during the first centuries of the Christian
era. In effect Christianity was established in Africa long before it went
to some European countries. Therefore the longevity has made it a fa-
miliar or close to an indigenous religion in parts of Africa despite the
fact that its influence disappeared or waned in some of these areas.
The extent to which this perceived stigma, real or imagined, affects
atheists’ freedom of expression is not known or easy to measure. What
is clear in our study, however, is that it poses a challenge for social
researchers because it affects the openness needed between the
researcher and the atheist. For example, in our study when asked: ‘‘How
do you describe yourself?’’ we provided four answers for respondents to
choose from. They were requested to circle all the answers that apply.
Some simply ignored or skipped the question and did not identify them-
selves. Some wrote not applicable, and some described themselves as
Christians but do not believe in the existence of God. We attempt to
explain these responses by saying that some of these respondents prob-
ably did not understand the meaning of the question or that they were
afraid to identify themselves. However, we believe it is the latter because
the trained research assistants insisted that they explained the key terms
to the respondents.
METHODS
Despite the limitations we have alluded to earlier for the scholar
studying atheism in Ghana, we have drawn on a limited set of data to
provide some insights into the atheists or secular humanist community
in that country. For this study, we relied on data from two main
sources. The first data comes from a survey conducted in Ghana in July
and August 2008 among a segment of Ghanaians including respondents
from the University of Ghana, Legon, some areas in Accra, Takoradi,
and also Keta and surrounding areas.7 With the help of trained research
assistants from the University of Ghana, those selected for the study
were interviewed on a host of questions dealing with religion and athe-
ism in Ghana. Of those interviewed (n ¼ 96), nearly half (49.5 percent)
were between the ages of 18 and 29, another 24 percent were between 30
and 40 years old. Two out of every three people surveyed was male
(68.8 percent). In addition, about 60 percent of our respondents had
some formal education beyond the primary level. This includes those
who said they had a secondary (high-school) education, had attended a
training college, or similar higher institutions such as a Technical school
or university. There were also professionals such as pharmacists, medical
officers and managers, a soldier and a police officer and a farmer. Over-
all, slightly more than two-thirds of our sample were urban residents
(68.8 percent).
Because the first data set is limited in many ways (for example, it
was not broadly representative of Ghanaians and was a small sample
size), we decided to use a second data set that is nationally representa-
tive and has some information on religion in Ghana—albeit the ques-
tions did not ask about atheism. This data set is the Ghana
Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) which have been conducted
since the mid-1980s. So far, four separate surveys have been conducted
as part of the GDHS—1988, 1993, 1998, and 2003. These cross-sectional
surveys (GDHS) were designed to provide policy makers with the most
up-to-date information on demographic and health processes in Ghana.
The sample employed a two-stage cluster sampling method using enu-
meration areas (EAs) as the sampling frame in identifying the women
who were interviewed. In all, about 150 EAs were used to identify
households from the various ecological zones, and rural and urban
localities. From these households, women aged 15–49 were surveyed.
Since the 1990s, men aged 15–59 have also been surveyed under the
auspices of the DHS. To better represent the population, the sample
was weighted using a weighting factor developed by DHS.
In addition to the demographic and health items—the main focus of
the DHS surveys, the GDHS also collected detailed information on the
respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics, including for example,
their age, education, place of residence, and religious affiliation. Reli-
gious affiliation was ascertained by asking the respondents the following
question: ‘‘What religion do you belong to?’’ Responses to this question
were used to construct a measure of religious affiliation or involvement
that had the following values: Catholics, Protestants, other Christians,
Muslims, traditionalists, and those who reported no religion. It is the
responses on religion that we use for our analysis. Since we are inter-
ested in the nonreligious group, we created a new variable which was
coded as ‘‘1’’ if the respondents said they were not affiliated with any
religious traditions in Ghana and ‘‘0’’ for all others.8 Because comparable
data that allow us to track changes over time are available only for the
women sample, the analysis we report here is restricted to women.9
FINDINGS
Results from our interviews, which involved both fixed-choice
responses and narrative accounts, provide some information about the
atheist community in Ghana. Since we were interested in getting infor-
mation about the atheist community, one of our questions asked them
to tell us how they describe themselves. The most cited definitions by
our respondents were: ‘‘no belief in the existence of God,’’ ‘‘having
No Religion
No Religious Preference
Secular-Humanist
Atheist
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Figure 4.1. Religious Beliefs and Self-Description of Study Respondents
no religion/no belief in any religion,’’ and ‘‘not religious.’’ Indeed

Figure 4.1 shows that 14 percent of those interviewed identify them-
selves as atheists, 17 percent secular humanists, and the remainder
indicating that they have no religious preferences or no religious affilia-
tion. These observations are not surprising as it should be pointed out
that some Unitarian-Universalists claim to be Christians and atheists at
the same time because they do not believe in God. Thus, most of the
definitions given by our respondents seem to fit perfectly what we
expected about atheism in Ghana.
On how long they have been atheists, the majority of our respondents
said ‘‘for a long time’’ or what others indicated ‘‘many years.’’ On the
reasons given for becoming atheists, several of the people responded as
follows: ‘‘disappointed with Christianity.’’ Others indicated they had no
time for religion, or were disenchanted with the clergy, or following
family traditions.
On the question of the size of the atheist community, when asked
‘‘In your estimation, how many atheists or secularists do you think are in
Ghana today?’’ The answers ranged from a few hundreds to some thou-
sands, and others estimated about 1 percent (out of a population of
twenty million). Twenty of the respondents said they had no idea or
were not sure. The rest gave varying answers from ‘‘a few people’’ to
‘‘many.’’ Another twenty-eight respondents did not answer that ques-
tion, making us to believe the veracity of their responses to this ques-
tion. Indeed we suggest that the lack of knowledge on the part of these
respondents makes it more difficult to have any realistic assessment of
the size of atheists in Ghana. Thus, the actual size of atheist population
in Ghana is open to a wide interpretation. We asked whether they
think the rate of atheism/secularism in Ghana has increased or
53
52
51
50 Decreasing
Increasing
49
48
47
46
45
44
Figure 4.2. Is Atheism increasing or decreasing in Ghana?
decreased in recent years, half of the respondents (50 percent) said that
based on their knowledge, they believe atheism is on the rise rather
than decline in Ghana (Figure 4.2).
On the question of why is it so difficult to obtain this information, the
first reason cited by our informants was the stigma previously discussed
that is attached to atheists, secular humanists, and freethinkers simply
because they do not believe in the existence of the Judeo-Christian God.
For those who claim a belief in other gods such as practitioners of Afri-
can Traditional Religions, their critics, especially Christians perceive
the traditional gods as idols and not gods and hope that one day these
traditionalists would convert and accept Christ as their savior. Others
had noticed or experienced some verbal criticisms from the pulpits or
from other religious leaders or organizations, or individuals against
atheists and secular humanists.
According to the respondents, some of whom were University of
Ghana students, there are no known atheist or secular-humanist associ-
ations on their campus or the other state-owned university campuses.
It is also not likely that they are at the other state universities. A num-
ber of the private universities are owned by churches and are not likely
places for these organizations though most of their students have no
affiliation with these universities they attend. Indeed, when asked
whether they knew of any organizations in the country that cater spe-
cifically to the interests of atheists, most of them (90 percent)
responded in the negative. Among the reasons cited for the absence of
an organization devoted to unaffiliated people in Ghana was the idea
that since most people do not want others to know of their private
Table 4.1
Knowledge and views on atheism, 2008 Ghana atheists survey
% n
Know of any atheists

No 56.4 53
Yes 43.6 41
Is rate of athesim increasing or decreasing

Decreasing 47.3 43
Increasing 52.7 48
Know of secularist organizations in Ghana

No 90.3 84
Yes 9.7 9
Class background of atheists in Ghana

No 92.1 82
Yes 7.9 7
Are atheists discriminated against in Ghana

No 61.3 57
Yes 38.7 36
Are atheists stigmatized in Ghana

No 21.5 20
Yes 78.5 73
Total 100.0 96
*
Because of the exclusion of missing cases, the sample size may not add up to 96 in
some cases.
lives, there is no need to associate with such organizations that may ex-
pose them to the public. If atheists are reluctant to make their stands
open it means the stigma is intimidating them and therefore do not
want to expose themselves to ridicule. We probed such an observation
by inquiring about discrimination and stigmatization of nonreligious
believers in Ghana. While about 39 percent of the participants said they
were discriminated against, most of them said they face some form of
stigmatization in the country (see Table 4.1).
Overall, the findings from our survey suggest an absence of any reli-
able information about the size of the atheist community in Ghana. We
compensated for these data limitations by analyzing responses given
by a representative sample of women on their religious identity to pro-
vide some rough estimates of this population. In the four surveys that
have been conducted in Ghana as part of the Demographic and Health
120
100
80
Affiliated
Percent
60 No affiliation
40
20
0
1988 1993 1998 2003
Figure 4.3. Changes in the the affiliated and unaffliated population in

Ghana, 1988–2003
Surveys, the respondents were asked to indicate their religious affilia-

tion. Those who did not identify with any of the religious groups were
classified as unaffiliated or nonreligious (Figure 4.3). It is the latter
group that we use as proxy variable to identify what we believe may
be the atheist population in the country.10
Contrary to what the survey respondents indicated, our analysis of
data from the 1988, 1993, 1998, and 2003 Ghana Demographic and
Health Surveys indicate that the proportion of Ghanaians who identify
themselves as nonreligious has actually been declining.11 From a high of
12 percent in the late 1980s, by 2003 the nonreligious population in
Ghana had declined to about 4 percent, an eight percentage point differ-
ence or change between the two time periods. Interestingly enough, as
the population of nonreligious Ghanaians declines, so do we see a corre-
sponding increase in the respondents who belong to some religious com-
munities. Such a finding is consistent with recent reports about the
growing religiosity of Ghanaians (see Gallup International 2002).
In Table 4.2 we examined the characteristics of the Ghanaian women
surveyed as part of the DHS by their religious affiliation. We do this to
provide some insights into the background of the affiliated and the
unaffiliated in Ghana. In 1988, 4,488 women were surveyed, of whom
3,957 said they were affiliated with some religious organization and
531 said they were not. Among the affiliated women (n ¼ 3,957) 20.9
percent had never been married. In contrast, only 11.5 percent of the
unaffiliated or nonreligious women (n ¼ 531) had never been married.
However there were more currently married women among the unaffi-
liated (78.95 percent) than the affiliated (69.2 percent) group. In terms
of education, the percentage of religious women who had some educa-
tion was higher (63.9 percent) than those reported among the nonreli-
gious women (32.6 percent). Even though more than half (55 percent)
Table 4.2
Marital status, education, and ethnic identity of religious and non-religious Ghanaians, GDHS, 1988–2003
1988 1993 1998 2003

No No No No
Affiliated Affiliation Affiliated Affiliation Affiliated Affiliation Affiliated Affiliation
Marital Status
Never married 20.9 11.5 21.2 6.9 24.3 14.1 29.3 9.6
Currently married 69.2 78.9 68.3 84.9 64.0 74.4 61.5 80.4
Formerly married 9.9 9.6 10.5 8.2 11.7 11.5 9.2 10.0
Education
None 36.0 67.4 30.8 66.5 26.8 63.3 26.1 74.7
Elem 55.6 31.5 57.8 31.8 18.0 18.2 20.1 16.5
HS 7.3 1.1 9.6 1.5 52.8 18.5 51.0 8.8
PostHS 1.0 1.8 0.2 2.4 2.7
Ethnicity
Akan 55.3 36.2 52.5 28.8 54.8 37.6 51.8 27.1
Ga&Adg 9.2 6.2 8.6 3.5 8.4 6.4 8.4 4.0
Ewe 15.7 17.9 13.7 23.4 15.6 19.1 12.9 18.3
Mole&Dag 9.2 24.3 13.7 29.7 6.7 8.6 12.4 21.9
Others 10.6 15.4 11.5 14.5 14.5 28.3 14.6 28.7
Urban Residence
No 64.3 79.1 59.2 85.3 62.9 81.8 50.1 82.8
Yes 35.7 20.9 40.8 14.7 37.1 18.2 49.9 17.2
N 3957 531 4024 538 4529 314 5441 250
of all Akans report some affiliation, among the unaffiliated also, they
represent slightly more than a third of the population (36.2 percent).
This pattern is to be expected as Akans account for nearly half of the
population in Ghana. The other groups with a sizable proportion of
unaffiliated women are Mole Dagbanis (24 percent) and Ewes (18 per-
cent). It is clear for all four survey years those rural women are more
likely to be unaffiliated compared to their urban folks. For the most
part, the pattern reported for the 1988 sample is similar to that of the
women surveyed in the subsequent years.
ATHEISM AND THE CHANGING CULTURAL CONTEXT

Ghana is generally characterized as a traditional society because the
majority of the population is engaged in agricultural production. One
may be right in describing it as a nation on the road of modernization,
though it has not yet arrived. It is rapidly becoming a modern society as
many people move into the cities, resulting in a breakdown of the tradi-
tional family and other social structures. Modern technology is bridging
some of the gaps between traditional and urban culture. For example,
millions of Ghanaians in rural and urban areas alike have cell phones,
televisions, and other modern amenities. They are learning to manipu-
late modern technology. Obviously, this is only one factor in moderniza-
tion. In addition, there have been changes in the relationship of religion
to the modern society, often referred to as secularization. In many ways
secularization is having an impact on the Ghanaian society. The concept
of secularization, originally developed by Max Weber, has many mean-
ings. For example, Weber’s meaning refers to a society or a social system
that appears to be less dependent on religious legitimation (1951, 1952,
1958b, 1963; see also Martin 1969, 1978). Paul Ricoeur describes it as
‘‘the emancipation of most human activities from the influence of eccle-
siastical institutions’’ (see Stewart and Bien 1974, cited in Monk et al.
2003, 287). The term may also imply a ‘‘greater institutional differentia-
tion and a more rational, utilitarian, and empiricist outlook on life and
on decision making by individuals and groups’’ (Roberts 2004, 306; see
also Berger 1967, 1979). These definitions demonstrate how difficult it is
to define the term because of its many meanings.
We now turn briefly to the reasons that led some of our respondents
to become atheists. Toward that goal we posed a general question: what
are the reasons or factors which led you to atheism? We wanted to
know if any aspects of modernization or secularization have contributed
to the factors that led our respondents to become atheists. One of the
initial assumptions was that our respondents would include in their
descriptions aspects of secularization or modernization as some of the
major factors that have shaped their lives in the cities where they pur-
sued especially their education and professional life. Most likely many
became atheists in the urban areas where they live. The survey had
actually indicated that majority of the respondents live in urban areas.
On the one hand, the Ghanaian religious arena indicates a sense in
which religion has lost some of its influence on the larger society. For
example, in the traditional past chiefs had tremendous power and
influence over their people and in the traditional religious arena they
were the symbols of religious authority. Although chiefs continue to
play constructive roles in their traditional areas, they no longer assert
the same powerful religio-cultural and political influence on their peo-
ple. Church organizations played similar powerful roles within their
church structures. However, today values of the larger society that are
reflected in the Ghanaian Constitution and in other areas of Ghanaian
life are not necessarily religious values. Politicians are not elected
based on any religious criteria. However, one may not be able to sepa-
rate religious moral values from political and other values that help
shape the society as a whole.
There are many social scientists who are still involved in the secu-
larization debate. For example, Swatos rightly points out that since the
‘‘1980s the concept of secularization has become a contested discussion
among scholars who debate its predictive and descriptive accuracy and
continued relevance in the postmodern world’’ (2006).
Following the secularization debate and its impact on religion, Berger
has noted that ‘‘the world today, with some exceptions is as furiously
religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever’’ (1992, 2;
cited in Roberts 2006, 310). One thing that is clear in Ghana and many
parts of Africa is that secularization has not shown any evidence of the
decline of religions. We also do not see any evidence that secularization
has any specific effect on the growth or decline of atheism in the coun-
try. Future research in this area is needed to fill the knowledge gap. Our
study shares a similar conclusion with Roberts, who states that the
movement toward a purely secular outlook is not an inevitable process
that spells a substantial and long-term decline of religion. He further
points out that rational theorists argue that secularization does not mean
a decline of religion, but it may entail a reformation of traditional reli-
gions and the spawning of new religious movements (2006, 313). There
is no doubt that some of the Catholic and Protestant churches are in
decline, but numerous Pentecostal or Charismatic churches have sprung
up, especially since the 1980s, in urban and rural areas in Ghana.
Among them are mega-churches that Ghana had never before seen.
CONCLUSIONS
Our focus in this study is to fill in some knowledge gaps about Afri-
can atheists, secular humanists, and freethinkers in Ghana. There is no
doubt that atheism has established some roots in Ghana. To a large
majority of Ghanaians, the society promotes the freedom of all religions.

However, although the majority of the respondents believe that Ghana
enjoys freedom of religion, some of the respondents as well as some
scholars who did not participate in the survey believe that there is some
stigma attached to atheists in Ghana. They all believe that there is no
reason to believe that atheists will be physically harmed because of
who they are. In an interview when we posed the question: How can
this be addressed, the key word from a number of them is education.
Many of them also believe that with a stable democratic political system
and increasing freedom of speech in the society, atheists like most other
groups may enjoy the privileges granted by the constitution. They look
forward to unhindered freedom to form free associations without any
stigma attached to their beliefs. One hopes that effective education will
promote affirmation of religious diversity in the nation.
This study has achieved a limited goal. For example, we still know
little about atheists in Ghana. There is not sufficient evidence to indi-
cate that atheism is growing or declining in Ghana. It is our hope that
any future study of atheism in the country will include an examination
of these issues. At least for now, unlike the United States where some
of the old laws still exist in some states that prevent nontheists from
holding office (Cimino and Smith 2007, 407), Ghana has no laws tar-
geted against atheists or freethinkers as a whole.
NOTES
1. The growth is not reported among Christians only because there have been
widespread reports from the region about the growing influence of Islam as well.
2. More than 96 percent of the population surveyed in a 2000 Gallup Inter-
national poll considered themselves as religious (Gallup International 2000).
3. Christians in Ghana run the gamut of the various denominations, rang-
ing from mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, Catholics, African Independent
Churches, and Assemblies of God to Seventh Day Adventists.
4. Indeed besides the mainline Christian denominations (i.e., old estab-
lished churches) such as Protestants and Catholics, growth has risen in the
population of ‘‘other Christians’’ or denominations. The latter include a collec-
tion of groups that include African syncretic, and faith-healing organizations,
as well as charismatic and Pentecostal Churches, whose growth has been phe-
nomenal (Yirenkyi 1999; Gifford 1998).
5. We consider these people as Ghanaians who do not believe in God and
do not consider themselves religious.
6. The literature includes some of the following best-selling books: Richard
Dawkins, The God Delusion; Sam Harris, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian
Nation; Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
7. These people were not randomly selected and ranged in age between the
ages of 18 and 70.
8. We acknowledge the limitations in our using these unaffiliated women
as provided by the recoded GDHS files as proxy indicator for atheists.
9. Data on men were collected in the 1993 survey, but it was limited to
only a select sample of men whose wives were interviewed. Since then,
detailed information about Ghanaian men has been collected, but given our in-
terest in looking at trends, these data are not included in our analysis. More-
over, existing studies also indicate that African women tend to be more
religious than their male counterparts, so we suspect that this restriction would
in no way affect the basic results of our study.
10. We acknowledge the potential limitations arising from our use of this
group of people to identify atheists, but given that there was a category for all
those who claim a belief in African traditional religions, we sincerely believe
that the unaffiliated ones are probably secularist.
11. This is true if we think the ‘‘nonreligious group’’ members are the same
as those who self-identified as atheists in the 2008 survey.
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———. 1995. The Christian churches and the democratization of Africa. New York:
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———. 1998. African Christianity. Its public role. London: C. Hurst & Co.
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Chapter 5
The Triumph of Indifference:

Irreligion in British Society
Samuel Bagg
David Voas
In December of 2007, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party

told a reporter that he did not believe in God. It caused a minor stir in
the papers, but nothing came of it. In fact, it was quickly forgotten; far
more notable that month was Tony Blair’s long-awaited conversion to
Catholicism. Hardly anyone was surprised or upset that Nick Clegg, the
leader of Britain’s third-largest party, was an atheist: the only curiosity
was his choice to make that public. Faith of any kind tends to be treated
as a private matter in Britain, so the public declarations of both Clegg
and Blair were regarded as ‘‘unusual.’’1 While a British politician’s secu-
lar political beliefs must of course be considered by his constituents, his
religious convictions are typically kept quiet; they could only distract
from the important political issues. To a Briton, this all makes perfect
sense: religion, or the lack of it, is simply irrelevant to policy-making. In
fact, its recent prominence, exemplified by Blair’s public faith, is widely
seen as an infringement of some kind on the natural British system.
Of course, this system is not universal across the developed world,
and one of Britain’s closest cultural kin—the United States—provides a
particularly striking contrast. Faith in America is fiercely public, and the
lack of it a shameful deficiency. One can only imagine the scandal that
would ensue if a major party leader or presidential candidate in the
United States were to make a similar admission: it would be political
suicide. According to a recent study, atheists are the most despised mi-
nority in the country, consistently ranking lower than blacks, Muslims,
and homosexuals on a number of different measures.2 Britain, on the

other hand, is far more tolerant of unbelief. Atheists, for the most part,
are normal citizens. Like some religious fundamentalists, they can be
perceived as ‘‘too extreme’’ if they act outside of a certain framework,
but so long as they don’t proselytize too aggressively or seriously advo-
cate the abolition of religion from all spheres of life, their private rejec-
tion of religion is of no consequence.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AVOWED ATHEISM IN BRITAIN

In the history of the world, the status of atheists in modern Britain is
unique. Indeed, even in Britain religious attitudes were not always so
permissive. Historian David Berman writes about the repressive stance
that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British authorities took toward
atheism, whereby religious authors denied that rational, convinced athe-
ists could even exist. The 1771 entry on ‘‘Atheism’’ from the Encyclopedia
Britannica reads ‘‘It is justly questioned whether any man seriously
adopted such a [nontheistic] principle. These pretensions, therefore,
must be founded on pride or affectation.’’ According to Berman, this
was part of an effort to delegitimize the agendas of atheism’s propo-
nents and discourage its acceptance among the Christian population.
Whether or not the repression was a conscious process on the part of
Britannica’s authors and the many others who made similar statements,
Berman argues convincingly that such proclamations at least had that
effect.3 Even the intellectual elite were not spared: Hobbes and Hume
were both heavily criticized for atheistic sentiments in their writings,
and as late as 1811 Percy Shelley was expelled from Oxford for author-
ing an atheistic pamphlet.4
Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, though, atheism—once
unique to eccentric intellectuals—became associated with radical poli-
tics and the working class uprisings of that period. The Church was
essential to the power structure that reformers like Robert Owen,
George Jacob Holyoake, and Charles Bradlaugh sought to overcome.5
Their popularity across all classes helped to lend legitimacy to their
beliefs. Bradlaugh, the most ‘‘thorough’’ of the three in his atheism,
drew enormous crowds to his speeches against the church and even
served in Parliament after a long and much-publicized battle over the
oath of allegiance. Initially, he was not allowed to take his seat because
it involved swearing to ‘‘Almighty God,’’ and his word as an atheist
could not be trusted. However, he was finally allowed to serve after
winning several reelections and worked to legalize an alternative to the
oath. Bradlaugh founded the National Secular Society (NSS) in 1866 as
local secular societies flourished all across Britain.6
The atheistic overtones of many of these reform movements were
largely a reaction to the religious revival of the Victorian era,
The Triumph of Indifference 93
however, and when the revival began to lose momentum, so did the
movement for ‘‘secularism,’’ as Holyoake had named it. As passionate
religion fell out of fashion, so too did fervent denial of it. Secular soci-
eties declined in number and membership, and the movement gradu-
ally died down.7 Though public intellectuals like Bertrand Russell, A.
J. Ayer, and Chapham Cohen kept on denying God in their writing
and speeches, atheism as a movement lay dormant in Britain for deca-
des.8 But the stage had been set, and atheistic opinions had lodged
themselves in the British mind: as the twentieth century progressed,
British opinion on the subject evolved slowly and without fanfare to-
ward acceptance of atheism as a legitimate ideology.
By the time atheism resurfaced as one line of attack on the establish-
ment during the social revolution of the 1960s, it had been integrated
within a rationalistic moral philosophy and life stance dubbed ‘‘human-
ism.’’ One effect of this reframing trick was that the atheistic viewpoint no
longer appeared as a simple rejection of God or Christianity—and in fact,
many Christian moral tenets are mimicked in humanist ethics. When the
Anglican Church fought against the women’s and gay rights movements,
though, they were harshly rebuked on nonreligious moral grounds. The
British Humanist Association (BHA), the second of the two major secular
activist groups, was born during this revival of radical politics.9
The BHA, amalgamated from several different preexisting groups in
1963, is quite different in character from the NSS, which was founded
in an era with relatively few secular people. As a result, the main goal
of the NSS was tearing down the privileges afforded to religion; as
noted above, this is still its major stated objective.10 It is often seen as
more categorically antireligious than the BHA, which was founded
when far more people were ready to reject the reigning religious para-
digms and so could afford to be more conciliatory in its stance against
religion. The BHA merely had to voice the concerns of the many who
already supported their positions, rather than convince a religious
supermajority that it shouldn’t mix religion with politics.
Both organizations survive to this day, but as a result of the condi-
tions under which they were formed, the NSS focuses more on the pro-
tection of the secular from the abuse of the religious and the radical
separation of church and state, whereas the BHA seeks to provide con-
crete alternatives to religion, in the form of the humanist moral system
and replacement ceremonies, such as weddings, funerals, and baby-
namings. To put it a different way, the NSS is abolitionist toward
religion—they would get rid of it entirely––whereas the BHA is substi-
tutionist: they would replace it with something that has a similar func-
tion but different content. The memberships of both groups have
fluctuated in sync with the prominence of religion in public discourse,
but even at their heights, both could claim only a miniscule following
compared to that of the churches. Like many lobbying groups, however,
they have a larger national presence and far more political influence
than their memberships would suggest.11
In 1965, a survey question asked respondents whether they would
vote for a prime minister who was otherwise qualified and represented
their preferred party, but who did not believe in God. Fifty-eight per-
cent of British voters answered that they would.12 This may seem low
at first, but it shows a stark contrast with the United States, where the
parallel figure at the time was below 20 percent;13 today, the United
States still polls with less than 50 percent of the voting public express-
ing confidence in an atheist candidate.14 By contrast, Britain’s Parlia-
mentary Humanist Group—with members across both houses and all
major parties—counts over 80 openly atheistic members of Parliament
among its ranks.15 Additionally, it is commonly accepted that certain
Labour leaders have been atheists, though they never made a point to
publicize their views.16 One commentator has written, rather aptly, that
if one considers that, in 1842, George Jacob Holyoake was jailed for profess-
ing atheism, but that 160 years later, in 2002, British atheism’s most press-
ing concern was its ongoing exclusion from Radio 4’s Thought for the Day
(allegedly a breach of human rights!), it becomes clear quite how much ac-
ceptance and toleration it has gained in such a relatively short time.17
Indeed, since the revival of the 1960s and 1970s, the radicalism associ-
ated with atheism has all but disappeared.
Instead, the British pride themselves on their self-proclaimed ‘‘mod-
eration,’’ tending to view both fundamentalist religion and ‘‘militant’’
or crusading atheism with skepticism, but being quite tolerant of any-
thing in between. Britons have become more ‘‘secular’’ in their every-
day lives (churchgoing, membership, and Sunday School enrollments
have all been in decline for over a century) but this doesn’t necessarily
mean an increased prominence for atheism. On the contrary, being
‘‘secular’’ often means simply not caring enough about religion either
to defend or deny it, so active atheism as a phenomenon is most often
a feature of particularly religious societies. Even the ‘‘New Atheists’’
who have appeared in the past decade—Hitchens, Dawkins, and the
rest—fit this trend: first, they have all appeared since 9/11 as religion
has become increasingly important to global society; and second, they
are largely based in America—even the British among them have fre-
quently directed their gaze across the pond.
In the Victorian era, with conservative evangelical churches attracting
huge crowds,18 there was a reaction that culminated in the founding of
the NSS. In an era when the Church was campaigning hard against an
onslaught of social reforms, the BHA pushed back. And in an era when
fundamentalist Islam is the newest perceived threat to Western culture,
the New Atheists are among those who have answered the call to fight
the negative impact of religion. But for most of the time, between these
surges in religious fervor, British unbelief doesn’t have a particularly
fearsome enemy in the Anglican Church. In a society where earnest reli-
gion is often not taken seriously and where a religious prime minister
worries about being considered a ‘‘nutter,’’19 the motivation for atheists
to fight against the status quo is hardly compelling. When the twin pil-
lars of the monarchy and the Established Church, once the foundation
of British society, have become little more than decorative artifacts in
the eyes of most citizens, atheists have little to worry about.
Nevertheless, the British character is also deeply reverent; a distinctly
Burkean pathos is still present behind the ‘‘consumer society’’ that char-
acterizes modern-day Britain. The fact that the Monarchy and the Estab-
lished Church still exist at all speaks volumes about the quintessentially
British respect for authority and tradition, especially in light of the aboli-
tion of both institutions in many of its European neighbors. After all, the
current status of religion is only noticeably poor because of its former
prominence. It is still by far the most widely attended voluntary activ-
ity,20 and more than 70 percent of British people still identify, however
weakly, as Christian.21 Though church attendance is very low in com-
parison to former totals, there is a widespread feeling that religion—and
in particular the Church of England—is a good thing to have around.
Many parents strive to send their children to ‘‘faith’’ schools, where the
injection of religion into the daily routine is supposed to encourage a
more obedient and successful ‘‘ethos.’’22 A prayer before the opening of
the houses of Parliament, the presence of bishops in the House of Lords,
and the Queen’s role as the head of the church are all taken for granted
by a majority of Britons; though a few certainly question all three of
these practices, the tide shows no signs of turning against them.
In light of this conflicted attitude, Liberal Democratic leader Nick
Clegg was left in an awkward position as he both asserted his unbelief
and attempted to cast his position as neither extreme nor anti-Christian.
‘‘I have enormous respect for religious people,’’ he quickly explained,
and followed that by pledging to raise his children as Christians with
the help of his Catholic wife. To top it off, he maintained that though he
was not an ‘‘active’’ believer, he had an ‘‘open heart and an open mind’’
about the subject of religion.23 Clegg’s situation was not unlike that
of the British people, muddling through a confusing, mismatched set of
beliefs and rarely practicing and yet unwilling to give up the sense of
Christian-ness that has been central to the formation of British identity
and culture.
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES

In common usage, the term ‘‘atheism’’ denotes a conscious, active
disbelief in God. By its roots, however, it means ‘‘a’’ þ ‘‘theos’’: living
‘‘without’’ or ‘‘away from’’ God. Though we’ve just laid out a history
of distinctly avowed atheism, the truth is that in modern Britain, there
are many ways to live without God. Most obvious are the ‘‘out-and-
out’’ atheists just described, who are the always visible but also among
the smallest groups of the irreligious. But the biggest difference
between people, even just regarding their religious behavior, is not
their answer to the question of God. Even for many British believers,
the role that ‘‘God’’ plays is next to nothing. Some who consider them-
selves Christians may use this nominal category as an ethnic label
rather than a religious one.24 There are others for whom God has never
been a serious factor, and as a result, the very terminology of theism
and atheism might not be familiar to them. It is not just the avowed
atheists, but all of these people—and anyone in British society who can
be fairly called irreligious—that we wish to describe in this chapter.
Traditionally, there are three metrics that social scientists use to
measure religiosity: belief, behavior (or practice), and belonging (or
affiliation). One might say that people are ‘‘perfectly’’ religious if their
beliefs are strong and faithful to a tradition, if they practice in some
way on a regular basis, and if their religious affiliation is central to their
identity. Thus, we might measure irreligion by the absence of these
characteristics and paint the irreligious ideal as disbelieving, nonpractic-
ing, and unaffiliated. However, describing only those people who fit
either model would leave most Britons unaccounted for. That is, there
are plenty of ‘‘Anglicans’’ whose beliefs could hardly be called ortho-
dox, confirmed theists who never pray or attend church, and nonbe-
lievers who go to the occasional service and identify as Christians. Even
Richard Dawkins, probably the most famous living atheist, has called
himself a ‘‘cultural Christian.’’25 Classifying such people as either reli-
gious or irreligious can be dangerous, because it ignores the complex-
ities inherent in religious identification.
Each metric in itself is quite complex: we must attempt to gauge not
just whether beliefs, practices, and affiliations exist, but also whether
their existence is significant to the individuals and faith traditions
involved. Belief in supernatural entities, for example, is extremely high,
but belief in and understanding of the Trinity is drastically lower.
Clearly, the latter belief is a more significant identifier of religiosity
than the former. Measurement of behavior is also notoriously difficult,
as self-reported church-going is often more than twice as high as
observed attendance.
Finally, tracking belonging (that is, the number of people who iden-
tify as religious) might appear to be simpler than estimating belief and
practice, but it turns out that differences in the way the question is
asked can cause significant variation in levels of self-identification.
When a tick-box in the context of ethnicity and nationality, for instance,
prompts people to self-identify as ‘‘Church of England’’ or ‘‘Christian,’’
the numbers for affiliation tend to be far higher than when the relevant
question is open-ended. In the 2007 British Social Attitudes survey,
which asks respondents if they consider themselves as ‘‘belonging to a
particular religion’’ in the context of a wide-ranging review of beliefs
and attitudes, fully 46 percent gave no religious identification. By con-
trast, less than 20 percent answered ‘‘none’’ in a Gallup survey asking,
among other census-type questions, ‘‘What is your religions denomina-
tion?’’ The only possible explanation is that the Christian affiliation of
at least a quarter of the population is so tenuous that it hinges on the
wording and context of the question.26
THE STATE OF BRITISH SECULARITY

Given these complications, we should begin our analysis with the
least complex categories: those who are definitely religious and those
who are definitely not. In a recent article titled ‘‘The Rise and Fall of
Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe,’’27 David Voas uses data from the European
Social Survey to define these groups. He classifies someone as ‘‘actively
religious’’ if she claims to attend services at least monthly and rates her-
self as above average on a scale measuring religiosity and ‘‘privately reli-
gious’’ if she does not attend church regularly but rates herself similarly
highly on scales measuring both religiosity and the ‘‘importance of reli-
gion’’ to her life. This way, we find about a quarter of Britons to be reli-
gious in some reasonably traditional way: 15 percent actively so and
another 10 percent privately. More significant than the mere presence of
some religious adherence in these people is the resemblance of their reli-
giosity to established traditions and its importance to their lives.
Is the rest of society irreligious, then? Not quite. To be so unambigu-
ously, by our measures, would require the respondent to attend church
and/or pray only at major holidays or less and to rate herself very low
on both the religiosity and ‘‘importance of religion’’ scales. On this ba-
sis about another quarter of Britons qualify as irreligious.
We are left with half of the British population unaccounted for. This
percentage may be called the ‘‘woolly middle,’’28 and it exemplifies the
ambivalent British attitude toward religion. These numbers are con-
firmed by the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey suggesting that 17
percent definitely believe in God and another 37 percent either dis-
believed God’s existence or thought His existence was impossible to
make judgments about. Forty-five percent were in the middle some-
where, believing in God only some of the time, having doubts about
that belief, or believing only in an impersonal higher power of some
kind. Yet another survey found that 18 percent felt that they were
‘‘practicing members of an organized religion,’’ another 49 percent were
‘‘nonpracticing members of an organized religion’’ or ‘‘spiritual but not
religious,’’ and finally another 26 percent were ‘‘not religious.’’29 Certainly
there is some religious or spiritual impulse in this woolly middle, but the
ambiguity surrounding it gives the social scientist reason to doubt its sig-
nificance.
One theory about such fuzzy fidelity explains that dwindling prac-
tice and membership in the church over the years is associated with
declining willingness to participate in all voluntary organizations,30
and that sweeping claims about the decline of religion overstate their
case. In this view, those with fuzzy fidelity are still Christians in most
of the relevant ways. It makes intuitive sense: if one obvious sign of a
supposed religious decline can be explained as a result not of detach-
ment from religion itself but simply as one more instance of a perva-
sive social phenomenon, then perhaps religion is not suffering the
drastic fall that is frequently ascribed to it.
However, this thesis depends on the assumption that practice is the
only declining variable—or that it is at least declining faster than the
others—and this is simply not the case. Belief in God has declined as
well, but more notably, those who still hold some sort of fuzzy fidelity
hold a different kind of belief than the traditionally religious. It is a
belief that often does not require them to go to church or pray with
any consistency. It is a belief that leaves them unsure of their affiliation
to the church. And it is a belief that often rejects major tenets of Chris-
tianity, replacing them with some combination of naturalism, alterna-
tive spirituality and indifference.
Another explanation of fuzzy fidelity comes from observers like Paul
Heelas, Linda Woodhead, and Colin Campbell, who take this tendency
toward alternative spiritualities as a sign of the ‘‘easternization of the
West’’ or ‘‘the spiritual revolution,’’ to use the titles of books by those
authors.31 A decline in traditional adherence accompanied by resilient
belief in the supernatural is explained with reference to the increase in
Eastern practices like Yoga and meditation. This view is also an alter-
native to traditional secularization narratives: Heelas et al. theorize that
some people are merely switching from one religious tradition to
another, rather than abandoning religion entirely. Even they concede,
however, that the rise in alternative spirituality is not enough to offset
the decline in traditional religiosity.
The most powerful explanation of the woolly middle phenomenon
is perhaps the most intuitive: Britons who make up this section of soci-
ety are between the religious and the irreligious temporally as well as
descriptively. In other words, the people who are now in the middle
have generally come from parents who are more religious than they
are and have children who will be, on average, less so. In this way,
fuzzy fidelity is merely a stepping stone between religion and irreligion
in an increasingly secular society.
This simplified narrative still misses something about the enormous
size of the middle and the persistence of certain characteristics within
it; for example, both nominal Christianity and a belief in some sort of
God are maintained by almost everyone in this category. And while the
woolly middle is somewhere between the religious and the irreligious
in terms of religiosity, they tend to have less education and lower
incomes than both their religious and their irreligious compatriots.32
This suggests that there is something about higher levels of education
and income that lead people to a more definitive stance on religion (be
it pious or atheistic) and casts doubt on naive versions of the seculariza-
tion thesis predicting that higher education and income necessarily lead
to greater secularity. Instead, it seems, there is something distinctive
about this middle ground, the historical narrative that has led Britain to
its creation and the direction it is likely to take in the future.
THEORIZING RELIGIOUS DECLINE

Colin Campbell defines irreligion as a response to the dominant reli-
gious culture of a society; thus, irreligion is as varied as its inverse. In
any case, the irreligious response generally takes the form either of indif-
ference or hostility to that dominant culture. In societies that are particu-
larly religious, the reaction of hostility is most frequent because when
religion is an important cultural force, it must be reckoned with in one
way or another. This is the reaction of most of the avowed atheists dis-
cussed above, so we’ll pause for a moment to examine how it occurs.
Broadly, there are two avenues through which people reach their hos-
tility toward religion: the intellectual and the moral. The product of intel-
lectual rejection is the stereotypical atheist of modernity: the thinker who
is no longer satisfied with traditional justifications for God’s existence.
However, it is likely that moral rejection is far more common, at least in
times of swelling irreligion. In the typical moral rejection, an individual
begins to realize that her own intuitions contradict the morality enforced
by the dominant church and starts to question the truth of religion based
on the inadequacy of its moral system. These people may not identify as
atheists, but they are certainly irreligious in that they have rejected the
dominant religious tradition of their culture. As we’ve established, when
there is a surge in atheism, it is usually because of a reaction to particu-
lar actions taken by the church, and so it is likely that a moral rejection
is the primary instigator of hostility during such periods.
However, a hostile reaction often fades in the face of changing reli-
gious doctrines and norms: indifference is a far more sustainable vari-
ety of irreligion. Thus, the story of British secularization is less about
the reaction of hostility than that of indifference, and it is the decreas-
ing importance of religion to daily life that has defined the last century
of British religious life.
Religious change before the modern era is of an entirely different
character than what we see today; even the climate of the early
nineteenth century is too dissimilar to serve as a useful comparison.

The late Victorian period was the first time that irreligion became a
concrete option, when questions like ‘‘Do you believe in God?’’ began
to make sense intellectually and when being burned at the stake wasn’t
the automatic reward for an answer in the negative. It was then that
the mechanisms shaping religious decline today began to crystallize.
The most comprehensive data on this era of religious fervor, which
is usually said to last from 1850 to 1880, come from the Horace Mann
church census of 1851. It can be taken to represent levels throughout
that 30-year period, and interestingly enough, it recorded that only
about half of Britain’s population was attending church in any given
week. This is not to say that the other half of Britain was irreligious,
just that the religion of the working classes was ‘‘dormant and un-
influential and peculiar in character,’’ much like the fuzzy fidelity of
today.33 Most of the middle and upper classes attended church, but for
the poorer working classes, food, clothing and shelter were too much
of a priority to allow time for churchgoing.34 Thus, ‘‘the sense of reli-
gious decline after about 1880 was a reflection of the weakening of
middle-class churchgoing’’ rather than a fall from the complete partici-
pation of the entire population.35 Of course, the working class repre-
sented most of the population of Britain during this era, and so many
of them were also participants in the religious revival that dominated
British culture. But there were many who did not, and so the situation
of some segments of the Victorian working class—indifferent but still
nominally attached—prefigures the situation of the entire population
since. Though the distractions of secular culture faced by all Britons
nowadays—football, shopping, and sleeping in—are rather different
than the ‘‘distractions’’ faced by the working poor in the nineteenth
century, the comparison is nonetheless instructive.
Several historical explanations for the decline of British religion in
the twentieth century have been provided by recent historical and
sociological writing. A particularly influential theory is articulated by
social historian Callum Brown, who views the 1960s and early 1970s as
a period of revolutionary change in the religious composition of the
nation, unmatched by any movement either before or since. Brown
suggests that this was the crucial period for secularization in Britain
and even dates 1963 as the single most important year.36 He makes his
case by citing the change in public discourse that occurred during that
time period, and the sharper declines in certain measures of religiosity
that began to appear only after this revolution.
The rapid change in discourse that he notes is real, and cultural
norms of the type Brown describes can certainly change measured lev-
els of religiosity, but we must examine how this change fits in with the
framework we have already outlined. When we use our broader meas-
ures from above, it seems that the decline in religiosity is far more
gradual than he suggests, without a discontinuity during the 1960s. A

more likely explanation of the phenomenon Brown describes is that the
revolutionary changes in discourse were the tremors of a society com-
ing to terms with tectonic shifts in the religiosity of its population,
shifts that had previously gone unnoticed but had been occurring for
generations. Again, this doesn’t invalidate Brown’s analysis, it merely
places it within a larger context.
THE CRUCIAL STORY: GENERATIONAL CHANGE

If we are tracking the religiosity of a population not by evaluating
cultural norms, but instead using the three specific dimensions of religi-
osity articulated in the previous section, we can see two ways in which
such variables could rise or decline: change over time within individuals
and gaps in transmission between generations. Many factors, in turn,
could cause such differences, but any change in religiosity, such as the
one posited by Brown, must register in one or the other of these metrics.
Consider one of the most startling figures about British religion: the
steady and constant increase in religiosity with age. This could either
be the result of ‘‘age effects,’’ that is, an increase in religiosity within
individuals over time, or ‘‘generational effects,’’ a decline in the religi-
osity of each successive generation, suggesting transmission failure.
The relative importance of each effect can be easily determined: if the
religiosity of people born around the same time rises as that cohort
ages, then we can conclude that age effects are more important. How-
ever, if religiosity remains constant as that cohort ages, then we have
good evidence that the overall change is mostly due to generational
effects, because on average, individuals within a birth cohort maintain
the same levels of measured religiosity. The data show conclusively
that the latter is true: generational effects dominate. Each generation
retains its average levels of religiosity, but each successive generation
is less religious than the one before. The data on parent-child religious
relationships from a different survey also exhibit this pattern, showing
that religious parents in Britain have an approximately 50 percent
chance of transmitting their affiliation, belief, and practice on to their
children, giving religion a ‘‘half-life’’ of one generation.
So why is the transmission of religion so difficult in Britain? The an-
swer is suggested by the two measured variables that tend to be lowest
of all and thus can be said to be leading indicators for decline: atten-
dance in church and the importance of religion to daily life. While
Christian identification and belief in some sort of God remain high for
most of the woolly middle, both of these other measures are almost
universally quite low. This phenomenon may be an example of ‘‘be-
havioral drift,’’ which refers to the way that religious practice can
erode irrespective of changes in belief or affiliation.37 People may stop
going to church so often, but they will still identify with the religion of
their birth and often believe in the same God. Religious practice is
more immediate and has more competition than either belief or affilia-
tion; regular practice demands time and energy, while maintaining
belief and affiliation requires very little of either. In fact, a decision to
change beliefs or affiliation would probably take far more time and
energy than simply not thinking about them.38
When parents have drifted away from regular church attendance
and pray less in the home, their children will not take on the same
beliefs or affiliations as the parents did during their own childhoods. If
the children do take on some form of religiosity, it will tend to be of a
more confused variety. With less formal religious instruction and a
reduced emphasis on the importance of religious observance in their
formative years, most children of drifting parents will carry this con-
fused or reduced religiosity with them for the rest of their lives. An
ounce of behavioral drift on the part of a generation of parents will
lead to a pound of secularity in their children.
This narrative of behavioral drift leading to gaps in intergenerational
transmission explains the ‘‘how’’ of religious change, but not necessarily
the ‘‘why.’’ As we’ve noted, such religious change is not universal, so
why did it happen in Britain, in the twentieth century and not before,
and not in some other similar countries? In order for behavioral drift
away from religion to occur, a number of conditions must converge.
Most obviously, religious attendance must not be a compulsory activity.
Secular alternatives must also be available to satisfy at least some of the
other functions fulfilled by the church, especially during the crucial Sun-
day morning time slot. But most importantly, the religious environment
has to be such that nonattendance is socially acceptable. In nineteenth
century Britain, the first two assumptions came to fruition, but they also
did in the United States at roughly the same time, and the United States
has not experienced such rapid drift. A major reason the United King-
dom has diverged in the twentieth century from the United States, then,
is the substantial difference in the social acceptability of irreligion.
ACCEPTANCE FOR THE SECULAR

This, then, is the $64,000 question: what led to social approval for
irreligion in Britain, particularly for the middle and upper classes who
were generally more frequent attenders? In what way was the religious
environment different from that of the United States, which had a simi-
lar cultural inheritance and which modernized at a similar pace? The
most obvious difference is the established Anglican Church in England,
and although its presence cannot account for everything, its influence
is definitely a salient difference.
With this in mind, many have advocated a ‘‘supply-side’’ or ‘‘mar-

kets’’ theory, whereby the demand for religion is constant across all
human societies, but the multitude of suppliers in America compete
for that demand and effectively channel it. The monopoly supplier in
Britain, on the other hand, is supposed to be relatively static and unre-
sponsive, so that it is less successful on the whole.39 Norris and Ingle-
hart have demonstrated with evidence from the World Values Survey,
however, that this explanation falls flat when used to explain examples
other than the United States; in general, there is little to no correlation
between religious diversity and strength of participation, even within
Western societies.40 It is more likely that the phenomenon has to do
with the specific character of the relationship each country has with
religiosity, a relationship that is broader in both cases than a simple
market/monopoly dichotomy would suggest.
In the United States, liberty has always been seen as a fundamen-
tally religious concept. In the Puritan conception, for instance, liberty
simply was the freedom to choose God.41 As Tocqueville put it, ‘‘Ameri-
cans so completely confuse Christianity and freedom in their minds that
it is almost impossible to have them conceive of the one without the
other.’’42 As a consequence of the deeply felt freedom of religious choice
and the responsibility that went with that choice, religious beliefs were
often a major part of the individual identity of Americans. In Britain, by
contrast, there was a default in the established church. In many ways, a
religious presence was taken for granted, so there was no need to
socially enforce it. The story is similar for identity: if one didn’t choose a
religious identity, then by default one was considered an Anglican.
There were plenty of breakaway denominations in the United Kingdom,
but they were almost universally more conservative or doctrinally strict
than the Anglican Church, which was comparatively impotent in enforc-
ing adherence because of its insistence on tolerance and broad national
appeal.43 The default choice was also the least dogmatic choice, and so
those who tended to be religiously inspired gravitated toward the doc-
trinally strict churches such as Methodism, Catholicism, or even Quaker-
ism. Those less interested in religion were free to have their mind on
other things, because their decision was already made for them.
Though we have seen similar patterns in most places where estab-
lished churches have interacted with postindustrial society, there is
plenty in the British situation that is unique to the Anglican Church
itself. In some countries, where the dominant church was severe,
oppressive, or intolerant, there has been deep disgust with the church.
The French Revolution was the prime example of such revulsion. At
the opposite end of the spectrum, there was the United States, where
religion was seen as a companion to political freedom, rather than as
an oppressive force. In the middle there was the Anglican Church,
established but quite liberal and tolerant, at least since the nineteenth
century. William Wolf writes in ‘‘The Spirit of Anglicanism’’ that
At its best it is the spirit of liberality, of comprehensiveness [i.e., tolera-

tion of differing viewpoints], of reasonableness, and of restraint. It
stresses the historically given rather than the theoretical, the moral rather
than the highly speculative. The spirit of Anglicanism appeals to the con-
science and to the individual as responsible for working out his or her
own salvation.44
The Anglican Church took on its present form after the Elizabethan settle-
ment, which was adopted primarily with a practical purpose; to persuade
people to stop killing each other after years of religious war. As a result,
it became the ‘‘church of reconciliation’’ between four distinct camps: the
Anglo-Catholics, the evangelical Protestants, and the liberal advocates
both of pure reason and of empiricism.45 The Church emphasizes histori-
cal ties and national identity over theoretical attachments, and individual
conscience over enforcement of dogma. In essence, Anglicanism is
extreme only in its breadth. Thus, the only defectors were those who
were so dogmatic that they could not accept its wealth of opinion.46
The Anglican Church was ripe for the behavioral drift that began in
the latter nineteenth century. When secular alternatives began to present
themselves, many Britons had no doctrinal allegiances pulling them back.
Neither was their nonattendance threatening to their identity or social sta-
tus, as they could still convincingly call themselves Anglicans in the
broadest sense. The default option was chosen widely, as defaults often
are, but with very little fervor. The Americans, forced to choose, would
commit strongly to a tradition, but the British, not made to think twice
about their religious choices, passively accepted the benign, tolerant
national default, and moved on with the rest of their lives. To drift away
from church for an American within a denomination was to withdraw
from the community and to remove a central fact of one’s identity. Laps-
ing from practice, for an Anglican in Britain, was a much less dramatic
affair, as he could keep both his identity and his community intact.
TRANSFORMING BELIEFS
Behavioral drift away from church attendance is the initial impetus
for change in this model, but soon afterward it is followed by a
decrease in religious belief and affiliation. Among the other conditions
that facilitate a decline in belief is the presence of public atheists as
examples for the general population. While we’ve established that
secularity in Britain often triumphs not through conscious decision-
making but through the slow evolution of behavior patterns and failure
of intergenerational transmission, there must be a few trendsetters in
atheism if a decline in belief is to accompany and reinforce the behav-

ioral drift. It doesn’t mean that every one of their followers will then
become atheistic, just that the extreme position must be publicly taken
in order to legitimize the moderate ones. In a process that Voas has
earlier termed ‘‘diffusion,’’ the traits of a few visible figures may be
copied by many others, and even if the original character and meaning
of the trait is lost in the process, the copies still stand on their own. For
example, cultural diffusion occurs when celebrities stop wearing fur
because it represents cruelty to animals, and people on the street stop
wearing it because it is now unfashionable.
In America, the only public atheist that anyone is likely to remember
is Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a revolutionary communist who tried to
defect to the USSR but was rejected at the border. Britain, however,
has a long tradition of upstanding public atheists, many of whom were
alluded to in the first section. People began to announce their atheism
relatively early on, with Holyoake and Bradlaugh especially becoming
household names. The ‘‘Bradlaugh Affair’’ in Parliament was a con-
stant feature in newspapers throughout the 1880s, and though the slant
was not usually glowing with praise for the agitator, neither was it uni-
versally negative.
Bradlaugh had struck a chord with many in the British working class
who resented the quintessentially upper-class Anglican Church.47 For
them, it was often not the default choice that it was for most Britons,
because as they moved in droves to sprawling cities, both the churches
and the secularists had burgeoning new markets to exploit, much
like those in America. But the iconoclasm of Bradlaugh made a lot
more sense in Britain—with its established Church and violent religious
history—than it did in America, where religion had always been linked
with freedom and tolerance. Thus, the more radical among the working
classes during this period of upheaval took on an antireligious stance
when given the opportunity. Although some certainly turned to more
conservative religions with a populist flavor, many in the working class
turned to socialism—and through it, secularism—as an ideology.
From here on, a clear-cut case of cultural diffusion can be demon-
strated. Though a figure like Bradlaugh may have adopted his crusade
against the church as a Spinozist philosophical rejection of theism, his
followers did so for reasons that most likely had nothing to do with
their stance on metaphysics. More importantly, for the larger audience
that Bradlaugh did not directly influence, the popularity of anti-
Christian viewpoints may have lent such a worldview a kind of
credibility it had previously lacked. Bradlaugh and his followers seared
the image of the respectable, hard-working atheist into the conscious-
ness of a generation and provided a feasible alternative to traditional
Christian belief for all Britons. For those who drifted behaviorally from
religious practice after the religious high-water mark of the 1880s, the
legacy of the ‘‘Victorian infidels’’48 was crucial in opening the doors to

widespread de-Christianization of belief.
Though the radical politics associated with it went into hibernation,
the tradition of public atheism continued: Bertrand Russell, despite
being a member of the aristocracy, was particularly outspoken, and
authors such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells were also
known atheists. There was a strong concern in the NSS with represent-
ing secular opinions in the popular press, and the Rationalist Press
Association, founded in 1895, circulated antireligious pamphlets and
cheap reprints of secularist literature among the general population.
Although it is unlikely that specific letters to the editor or copies of
Hume changed a significant number of minds, their constant presence
in the cultural consciousness facilitated the gradual abandonment of re-
ligious beliefs, which had been made possible on a wider scale by the
drift away from regular practice and thus from the reinforcement of
doctrine that churchgoing would have provided.
It is important to pause here and note a few things about the narra-
tive we have drawn so far. First, each ‘‘stage’’ is really an ongoing pro-
cess that is coextensive in time with every other stage; and second, the
trajectory of events is neither definitive nor inevitable. Behavioral drift
has occurred throughout history and still occurs for many today, and
there are plenty of people for whom it will never happen. For some
individuals, an abandonment of belief will lead to a reduction in practice
rather than vice versa. In trying to draw together the most frequent
trends and paint the broadest picture possible, we will necessarily fail to
capture every individual story. Especially with religion, there are as
many narratives of change as there are people in the world, so we can
attempt to describe only the most general trends. However, we can still
say that overall, a reduction in practice precedes a decline in belief, and
in the majority of cases, both will precede a decline in identification with
a religion.49
THE FALLING APPEAL OF CHRISTIAN AFFILIATION IN

A MODERN CHRISTIAN NATION
With practice in free-fall and beliefs on the decline, nominal affilia-
tion with Christianity often seemed resilient. For example, while actual
church attendance reached a peak somewhere in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, baptism rates in the Church of England remained
fairly constant, sometimes even rising, until the 1930s.50 Even if indi-
viduals did not go to church or believe in the God of their fathers, they
still considered religion a positive force, and for the most part, they
saw no reason to dissociate themselves from it. The radical unbelief of
Bradlaugh had been diffused into passive, ‘‘practical atheism,’’
whereby religion or the lack of it mattered very little to people. But
few reasons had yet been presented that would convince normal Brit-
ish citizens to reject God outright.
This is where the revolutionary social change posited by Brown
comes in. Although the 1960s did not see drastic shifts in any of the
variables used to measure religiosity, it did trigger cultural confronta-
tion and brought social attitudes up to date with the demographic real-
ities of a Britain that was far less religious than when those attitudes
were formed. For the first time since Bradlaugh’s day, people began to
seriously challenge the widespread assumption that religion, on the
whole, was a force for good, and because of demographic changes, the
religious climate this time was far more open to such public challenges.
This was the era of legal battles over restrictions on birth control, homo-
sexuality, and divorce, the onset of religious satire on public television,
and the hyper-sexual, drug-laden ‘‘summer of love,’’ all of which the
Church vehemently opposed.51 The second major wave of irreligious
movements began, and the BHA was founded amidst this fervor.
The movements eventually lost energy, but many of the changes
stuck. No longer was it generally assumed that the Church of England
had the answer to moral questions; rather, it was now often assumed
to have the wrong one. Its role morphed from definitive moral arbiter
to one voice among many. Even if it was (and is) still privileged, it is
certainly not the only voice that is taken seriously by the British peo-
ple. This change allowed people to openly flout the moral authority of
the Church, loosening the last tether that kept them to the foundation
of Christian affiliation. The loss of the moral superiority of the Church
allowed people, finally, to drift away from identification with Christi-
anity. Before this point, whatever an individual’s particular beliefs or
practices were, his Christian affiliation signified to others that he was a
moral person and that he respected the Western traditions of law and
liberty. While being Christian still means that to many people, an alter-
native was provided at this point that many have chosen to take ever
since: affiliating with no religion at all.
CONCLUSIONS
Britain has a thorny relationship with religion, and its relatively long
history of atheists plays no small part in that. Interestingly, the times
of greatest prominence for atheism have tended to coincide with the
periods of greatest religiosity, and for this reason, the late Victorian era
is often seen as the golden age of British atheism. Even the latest re-
vival of interest in atheism can be attributed largely to the recently ele-
vated prominence of religion in the news. This small and largely
Ameri-centric trend aside, though, modern Britain is neither particu-
larly religious nor overtly irreligious, but secular:52 neither religion nor
irreligion plays a large role in daily life. The religious tend to be fairly
quiet about their beliefs, as do the atheists. Most of the country is

somewhere between active religiosity and total irreligion, but their abil-
ity to hold these fuzzy beliefs exists in large part because they are
rarely used or challenged. Religion is simply not very often on the Brit-
ish mind—whether God exists or not, He plays very little role in the
lives of most people. And yet, despite the lack of daily interference,
Christianity has not disappeared from the backdrop of society, with a
majority of Britons holding to belief in some sort of God and identifica-
tion as some sort of Christian however doubtfully or occasionally.
The process by which Britain came to this complex secularity is the
subject of much debate. There is still much left unanswered by this
chapter, but the broad narrative outlined here can give us some clues
and hypotheses for future research. Demographically, the religious
decline seems to be a result of failed transmission of religious identity
from parents to children, which is in turn caused by a decrease in the
prominence of religious activities in childhood. Parents may not have
stopped attending and may still identify with the beliefs and denomi-
nation of their childhood, but they are unwilling or unable to make
their children follow in their religious footsteps. The prominence and
respectability of atheists in the public sphere, a secularizing culture,
and the extreme tolerance of the Anglican Church all contribute to the
generation gap. If maturing adults have less reinforcement from home,
see plenty of attractive secular alternatives to religious beliefs and prac-
tices, and have few social incentives to remain regular participants,
they will be less likely to become religious adults.
Affiliation may be slower to change than either beliefs or practices,
because the alternatives are less attractive—‘‘none’’ is not a particularly
appealing or salient identity. However, even this is changing, as athe-
ism has been gaining more and more respectability, both contributing
to and benefiting from the increasing secularity of society at large.
Even if people are not turning in mass numbers to atheism, a populace
that cares less about religion in general will care less when certain of
its members reject it, as long as they do so without making too much
of a fuss. Of course, this process has been far from conscious. It was
not the long-awaited triumph of rational thought over religious ortho-
doxy that many expected: many atheists still hold other supernatural
beliefs. Neither was there suddenly any decision made that atheism
was respectable. Instead, increasing acceptance has been the result of
slow shifts in behavior patterns and the gradual realignment of atti-
tudes to match those new behaviors.
There is no sign of these trends reversing in the future, but this does
not mean that atheism will become universal or even a majority posi-
tion. On the contrary: in a society where religion is unimportant, the
opinions of people about religion tend to be far less definite, and this
is the climate in which fuzzy fidelity has thrived. Indeed, it has taken a
return to prominence of religion, in the form of both political and pie-

tistic Islam, to force a reevaluation of that fuzzy fidelity by atheists and
religious conservatives alike. We don’t yet know how these new cir-
cumstances will affect the religious composition of the country, but we
can only guess that the British will counter the revival of religion in
public life in the way that they have done since the Victorian era. Atti-
tudes will continue to shift away from religious orthodoxy, though not
necessarily toward anything else concrete, as Britain comes to terms
with its unconventional secularity.
NOTES
1. ‘‘Nick Clegg says: I don’t believe in God,’’ The Times, Dec. 19, 2007: ‘‘His
admission is nonetheless unusual for a British political leader, most of whom
have tended to try to avoid upsetting believers and non-believers alike by
referring to or hinting at their faith before saying religion is a private matter.’’
2. Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann, (2006) ‘‘Atheists
as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society,’’
3. David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain (Kent, UK: Routledge,
1988); particularly ‘‘The Repression of Atheism,’’ p. 1–47. The Britannica entry
is quoted in this chapter, on page 1.
4. Ibid., 64, 101, and 134.
5. Colin Campbell, Towards a Sociology of Irreligion (London: Macmillan,
1971), 46–57.
6. Ibid., 50.
7. Ibid., 50.
8. Ibid., 57–83.
9. Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow,
UK: Pearson Education, 2006), especially ‘‘The Sixties Revolution, 1960–1973,’’
224–270.
10. http://www.secularism.org.uk/generalprinciples.html (accessed August
31, 2009).
11. Colin Campbell, Towards a Sociology of Irreligion, 91–96. http://www.
humanism.org.uk; personal conversations with Terry Sanderson, president of
NSS and Andrew Copson of the BHA.
12. George H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great
Britain 1937–75: Volume Two 1965–1975 (New York: Random House, 1976), 829.
13. Penny Edgell et al. ‘‘Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural
Membership in American Society,’’ 215.
14. Ibid.
15. Stephen Bullivant, ‘‘Sociological Perspectives,’’ draft chapter from ‘‘The
Salvation of Atheists: The Catholic Engagement with Atheism,’’ doctoral work
in progress, University of Oxford, 2008, 22.
16. ‘‘Nick Clegg is a believer . . . in families, not God,’’ The Times, Dec. 20,
2007: ‘‘Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, and Hugh Gaitskell were the last political
leaders to admit to being non-believers.’’
17. Stephen Bullivant, ‘‘Sociological Perspectives,’’ 23.
18. Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History (London, UK: Arnold
Publishers, 1997), 316–330.
19. ‘‘Blair Feared Faith ‘Nutter’ Label,’’ BBC News, Nov. 25, 2007.
20. Grace Davie, ‘‘Praying Alone? Church-going in Britain and the Putnam
Thesis: A Reply to Steve Bruce,’’ Journal of Contemporary Religion 17, no. 3
(2002): 329–335.
21. See 2001 Census of Population; 72 percent in England and Wales and 65
percent of those in Scotland are categorized as Christian.
22. Though the reasons for their popularity are, admittedly, more complex.
23. ‘‘Nick Clegg says . . .’’
24. Abby Day, ‘‘Researching Belief without Asking Religious Questions,’’ in
Fieldwork in Religion 4, no. 1 (2009).
25. ‘‘Dawkins: I’m a cultural Christian.’’ BBC News, Dec. 10, 2007.
26. David Voas, ‘‘Surveys of Behaviour, Beliefs and Affiliation,’’ in Handbook
of the Sociology of Religion, ed. J. Beckford and N. J. Demerath (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 2007), 128–150.
27. David Voas, ‘‘The Rise and Fall of Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe,’’ European
Sociological Review 25, no. 2 (2009): 155-68. The argument in this section is
developed more fully in this ‘‘Fuzzy Fidelity’’ article.
28. Robert Piggott, personal conversation.
29. Ipsos-MORI poll; details to be confirmed. (2003) http://www.ipsos-mori.
com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId¼773 (accessed
August 31, 2009).
30. Much of this draws on R. D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Re-
vival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); applica-
tions of the idea to Britain include Grace Davie, ‘‘Praying Alone? Church-going
in Britain and the Putnam Thesis: A Reply to Steve Bruce,’’ 329–335.
31. Colin Campbell, Easternization of the West. (London: Paradigm Publishers,
2007); Paul Heelas, and Linda Woodhead The Spiritual Revolution (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
32. Though the average difference is relatively small, the data show strongly
that the effect exists.
33. Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History, 337, quoting Manchester
Domestic Missionary, 1848.
34. Ibid., 335, quoting Thomas Frost.
35. Ibid., 337.
36. Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain, 224.
37. David Voas, ‘‘The Continuing Secular Transition,’’ in The Role of Religion in
Modern Societies, ed. D. Pollack and D. V. A. Olson (London: Routledge, 2007), 25–48.
38. This intragenerational change would not manifest itself in the BSA statis-
tics we used to show the primacy of generational effects over age effects,
because the self-conception of those parents has not changed very much; thus,
the fact that the religiosity of each cohort appears to hold steady is unsurprising.
39. Among those who have advocated this approach are Roger Finke,
Rodney Stark, Laurence Iannaccone, William Bainbridge, and R. Stephen
Warner.
tics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 95–106.
41. See John Schaar, ‘‘Political Thought of John Winthrop,’’ Political Theory 19,
no. 4 (1991): 493–518.
42. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. H. C. Mansfield and
D. Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
43. Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History, 316–326.
44. William J. Wolf, ‘‘Anglicanism and its Spirit,’’ in The Spirit of Anglican-
ism, ed. William J. Wolf (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1981), 186.
45. Ibid., 178.
46. A conversation with Tim Jenkins contributed a great deal to this analysis.
47. Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History, 330.
48. Edward Royle, Victorian Infidels (Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press, 1974).
49. Robin Gill, Churchgoing and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), chapter 3. See also David Voas and Alasdair Crockett,
‘‘Religion in Britain: Neither believing nor belonging,’’ Sociology 39, no. 1
(2005): 11–28.
50. David Voas, ‘‘Intermarriage and the demography of secularisation,’’
British Journal of Sociology 54, no. 1 (2003): 83–108.
51. Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain, 224–70.
52. Here, we mean ‘‘secular’’ in the sense to follow, not in the sense of
French la€icite or American secular government.
Chapter 6

in the Arab World
Jack David Eller
Most of the public and many experts would no doubt agree with the
assessment of Ernest Gellner, the eminent scholar of anthropology and
history, that ‘‘I think it is fair to say that no secularization has taken
place in the world of Islam: that the hold of Islam over its believers is
as strong, and in some ways stronger, now than it was 100 years ago.
Somehow or other Islam is secularization-resistant.’’ (p. 2)1 Especially in
a time of war, it is not surprising that the more extreme and polarizing,
if not literally distancing and exoticizing, images of ‘‘the enemy’’ would
prevail, drowning out the voices of moderation and complexity in the
din (a particularly ironic term, since din—pronounced ‘‘deen’’—is the
Arabic term for faith or religion). Certainly the loudest voices in the con-
temporary Islamic world are the nonsecularists and the antisecularists.
However, the claim that there is no secularization is Islam would be
very surprising to Fu’ad Zakariyya, Husain Ahmad Amin, Muhammad
Nur Farahat, and Farag ‘Ali Fuda, for instance, whom Alexander Flores
calls the four main spokesmen of ‘‘outspoken secularism’’ in Egypt
today (p. 28)2 or to earlier secularists such as Taha Husayn, Ya’qub
Sarruf, Faris Nimr, Nicola Haddad, Salama Musa, and Lewis Awad, not
to mention the influential Ali Abd al-Raziq; or to parties and organiza-
tions such as Jam’iyyat al-Nida’ al-Jadid (New Appeal Society), Jam’iyyat
al-Tanwir (Enlightenment Society), Hizb ‘Almani (Secular Party, with its
slogan ‘‘Religion belongs to God, the homeland belongs to us all’’), and
Tayyar al-‘Almani (Movement for Secularism); or to secular regimes and
governments including Nasser’s and Mubarak’s Egypt, Bourguiba’s
Tunisia, even Hussein’s Iraq, and of course Ataturk’s Turkey.
Clearly then, while secularism may not be the dominant force in Is-
lamic societies—and then again, in a certain sense, it may be, as we will
examine below—it is a real force. The assumption or conclusion that sec-
ularism does not exist at all in those contexts, or that it is a small insig-
nificant factor, or that it is in retreat, is a product of a variety of factors
including unfamiliarity with the realities on the ground, exaggerated
attention to the ‘‘resurgent’’ religionists, and the conventional ‘‘Oriental-
ism’’ that views non-Western societies as irreconcilably different from
and inferior to the West. But it appears that the problem may go deeper,
to a profound misunderstanding of what secularism is, what Islam is,
and for that matter what religion in general is. We will have the occa-
sion, and the obligation, to consider all of these issues below.
In this chapter, we will be focusing on the ‘‘Arab world,’’ but that
calls upon us to determine what precisely to what the ‘‘Arab world’’
refers. Simplistically, the Arab world (al-‘alam al-‘arabi) consists of those
places where Arabs live. But what is an Arab? Albert Hourani, the
great historian of Arab societies, writes
Most Arabs, if asked to define what they meant by ‘‘the Arab nation,’’
would begin by saying that it included all those who spoke the Arabic
language. But this would only be the first step, and it would carry them
no more than one step farther to say it included all who claimed a link
with the nomadic tribes of Arabia, whether by descent, by affiliation, or
by appropriation (through the medium of language and literature) of
their ideal of human excellence and standards of beauty. A full definition
would include also a reference to a historic process: to a certain episode
of history in which Arabs played a leading part, which was important
not only for them but for the whole world, and in virtue of which indeed
they could claim to have been something in human history.3
Thus, ‘‘Arab’’ does not specify any particular race or country or even,
necessarily, religion; there were Arabs before there was Islam. ‘‘Arab’’
is not a synonym for ‘‘Muslim.’’ Many—in fact, the vast majority—of
the world’s Muslims are not Arabs: of the 1.4 billion Muslims, less than
three hundred million are to be found in the traditionally ‘‘Arab’’
countries, which include Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Iraq, Syria,
Jordan, Lebanon, and the strip of North Africa (known as the Maghreb
in Islam) that contains Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and
Morocco. The Arab world does not contain major Islamic states and
regions such as Iran or Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan and Central
Asia, northern India, Bangladesh, Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, and
of course Malaysia and Indonesia, the latter of which is far and away
the most populous Muslim-majority country.
Nor are all Arabs Muslims: between 8 and 12 percent of Arabs are
Christians, particularly in Lebanon and Egypt, and Arabs can theoretically
Atheism and Secularity in the Arab World 115
belong to any religion. Finally, not all people living within the ‘‘Arab
world’’ are Arabs, nor are all Arabs resident in the ‘‘Arab world.’’ Kurds
constitute an important minority in Iraq (15–20 percent) and Syria (5–10
percent). Berbers occupy much of Morocco (35 percent) and Algeria
(20 percent). Significant numbers of non-Arabs live in the Gulf states, if
only as temporary laborers, including Persians, Indians, Baluchs, and Fili-
pinos. A mere 39 percent of Sudanese are Arab. Meanwhile, many Arabs
find themselves outside the conventional ‘‘Arab world’’ in such states as
Israel, Chad, Turkey, Iran, and Mali, not to mention Europe and the
United States.
The complex and contested nature of Arab identity suggest that few
generalizations can be made about this constituency; ‘‘Arab’’ is not any
one concrete thing. Neither is ‘‘Islam’’ any one concrete thing: there are
multiple doctrinal schools, historical interpretations, and local versions
of Islam. That is to say, there is serious—although often invisible to the
West—internal controversy and debate over what exactly Islam is,
what it was in the past, what it should be in the future, and, perhaps
most critically, how it should relate to ‘‘the West,’’ to ‘‘modernity,’’
and to ‘‘secularism.’’ It only seems obvious, then, that secularism
would not be any one concrete thing either; this is true in Christian
and other societies, so there is no reason why it should be untrue in Is-
lamic ones. Some Arab people have embraced secularism thoroughly,
others rant against it in absolute terms, and others have found a way—
or at least proposed that there is a way—to integrate it with religion.
As we will discuss below, some like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im
plead that one can only be a true Muslim in a secular state.4 The possi-
bility of such an opinion indicates that the familiar notion of secularism
as religion-less or even antireligion is inadequate. In a word, we will
find in this chapter that secularism takes on its own local meaning in
al-‘alam al-‘arabi—or at least that it will as they work out their own
local version of Arab modernism and Arab secularism.
THE LANGUAGE OF SECULARISM AND RELIGION

IN THE ARAB WORLD
To begin to situate the Arab Islamic experience of secularism in its
required context, we must consider how religion and its secular alter-
native are conceived and expressed specifically in the Arabic language.
We cannot assume that either religion or secularism is understood and
practiced in the same way in al-‘alam al-‘arabi as it is in the Western-
Christian world.
As we have already discovered, din is the Arabic word for ‘‘reli-
gion’’ or ‘‘faith’’ or ‘‘belief.’’ The particular din of Islam originates from
the Qur’an, the scripture that was revealed to Muhammad during the
more than twenty years of his prophecy (Muhammad is regarded as a
rasul or messenger). The Qur’an represents the final and authoritative

word of the one god, Allah. A muslim is one who submits to the will of
Allah, Islam is the religion or din of submission to Allah, and salam or
peace is the experience of submission to Allah (all three of which
words derive from the same Arabic root, slm).
Islam sees itself as absolute and conclusive monotheism, without the
mysterious doctrines of incarnation and trinity. Essential to Islamic
monotheism is the concept of tawhid or oneness/unity: there is one
god, Allah, and none other like him. Accordingly, the two most funda-
mental errors that a human being can make are polytheism and athe-
ism. Shirk is the Arabic term for polytheism or idolatry, believing in or
worshipping any god besides Allah (which is tantamount to atheism,
because no such gods exist). In the time before Muhammad’s revela-
tions, most humans were idolaters or murky monotheists, living in
ignorance of the one true god—a condition known in Arabic as
jahiliyyah or the era of religious ignorance (jahl means ‘‘ignorance’’).
Kufr more particularly signifies disbelief or infidelity, which can take
two forms: kufr-i jahli or disbelief from lack of knowledge or under-
standing of Allah and kufr-i juhudi or disbelief from rejection of the
truth of Allah. The latter is clearly worse. A person denies or rejects
the truth of the tawhid of Allah, who refuses to submit to Allah’s will,
is a kafir, an unbeliever or infidel. Typically, a kafir is a person who has
never accepted the authority of Islam; for the backslider, the apostate,
the term murtadd is reserved, and as in many religions, this is the worst
position that a human can occupy. Takfir is the act of denouncing a
person or group as an infidel or fallen Muslim.
Two of the key issues in Islam are religious leadership or authority
and the relationship between religion and politics or power. On the
first issue, there have evolved a variety of spiritual and/or textual spe-
cialists in different times and places. The general term ‘alim or ‘alam
designates ‘‘one who knows’’ or ‘‘one with knowledge,’’ ‘ilm referring
widely to knowledge (more recently, ‘‘science’’) and narrowly to reli-
gious knowledge. Collectively these leaders or teachers are called ulama
or ulema. Another common term is imam, literally ‘‘leader’’ (which
holds special significance for Shi’ite Muslims). Ayatullah or ayatollah is
a specifically Shi’ite title for a religious scholar/leader, literally a
‘‘sign’’ (ayah) of Allah. By whatever name, the ulama used their learn-
ing and wisdom to guide the community of believers, the umma. How-
ever—and this is crucially important—Islam has never had a formal
professional clergy or priesthood comparable to that in Christianity,
particularly but not exclusively Catholicism. There was and is no
‘‘church’’ in Islam, and any discussion of the role of religion in society
must keep this difference in mind.
This takes us naturally to the issue of ‘‘church and state,’’ or more
generally the problem of religious authority and ‘‘political’’ or
‘‘governmental’’ authority. In Arabic, al-hukm can mean government or

governance, although it also refers to legal rulings or jurisprudence
arising from the Qur’an or the ‘‘traditions/customs’’ (the sunna) based
on the precedents set by Muhammad during his lifetime, many of
which are recorded in the Hadith, a book second in importance only to
the Qur’an. The revelations to the prophet and the sayings and doings
of the prophet provide models or examples for subsequent, including
modern, political rulings and constitute a code or law, the shari’a.
Whether or not Muhammad or his successors were ever ‘‘political’’
figures is a debate that we will take up in the next section and is a
debate conducted in the contemporary Arab world. At any rate, the
term caliph or khalifah evolved to specify a ‘‘successor’’ to the authority
of Muhammad (political, spiritual, or both); for some sects of Islam, the
khalifah was to belong to the prophet’s family line. Sharif is a title re-
served for descendants of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima
and his son-in-law Ali.
For many Muslims at least, Islam is more than ‘‘religion’’ in the
modern Western sense of the term; in a traditional formulation, Islam
is din wa dawla, ‘‘religion and state,’’ and din wa dunya, ‘‘religion and
world.’’ As suggested above, the scriptures and models of the founding
era of religion came to be used in the way that case law is used in the
West. In practice, then, Islam provided the basis and substance for fiqh
or jurisprudence, upon which an authority ( faqih, plural fuqaha) would
rule on cases in his own time. While sometimes criticized, especially by
nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernizers as a form of taqlid or
blind imitation of the past, Islam actually has always struggled for ijma
or consensus but allowed for ikhtilaf or difference of opinion. Diverging
interpretations, and diverging schools of interpretation, grew from the
shared texts and traditions, warranted by the Islamic concept of ijtihad
or independent reasoning from precedent. Some sections of the Qur’an
or actions of Muhammad seem clear and definitive enough and consid-
ered nass or ‘‘proof texts’’; others, though, are less clear or immediately
relevant and become the subject of practices like qiyas or reasoning by
analogy—which inevitably leads to varying conclusions.
Undeniably, then, Islam from its earliest days has been diverse and
evolving, containing many opinions on virtually all subjects. It seems
certain, then, that the din should encompass ideas and attitudes that
are even questionable by or contrary to—indeed, heretical to—common
standards. One such attitude is secularism, a term that was not known
to the medieval Islamic (or for that matter Christian) world but that
had its counterpart even then (as we will demonstrate below). Since
sustained contact with the West began in the late eighteenth century,
the word al-‘alamaniyyah was coined as an Arabic equivalent for secu-
larism, derived from ‘alam for ‘‘world.’’ Another word that is some-
times used for secularism is al-‘ilmaniyyah, which is commonly believed
to derive from ‘ilm for ‘‘knowledge’’ or ‘‘science’’ but is apparently

simply an alternate pronunciation of the previous term, al-‘alamaniyyah.
A few writers and activists have proposed the word al-dunyawiyyah
from the root dunya or ‘‘physical world’’ as opposed to heaven or spir-
itual world, and readers may encounter that term in the literature.
Indisputably, in much Arabic and Islamic thinking, al-‘alamaniyyah is a
negative thing, akin to atheism (many call it outright kufr), as is ques-
tioning authority and precedent or introducing ‘‘innovation’’ (bid’ah).
SECULARISM IN PRE-MODERN ISLAM

While the term ‘‘secularism’’ is new to the Arab world, it is a point
of some contention whether or not the experience is. In one sense, we
have just seen the nature of the problem: was Islam originally both ‘‘re-
ligion’’ and ‘‘politics,’’ which in interpretive practice means, were
Muhammad and/or his immediate and subsequent successors both
temporal and spiritual authorities, otherworldly guides and worldly
governors? In another sense, the problem goes much deeper than the
‘‘separation of church and state’’: do the—distinctly Western-Christian—
concepts of ‘‘church,’’ ‘‘state,’’ and their ‘‘separation’’ apply in Arabic
religion at all? Therefore, is the sacred/secular division relevant in
Islam? For example, as Parvez Manzoor has opined, unlike the Christian
church or the Buddhist sangha, Islam ‘‘did not have any sacerdotal
institutions, any churches, and hence was spared the sacred-secular
dichotomy of the West’’ which was a cultural-historical consequence of
the ‘‘institutionalization’’ of religion (p. 90).5 On the one hand, perhaps
Islam never distinguished political power from spiritual power; on the
other hand, perhaps it always did. And finally, at the most profound
level, we may find that the very idea of ‘‘religion’’ in distinction to ‘‘the
world’’ or ‘‘society’’ is at best a foreign one and at worst a false one—
also a product of Western-Christian experience but neither entirely
universal nor entirely useful.
The Arab tradition that Islam is din wa dawla, ‘‘religion and state’’
flows from the widely understood career of its founder, Muhammad.
According to this tradition, Muhammad was not only a prophet but a
jurist, virtually a mayor, of the city of Medina and then of Mecca and
the growing ‘‘Arab-Islamic empire.’’ In the legitimating function of
religion, this paradigm of prophet-politician would establish Islam as
religion–politics and its leadership as spiritual–temporal or otherworldly–
this worldly. There are two ways that this phenomenon might work.
In the stronger case, the religious leaders would be one and the same
as the political leaders; for instance, the khalifah or the ulama
individually or collectively would wield actual governmental authority,
or the political/military leadership would be spiritually or divinely
authorized. Such was the assertion of the medieval scholar al-Mawardi
(991–1031), who regarded the caliphate ‘‘as being a necessity derived

from the divine law rather than from reason.’’6 No doubt many a ruler
and pretender to the throne advanced the same argument. This is,
understandably, the ‘‘prevailing view among Islamists,’’ ‘‘that classical
Islamic society does not distinguish between the religious and political
aspects of communal life. The Caliphate was both the religious and the
political leadership of the community of Muslims, whose individual
believers and subjects belonged to a polity defined by religious alle-
giance’’ (p. 363)7.
In the weaker case, the spiritual and the temporal authorities would
be distinct but connected, establishing a joint temporospiritual system,
as in the account of Abu-Rabi’:
. . . the state has never been disconnected from religion. The traditional
ulama class legitimized the state with the leverage it had with the
masses. Historically, ‘‘official Islam’’ enjoyed the protection and patron-
age of the ruling elite in Muslim society. . . . The ulama, especially in the
Sunni world, have more or less stood with the status quo by refusing to
support opposition to existing political authority.8
Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), writing in the midst of the Mamluk period,

concurred, insisting that ‘‘good government depended on an alliance
between amirs, political and military leaders, and the ulama, inter-
preters of the law.’’9 The great Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) himself held
that the caliphate and the crown ‘‘existed side by side,’’ even if he was
in favor of the politicizing of religion.10
However, an energetic and convincing position is that political and
religious power were not only differentiated but separate and even as
often as not at odds with each other. Muhammad Sa’id al-Ashmawi in
1987 wrote that ‘‘God wanted Islam to be a religion, but men have
turned it into politics’’ (p. 92–93)11. (Notice, though, that this type of sec-
ularism is hardly antagonistic to religion.) Muhammed Talbi in his 1992
book ‘Iyal Allah, afkar jadida fi alaqat al-Muslim bi-nafsi-hi wa-l-akharin (The
Family of God: New Reflections on the Muslim’s Relationship with Himself
and Others), goes yet further, positing that
the Islamic umma never was a political unit. It was always founded on
spiritual unity, the unity of witness and adoration. Its unity was never
political. On the political level there have constantly been conflicts and
wars, right from the moment of the ‘‘great sedition’’ (al-fitna l-kubra) to
the present day.12
One of the most influential criticisms of the political nature of early

Islam came from Ali Abd al-Raziq, a key secularist figure of the early
twentieth century. In his 1925 work al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm he
asserted that Muhammad never even created or governed a ‘‘state’’ at

all; asked to summarize his book, he said:
Islam did not determine a specific regime, nor did it impose on the Mus-
lims a particular system according to the requirements of which they
must be governed; rather it has allowed freedom to organize the state in
accordance with the intellectual, social, and economic conditions in
which we are found, taking into consideration our social development
and the requirements of our times.13
In his analysis, then, Muslim politics is necessarily ‘‘secular’’ in the original

sense of the term—‘‘of the current age/time’’—because it is not given by
religion and only exists in adjustment to contemporary social conditions.
After studying the first centuries of the Muslim era, Lapidus con-
cludes that indeed religion and politics were typically separate:
In fact, religious and political life developed distinct spheres of experi-

ence, with independent values, leaders, and organizations. From the mid-
dle of the tenth century effective control of the Arab–Muslim empire had
passed into the hands of generals, administrators, governors, and local
provincial lords; the Caliphs had lost all effective political power. Gov-
ernments in Islamic lands were henceforth secular regimes—Sultanates—
in theory authorized by the Caliphs, but actually legitimized by the need
for public order. Henceforth, Muslim states were fully differentiated po-
litical bodies without any intrinsic religious character, though they were
officially loyal to Islam and committed to its defense.14
As time passed and Arab/Islamic society grew and evolved, ‘‘this ini-
tial differentiation of religious and communal institutions from the po-
litical institution of the Caliphate grew more profound and more
clearly defined. In later centuries . . . the Caliph lost his de facto politi-
cal power to secular military and administrative regimes, albeit to
regimes nominally loyal to Islam.’’15
Ibn Warraq, in a stinging attack on Islam, goes further, to discuss a se-
rious, even if minority and unpopular, current of ‘‘rationalism’’ or ‘‘free-
thought,’’ sometimes verging on atheism, in medieval Islam. He holds
up, for example, the Mu’tazilites as a movement influenced by Greek
philosophy and committed to reason (‘aql). Reason in their view even
constrained or compelled Allah (when they still believed in him): their
doctrine of human rationality and ‘‘self-determination leads to the rejec-
tion of the notion of God’s arbitrary rule; divine omnipotence is limited
by the requirements of justice.’’16 Ahmed bin Habit rode his rationalism
into virtually disbelief. Others, still faithful, subjected the Qur’an, the tra-
ditions of Muhammad, and the doctrines of Islam to critical inquiry.
Various other kinds of zindiq (heresy, more specifically ‘‘dualism’’)
cropped up in Islam as well. Ibn al-Muqaffa questioned aspects of the
din, while Ibn Abi-l-Awja went so far as to assert the eternity of the
natural world and to deny the existence of a supernatural creator.17
Warraq lists a large number of other philosophers and freethinkers in
Arab history, many of whom were persecuted or executed, including
Salih Abd al-Quddus, Hammad Ajrad, Aban bin Abd al-Humayd bin
Lahiq al-Raqqasi, Qays bin Zubayr, Abu’l Atahiya, Abu Tammam,
Ibn al-Rawandi, and of course the infamous Abu ‘L-ala Ahmad bin
Abdallah al-Ma’arri, who wrote scathing verses in the eleventh century
calling religion a ‘‘fable invented by the ancients’’ and ‘‘noxious weeds’’18
and asserting the superiority of reason over prophecy and belief.
Certainly, then, the premodern Arab world did not lack its ‘‘secula-
rists’’ or rationalists, even if the society was not kind and tolerant to-
ward them. However, the more profound issue, raised at the outset of
this section, is whether the sacred/secular dichotomy applies to Islam
at all, if to any religion. Plenty of Muslim observers have commented
on the Western-Christian basis of the very concept of ‘‘secular,’’
founded on an unacceptable dualism of ‘‘world’’ versus ‘‘spirit’’ and a
fundamental desacralization or even denigration of the ‘‘world.’’ To
begin, Bernard Lewis reminds us that, unlike in the early centuries of
Christianity, which left an indelible mark on that religion, in Islam:
political authority was not a human evil, not even a lesser or a necessary
evil; it was a divine good. The body politic and the sovereign powers
within it are ordained by God himself, to promote his faith and to main-
tain and extend his law. The Muslim, like the Christian, sees God as
involved in human affairs and as subjecting his people to a variety of
tests. But for the Muslim, God’s main concern is to help rather than to
test his people, in particular to help them achieve victory and para-
mountcy in this world.19
In other words, while Islam undeniably has spiritual aspirations and oth-
erworldly interests (like heaven), it is also a very thisworldly religion—
which may sound like a contradiction to many readers but is not.
An-Na’im, for instance, posits that from the Muslim point of view,
‘‘Islam provides a comprehensive model for individual and communal
life, in the public as well as the private domain.’’20 It is more than ‘‘pri-
vate belief’’ as religion has come to be seen since the Enlightenment in
the West—more than ‘‘private’’ and more than ‘‘belief.’’ It is, as we
noted above, law and tradition and precedent and model and paradigm.
It touches, potentially and depending on the particular ijtihad employed,
every aspect of human life, society, and the world. As Lewis writes in
another place,
The idea that any group of persons, any kind of activities, any part of
human life is in any sense outside the scope of religious law and
jurisdiction is alien to Muslim thought. There is, for example, no distinc-

tion between canon law and civil law, between the law of the church and
the law of the state, crucial in Christian history. There is only a single
law, the shari’a, accepted by Muslims as of divine origin and regulating
all aspects of human life: civil, commercial, criminal, constitutional, as
well as matters more specifically concerned with religion in the limited,
Christian sense of that word.21
Of course he overstates his case, since shari’a law is not the only law in
all Arab and Muslim societies, but it has the capacity—and in more
than a few situations the intent—to be the one and only law.
While this view of religion as an all-encompassing worldly and
social system may confuse and offend Western readers, it is in fact not
contradictory from an Arab–Muslim perspective. More like medieval
Christianity than most observers might realize or care to accept, Islam
is an otherworldly originated and legitimated system for life in this
world; perhaps less like medieval Christianity, while its source and na-
ture is otherworldly, its attention is very much directed here, to the
real world of human problems. Fazlur Rahman says it best:
Although God consciousness and the conviction of the Last Day are
powerful and persistent themes in the Qur’an, there is no doubt that
belief in God or human accountability play a strictly functional role
here. . . . In Qur’anic terms no real morality is possible without the regu-
lative ideas of God and the Last Judgment. Further, their very moral
function requires that they exist for religiomoral experience and cannot
be mere intellectual postulates to be ‘‘believed in’’. . . .
But the substantive . . . teaching of the Prophet and the Qur’an is
undoubtedly for action in this world, since it provides guidance for man
concerning his behavior on earth in relation to other men. God exists in
the mind of the believer to regulate his behavior if he is religiomorally
experienced, but that which is regulated is the essence of the matter.22
In short, traditional Islam is as much thisworldly as otherworldly—as

much ‘‘secular’’ as ‘‘sacred’’—and it is, in Rahman’s formulation, sacred
in the interests of the secular (for maslaha, human interest or well-being)
and otherworldly for the benefit of this world. To regard the ‘‘secular’’ as
somehow outside of or oppositional to ‘‘religion’’ is foreign to Islam.
That is to say, ultimately, that Islam apparently always had two of the
key criteria of ‘‘secularism’’—some measure of separation of religion
from state, and a regard for and focus on the world of human existence.
ARAB SECULARISM IN THE MODERN ERA

As the modern age dawned on al-‘alam al-‘arabi, two important con-
ditions obtained: first, it was a subordinate component of a much
larger Islamic empire dominated by non-Arabs, namely the Ottoman

Turkish state; and second, it and the Ottoman state within which it
was contained were coming under increasing pressure from an ascen-
dant Western civilization, which was soon to take the form of invasion
and colonization. Arab secularism must be seen in the context of these
grander processes of colonialism, nationalism, globalization, and mod-
ernization in general.
The early modern circumstances of Arab religion and society
depend heavily on the Turks, who found themselves on the decline by
the mid-1700s—ending their assaults on Central Europe (after having
long since lost the Islamic outposts in Spain) and facing defeat from
their northern rival Russia. The Christian communities had already
come to the attention of a rising France and Austria, which demanded
the right to defend and administer those populations; because of mili-
tary and financial weakness, the Ottomans were forced to submit. By
1792 Selim III recognized the necessity to modernize his army, which
meant Westernizing it, and even those limited reforms were met by re-
sistance from religious and political conservatives.
The urgent need for, and the inevitably occurrence of, change was
made immanent by the French occupation of Egypt in 1798. Although it
was temporary (ended by way of British assistance to the Turks), the
invasion inaugurated the cultural shocks that are still felt in the Arab
world—as well as the lens through which it sees much of present-day
history. Interestingly, although the French landing in Egypt was part
of the revolutionary movement in France, distinguished by rationalist/
secularist/nationalist fervor, it was not utterly hostile to or dismissive of
religion: Napoleon’s proclamation to his new Egyptian subjects began
with the words, ‘‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate;
there is no God but God, He has no offspring and no partner.’’ But it went
on to assert that the new administration would be ‘‘built on the basis of
freedom and equality’’—setting the stage for the fusing of secular culture
and religion that would characterize the Arab world from then on.23
The defeat in Egypt and the growing encroachments of Europe had
two immediate effects, both in the direction of ‘‘secularization.’’ In
Egypt Muhammad Ali was established in power after the French with-
drawal, and he became the first well-known and successful modernizer
in the Arab world. He opened modern Western-style schools ‘‘to pro-
duce personnel for government and administration, not to produce a
person imbued with Islamo-Egyptian culture.’’24 By 1860 the products
of these institutions were rising to administrative positions, including
Isma’il Pasha, who took over political control in 1863. Egypt would go
on to become probably the center of Arab modernism and secularism,
then and today, as we will explore below.
Meanwhile, at the center of the empire, Mahmed II initiated a series
of reforms starting in 1826 that would come to known collectively as
the Tanzimat. Among these moves were the disbanding of the Janissary
corps (the traditional soldiery of the empire) in favor of a modern-type
military, for which purposes officer-training colleges were created. Also,
medical schools and programs for civil servants were established, news-
papers were introduced, and governmental administration was reorgan-
ized and modernized; even Western-style clothing was adopted.
Thus, at the center of Ottoman power and in the Arab periphery
(not only Egypt, but Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon, which were also feel-
ing the penetration of the West and responding with their own ver-
sions of reform, often for their own local reasons, as especially in the
case of Tunisia), modernization was arriving in force by the mid- to
late-1800s. One of the components of this modernization was seculari-
zation, or perhaps what we might better call liberalism, especially in
terms of education, politics, and culture. Among its first Arab advo-
cates was Rifa’a Badawi Rafi’ al-Tahtawi (1801–1873), an Egyptian who
studied in Paris for five years under the orders of Muhammad Ali,
learning French and English literature. For him as for many of his con-
temporaries and descendants, the immediate problem was the per-
ceived backwardness and weakness of Arab vis-a-vis the expanding
West; for him as for them, the solution was to learn selectively from
the West. In that sense a liberalizer or modernizer or reformer, he was
far from an atheist or anti-Islamist. In fact, he represents the main
trend in Arab–Islamic modernization, which is to borrow discerningly
from Western civilization while often sharply criticizing some or most
of that civilization, all within a distinctly Islamic idiom.
Al-Tahtawi in particular studied and admired aspects of European
political theory, notably the ideas of individual freedom and democ-
racy. In his writings such as Manahij al-albab al-misriyya fi mabahij al-
adab al-‘asriyya (loosely translated, The Paths of Egyptian Hearts in the
Joys of the Contemporary Arts),25 he described and praised Western de-
mocracy, but in a recognizably Islamic way. To those who resisted
learning anything from the West, he wrote, ‘‘Such people are deluded;
for civilizations are turns and phases. These sciences were once Islamic
when we were at the apex of our civilization. Europe took them from
us and developed them further. It is now our duty to learn from the
just as they learned from our ancestors’’ (p. 18)26. That is, civilization—
presumably even Arab–Islamic civilization—is a product of its unique
moment of development, that is, a secular product in the original sense
of the term.
While al-Tahtawi recommended the rule of law and civil freedom,
he continued to accept the absolute executive power of the political
authority; in this regard he was no modern democrat. However, his
most revolutionary contribution was an emphasis not on religion or
even on Arabism as the root of Egyptian identity but on membership
in the watan, the country or nation. He advanced a modern concept of
wataniyyah (nationhood) and hubb al-watan (‘‘love of country/territorial

patriotism’’) as the essence of Egyptianness—one that included Islam
but also harkened back to ancient pre-Islamic Egypt as well.
Others followed more or less in al-Tahtawi’s footsteps, including
Khairuddin al-Tunisi and Abdel Rahman al-Kawakibi. The former in
particular, in his 1867 Aqwam al-masalik fi ma’rifat ahwal al-mamalik (The
Road Most Straight to Know the Conditions of the State) urged Arabs to
embrace ‘‘whatever is conducive to the welfare of the Islamic commu-
nity and the development of its civilization, such as the expansion of
the bounds of science and learning and the preparations of the paths
which lead to wealth . . . and the basis of all this is good govern-
ment.’’27 Al-Tunisi was not the only non-Egyptian (he was Tunisian,
obviously) to join the movement; a number of Syrian/Lebanese writers
also added their voices to the reform efforts, especially Christians,
including Faris al-Shidyaq and Butrus al-Bustani (both Maronites).
However, the two greatest figures of the nineteenth century both
operated in the Egyptian context; these were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
(1839–1897) and Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905). Both, but perhaps al-
Afghani more than ‘Abduh, embodied the contradiction of being
utterly opposed to colonialism but not opposed to everything that the
colonialists thought and did. Al-Afghani, of whom ‘Abduh was a stu-
dent and follower, harshly criticized Western science and reason for
the suffering and destruction it caused, condemning it as ‘‘undiluted
ignorance, sheer barbarism, and total savagery.’’28 Even so, he under-
stood the requirement that Arabs discover and master the sources of
Western economic, technical, and military power, yet he demanded
that this all be done in a distinctly Islamic way.
Thus, according to Badawi, ‘‘Al-Afghani wanted to reform Islam, not
to modernize it.’’29 Yet, reformation in this case is an ostensibly modern
phenomenon: it entailed questioning not only Western practice and
assumptions but medieval Muslim ones as well. It entailed, that is, ‘‘a
new Ijtihad [interpretation] and the discarding of the authority of the
established scholars.’’30 The answers to Arab–Islamic problems were in
Islam, if correctly understood—which meant that his predecessors
incorrectly understood it. The primary novelty of his approach was to
see Islam less as a religion than as a civilization or culture (a clearly
nineteenth-century European idea): as Hourani puts it, for al-Afghani
‘‘The aim of man’s acts is not the service of God alone; it is the creation
of human civilization flourishing in all its parts’’31—which is, once
again, a ‘‘secular’’ attitude in a sense. While hardly a rationalist of the
Western sort (in fact, he wrote a tract entitled al-Radd ala’l-dhahriyyin,
meaning The Refutation of the Materialists) he did maintain the compati-
bility of science and Islam, to the point of debating the well-known
Western scholar Ernst Renan on the subject. Contrary to Renan’s claim
that Islam was essentially incompatible with modern science (a typical
‘‘orientalist’’ view), al-Afghani held ‘‘that the essence of Islam was the
same as that of modern rationalism’’ and that the Qur’an anticipated
many things that Western science had only just discovered. Even more,
he insisted that Islam contained the moral and personal code that
‘‘could save the secular world from that revolutionary chaos’’ observ-
able in the political, social, and economic upheavals of the day.32
The student Muhammad ‘Abduh concurred with the master that the
West was ‘‘a political force to be resisted and a social ideal to be imi-
tated,’’ which led not to an abandonment of Islam but a reformulation
of it.33 The Arab world was surely in a state of decay and stagnation, he
allowed, and many benefits could be derived from the West, but these
benefits—science, limited government, and rational thought—were not
only well-suited to Islam but were actually contained in the foundations
of Islam (the salafiyyah or ways of the ancestors/forefathers). A rejuven-
ated and rightly-interpreted—some might say ‘‘modernized’’—Islam
would solve nineteenth-century Arab problems. For he recognized, in
the classically secularist way, that ‘‘laws vary as the conditions of nation
vary,’’34 that is, that a society and even a religion is a product of its
historical moment. Western civilization could not be simply transplanted
into Islamic territory, but neither was Islam a static and fixed thing.
One of his greatest complaints against Islam was its habit of taqlid or
blind imitation; drawing on the opposite tradition, maslaha (interest/
well-being/usefulness) and talfiq (‘‘piecing together’’ or combining the
best of multiple sources of knowledge/interpretation), he distinguished
between what was permanent and obligatory in Arab–Islamic civiliza-
tion and what was temporal and optional or at least modifiable.
Through such modern media as the journals al ‘Urwat al Wuthqa
(commencing in 1883) and more influentially al Manar, he propagated
the notion that Islam was every bit as rational as European science and
philosophy and that Islam could be the basis for a modern progressive
Arab way of life. He went so far as to integrate the idea of evolution
and the prophecy of Muhammad, as well as to support the notion of
causality (which some Muslims saw and see as a denial of Allah’s final
authority). Islam, in his mind, was a religion of reason, of nature, and
of the future, and he went so far as proposing changes to the curricu-
lum of the leading Egyptian university, Al Azhar, to add modern natu-
ral and social sciences. This modern knowledge was essential to the
wealth and happiness of the people and to the strength of the society
and was therefore not un-Islamic or un-Arab—if taught in Arabic with
a firm moral underpinning. Many of his changes were enacted,
although he was forced to resign from the reform committee in 1905,
partly due to pressure from conservatives.
Al-Afghani and ‘Abduh were hardly the only figures of moderniza-
tion and reform in the colonial Arab world, nor were they the most
radical. Muhammad Rashid Rida contributed to and perpetuated the
work of both, in a more conservative and theological vein. Farid Wajdi,

in his al-Madaniyyi wa’l-Islam (Islam and Civilization), raised the laws of
society and history discovered by the West to virtually the same level
as the laws revealed in Islam but insisted that they were identical. ‘‘In
such works,’’ Hourani opines, ‘‘Islam was, so to speak, ‘dissolved’ into
modern thought.’’35 Lufit al-Sayyid demoted Islam still further, reach-
ing a basically pluralistic or relativistic position that, while Islam pro-
vided the basis for Arab civilization, other religions could and did
serve that function for other civilizations—and that therefore religion
was in an important sense ‘‘functional’’ and not the only contributing
factor to that function.
Among the Christian Arab modernists of that and the following gen-
eration were Shibli Shumayyil, Farah Antun, Georgie Zaidan, and
Salama Musa. Shumayyil (1850–1917) in particular introduced Darwin-
ism to the Arab world and championed the separation of religion from
government; a much more thorough secularist than his predecessors,
he ‘‘believed that the religion of science necessitated a declaration of
war on older religions’’ and that ‘‘nations grew stronger as religion
grew weaker.’’36 Antun (1874–1922), drawing his inspiration from the
classical philosopher Ibn Rushd, was such a complete secularist and
separatist that Rashid Rida accused him of atheism. Musa (1887–1958)
was more positively hostile not only to Islam and religion but to East-
ern civilization as a whole, asserting that ‘‘society cannot advance or
progress unless the role of religion in the human conscience is re-
stricted; progress is the new religion of humanity.’’37
We have already encountered the polemical religion/state separa-
tism of Ali Abd al-Raziq (1888–1966). Taha Hussain (1879–1973) sought
to debunk early Muslim culture and literature as well as politics:
beyond rejecting the divinity of the Caliphate and of the political
authority of Islam, he also wrote a controversial book in 1926 called On
Pre-Islamic Poetry in which he questioned the authenticity of certain
aspects of the Qur’an and accused Muslims of forging much of so-
called pre-Islamic culture. In his 1938 The Future of Culture in Egypt he
went so far as to suggest that Egypt essentially was a part of the West
and not of Islamic civilization at all.
ARAB SECULARISM FROM INDEPENDENCE TO THE PRESENT

Albert Hourani refers to the period from 1798 to 1939 as the ‘‘liberal
age’’ in Arab–Islamic thought, and although it is certainly true that
there were liberalizing agents and forces afoot, as we have just seen, it
would be incorrect to assume that these were the only ones in action.
Zaki Badawi suggests that four concurrent movements were in opera-
tion: the liberal/Westernizing, the secularist, the conservative, and the
Islamic revivalist. All responded to the same basic social/political/
economic conditions, all grappled with the challenge not only of West-
ern civilization but of colonialism, globalization, and modernity in gen-
eral, and all referred to—and most, including the liberals and some
secularists—the specific heritage of Islam, raising the question of
Islamic or Arab ‘‘specificity.’’
If the colonial era in al-‘alam al-‘arabi had opened hesitantly with the
1798 invasion of Egypt, it was in full effect by the French conquest of
Algeria (starting in 1830) and of Tunisia (starting in 1881), the British
administration of Egypt (from 1882) and Sudan (from 1898), and of
course the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, which
brought French and British occupation to the Arab heartland. With these
events, the victory of the West seemed complete, and the crisis of the
East seemed acute. Interestingly if not ironically, the period from the
1880s, through the independence of the various Arab or Muslim states,
until 1967 at least, may be remembered as the great age of Arab secular-
ism. In fact, according to the analysis of Ibrahim Abu-Rabi’, of the four
main currents of twentieth-century Arabic thought—nationalist, liberal,
Marxist/leftist, and Islamist—three might rightly be dubbed ‘‘secularist.’’
Secularism was one movement or dream among many until outside
events once again—specifically the First World War and the break-up
of the Turkish empire—brought secularism to power in Ataturk’s new
modern state of Turkey. As described elsewhere in this volume,
Ataturk sought to modernize Turkey by eradicating the most backward
and superstitious elements of religion and by putting the remainder of
religion in its place within a secular society, which meant out of pub-
lic/political affairs and under the authority of the state, which included
after 1924 a ‘‘Department of the Affairs of Piety’’ to manage and
administer religion secularly.
In the Arab world from Iraq to Morocco, most often postcolonial
state government, including ‘‘development and administrative strat-
egies, coercive functions, information flow, and educational systems
were firmly in the group of men whose training and outlook were
overwhelmingly secular’’ (p. xiii).38 As John Esposito adds,
While the separation of religion and politics was not total (as it is not in
fact in many secular countries in the West), the role of Islam in state and
society as a source of legitimation of rulers, states, and government insti-
tutions was greatly curtailed. . . . The central government also attempted
to bring Islamic institutions (mosques, religiously endowed properties or
awqaf, religious courts, etc.) under state control.39 (p. 2)
This was, in the words of John Entelis, an era of optimism, coming after
the flush of successful independence movements, ‘‘envisioned [as] a sus-
tained period of ‘modernization’ involving expanded social opportunity,
sustained economic growth, and cultural diffusion or ‘Westernization’’’;
despite the fact that such regimes were often ‘‘blatantly authoritarian,’’
hopes were still high and such rigid social control from the central was
frequently seen as necessary if not actually beneficial (p. ix).40
The most conspicuous cases of secular Arab governments, usually
with more or less strongly secularizing policies for their societies, were
Algeria, Tunisia (especially under the rule of Habib Bourguiba from
1957 to 1987), the Ba’athist regimes as in Syria and Iraq, and of course
Egypt under Nasser and his successors, Sadat and Mubarak. Tunisia
may be the most overt example: after French invasion in 1881, a ‘‘Young
Tunisian’’ movement soon began, along the lines of the ‘‘Young Turk’’
movement within the Ottoman Empire, that sought to reform society
through ‘‘adaptation of desirable and useful Western social, economic,
and political values.’’ (p. 32).41 It is not at all insignificant that Tunisia,
like the rest of the Maghreb, was a French colony, exposed to a particu-
larly stringent version of secularism known as laicisme; a product of rev-
olutionary France, laicisme (related to the English word ‘‘laity’’) was a
radical program of not only separation but suppression of religion,
which, in the words of Rachid al-Ghannouchi literally ‘‘declared war
against the church,’’ and it was men who were ‘‘graduates of the French
school of thought’’ who inherited the levers of power there (p. 97).42
Bourguiba sought to modernize his country in a definitely Western
mold. He introduced reforms of politics and government, the media,
and education. He also championed a ‘‘code of personal status’’ that
contradicted Muslim custom and shari’a law in a variety of ways,
including outlawing polygamy and extending women’s rights in mar-
riage, which institution was reconceived as a voluntary civil contract
rather than a religious bond. His administration embraced family plan-
ning and limited waqf religious properties and endowments. In his later
years he became a staunch opponent of militant Islamism.
Algeria has been another case of post-French secular government.
By World War I there were ‘‘new voices protesting the colonial condi-
tions,’’ not traditionalist or Islamic ones but ‘‘city voices speaking
almost exclusively in French and demanding not the world of the
Qur’an, the Sunna, or of the local holy men but the world envisioned
by European thinkers—Voltaire, Rousseau, Auguste Comte. . . . At first
assimilationists and later liberal nationalists, these men were over-
whelmingly secular in outlook’’ (p. 75).43 The Algerian struggle against
French occupation, starting in 1954, also ‘‘was instigated by secular
militants,’’44 and the struggle eventually brought to power the Front de
Liberation Nationale (FLN), which governed as an Arab socialist and
revolutionary party with ‘‘a thin veneer of Islam’’ while it ‘‘pursued an
essentially secular path of political and economic development.’’45 As
recounted below, in the late 1980s the FLN faced a stiff challenge from
a populist Islamic party that caused it to negate the electoral victory of
the Islamists—thus choosing secularism over democracy.
Ba’athism was a form of Arab nationalism that took hold predomi-

nantly in Syria and Iraq. From the word ba’ath for ‘‘resurrection,’’ it was
a movement arising in the 1940s from the Syrian Arab Socialist Party of
Akram Howrani and the Arab Resurrection Party of Michel Aflaq; Aflaq
in particular had studied in Europe and was influenced by the ideas of
Herder on nationalism and Lenin on imperialism. By the 1950s the
Ba’ath Party held a significant share of seats in the Syrian parliament,
and in 1958 it eventually but temporarily achieved one of its pan-Arab
goals by merging Syria into a ‘‘United Arab Republic’’ with Egypt. In
1963 political coups brought Ba’athists to power in Syria and Iraq, in the
latter of which Abd-al Karim Qasim was overthrown in a purge that
would subsequently lead to Saddam Hussein’s reign (1979–2003).
The Ba’ath regimes, especially the Iraqi version and especially the
Hussein version, highlight the tendency of ‘‘secular’’ Arab govern-
ments to exploit religion even if they did not practice religion and to
devolve into authoritarianism or worse. In fact, many observers despair
that Ba’athism was and is not so much opposed to religion as to any-
thing that stands in the way of its absolute authority. Nevertheless, its
policies do pit it against Islam in many ways and against radical politi-
cal Islam in almost every way.
Morocco is a unique case of a monarchy that survived colonialism
but whose postindependence ‘‘model of state-building unmistakably
reflects the elements of a secular state: liberal orientation, a constitu-
tion, parliament, political pluralism, professional organizations, and a
modern educational system’’ (pp. 167–68).46 One of the great figures on
that scene was Muhammad Ibn al-Hassan al-Wazzani (1910–1978), a
‘‘secularist’’ and nationalist who admired the politician Ataturk and
the scholar al-Raziq. He believed in constraints on the power of the
sovereign, based both in Western liberal values and his reading of Is-
lamic history, such that caliphs and even the ulama have no political
authority. He was thus a firm religion–state separatist and a proponent
of the National Charter of Rights, a document modeled after the French
Declaration des Droits de l’Homme and du Citoyen.
Egypt is our final but perhaps the best-known instance of a secula-
rist administration, which has now lasted several decades through at
least three rulers; as we have seen, Egypt has in fact been a center of
Arab secularism for generations. Home to al-Afghani, ‘Abduh, and
many more secular heroes, the Egyptian revolution of 1952 ‘‘brought to
power men who [were] fully alive to the need for accepting the techni-
ques of modern industry, and living in the universe of modern political
discourse,’’ even if they were intent to put a distinctly Arab spin on
them.47 Like Ataturk whom he emulated in many ways, Jamal Abd’ul
Nasir, also known as Gemal Abdel Nasser, put ‘‘national’’ interest and
identity ahead of religious: he envisioned an Egyptian unity, and an
Arab unity, and even a non-Western unity that clearly did not rest on
Islam. Along with unity he emphasized Western-style republicanism

(although certainly not democracy) and industrialization, and while he
aimed to advance the cause of pan-Arabism, he also had to confront
the problem of Islamist opposition, particularly in the form of the Mus-
lim Brotherhood. In fact, in 1966 Nasser had one of the most prominent
leaders and theorists of the Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, executed,
‘‘arresting and imprisoning thousands, and driving many others under-
ground or into exile. By the late Nasser period [his regime ended in
1971], the state had coopted the religious establishment and silenced its
Islamic (and indeed any and all) opposition.’’48 Anwar Sadat (ruled
1971–1981) roughly carried on the policies of Nasser while moderating
somewhat toward the Islamists; this did not prevent his assassination
at the hands of the Jamaat al-Jihad or ‘‘Society of Holy War.’’ His suc-
cessor and still president in 2009, Hosni Mubarak, initially attempted
to steer a course of ‘‘political liberalization and tolerance while at the
same time responding quickly and firmly to those who resorted to vio-
lence to challenge the authority of the government,’’ including but not
limited to the Islamists, but within a decade this policy gave way to
more aggressive response to the challenge of both religious extremists
(those who advocated the violent overthrow of the government) and
moderates (those who participated within the established political and
legal framework) resorting to ‘‘harassment and imprisonment’’ against
threats Islamic and otherwise.49
THE LIMITS OF ARAB SECULARISM AND ITS PROSPECTS

FOR THE FUTURE
As is plain to see, the promises of the Entelis’ ‘‘era of optimism’’
were not entirely realized; indeed, he determines that the golden days
of benign authoritarianism turned more malignant in the 1960s and
1970s, with the dictatorial state morphing into the mukhabarat or Arab
police state. This was one, but by no means the only, reason why secu-
larism began to fall from favor in many parts of al-‘alam al-‘arabi. In
fact, one sure sign of a turning tide was the ‘‘conversion’’ of a number
of previously liberal or Marxist Arab thinkers back to Islam, including
Adil Hussain, Tariq al-Bishri, Muhammad Imarah, Rashid al-Ghannouchi,
and Munir Shafiq. At the same time, openly Islamist, even militant and
violent groups and parties, began to emerge, triumph, and—in the case
of Iran—achieve power.
Again, there are many explanations for the distaste toward secular-
ism in recent decades, not all of which have to do with secularism
itself. One of the most glaring explanations is the association of secular-
ism with the foreign and still dominant West: many thoughtful Arabs
perceive it as yet more cultural imposition, a form or arm of neocoloni-
alism. Additionally, the expectations of economic growth and
prosperity were not met: scholars and the masses alike noticed that
increasing ‘‘modernization’’ did not seem to bring wealth and eco-
nomic independence but rather increasing dependence on and hegem-
ony of the West; Arab regimes actually often appeared to be in
collusion with the West (especially the Persian Gulf states, Saudi Ara-
bia in particular), or at best unable to mount an effective response. In a
word, the secular-nationalist option seemed have failed.
A number of commentators note the wider failure to develop a mod-
ern secular ‘‘civil society,’’ which took various shapes. For one—and
this complaint is echoed in from many sources—the secularizing forces
in most Arab states were always a small elite group. As Abu-Rabi’ puts
it, the ‘‘social base’’ of secularist nationalist modernization was always
‘‘narrow,’’ attracting little of the general populace of the state.50 Even
worse, he suggests that in many instances there was not only a class
but a tribal or sectarian division between the ruling secular elite and
the majority of the citizens. Furthermore, and partly because of this
structural weakness, regimes could not and did not support the devel-
opment of independent institutions of a civil society, such as trade
organizations, professional groups, free political parties, and the like.
Again in Abu-Rabi’s formulation, leaders tried to accomplish modern-
ization without modernism—without the cultural and social founda-
tions upon which such values and practices are securely built.
Finally, there were political reasons—both internal and external—for
the perceived retreat of secularism. One was the continuing irritant of
the Israel–Palestine issue. The Arab defeat in the 1967 war was seen by
many as a total indictment of the secular modernizing project. Later,
the collapse of the USSR and the exhaustion of Marxism drove others
away from that source of secularist thought. More than few observers
claim that the West did not really want or support truly free and suc-
cessful Arab democratic and secular systems; however, perhaps most
directly, secularism was often associated with the bitter experience of
political oppression and even violence at home. As John Voll states,
‘‘the processes of Westernization as experienced in North Africa [and
most of the Arab world] in the past century lead not to democracy but
to authoritarianism’’ (p. 14).51 Thus, much of the resistance to secular
regimes, from Iran to Algeria, was not only or mostly about the secu-
larism but about the tyranny and repressiveness of those regimes.
We must then see the rise of Islamism in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries as partly a response to the failed economics and
exclusionary politics of the existing Arab states. In this sense, however, this
resurgent and muscular religion is in a sense an effect of secularization—
and in a sense more than a bit secular itself. Bichara Khader writes that the
new Islamism is not traditional religion, certainly not eternal religious
truth, but rather ‘‘the product of a given space and time. You do not need
to search in the Koranic texts to understand Islamism. Instead, you need to
analyze and interpret the social, political, and economic realities in which it
has developed. The explanation lies not in theology, but in the human sci-
ences’’ (p. 58).52 Islamism is religion, to be sure, but it is religion in reaction
and thus is very much a creature of its particular historical and social con-
text, of its ‘‘age,’’ and thereby ‘‘secular’’ in the original sense of the term.
As Abu-Rabi’ summarizes,
The debate about religion in contemporary Arab society is more than

merely theological or metaphysical controversy. It is about all things that
have gone wrong in contemporary Arab society; it is, in fact, about the
identity of an Arab society that fell under the impact of the humanistic/
capitalistic/post-Enlightenment West of the nineteenth century.53
Such Islamism has always been one of the currents in the response to
the encroaching West. Thus, the ‘‘causes’’ of the Islamic movement are
more than slightly secular: unemployment, poverty, inadequate hous-
ing, corruption, repression, cultural/political/military weakness, most
recently unaffordable or simply unavailable food, and so on. One Alge-
rian man complained that his only four options were unemployment,
participation in the black market, emigration to France, or membership
in the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS, the party that ‘‘successfully’’ chal-
lenged the ruling FLN for power, only to be denied that power by
force).54 One last time, the origins and strength of contemporary Is-
lamic movements ‘‘are to be found primarily in the political and eco-
nomic circumstances of these countries rather than in the religious and
cultural traditions of their inhabitants.’’55
Reference to Islamic ‘‘movements’’ reminds us too that, while there
is religion (among other things) in their message, there is secularity and
modernism in their medium. Islamists form political parties and use all
of the tools of modern technology (print, television, computers, the
Internet, not to mention modern weapons) to achieve their goals. Some
Islamists engage in debates with secularists and other opponents, as
occurred in 1986 in Egypt between secularist Fu’ad Zakariya and Islam-
ists Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali and Yusuf al-Qardawi (with con-
verted Islamists Tariq al-Bishri and ‘Adil Husayn serving as
commentators—an event which was formally entitled ‘‘A Seminar [on
Islam] and Secularism’’ (Nadwa hawla al-Islam wa al-‘ilmaniyya).56 Similar
encounters happened in 1997, including a debate between Syrian secu-
larist Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm and conservative Shaykh Yusif al-Qaradawi
(which was broadcast on the Arab television station al-Jazira) and
another between Nasir Hamid Abu Zayd and Egyptian religious thinker
Muhammad ‘Imara. Running arguments also take place in newspapers
and journals. Some, like Khalid Muhammad Khalid, have gone so far as
to endorse representative democracy, multiparty elections, and freedom
of the press, as desirable and compatible forms of Islamic politics.
Ultimately, if a religious movement actually seizes power, by force

or by vote, it must then govern. Although this might seem like the
defeat of secularism (the closing of the space between religion and
state), in an ironic manner it is a triumph for secularism, as the reli-
gious movement must now function like a government in the real
world. A regime like Khomeini’s in Iran or the Taliban’s in Afghani-
stan may indeed institute the shari’a, but must also deliver the mail,
pick up the trash, and maintain the army—all secular activities. As evi-
dence of the contradiction implicit in the merger of religion and tempo-
ral power, in 1988, Khomeini declared that the state had the authority
to rule even in opposition to Islamic law or ritual duty.
One final point to be made is that today’s confident Islamism is not
inevitably the end of secularism in the Arab world. Just as Islamism
represents a response and challenge to secularism, so secularism reap-
pears as a counter-response and counter-challenge—perhaps, in some
cases, more confident and radical than before. In answer to the Islamist
wave, Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawi in 1987 published Political Islam,
which renews the argument from al-Raziq that ‘‘Islam was from the
beginning an apolitical religion concerned solely with spiritual and
ethical guidance. The form Islam has subsequently taken—as ‘religion
and state’—for him is a deviation and a perversion of that true concep-
tion’’ (pp. 32–33).57 Even most insistent voices like those of Fu’ad
Zakariyya and Faraj Fawda (also known as Farag Foda) joined the
chorus; Zakariyya, for instance, has called the mentality of the Islamists
‘‘medieval’’ and warned urgently about the need to oppose Islamism
as a political force:
Any struggle between political parties and tendencies in Egypt . . . remains

a struggle between two human positions, whereas the Islamic tendency, if
successful, would move this struggle to a completely different level. It
would become a struggle between heaven and earth, between the party of
God and the party of the devil. . . . Once the governing body comes to
speak in the name of the shari’a, opposition turns to unbelief, any differ-
ence becomes an insolence in the face of God’s law or an apostasy that has
to be punished applying the appropriate hadd [Quranic punishment—in
this case, death]. The conditions of political and social struggle will become
much worse and much more difficult. I am not exaggerating if I say that
the idea of the struggle itself will then be thoroughly uprooted.
Therefore the interest of the left, and with it all nationalist forces, in
maintaining the proper conditions for a legitimate political struggle
imposes on all the duty to close ranks and stand against a tendency
threatening to eradicate the principle of struggle itself.58
Fawda, regarded by some as more outspoken and articulate than Zakar-

iyya, paid the ultimate price for criticizing his enemies as ‘‘obscurantists’’
(zalamiyyun) and ridiculing them publicly: he was assassinated on June
8, 1992—which act was lauded by Ma’mum al-Hudaybi, the head of the

Muslim Brotherhood at the time, as the proper fate for an apostate.
While such attempts to stamp out secularism may have a chilling effect
on some of its proponents, they also have the potential to push some indi-
viduals from a tolerant secularism to a confrontation one or even to out-
right rejection of Islam and all religion. Already these products of
repressive tyrannical religion (which was itself a product of repressive
tyrannical politics) have appeared, in the person of Ibn Warraq, Ayaan
Hirsch Ali, and the almost two dozen subjects of Susan Crimps’ and Joel
Richardson’s new book Why We Left Islam.59 So, while secularism and
even atheism may not be the driving forces in the Arab world, they are
forces that have existed in some form or another from the very beginning
of its Islamic phase and that appear certain to survive, reemerge, and
redefine Islam and al-‘alam al-‘arabi for a future age, for a future saeculum.
NOTES
1. Ernest Gellner, ‘‘Islam and Marxism: Some Comparisons, ’’ International
Affairs 67, no. 1 (1991): 1–6.
2. Alexander Flores, ‘‘Egypt: A New Secularism?’’ Middle East Report 153
(1988):27–30.
3. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (London and
New York: Oxford University Press), 1.
4. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the
Future of Shari’a (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press,
2008).
5. S. Parvez Manzoor, ‘‘Desacralizing Secularism,’’ in Islam and Secularism
in the Middle East, ed. Azzam Tamimi and John L. Esposito (Washington
Square, NY: New York University Press, 2000), 81–96.
6. Hourani, op. cit., 10.
7. Ira M. Lapidus, ‘‘The Separation of State and Religion in the Develop-
ment of Early Islamic Society,’’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 6, no.
4 (1975):363–385.
8. Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi’, Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967
Arab Intellectual History (London and Sterling VA: Pluto Press), 15.
10. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddima, Vol. 3, 2nd ed., Franz Rosenthal, trans.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 427.
11. Quoted in Maurice Boormans, ‘‘Cultural Dialogue and ‘Islamic Specific-
ity,’ ’’ in Islam, Modernism, and the West: Cultural and Political Relations at the End
of the Millennium, ed. Gema Martin Munoz (London and New York: I. B. Tauris
Publishers, 81–93), p. 92–93.
12. Quoted in ibid., 91.
13. Quoted in Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development
Ideologies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 131.
14. Lapidus, op. cit., 364.
15. Ibid., 384.
16. Ibn Warraq, Why I am Not a Muslim (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,
1995), 247.
17. Ibid., 254.
18. Ibid., 283.
19. Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1988), 25.
20. An-Na’im, op. cit., 49.
21. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002),
100.
22. Falur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradi-
tion (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 14.
23. Quoted in Hourani, op. cit., 49.
24. Rahman, op. cit., 59.
26. Quoted in Azzam Tamimi, ‘‘The Origins of Arab Secularism,’’ in Islam
and Secularism in the Middle East, ed. Azzam Tamimi and John L. Esposito
(Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 2001), 13–28.
28. Quoted in M. A. Zaki Badawi, The Reformers of Egypt (London: Croom
Helm, 1976), 23.
29. Ibid., 29.
30. Ibid., 28.
32. Ibid., 123.
33. Badawi, op. cit., 40.
35. Ibid., 162.
36. Badawi, op. cit., 22–23.
38. John Ruedy, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Islamism and Secularism in North Africa,
ed. John Ruedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996 [1994]), xiii–xx.
39. John Esposito, ‘‘Introduction: Islam and Secularism in the Twenty-First
Century,’’ in Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, ed. Azzam Tamimi and
John L. Esposito (Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 2001)
1–12.
40. John P. Entelis, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Islam, Democracy, and the State in North
Africa, ed. John P. Entelis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1997), ix–xxv.
41. Kenneth J. Perkins, ‘‘‘The Masses Look Ardently to Istanbul’: Tunisia,
Islam, and the Ottoman Empire, 1837–1931,’’ in Islamism and Secularism in North
Africa, ed. John Ruedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996 [1994]), 23–36.
42. Rachid al-Ghannouchi, ‘‘Secularism in the Arab Maghreb,’’ in Islam and
Secularism in the Middle East, ed. Azzam Tamimi and John L. Esposito (Wash-
ington Square, NY: New York University Press, 2001), 97–123.
43. John Ruedy, ‘‘Continuities and Discontinuities in the Algerian Confron-
tation with Europe,’’ in Islamism and Secularism in North Africa, ed. John Ruedy
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996 [1994]), 73–85.
44. Ibid., 78.
45. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 152.
46. Emad Eldin Shahin, ‘‘Secularism and Nationalism: The Political Discourse
of ‘Abd al-Salam Yassin,’’ in John Ruedy, ed. Islamism and Secularism in North
Africa, ed. John Ruedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996 [1994]), 167–185.
47. Hourani, op. cit., 348–349.
48. Esposito and Voll, op. cit., 174.
49. Ibid., 177.
50. Abu-Rabi’, op. cit., 52.
51. John O. Voll, ‘‘Sultans, Saints, and Presidents: The Islamic Community
and the State in North Africa,’’ in Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa,
ed. John P. Entelis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1997), 1–16.
52. Bichara Khader, ‘‘The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: A Singular
Approach to a Plural Mediterranean,’’ in Islam, Modernism, and the West: Cul-
tural and Political Relations at the End of the Millennium, ed. Gema Martin Munoz
(London and New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers), 47–62.
53. Abu-Rabi’, op. cit., 53–54.
54. Mark Tessler, ‘‘The Origins of Popular Support for Islamic Movements:
A Political Economy Analysis,’’ in Islam, Democracy, and the State in North
Africa, ed. John P. Entelis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1997), 93–126.
55. Ibid., 93.
56. Nancy E. Gallagher, ‘‘Islam v. Secularism in Cairo: An Account of the
Dar al-Hikma Debate,’’ Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 2, (1989):208–215.
57. Alexander Flores, ‘‘Secularism, Integralism, and Political Islam,’’ Middle
East Report 183 (1993):32–38.
59. Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim; Ayaan Hirsch Ali, Infidel (New
York: Free Press, 2007); Susan Crimp and Joel Richardson, eds. Why We Left
Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out (Los Angeles: WND Books, 2008).
Chapter 7
Atheism and Secularity in India

Innaiah Narisetti
The Republic of India, with a population of one billion, is 81.3 percent

Hindu, 12 percent Muslim, 2.3 percent Christian, 1.9 percent Sikh, and
less than 1 percent Buddhist. The census has no column to note the
number of unbelievers or atheists. The Indian constitution is secular
but the governments and general society are nonsecular. The separa-
tion of state and religion is never implemented, neither in letter nor in
spirit. Secularism is interpreted as ‘‘equal respect to all religions,’’ an
interpretation that puts limitations on the development of a truly secu-
lar spirit. Every religion at some point has entered into politics, all po-
litical parties use religion as a way to catch votes, and every religion
takes advantage of this situation in getting tax exemptions. This mutual
understanding among the parties concerning religion does not allow
secular laws to be put into practice. All religions get holidays for their
festivals, which are officially declared as national holidays. Govern-
ments practice religious rituals during opening ceremonies, inaugura-
tions, ground-breaking occasions, and so on. Elected representatives
normally take an oath in the name of God, whereas very few take an
oath on their conscience or the constitution.
However, the Indian constitution also envisages scientific temper as a
fundamental duty; human rights are also fundamental. The first prime
minister of an independent India was Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). He
stood for secular values and a uniform civil code that transcended reli-
gious laws. But he was also head of the ruling Congress party, which
never allowed him to have his own way in implementing secularism.
Among India’s politicians since Nehru, atheists, rationalists, and human-
ists can be counted on one’s fingers; most prominent are the late
Mr. Ram Manohar Lohia, a socialist leader who was an ardent atheist
and propagandist, and Bhimrao Ambedkar, a Buddhist leader who was

also a secularist who converted some lower caste Hindus to Buddhism
and fought against caste hierarchy, although without much success.
Indian public schools do have secular education; the government of
India has established national-level textbook guidelines that are fol-
lowed by state-level textbooks. They are by and large secular. How-
ever, private schools run by religious institutions are based on the
teaching of their respective holy books, and they are inculcating the
children with blind beliefs.
In the absence of secular political parties, various nongovernmental
organizations are functioning at numerous levels to propagate secular
values, which has proven to be an uphill task. The fact is, membership
within all the secular organizations in India is negligible among the
population of one billion. It would be surprising if the total member-
ship exceeded more than half a million. Most of the organizations con-
fine their activities to their respective states, India being a vast country
with fourteen official languages and twenty-eight states. Indian secular
organizations are indeed few, with limited resources and facilities.
RADICAL HUMANIST MOVEMENT

The Radical Humanist movement in India began under the leader-
ship of Manavendra Nath Roy (1887–1955), who did pioneering work in
spreading a scientific outlook among intellectuals, university professors,
media persons, and scientists. M. N. Roy pleaded for the scientific study
of history, since Indian history is full of myths and stories without any
scientific evidence. He also advocated a scientific approach concerning
politics. His Radical Humanist movement commenced its task from
1948 onward, immediately after India attained independence. M. N.
Roy helped to shape a philosophical and scientific outlook to various
disparate unbelief movements throughout India. He organized reorien-
tation study camps where the scientific orientation was promoted. Roy
also established Radical Humanist, Renaissance, and Rationalist organi-
zations and elevated them to the international level, often questioning
the prevailing Gandhian spiritual ideology of his day. After the death
of Roy in 1955, several intellectuals and institutions carried on his spirit
of scientific, rational inquiry through study camps, training classes, pub-
lications, seminars, and magazines.
INDIAN SECULAR MOVEMENT

Professor A. B. Shah (died 1982) was the founder of the Indian Secu-
lar Society. He was from Pune and lived in Mumbai, where, with the
help of Hamid Dalwai, he tried to educate Muslims. He also estab-
lished Satya Shodak Mandal, with the purpose of bringing Muslim
Atheism and Secularity in India 141
youth into the mainstream of secular society. His book Muslim Politics
provoked much discussion. Facing the wrath of many Hindus by ques-
tioning the ban on killing cows, he vigorously propagated the scientific
method as a solution to several problems facing obscurantist India. His
book Scientific Method made a rare breakthrough in Indian academia
when it was prescribed as a textbook in Bangalore University when H.
Narasimhaiah was the vice chancellor. Shah started several publica-
tions and magazines (Humanist Review, New Quest, and The Secularist)
and educational reform campaigns for humanism and secularism. Cur-
rently, Mr. V. K. Sinha edits The Secularist and New Quest magazines
from Mumbai.
Shah’s scientific approach to religion and politics faced several diffi-
culties, especially from fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims. He organ-
ized study camps, meetings, seminars, and symposia, instituting a
dialogue of all sections of religious organizations. He challenged the
cult gurus and fanatic Muslim mullahs, and he opened debates about
holy books. He stood for human values and human rights. He tried to
spread the ideas through scientific method and education. The move-
ment took strong roots in some states of India, especially Maharastra,
Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Kerala.
INDIAN RATIONALIST MOVEMENT

The Rationalist Association, which started in Bombay during the 1930s,
has slowly picked up momentum over the years. Abraham Solomon,
Lokhandawala, M. N. Roy, M. V. Ramamurhty, R. Venkatadri, Avula
Gopalakrishna Murthy, and Innaiah Narisetti have all been active par-
ticipants and leaders of the movement. There currently exists a Federa-
tion of Indian Rationalist, Atheist, and Humanist organizations (FIRA),
which was started by Mr. Basava Premanand, recent editor of Indian
Skeptic. He was succeeded as president by Dr. Narendra Naik in 2007.
FIRA is an umbrella organization that includes groups and committees
from all over India, including the Ananthapur Rationalist Association,
Andhra Pradesh, Atheist Center, Kerela Bangalore Rationalist Human-
ist Association, Patna. Dakshina Kannada Rationalist, Hyderabad
Rationalist Forum, Tamil Nadu, and Tarksheel Society.
PERIYAR MOVEMENT
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) was a great social revolutionary
who opposed caste hierarchy and Hindu Brahmin domination of other
castes and sought equal rights in temple priesthood. Hitherto, only
members of the Brahmin caste were allowed to become priests. Periyar
wanted all castes, including the downtrodden castes, to be able to offi-
ciate at marriages and perform religious ceremonies in temples. He
wanted the abolition of untouchability, which was the creation of Hin-

duism. Periyar’s vigorous and spirited role in the Vaikom Satyagraha
(1924–1925) contributed in no small measure to the triumph of that first
historic social struggle in the history of modern India. This paved the
way for the ‘‘untouchables’’ to use public roads without any inhibition
and for other progressive egalitarian social measures. The Self-Respect
Movement, founded by Periyar in 1925, carried on a vigorous and
ceaseless campaign against ridiculous and harmful superstitions, tradi-
tions, customs, and habits. He sought to dispel the ignorance of the
people and make them enlightened. He exhorted them to take steps to
change the institutions and values that led to meaningless divisions
and unjust discrimination. He advised them to change according to the
requirements of the changing times and keep pace with modern condi-
tions. Self-respecters performed marriages without Brahmin priests
(purohits) and without religious rites. They insisted on equality between
men and women in all walks of life. They encouraged intercaste and
widow marriages. Periyar also propagated the need for birth control,
as far back is the 1920s. He gathered support for lawful abolition of the
Devadasi (temple prostitute) system and the practice of child marriage.
It was mainly due to his consistent and energetic propaganda that the
policy of reservations in job opportunities in government administra-
tion was put into practice in the then Madras Province (which included
Tamilnadu) in 1928.
While in prison, Periyar was elected as the leader of the South In-
dian Liberal Federation, popularly known as the Justice Party. As a
result of Periyar’s persistent efforts, the degrading practice of serving
separately the Brahmins and the ‘‘others’’ in the restaurants in railway
stations was abolished in 1941. The conservative section in the Justice
Party disliked Periyar’s radical social reform program, his critical view
of religious literature, and the propagation of rationalist ideas.
Unmindful of their opposition, he continued his forward march and
gathered around him the youth and the common people. It was during
1942–1943 that Maniammai joined the movement and came to attend to
the personal needs of Periyar. She was devoted to the leader and
served him sincerely. They married later in 1948.
DRAVIDAR KAZHAGAM (1944–1973)

The Justice Party’s provincial conference held in Salem in 1944
marked a turning point in Periyar’s movement. The name of the Party
was changed to Dravidar Kazhagam. The members were asked to give
up their posts, positions, and titles conferred by the British rulers. They
were also required to drop the caste suffix of their names. It was in this
historic Salem conference that Periyar allowed Mr. K. Veeramani, the
current president of Dravidar Kazhagam, to stand on the table and
address the gathering. Arignar Anna introduced him to the audience

as the Thiru Gnanasambandar of the Self-respect movement. (Gnana-
sambandar was a precocious devotee and composer of hymns in Tamil
in the Saivite lore.) Followers of Periyar were looking for an opportu-
nity to part with him. When he married Maniammai in 1948, he quit
Dravidar Kazhagam, stating that Periyar had set a bad example by
marrying a young woman in his old age; he was 70 and she 30. Those
who parted company with Periyar formed Dravida Munnetra Kazha-
gam (DMK), under the leadership of C. N. Annadurai (Arignar Anna).
In 1956, the Dravidar Kazhagam undertook an agitation of burning
the portrait of Lord Rama because he symbolized the preservation of
Varna dharma (caste system). Periyar was placed under preventive
arrest on this occasion. In those days, the board ‘‘Brahmins Hotel’’ was
displayed, following the lead given by the Brahmins, to indicate that
only vegetarian food was served there. Dravidar Kazhagam objected to
the Varna dharma connotation and started an agitation symbolically in
front of a hotel in Madras (Chennai) in 1957. Batches of volunteers agi-
tated daily, and 1,010 of them courted arrest until March 1958, when it
culminated in success. Dravidar Kazhagam subsequently decided to
undertake further agitation, demanding an end to the practice of
appointing only Brahmins as Archakas (priests) in Agamic temples, as a
way of removing one of the root causes of Varna-Jaathi.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) eventually gave an award to Periyar, and the Union Educa-
tion Minister Triguna Sen, in Madras (Chennai), on June 27, 1970. The
citation hailed Periyar as ‘‘the Prophet of the New Age, the Socrates of
South East Asia, Father of Social Reform Movement, and Arch enemy
of ignorance, superstitions, meaningless customs and base manners.’’
Unmai, a Tamil monthly (now a fortnightly) and Modern Rationalist,
an English monthly, were started by Periyar in 1970 and 1971, respec-
tively, to propagate the ideals of rational humanism more extensively.
The Allahabad High Court lifted proscription of the Hindi version of
Periyar’s book on Ramayana in 1971. In the same year the proscription
of ‘‘Ravana Kavyam’’ proscribed by the Congress Government of the
Madras State was removed. On January 12, 1971, the DMK government
enacted a law giving equal opportunities to qualified persons to
become the Archakas of Hindu Agamic temples irrespective of their
birth in any Varna or Jaathi (caste). Periyar gave an inspiring clarion
call for action to gain social equality and dignified way of life at Thia-
garaya Nagar, Chennai on December 19, 1973. He fell ill on the next
day and breathed his last on December 24, 1973.
Currently, some 200,000 families are Periyarists, self-respecters, and/
or secularists, and for the first time, a rationalist-humanist university
has been established as Periyar Maniammai University at Vallam,
Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. Mr. Veeramani has been elected as chancellor,
and Dr. N. Ramachandran has been appointed as vice-chancellor. Both

are atheists and rationalists.
THE ATHEIST CENTRE

The Atheist Centre was founded by Gora (1902–1975) and Saraswa-
thi Gora (1912–2006) in 1940 at Mudunur Village in Krishna District,
Andhra Pradesh. On the eve of Indian independence, the Atheist
Centre was shifted to Vijayawada in 1947, and since then it has been a
hub of activity for the promotion of atheism, humanism, and social
change. After the death of Gora in 1975, the Atheist Centre’s activities
are undertaken under the able guidance of Mrs. Saraswathi Gora, the
cofounder of the Centre. She was assisted by a dedicated team of peo-
ple who are engaged in the promotion of atheism as a way of life. The
Atheist Centre is also actively engaged in secular social work activities
for comprehensive rural development and rendering assistance to the
people to develop an alternate way of life along secular and humanist
lines. The Atheist Centre gives the highest priority to fighting the evil
practices of untouchability and caste distinctions. In the face of severe
opposition, the Atheist Centre has taken up programs of intercaste din-
ing and intercaste marriages (marriages among different castes), in
order to fight the heinous custom of untouchability. Gora made it a
point to stay in an untouchable locality whenever he was invited to
address a meeting at any village. Intercaste dining programs were also
organized in villages on many occasions. It was a deliberate attempt to
usher in modern social change in a traditional society. The Atheist
Centre is at the forefront of promoting intercaste and casteless mar-
riages; more than five hundred such marriages have taken place at the
Centre and other parts of the state. Members of the Atheist Centre
present an example before others by breaking the barriers of untouch-
ability. It is an example that inspires others in the efforts for social
equality. In addition to the casteless marriages, it also organizes
socially mixed programs where food is cooked in different homes, but
eaten together, transcending the barriers of caste. It organizes gather-
ings of the intercaste and casteless couple and honors them. It also
encourages marriages under the Special Marriage Act, which is a secu-
lar method without reference to caste and religion. Inter-religion mar-
riages between Hindu–Muslim, Hindu–Christian, and Hindu–Sikh are
held at the Centre, strengthening secular values.
Dispelling superstitions is an important work of the Atheist Centre.
The superstitious mind that believes in miracles is a bane to Indian soci-
ety and prevents its forward progress. Hence, Gora and Saraswathi Gora
started fighting superstition right from the 1920s; they publicly viewed
eclipses, defying the superstitious taboo that pregnant women should
not do so. They also lived in so-called haunted houses and exploded the
myths surrounding the public’s fears of such places. The Atheist Centre
takes up programs to promote the scientific outlook and rational think-
ing. Fire walking demonstrations are organized in the villages. Many
so-called miracles are exposed. God-men are challenged to prove their
so-called supernatural abilities. When Sai Baba visited Vijayawada, the
Atheist Centre questioned him to prove his miracles. Scores of people
were arrested in this connection. It also exposed the hoaxes of rebirth.
In a traditional society where people are still steeped in superstition,
the belief in witchcraft and sorcery wrecks havoc on many innocent
lives. It leads to feuds and even murders in the villages, with allega-
tions and accusations of sorcery. In the Hyderabad State, the belief in
witchcraft and sorcery is still deeply entrenched in the minds of the
people. In 1983, leaders in the district administration in Medak invited
the Atheist Centre to help dispel such superstitions. A team of doctors,
social workers, psychiatrists, and scientists, headed by Dr. Samaram,
visited Medak District to study the mass hysteria that had reached epi-
demic proportions. Similar assignments were undertaken in Nalgonda
district to educate the people about the nonexistence of witchcraft. In
exposing and debunking witchcraft and sorcery, the Atheist Centre
receives the cooperation of the Indian Medical Association, the police
and the government departments, and other social organizations.
With a view to promoting literacy and education along secular and
humanist lines, the Atheist Centre also organizes education and aware-
ness programs. Adult and women’s education are important ingredients
of these activities. Substantial work has been done by the Atheist Centre
in the field of social and adult education. Gora’s books for adult literacy
and scientific and social outlook are widely read. In a traditional society
like India, championing sex education is an uphill task. Undaunted by
the hurdles, the Atheist Centre is championing sex education. Dr.
Samaram of the Atheist Centre has been writing on sex science in the
most popular Telugu daily newspaper Eenadu for more than five years.
His five volumes Sex Science have become very popular. So far,
Dr. Samaram has published more than 150 books on health education,
family planning, and popularizing medical science. The books are
widely read. For the last thirty years, Dr. Samaram has been contribut-
ing every week in the dailies and weeklies on various aspects of health
and his column of questions and answers on sex problems receives
wide attention. Dr. Samaram is not only a medical science writer, but
also a practicing doctor. He and Dr. Maru are helping in the organiza-
tion of health camps and AIDS awareness programs on a wider scale.
GORA (1902–1975)
One of the shining lights of southern India’s unbelief movement was
Gora, or Goparaju Ramachandrarao. He was a Brahmin who stood
against the supremacy of Brahmins and hence was excommunicated

from the caste. He came from Andhra Pradesh and was closely associ-
ated with M. K. Gandhi in the freedom fight against the British. Gora
never compromised on the principle of atheism. His wife Saraswati
(died 2006), who also came from an orthodox Brahmin family, was an
active participant, and together they led the atheist movement. In 1940,
Gora established an atheist center in Vijayawada, a coastal town in
Andhra Pradesh and spread secular ideas through magazines, litera-
ture, and meetings. Gora toured many countries of the world and was
in contact with world atheist leaders such as Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
Gora organized beef and pork dinners for Hindus and Muslims, who
consider both dishes as sacrilegious. He wanted party-less democracy,
simple living, and the spread of positive atheism, which asserts ethical
life. His entire family is still promoting his ideas. Gora also conducted
several intercaste and interreligious marriages, and both his son and
daughter married spouses who came from the untouchable castes,
showing by example what their father preached. The international
atheist center established by Gora and managed by his family is well
known throughout India as well in rationalist circles around the world
for its path-breaking activity. Mr. Lavanam, Dr. Vijayam, Dr. Samaram,
Vikas Gora, Hemalatha Lavanam, the late Saraswathi Gora, Maaru,
Chennupati Vidya (once elected to Parliament of India), and several
family members are working hard to spread the atheist philosophy.
They conduct science exhibitions, organize international conferences,
and publish books and monographs regularly. They run two monthly
journals: Atheist (in English) and Naastika patrika (in Telugu). Their social
service to reform former criminal tribes and rehabilitation of the tsu-
nami-affected people in coastal areas is well appreciated. Dr. Samaram
exposes the fraudulent claims of alternative medicines, bogus god-men,
and their divine powers to safeguard the gullible public. Andhra Pra-
desh’s atheist movements spawned several splinter groups, often with
their own magazines and literature. For example, Mr. Ravipudi Venkata-
dri is editing a monthly Telugu magazine Hetuvadi to spread rationalist
theories. He has published several books and monographs in Telugu.
He heads the Rationalist movement in Andhra Pradesh.
Other southern and western Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, and
Maharastra also saw a surge in rationalist activity in the early twentieth
century with skeptical and agnostic ideas. Abraham Kovoor electrified
the skeptics’ movement with his speeches and demonstrations, touring
several states in India as well as Sri Lanka to spread the movement. His
books—debunking astrologers and god-men—were very popular.
Another active member of the rationalist movement in Kerala was
Govindan (late, poet), who edited the magazine, Sameeksha. The father
and son duo of Joseph and Sanal Edamaruku were also instrumental in
challenging god-men and exposing fraudulent ‘‘miracles,’’ touring
intensively to demonstrate the falsehood of miracles. Sanal Edamaruku

shifted to Delhi where he started an international rationalist organiza-
tion with a Web site, journals, books, and an active publicity campaign.
He exposed god-men constantly through demonstrations and media.
Sanal Edamaruku is the president of the Rationalist International and
edits the Internet publication Rationalist International, which appears in
English, French, German, Spanish, and Finnish. He has convened three
International Rationalist Conferences in 1995, 2000, and 2002. Mr. Sreeni
Pattathanam is a Malayalam writer who has ten books and many inves-
tigative reports to his credit. He was born in Kollam, Kerala State. He
began his career in the police department, which helped him to recog-
nize the unjustifiable alliance between the state and religion. Mr. Sreeni
Pattathanam was instrumental several years ago in exposing the ‘‘mira-
cle’’ of the divine Makarajyoti light, which appears during the annual
Ayyappa pilgrimage in Kerala on a remote hill. Having resigned from
the police service, Mr. Pattathanam became a teacher in a government
school. The investigative mind of a police officer and the analytical
mind of a schoolteacher gave Mr. Pattathanam a charming presentation
of his topic, which reflected in his writings as well. He traveled a lot in
the nooks and corners of Kerala. He had been the editor of Ranarekha, a
rationalist monthly, published in Malayalam. He was also the state gen-
eral secretary of the Indian Rationalist Association (IRA) of which
Mr. Sanal Edamaruku is its national general secretary. Currently he is
the chief editor of Yukthirajyam, the Malayalam rationalist monthly and
the general secretary of Bharatiya Rationalist.
Meanwhile, skeptic groups began working in states such as West Ben-
gal, Orissa, Bihar, Punjab, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Mahara-
shtra, and Tamil Nadu. B. Premanand arranged for a federation of all
the groups and conducted several meetings at the national level, person-
ally training several people in magic so that faith healers and god-men
and -women could be easily exposed. The state level federation in
Andhra Pradesh (FARA) actively fought against fraudulent claims of
god-men, alternative medicines, and supernatural claims under the coor-
dinator N. Innaiah. The Rationalist Association, which started in Mumbai
during 1930s, slowly picked up the momentum. Abraham Solomon,
Lokhandawala, M. N. Roy, M. V. Ramamurhty, R. Venkatadri, Avula
Gopalakrishna Murthy, and Innaiah Narisetti were all active participants
and advocates of the movement.
BIHAR STATE
The Bihar Buddhiwadi Samaj (Bihar Rationalist Society, BRS) was
founded in 1985 by Ms. Kawaljee and Dr. Ramendra as a nonparty,
nonprofit, educational society for the promotion of rationalism. Kiran
Nath Datt, Shivendra, Manavendra, Ramanand Mandal, and Rahul
Prasad were the other founding members of the organization. In the

beginning they used the name ‘‘Bihar Buddhiwadi Samaj.’’ Gradually
they have started using Bihar Rationalist Society. According to the BRS,
blind faith in God and organized religions are big hurdles obstructing
the growth of human knowledge and a rational morality.
‘‘Why I Am Not a Hindu’’ is the only English publication of the
BRS, and it was published in 1993. Its second edition titled ‘‘Why I Am
Not a Hindu’’ and ‘‘Why I Do Not Want Ramrajya’’ were published in
1995. Besides publishing such works, BRS has also organized meetings,
seminars, and letter-writing campaigns. It has organized and supported
miracle-busting campaigns, intercaste dining, and intercaste marriages.
One of the highlights of the activities of the BRS has been the establish-
ment of contact and cooperation with organizations having broadly
similar or complementary aims. Cooperation with like-minded organi-
zations has included the exchange of articles, journals, and literature,
as well as help in publicizing one another’s works.
MAHARASTRA STATE
In Maharastra, a big campaign was organized to convert the Hindus
into Buddhists so that they could get rid of inequality, untouchability,
and attain human rights with dignity. B. R. Ambedkar led this move-
ment, though without much success. In 1983 Dabholkar started working
in the field of superstition eradication. After helping form MANS in
1989, he helped it grow to more than 170 branches in nearly all districts
of Maharashtra. He has been the executive president (Karyadhyaksha)
of MANS since its founding. He has written eleven books on various
aspects of superstitions and their eradication. In the past decades he
has confronted many Babas, Buas, Tantrics, and Mantrics, among
others, and has led many agitations against various forms of supersti-
tions, water pollution, and animal sacrifice. Inculcation of the scientific
outlook is one of the main functions of MANS, a mobile van named
‘‘Scientific Attitude Promotion Van’’ or ‘‘Vidnyan Bodh Vahini.’’ It has
helped spread a scientific attitude in school children, especially in rural
areas. Since its inception, MANS has carried out more than 1,200
programs in different schools all over Maharashtra. MANS workers
travel in this well-equipped van, visiting schools and presenting a four-
hour program; in this program they teach basic principles of science by
using scientific toys and other aids. There is also a program for impart-
ing sex education wherein films made for adolescent boys and girls are
shown separately. Posters about astronomy are displayed to develop in-
terest in students about the universe. Books promoting scientific and a
moral ethical outlook are displayed and sold at affordable prices. A
mini-science festival-like atmosphere is created whenever this van—the
Vidnyan Bodh Vahini—conducts a four-hour program in any school.
The vehicle is equipped with a small kitchen, toilet, and bath and
boarding accommodations for five people. Three sides of the rear por-
tion of the van can be opened and can be used as a bookshop as well
as a stage. It is also equipped with a big screen and a projector to show
educational films to many people at a time. The new custom-made van
providing for the stay of MANS workers will surely help us further our
mission—Promotion of Scientific Attitude.
The Moral Rational Movement or Vivek Vahini is a movement initi-
ated by MANS for teachers and colleges students. It aims at making
students into thoughtful, discerning, judicious, ethical, principled, civi-
lized, honorable, rational, wise, and cultured citizens, enabling them to
put their rational thinking into practice through concrete programs for
the betterment of themselves and society. This organization has gained
accreditation from the education department of the government of
Maharashtra State and works under the chairmanship of the lecturers
and professors of the respective colleges. Study Circle and some novel
programs are a few of its activities.
TRUTH SEEKERS MARRIAGE CEREMONY OR

‘‘SATYASHODHAK’’ MARRIAGE CEREMONY
Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (or the Maharashtra
Superstition Eradication Committee) helps and propagates the ‘‘Satya
Shodak’’ marriage ceremony to prevent huge amounts of money being
wasted by many people in unnecessary pomp and show in conven-
tional marriages. Many people from all strata of society get entrapped
in debt, leading to untold hardship. Mahatma Jotirao Phule, from
Maharashtra the great social reformer of the twentieth century, propa-
gated this marriage ceremony that was simple and inexpensive and
made the Brahmin priest’s services redundant. Mahatma Phule started
Satyashodhak Samaj, the Society of ‘‘Truth Seekers.’’ Hence the marriage
ceremony adopted by this society is called Satyashodhak Marriage.
WEST BENGAL
Prafulla Kumar Naik, with the help of local humanists and rational-
ists, questioned the claims of miracles by Mother Theresa. In Andhra
Pradesh and Kerala, focus has been against god-men and -women who
claim to provide miracle cures. Andhra rationalists opposed unscien-
tific alternative medicines (homeopathy), exposing the bogus claims of
Alex Orbito (psychic surgery), the swallowing of live fish for asthma
cures, the hugging of Matha Amrithananda Mayi in order to obtain
prosperity, and geomancy (Vaastu).
Mr. Manoj Datta, Mr. Subhankar Ray, Mr. Ajit Bhattacharya, Bhaskar
Sur, and others are continuing to spread the Humanist message. Prof.
Amlan Datta, former vice chancellor of Viswabharati and Prof. Shib

Narayan Ray are the veterans in West Bengal who constantly inspire
the humanists through their writings and speeches. Several books have
been published with documentation about fraudulent god-men, the
truth about the Bible, the falsehood of geomancy, the unscientific na-
ture of astrology, critiques of Hinduism, and the general need to
spread skeptical thinking. Basava Premanand, Sanal Edamaruku,
Innaiah Narisetti, Ramanamurthy (editor, Vijaya Viharam Telugu maga-
zine), and G. R. R. Babu continue to question the authenticity of holy
persons and have taken their message to an international level, draw-
ing considerable media attention to what is going on inside India. Char-
vaka, a Telugu magazine edited by Mr. Thotakura Venkateswarlu from
Vijayawada had a great impact on the youth in early 1970s.
Increasingly, the movement is also getting help from Indians who
are now living abroad, people such as Aramalla Purnachandra and
Nirmal Mishra, and Jyothi Sankar (who died in 1998) in the United States
who are providing key intellectual backing to India’s small number of
humanists, skeptics, and rationalists. Despite their efforts, these miracle
cures continue to draw thousands of believers, many of whom are
conned into making financial donations in the hope of curing their ills.
Punjab Rationalist Activity

Founded in 1984 under the leadership of Megh Raj Mitter, the Tark-
sheel Society aims to disseminate rationalist ideas and scientific think-
ing among the Indian people in order to eradicate religious fanaticism,
communalism, the caste system, untouchability, and superstition. Affili-
ated to Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, the Tarksheel
Society advocates the separation of religion and education. The society
has units in almost all the villages and towns of Punjab.
Orissa Rationalist Activity

The Orissa Rationalist Society (ORS) functions under the leadership
of Prof. D. N. Padhi and Prof. D. Sahoo Md Sukur. Dr. A. K. Patra, a
scientist of the Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology,
extends his help and cooperation. Dr. N. Patel, A.D.M.O., Kalahandi,
and Dr. B. C. Panda, a noted gynecologist, extend their help in secular
activitities. Dr. A. K. Patra gave some action programs to dispel super-
stitions of the masses.
ANDHRA PRADESH
Andhra Pradesh has the Atheist Society of India, the Radical
Humanist Centre, Inkollu, Chirala, the Renaissance Institute, two Rationalist
Associations of Andhra Pradesh, the Humanist and Ethical Association

of Hyderabad, and the Institute for Advancement of Women, to name a
few. They publish ten journals in Telugu and English, including Hetu-
vadi, Rationalist Voice, Nastika Margam, and The Atheist. A recent cata-
logue showed nearly 450 Humanist book titles available for sale in the
Telugu language.
Several universities include M. N. Roy’s Humanist philosophy as
part of their philosophy and political science curriculum. The Atheist
Centre, an associate member and recipient of IHEU’s International
Humanist Award for pioneering social reform activities, and in mem-
ory of whose founder, Gora, the government of India issued a com-
memorative stamp in 2002, is based in Vijayawada. The Atheist
Centre’s activities stand as an internationally recognized monument to
atheist and Humanist social action. Not very far from Vijayawada is
the independent Charvaka School run by (the late) B. Ramakrishna
who died in 2007 in Nidamarru, with its own textbooks on atheist mo-
rality for children. Bringing together many of these diverse Humanist
activities to create a strong and powerful profile and unified identity
for Humanism in the state is FARA: the Federation of Rationalist,
Atheist and Humanist organizations of Andhra Pradesh. It is headed
by veteran journalist and Humanist and chair of the IHEU Committee
on Religious Abuse of Children, Dr. Innaiah. Under Dr. Innaiah’s lead-
ership, humanism and rationalism have received prominent publicity
in the media. Jana Vigyana Vedika, a science popularization organiza-
tion, is a close collaborator. The rationalist and Humanist movement
has the active support of Dr. P. M. Bhargava, a distinguished biochem-
ist, and Professor Balasubramanyam, the 1997 winner of UNESCO’s
Kalinga Award for Popularization of Science. Justice Sambasiva Rao, a
respected ombudsman, and the feminist Malladi Subbamma are both
closely associated with humanism. With such support and leadership,
but also facing the growth of Hindu nationalism, the movement has
great strengths but many challenges as well.
CENTER FOR INQUIRY INDIA

In 2005, the Center for Inquiry India commenced its work with
Hyderabad as its headquarters. The activities include publications of
books by Paul Kurtz, M. N. Roy, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris (all
translations in Indian languages), the writings of Dr. N. Innaiah, and
the translations of Venigalla Komala. Research projects undertaken
include a survey of scientists on their belief systems, child abuse, and
the spread of the scientific method among youths and students.
National seminars have been conducted on the population problem,
child abuse by religions, women, and equality. Dr. N. Innaiah is the
chairman of the center with directors from various walks of life.
Additional Organizations
The Social Development Foundation (SDF) in Uttar Pradesh works
under the leadership of Mr. V. B. Rawat to uplift the untouchables. It
holds humanist workshops regularly. Projects are undertaken to edu-
cate and train girls. The Goa Science Forum is a well-known group of
science and rationalist activists based in Goa, India. Affiliated to the
Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA), it conducts work-
shops on various issues with a view to spreading scientific points of
view, humanism, rationalism, and a spirit of inquiry and reform. The
Forum also encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and
fringescience claims from a scientific point of view. Its current presi-
dent is R. G. Rao, and under the leadership of Manavatavadi, secular
activities are taken up in the state of Haryana.
REFERENCES
The following are general references for information of secularism in India:
Magazines and Journals

The Atheist: monthly magazine, Vijayawada, India
Buddhiwadi: Hindi quarterly journal published by the Buddhiwadi Foundation,
Patnar, Bihar, India
Humanist Outlook: quarterly magazine, Delhi, India
The Indian Skeptic: monthly journal of the Indian Society for the Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal, Podanur, Tamilnadu, India
Modern Rationalist: monthly magazine, Chennai, Delhi
The Secularist: bimonthly magazine, Mumbai, India
Radical Humanist: monthly magazine, Meerut, UP, India
Web Sites
Rationalist International of Sanal Edamaruku. http://www.rationalistinter
national.net/ (accessed August 31, 2009)
Ramendra Buddhiwadi Samaj. http://www.geocities.com/brs_patna/ (accessed
August 31, 2009)
Vidya Bhushan Rawat. http://www.blogger.com/profile/11765166843439006384
(accessed August 31, 2009)
Books
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Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Dr. Ambedkar renounced Hinduism). Patnar, Bihar, India: Buddhiwadi Foundation.
———. 1992b. Sampoorna Kranti aur Buddhiwad (Total Revolution and Rational-
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Allied Publishers.
Chapter 8

in the Netherlands
Loek Halman
Dutch society is quite exceptional in terms of religion. In no other

European country are there so many people not belonging or no longer
belonging to a religious denomination. On the other hand, of those
who are (still) members of religious denominations, a large part should
be characterized as core members in the sense that they not only are
members, they also attend religious services frequently and are also
otherwise strongly involved in religious activities and organizations.
This polar situation, with high levels of unchurched people on the one
hand and relatively many core members on the other hand, appears to
be typically Dutch (Halman and de Moor 1994; Halman, Luijkx, and
van Zundert 2005, 72).
Religion in the Netherlands appears to be a particular case in Europe
also from another perspective. A few decades ago, Dutch society was
still pillarized, and although other countries also have experienced
pillarization such as Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, West Germany, and
France (Hellemans 1988; Righart 1986), the degree of pillarization
seems to be an unique feature of Dutch society. Belonging to a pillar had
far-reaching consequences for everyday life. Being a Catholic, for
instance, implied to attend a Catholic school, vote for a Catholic politi-
cal party, be subscribed to a Catholic newspaper, belong to a Catholic
broadcasting company, be a member of a Catholic trade union, receive
medical treatment in a Catholic hospital, and so on. Processes of mod-
ernization rapidly decreased the former ideological isolation of the var-
ious social groups in Dutch society and made people aware of other
systems of meaning. Since the 1960s, Dutch society witnessed a process
of depillarization, which meant at the individual level that identifica-

tion and mass support for and membership of pillarized organizations
decreased and that the once strong links between religious preferences
and political orientations became substantially weaker. This is reflected
in the already mentioned large share of the Dutch population that does
not belong to one of the denominations. The number of unchurched
people in the Netherlands is unparalleled in Europe. According to the
most recent European Values Study (EVS), only the percentages of
unchurched people in Estonia and Chech Republic exceed the Dutch
percentage (Halman, Luijkx and Van Zundert 2005, 71). Indeed, the
Dutch appear to be a particular case in Europe! This raises questions
such as whether this evolution from severely pillarized into
unchurched society implied that Dutch people have turned into nonre-
ligious people and have become atheists. And who are these nonreli-
gious people and atheists? Do they have specific characteristics in
terms of sociodemographics such as age, level of education, or gender?
Another question deals with the implications of such a development.
It is often argued that modern people are individualized people and to a
large extent independent of society. They are no longer forced to accept
a public order of standards and evaluations. As Wilson wrote, because
God is dead or has become rather silent ‘‘man is adrift on an unchar-
tered sea, left to find his moral bearings with no compass and no pole
star, and so able to do little more than utter personal preferences, bow
to historical necessity, or accept social conventions’’ (Wilson, 1997, 5).
Religious control over individual actions has diminished severely and
people’s moral convictions are increasingly based on people’s own ideas
and personal values, or as Martin (2005, 23) writes, ‘‘as far as morality
was concerned people grew less inclined to accept rules, and began to
dissolve the sense of obligation into a utilitarian calculus of happiness.’’
It is argued that contemporary people are too narrowly focused on pure
self-interest, which is considered a severe threat for the respect for
human rights and human dignity, liberty, equality, and solidarity. The
‘‘good’’ values are assumed to have declined or even vanished, while
the wrong, ‘‘bad’’ values triumph in today’s highly individualized soci-
ety. In particular so called Communitarians have expressed their concern
for the ultimate consequences of this development toward hedonism,
privatism, consumerism, and the ‘‘I’’ culture. In their view, there is a
trend toward radical individualism and ethical relativism and the with-
drawal of the individual from community life, and in order to stop this
downward spiral they suggest the reestablishment of a firm moral order
in society by (re-) creating a strong ‘‘we’’ feeling and the (re-) establish-
ment of a ‘‘spirit of community’’ (Etzioni 1996, 2001).
However, the idea that secularization not only means religious
decline but also moral decline is widespread, not only among Commu-
nitarians. Many of our political leaders, politicians, and church leaders
Atheism and Secularity in the Netherlands 157
argue along such lines. The question is: Are they correct? Do we really
have to be afraid of the atheists and secular people? If atheists and
nonreligious people do not regard the church and church leaders as
their moral guides, what implications will this have on the moral state
of a nation? Can we find evidence that nonreligious people are more
individualistic and more permissive or even in favor of an ethos of
anything goes? To address such questions, we explore the moral con-
victions of the unchurched, the atheists, and nonreligious people in
Dutch society and compare them with the morals of the Dutch
churched and religious people.
We start this chapter with an overview of the trends with regard to
religion in Dutch society using data from a long-term survey project on
God in Dutch society (God in Nederland; see Bernts, Dekker, and de
Hart 2007; Dekker, de Hart, and Peters 1997; Goddijn, Smets, and van
Tillo 1979). This data set enables us to look back in recent Dutch his-
tory and to investigate the trends since 1966. The further exploration of
the characteristics of atheists in Dutch society is based on survey data
from the EVS (Halman 2001; www.europeanvalues.nl). This data set is
also analyzed to investigate the moral consequences of the trends.
THE DUTCH RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

If one thing is clear, secularization understood in terms of declining
levels of religious adherence has obviously occurred in the Nether-
lands. The numbers of unchurched people steadily has increased since
1966. In 1966, one in every three Dutch people was not affiliated with
one of the denominations; by 2006 this had almost doubled: 61 percent.
Such figures are unparalleled in Western Europe, even in the Nordic
secular countries. Only in some former communist countries that most
strongly experienced social repression during Soviet domination and
its secular ideology show similar or higher levels of nonaffiliation
(Halman 2001, 74; Halman, Luik, and van Zundert 2005, 71).
In particular, the adherence of the Catholic Church dropped sharply;
it halved, from 35 percent in 1966 to 16 percent in 2006. The reduction
of adherents of the Protestant churches cannot be shown so easily.
The recent merging of the Dutch Reformed Church and various
Re-Reformed Churches into one church, the Protestant Church in
The Netherlands (PKN) complicates a straightforward comparison of
figures over time. It seems, however, that the decline is mainly caused
by Dutch Reformed people leaving their church. Between 1966 and
1996, the adherence of Re-Reformed Churches remained more or less
the same: about 8 percent of the Dutch people, whereas the adherence
of the Dutch Reformed Church declined by 6 percentage points from
20 percent in 1966 to 14 percent in 1996 (Dekker, de Hart, and Peters
1997, 12). So, the recent increase in numbers of unchurched people in
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1966 1979 1996 2006
Roman Catholic Protestant Church Other Unchurched
Figure 8.1. Denominational affiliation in the Netherlands

Source: Bernts, Dekker, and de Hart (2007).
the Netherlands is to a large extent the result of Catholic people leav-

ing their church.
As can be seen in Figure 8.1, the adherence of other religious groups
is confined to less than 10 percent. This group of people of other reli-
gions is very diverse and includes Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Mus-
lims. At this moment about 6 percent of the Dutch population is
Muslim (Bernts, Dekker, and de Hart 2007, 15).
Worship is one thing, religious practice another. For instance in the
Nordic European countries, large majorities of the people consider
themselves a member of the Lutheran church. This phenomenon of
high levels of church membership may be understood from the strong
connection between church and state in these countries where ‘‘citizen-
ship implied church membership’’ (Gustafsson 1994, 21). Church mem-
bership is considered almost a citizen’s duty in these cultures and as
such church membership can be seen as a way of expressing solidarity
with society and its basic values (Hamberg 2003, 50). However, because
the level of actual participation is rather low in the Nordic countries,
membership in these countries will be less meaningful religiously than
in other countries. Davie (2000, 3) depicted this situation as belonging
without believing.
Church attendance has also steadily declined in the Netherlands.
Although half of the Dutch people in 1966 reported attending religious
services at least once a week, in 2006 this had declined to 16 percent.
It appears that among Catholic people in particular, church attendance
is low. One in every four Catholics claims to go to church frequently,
while among adherents of Protestant churches it is 40 percent. If, using
the Dutch data from the most recent EVS in 1999, the Protestant church
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1966 1979 1996 2006
Frequently Sometimes Seldom Never
Figure 8.2. Church attendance in the Netherlands

is further divided into Dutch Reformed and Re-Reformed adherents,

church attendance is higher among the latter group (49 percent) than
among Dutch Reformed (32 percent). Unchurched people, the majority in
the Netherlands, never (80 percent) or rarely attend a religious service.
Combing the characteristics of church adherence and church
attendance provides a clear picture of the religious landscape of the
Netherlands. The landscape appears to be bipolar: on the one hand, a
majority (54 percent) of Dutch people do not belong to a church and
never or hardly ever go to church, and on the other hand, a large
minority (20 percent) are members and attend religious services
frequently. This minority can be considered core churchmembers!
Also in this respect, the Netherlands is unique in Europe (Halman,
Luijkx, and van Zundert 2005, 72). Having such a large group of non-
affiliated people who rarely go to church makes the question whether
or not Dutch society is not only secular but also has become atheist
even more interesting.
ATHEISM AND SECULARITY

There is little research on religion and atheism in the socioscientific
literature. ‘‘Systematic attempts to understand Atheism as a social or
psychological phenomenon, employing rigorous theory and quantita-
tive research methods, have been rare’’ (Bainbridge 2005, 3). One
obvious problem to investigate atheists using quantitative research
methods is the limited number of atheists in most countries. As we will
see, the Netherlands is not an exception in this regard. Further, the
category of atheists remains unclear for in many empirical studies they

are often lumped together with agnostics, religious ‘‘indifferents,’’ and
the broader category of unchurched people.
The same is of course true for the term secularity. This concept is as
unclear as the category of atheists is. Does secularity denote nonreli-
giosity? Are secular people not religious people, or is religion not
important (anymore) to them? Does secularity refer to people who may
still feel religious but who are not or are not any longer willing to be
connected to a church? Their once-strong ties between belief and prac-
tices may have diminished, and although people who go to church are
likely to be more religious than those who do not go to church, it does
not necessarily mean that religious people go to church. Why should
they? Bainbridge argues that those who are ‘‘healthy, prosperous, and
untroubled in their personal relations might have little or no need for
specific compensators’’ (Bainbridge 2005, 6) as provided by most reli-
gious traditions. However, does that make them atheists or just
believers without belonging, as suggested by, among others, Davie
(2000, 2002)? She argued that the ‘‘marked fall-off in religious atten-
dance (especially in the Protestant North) has not resulted, yet, in a par-
allel abdication of religious belief’’ (Davie 2002, 5; 2000, 8). Therefore,
instead of speaking of secular Europe, she regards it more appropriate
and accurate to speak of unchurched Europe because of the discrepancy
between religious practices and actual beliefs.
Among others, Inglehart (1997, 80) argued that the emergence of a
sense of security among people in economically more advanced societies
has reduced the need for ‘‘the reassurance that has traditionally been
provided by absolute belief systems, which purport to provide certainty
and the assurance of salvation, if not in this world at least in the next.’’
However, the decline in traditional religious beliefs is ‘‘linked with a
growing concern for the meaning and purpose of life’’ (Inglehart 1997,
80). What has happened is that the social significance of religious institu-
tions has declined, but also Bryan Wilson (1982, 150) wrote that it does
not mean ‘‘that most individuals have relinquished all their interest in
religion, even though that may be the case. It maintains no more than
that religion ceases to be significant in the working of the social system’’
(see also Dobbelaere 1981, 2002). It is the individual who has become the
main point of reference in the shaping of values, attitudes, and beliefs.
Increasingly, people believe in whatever they themselves want to believe
in, which is not necessarily what the Churches tell them to believe. In
other words, traditional dogmatic beliefs have been replaced by a more
modern, personalized way of believing. Some analysts have emphasized
this development, which they regard ‘‘as a shift away from the tradi-
tional churches . . . with larger numbers of people defining and practic-
ing their religiosity in non-traditional, individualized and institutionally
loose ways’’ (Berger 2001, 447). Institutional religion is assumed to
have become marginalized and, consequently, to have lost much of its

influence on people’s lives. As such, it seems that the decline in religios-
ity is mainly confined to institutional decline and does not indicate a
decline in religious beliefs. In many European countries, this has
resulted in a situation that Davie characterized as ‘‘believing without
belonging’’ (Davie 2000, 3). This would mean that people in contempo-
rary advanced society are no longer in need of a church, but can still be
religious. Religion has become privatized, meaning that it has become a
matter of individual choice and preferences and it remains to be seen if
and to what extent people have turned into atheists.
But what are atheists? In most, if not all, empirical studies, atheists are
those people who declare themselves atheist. Also in the data set used by
Bainbridge this was the case: ‘‘Those individuals who do not have a reli-
gious preference were asked to describe themselves using the responses
Non-religious, Agnostic, Atheist or none of these’’ (Bainbridge 2005, 12). In
other surveys, such as the EVS (Halman 2001), the World Values Surveys
(Halman, Inglehart, Diez-Medrano, Luijkx, Moreno, and Basan ~ ez 2007;
www.worldvaluesurveys.org), the International Social Survey Programme
(www.issp.org), the European Social Survey (http://www.europeansocial
survey.org), and various issues of the Eurobarometers (see http://ec.europa.
eu/public_opinion/index_en.htm), similar questions are included to tap the
degree to which people are religious or are convinced atheists.
In data sets from Dutch repeat surveys on God in the Netherlands
(God in Nederland), not such a direct question was asked, but the
number of atheists was determined by the response to the question of
what comes closest to your own conviction. The response categories
were (1) there is a personal God, there must be some kind of ultimate
power; (2) I do not know if God exists or if there is an ultimate power;
and (3) there is no God or ultimate power (Bernts, Dekker and de Hart
2007, 217). The latter response item was considered to indicate the
category of atheists and asked in this way, 14 percent of the Dutch
people in 2006 could be classified as such (Bernts, Dekker, and de Hart,
2007, 40). About one in every three respondents said to believe in
something supernatural, whereas for one in every four respondents it
appears less certain. They said that they did not know if God or a
supernatural power existed. A more or less equal number of people in
the Netherlands said they believe in a personal God (theists).
Since 1966 the percentages of theistic believers has been halved,
whereas the number of atheists doubled. Percentages of people who
believe in the existence of an ultimate power increased slightly, and the
percentage of agnostic people increased by ten percentage points, from 16
percent in 1966 to 26 percent in 2006. The trends are shown in Figure 8.3.
However, when asked in a more direct way, the number of con-
vinced atheists appears to be much lower. A direct question is avail-
able in the EVS and World Values Surveys. In these surveys,
Figure 8.3. Percentages of Dutch people who say they believe in a

personal God (theist), in a supernatural power, who do not know if a
God or supernatural power exists (agnostic), and people who deny the
existence of God or a supernatural power (atheist)
respondents were asked: ‘‘Independently of whether you go to church

or not, would you say you are: A religious person; Not a religious per-
son; A convinced atheist.’’ Asked in this way, it appeared that in 2005
only 7 percent of the Dutch population considered themselves a con-
vinced atheist. This percentage has slightly increased since 1981.
Although the time span of the EVS is more limited than the time span
of the God in Nederland project, the trends are more or less the same.
In 1981 about 4 percent declared themselves convinced atheists; in 1990
it was 5 percent, and in 1999 6 percent. Not a very sharp increase, yet
a steady one. In Figure 8.4 these trends are displayed. The figure also
reveals the slight decline in the number of religious people and also
the slight increase in the number of people who claim not to be reli-
gious. If the latter category is indicative of secularity, a trend of grow-
ing secularity is visible in Dutch society.
The results from these two different data sources in the number of
atheists can likely be attributed to the indirect way atheism is tapped
in the God in Nederland project and the direct way of asking used in
the EVS and World Values Surveys. Only 25 percent of the people who
claim not to believe in any sort of spirit, God, or life force consider
themselves an atheist! The majority of them (69 percent) indicate that
they are not a religious person. It seems as if the rejection of God or
the existence of an ultimate power cannot be equated with being a con-
vinced atheist. If the two responses are combined and we consider
Figure 8.4. Percentages of Dutch people who claim to be religious,

not religious, or convinced atheist in 1981, 1990, 1999, and 2005
Source: EVS 1981–1999 and WVS 2005
those respondents who claim to be atheist and also claim that they do not
think that there is any spirit, God, or life force, the percentage of atheists
in Dutch society would only be three! For 55 percent of the Dutch
respondents, being religious seems to imply either belief in a personal
God or belief that there is some kind of spirit or life force. Six percent con-
sider themselves religious but do not really know what to think.
What is clear from such figures is that a majority of Dutch people
still claim to be religious and that atheism is a phenomenon that
applies to a very small or even negligible minority of the Dutch popu-
lation. The figures also reveal that since the 0 90s not much change can
be reported. The main changes took place before and during the 0 80s
and boil down to an increasing number of nonreligious people at the
cost of the number of religious people. However, this increase in the
number of nonreligious people does not reveal a trend toward disbelief
or unbelief. Even nonreligious people appear to ‘‘believe in some-
thing.’’ More recently, the situation seems to have stabilized and
hardly any changes can be reported.
ATHEISTS AND DISBELIEF?

Although there exists ambiguity and controversy about what athe-
ism exactly is and how it emerged and developed, a common under-
standing of atheism is the abandonment of all religious claims, beliefs,
and convictions. Does it mean that the atheist denies all beliefs and
faiths, or do atheists deny the existence of God, and thus can atheism
Figure 8.5. The ‘‘beliefs’’ of the religious, not religious, and atheists in
the Netherlands
Source: EVS 1999
best be described as disbelief in God? As Silvia Berti (1995, 562)

pointed out, ‘‘he who asserts, however courageously, that he does not
believe in God, in the end does nothing more than say, ‘I believe that
God does not exist.’’’ This is not the place to enter into the philosophi-
cal or theological discussions and for the purpose of this chapter it
seems sufficient to regard atheists as not simply unbelievers, but to fur-
ther explore the beliefs, convictions, and practices of those who claim
to be convinced atheists.
In order to explore this, we analyze data from the most recent EVS
in the Netherlands (Halman 2001). Half of the convinced atheists does
not think that there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force, which means
that also half of them is less certain. Fourteen percent of the convinced
atheists are hesitant and do not really know what to think. So, one in
every seven convinced atheists shares the agnostic view, whereas, as
shown in Figure 8.5, one in every three convinced atheists states that
there is some sort of spirit or life force.
Thus, despite the fact that they claim to be convinced atheists and
the majority of them deny the existence of a personal God, a rather
large minority of the Dutch convinced atheists believe in a supernatu-
ral power! What other beliefs do they share?
They do not believe in God, hell, and heaven, but many of them believe
in telepathy and reincarnation! In Table 8.1, these data are displayed.
Belief in hell is also not widespread among Dutch people in general,
neither religious nor nonreligious people. The majority of the religious
people do believe in God, life after death, heaven, sin, and telepathy,
Table 8.1
The religious beliefs of the religious, not religious, and atheists in
the Netherlands
Belief in (% yes)
Life after
God death Hell Heaven Sin Telepathy Reincarnation
Religious 87.1 70.2 21.6 56.5 55.4 51.9 23.9

person
Not religious 16.6 20.9 1.9 10.4 14.7 48.2 18.1
person
Convinced 1.6 13.3 0 1.6 13.1 41.1 21.3
atheist
Source: EVS 1999
whereas among atheists only one in every seven admits to believe in

life after death and heaven. However, with regard to belief in telepathy
the differences between religious people and atheists is not so strong,
whereas as many religious people as nonreligious people and con-
vinced atheists claim to believe in reincarnation!
Thus, convinced atheists in the Netherlands do indeed differ from
Dutch religious people, mainly with regard to the dogmatic faith or
traditional convictions in the sense that in general they report they do
not believe in these. They resemble each other, however, with regard
to belief in telepathy and reincarnation. All this seems to demonstrate
the decline of traditional institutional religiosity in favor of a more per-
sonal way of believing.
This can also be demonstrated from the obvious differences between
atheists and nonreligious people on one side and religious people on
the other with regard to church related activities, such as church
attendance and the importance of religious services at significant life
events. Nonreligious people and atheists hardly ever go to church, and
they do not consider it important to have religious services at the occa-
sion of birth, marriage, and death. However, a small minority of the
Dutch atheists takes some moments of prayer, meditation, or contem-
plation or something like that. Fewer atheists (55 percent) than reli-
gious people (81 percent) take such moments, and although religious
people may have answered ‘‘yes’’ because they actually pray to God,
whereas atheists were thinking of moments of contemplation when
they answered this question, it seems clear that prayer, contemplation,
or meditation is not an activity that is solely reserved for religious peo-
ple. Perhaps it is also an indication that the quest for meaning remains
and is not exclusive for religious people.
WHO ARE THE ATHEISTS AND SECULAR PEOPLE?

It turns out that atheists differ from religious people in terms of tra-
ditional institutional beliefs and behaviors that are more adhered to by
the latter than the former. In many ways atheists do not differ much
from people who claim to be not religious persons. But who are the
atheists in terms of sociodemographic characteristics? Do they
have typical characteristics or can they be found among all categories
of the Dutch population? And because atheists no longer believe in the
religious dogmas and convictions, are they also more modern in other
aspects? The latter may be assumed because atheism is often connected
to secular ideology that emerged from the Reformation, the Enlighten-
ment, and expanding role of science in society and increasing levels of
personal autonomy (Berti 1995, 556). If atheism is indeed the ultimate
consequence of modernization in general and secularization and indi-
vidualization in particular, it can be expected that atheists are among
the most modern people in society. Of course, it can be doubted that
atheism is a modern phenomenon and did not exist in premodern
times. There always have been people who denied the idea of God or
did not believe in a God, and atheism or unbelief seem to have been in
all times. Whether or not they share more ‘‘modern,’’ that is, less tradi-
tional views beyond the religious domain remains to be seen.
In order to address these questions, a number of simple analyses
were performed. More sophisticated analyses (e.g., regression analyses)
cannot be used here because of the limited number of atheists (N ¼
62). However, applying multinominal logistic regression techniques
reveals that atheists differ from religious persons mainly in terms of
level of education and gender. Atheist differ from nonreligious people
only with regard to the level of education. Included in these regression
analyses as independent variables were—apart from level of education
and gender—age, income, and degree of urbanization.
Atheists are more often found among men than among women, who
appear to be more often religious than men. These differences are often
attributed to differential socialization (Miller and Stark 2002) but also to
the more family-oriented attitude of women. It is argued that because of
such an attitude, women pray more than men, and they pray for the
well-being and happiness of their families (Dobbelaere and Voye 1992,
131, 160; 2000, 139). Proponents of the work-force theory use time con-
straints as the main argument to explain why women are more religious
than men. Participation in the work force not only means that people
have less time to be engaged in other activities and thus also in church
activities but ‘‘work force participation can provide alternative sources of
identity, interests, values, legitimations, and commitments so that reli-
gion simply becomes less important’’ (De Vaus and McAllister 1987,
473). Although female participation in the labor force has increased
sharply in the last decades, also and especially in the Netherlands, more
than in other countries Dutch women are mainly involved in part-time
jobs. Eurostat figures on employment reveal that in the Netherlands 68
percent of employed women are in part-time jobs. Because more men
than women are engaged in paid full-time employment, men are less
involved in church or religious activities and are likely to be less reli-
gious. That women will be more religious than men can also be argued
from yet another perspective. Women are, more often than men,
employed in ‘‘caring jobs,’’ e.g., nursing activities, childcare, and school-
teaching, which, owing to the historical link between the caring activities
of deaconesses in Lutheran churches and women who are religious, are
often associated with higher levels of religiosity. We are not going to
elaborate on these findings, but these arguments make it understandable
that fewer women than men appear to be atheist.
That more highly educated people appear more often to be con-
vinced atheists may also not come as a big surprise. As can be argued,
education implies increasing cognitive skills and being more critical
toward authorities, including the religious ones. Highly educated
people, more than less educated people, emphasize individual
autonomy and personal judgment. Hence, people with more education
will display lower levels of religiosity. This hypothesis is based on
Weber’s idea of the absolute incompatibility of religious and scientific
orientations. It is argued that people are either scientific or religious,
but not both (Johnson 1997, 232). Although the relationship may
be more complex (see, e.g., Johnson 1997, 233), most empirical evidence
indicates a negative association between level of education and degree
of religiosity. The higher level of education also seems to imply that
people do not have to escape into vague terminology, such as being
nonreligious, but they are able to define themselves as atheists.
Are atheists more modern than religious people, and do atheists also
differ in terms of modernity from nonreligious people, or is it justified
to lump these two categories together as is done so often in empirical
analyses? There is not much empirical evidence that atheists are indeed
more modern than religious people. Modernity is understood as reject-
ing traditional women’s roles and authorities, emphasizing individual
freedom, and being more rational. In Figure 8.6 the differences between
religious and nonreligious people and atheists on a few dimensions of
modernity are shown.
The traditional female role as housewife is indeed slightly less
accepted by atheists than by religious people, but atheists resemble non-
religious people in this respect. The same applies for single parenthood,
which is slightly more accepted by atheists and nonreligious people
than by religious people. Contrary to what could be expected, religious
people stress emphasis on the individual more than atheists and nonre-
ligious people, and they also put more emphasis on technology than
100,0
90,0
80,0
70,0
60,0
50,0
40,0
30,0
20,0
10,0
0,0
follow single parent technology individual housewife authority freedom
instructions above
equality
Religious person Not religious person Convinced atheist
Figure 8.6. Traditional and modern orientations among religious, not

religious, and atheist persons in the Netherlands
Source: EVS 1999
atheists and nonreligious people. However, the differences are rather

modest. When it comes to authority, atheists more than religious people
and nonreligious people reject greater respect for authority, and atheists
appear to be more independent than religious and nonreligious people.
More than these latter categories, atheists indicate having control over
their lives. Because having control over your life seems to generate
higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction, it appears strange that
atheists are not happier and more satisfied than religious people. As
such, these results confirm what Andrew Clark from l’Ecole de Econo-
mie in Paris and Orsolya Lelkes from The European Centre for Social
Welfare Policy and Research have demonstrated earlier. Using two
large-scale European data sets, they showed that the religious people
enjoy higher levels of life satisfaction and that religion does seem to
insure against the effects of some adverse life events. They concluded
that Christian beliefs affect the lives of Europeans positively (Clark and
Lelkes 2006), and it also applies to the Dutch. Religious people in the
Netherlands appear slightly more happy and satisfied with their lives
than atheists. The differences are statistically, however, not significant.
CONSEQUENCES?
The waning of the dominant position of religion in modernizing so-
ciety fostered the establishment of a ‘‘new morality’’ or ‘‘permissive
morality’’ (Wilson 1982, 86). Since the moral guidance of the churches
and religion is less self-evident and under heavy pressure, it can be
assumed that people’s religious orientations are no longer, or less
strongly, linked to their moral views. In traditional societies, individual

belief systems and religious practices were assumed to be strongly
dependent on the beliefs of the community and on the prescriptions of
the churches. Cultural and social differentiation resulted in people
increasingly participating in different universes of meaning, each gov-
erned by its own set of values. Within each institutional sphere, norms
and values have become functional, rational, and, above all, autono-
mous. In this interpretation, secularization can be seen as ‘‘the reper-
cussion of these changes on the religious subsystem. It denotes a
societal process in which an overarching and transcendent religious
system is reduced to a subsystem of society alongside other subsys-
tems, the overarching claims of which have a shrinking relevance’’
(Dobbelaere 1995, 1; see also Dobbelaere 2002, 166). The processes of
differentiation, specialization, and professionalization made each social
sphere in life increasingly autonomous and a specialized unit in society
with its own set of values and rules (M€ unch 1990, 443). The churches
have lost several of their traditional functions such as schools, hospices,
social welfare, registry of births, marriages, and deaths, culture, and
organization of leisure (Dogan 1995, 416). Institutional domains have
become segmented in the sense that within each institutional sphere
norms and values have become functional, rational, autonomous, and
withdrawn from the religious sphere. The ‘‘sacred canopy is more and
more restricted’’ (Dobbelaere 2002, 23). As a consequence, religion
became marginalized and lost much of its influence on people’s lives.
In other words, religion has lost its societal and public functions, and
religion has become privatized and marginalized within its own differ-
entiated sphere (Casanova 1994, 19). The emancipation of the individ-
ual, the growing emphasis on personal autonomy and individual
freedom, the deunification of collective standards, and the fragmenta-
tion of private pursuits seem advantageous to ‘‘a declining acceptance
of the authority of hierarchical institutions, both political and non-
political’’ (Inglehart 1997, 15). Thus, citizens are increasingly question-
ing the traditional sources of (religious) authority and no longer bound
by common moral principles. All in all, it seems reasonable to assume
that moral and sexual choices are increasingly based on personal deci-
sions and lifestyle preferences and less on prescriptions by the church
and church leaders. It implies a weakened impact of religious beliefs
and values on people’s moral choices and convictions. The moral guid-
ance of the churches and religion is no longer self-evident and under
heavy pressure. Particularly secular people will not take for granted
the prescriptions and rules of the church. Religious people are much
likelier to adhere to the moral teachings and guidelines of the church,
and as such it can be expected that religious people will be more strict
than less religious people, in particular with regard to condemning
(deviant) sexual behaviors. The latter is to be expected because religion,
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1 ex y
di n
br y
s
a g
jo tax
ad g
su ia
lit e
sp ing
ng
g
th ce
ab lity
sm sex
su es
oi ho
g its
ug
os iber
r
tio
r in
n
id
so din
as
te
eu or
ca tax
i
di
ua
tin ef
ly
ic
av lco
ok
on
dr
or
ul
te
an
al
ee
i
v
ea en
yr
d
ft
ch te b
m
a
ho
st
religious person not religious person convinced atheist
Figure 8.7. Acceptance of various behaviors by religious, not religious,

and atheist people in the Netherlands
Source: EVS 1999
churches, and church leaders have always and still do condemn(ed)

sexual behaviors strongly.
The data from the EVS surveys does support these ideas. In the EVS
surveys, a list of items covering a wide variety of moral issues and par-
ticular behaviors ‘‘which an adult living in the twentieth century might
have to confront in his or her life, or might at least be expected to have
an opinion about’’ (Harding et al. 1986, 7) was presented, and respond-
ents were asked to indicate whether or not the behaviors could always
be justified (p. 10), never be justified (p. 1), or something in between.
Eighteen statements were presented, ranging from cheating on taxes
and claiming state benefits illegally and paying cash for services to
avoid taxes, to homosexuality, euthanasia, and having casual sex. In
Figure 8.7 we have displayed the mean scores on these 10-point scales
for each of the issues mentioned and for the religious, nonreligious,
and atheist people in the Netherlands.
Figure 8.7 reveals, first of all, that the acceptance of issues such as
claiming state benefits illegally, joyriding, bribery, littering, driving
under the influence of alcohol, and speeding over the limit, are in gen-
eral not accepted by Dutch people. These activities are illegal and seem
demonstrations of disrespect for laws and rules.
Cheating on taxes, the use of soft drugs, lying in your own interest,
avoiding taxes, adultery, and smoking in public buildings are issues
that the individual gains personal benefits from. These are slightly
more accepted by Dutch people in general. Most accepted are behav-
iors that are strongly associated with the private, personal life sphere,
including corporeality. Homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, divorce,

and casual sex are acceptable by larger numbers of the people in the
Netherlands.
Figure 8.7 also reveals that when it comes to such issues of civicness
(such as joyriding and speeding over the limit) and issues of personal
interest (avoiding taxes), the differences between religious, nonreligious
people, and atheists are negligible. Atheists and nonreligious people
resemble the religious Dutch respondents in rejecting these behaviors,
but when it comes to sexual issues and micro-ethical questions, reli-
gious people appear far more strict than nonreligious and atheist peo-
ple. It is clear that the moral guidance of the churches has come under
strong pressure, particularly in the realm of sexuality and morality. On
issues like divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia, people no
longer rely solely on the judgments and prescriptions of the Church.
Increasingly, individuals are deciding for themselves. As Taylor once
put it, ‘‘masses of people can sense moral sources of a quite different
kind, ones that don’t necessarily suppose a God’’ (Taylor 1989, 312–13).
Dogmatic ethical (religious) rules are not taken for granted anymore,
but are dependent on the situation and private interpretations and
evaluations of these situations. The data from the EVS surveys seems
to confirm the suggestion that moral and sexual choices are thus
increasingly based on personal decisions and lifestyle preferences.
The data seem to demonstrate that the institutional, religion-domi-
nated morality has been marginalized. People have not become amoral,
but instead their morality is based more on personal considerations and
convictions. In other words, a personal morality has developed, but there
is not much evidence that an ethos of anything goes has developed.
Most people, religious and nonreligious as well as atheists, are very
reluctant in accepting all kind of ‘‘indecent’’ and ‘‘uncivic’’ behaviors.
There are also not much differences between religious and nonreli-
gious people and atheists in the Netherlands when it comes to degrees
of solidarity. The fear that the marginalized role of religion for some
will eventuate in a loss of solidarity is ungrounded. We cannot find
evidence that supports that view.
In the EVS, solidarity was tapped by two questions. One asked the
degree to which people were concerned about the living conditions of
groups of people in the sociospatial sphere. These groups varied from
your immediate family and people in your neighbourhood, the region,
and fellow countrymen, to Europeans and humankind. The other asked
the degree to which people were concerned about the living conditions
of four welfare target groups: the elderly, the unemployed, immigrants,
and sick and disabled people. Answer categories ranged from 1 ¼ not
at all concerned to 5 ¼ very much concerned. In Figure 8.8, the mean
scores on these items for the religious and nonreligious people and
atheists in the Netherlands are shown.
5.00
4.50
4.00
3.50
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
ns
d
ry
ily
ed
ts
en
nd
le
or
io
de
ea
n
m
oy
ab
m
g
ki
hb
ra
fa
el
re
an
pl
is
ig
w
ig
ro
em
,d
m
llo
m
ne
Eu
im
hu
fe
ck
un
si
religious person not religious person convinced atheist
Figure 8.8. Solidarity among religious, not religious, and atheist people
in the Netherlands
Source: EVS 1999
It is obvious that there are no big differences in the degree to which

atheists are in unity with the various groups in society compared with
religious and nonreligious people. True, religious people are overall
more unified than nonreligious people and atheists, but the differences
are only modest and concern solidarity with people in the neighbor-
hood, people in the region, and the elderly, sick, and disabled (all
p < 0.000). However, it cannot be concluded that atheists are not uni-
fied with these groups in society and that low levels of solidarity can
be attributed to being atheist or not religious!
CONCLUSIONS
Writing about Dutch atheists is not so easy because in surveys the
number of atheists is rather limited and often too limited to justify sta-
tistical analyses. Although many people in the Netherlands are not
(any longer) affiliated with one of the religious denominations, it does
not imply that Dutch society has turned into an atheist society or into
a society of nonbelievers. There is a decline in the number of religious
people and thus an increase in the number of people who claim not to
be religious, but the number of people in the Netherlands who con-
sider themselves atheist is modest and has hardly increased in the last
decades. That atheism has not increased is not a result of certain poli-
cies in the Netherlands. In Dutch society, church and state have been
separated for a long time, and there is freedom of religion and of athe-
ism. Being an atheist is not a hindrance to becoming a minister! It is not
an issue in Dutch politics although there are some Christian and even
Orthodox Christian political parties, and representatives of them are in
the Parliament and current government.
The Dutch atheists appear not to have special characteristics in
terms of sociodemographic features. They do not appear as being the
most modern or postmodern group in society. In fact they appear to be
a very diffuse group, and in many respects they resemble nonreligious
people. Both the nonreligious group and the atheists can together be
differentiated from religious people. Atheists appear slightly more tol-
erant when it comes to the acceptance of all kinds of sexual and ethical
behaviors. The behaviors that are more acceptable to them all relate to
the private sphere that is increasingly regarded as a sphere in which
traditional authorities are not allowed to interfere. Also religious peo-
ple in Dutch society are more lenient toward these sexual behaviors
than to accepting indecent behavior. As such, neither in the religious
group, nor among atheists, is an ethos of anything goes developing.
Civic morality was and remains high throughout Dutch society.
The conclusion therefore is simple: Dutch atheists are as ordinary
and common as religious people in the Netherlands. Apart from the
fact that they do not believe in the existence of God, they have no typi-
cal characteristics that makes them special. They can be found among
all layers in Dutch society. They are as moral and responsible as religious
and nonreligious people, but they remain a small minority. Although
in the Netherlands the number of people that claim to be not religious
has increased, and the number of unchurched people exceeds the num-
ber of religious-affiliated people, most people remain believers and
have not become atheists. Apart from belief in God, most Dutch people
believe in ‘‘something.’’
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———. 1984. Godsdienst in Belgi€e. In De Stille Ommekeer, ed. J. Kerkhofs and
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———. 1995. Religion in Europe and North America. In values in western soci-
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———, and L. Voye. 1992. Godsdienst en kerkelijkheid. In De Versnelde Ommek-
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———, and L. Voye. 2000. Religie en kerkbetrokkenheid: Ambivalentie en
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vidualizing society, ed. P. Ester, L. Halman, and R. de Moor, 37–66. Tilburg:
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an
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Chapter 9
Atheism and Secularity:

The Scandinavian Paradox
€ chau
Peter Lu
Depending on how one interprets the concept of secularization the

Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, are either the
three most secularized countries in the world or among the least secu-
larized. In general the Scandinavian countries are considered among
the most secularized in the world. According to most surveys the Scan-
dinavian populations rank among the least religious when compared
to the rest of Europe.1 According to data from the International Social
Survey Program (ISSP) 1998, about 11 percent of the Danes attend
church at least once a month; for Norwegians it is about 10 percent,
and among Swedes it is about 8 percent. Compare this to Germany
where about 26 percent attend church at least once a month or Portu-
gal where the number is about 47 percent.2 With regard to the belief in
central tenets of the Christian faith such as God, an afterlife, heaven,
hell, and sin, both Danes and Swedes exhibit some of the lowest scores
in Europe, scoring lower than even the French and much, much lower
than the Greeks.3 The comparably weak religiosity of the Scandina-
vians is contrasted by their strong support of their national majority
churches: the formal membership rates are above 80 percent in the
Scandinavian countries. Religiosity is low but formal church member-
ship rates are very high, comparable to those of southern Europe.
The combination of low levels of Christian religiosity and high rates
of formal church membership is puzzling, but the question is what con-
sequences it has for the number of atheists in the Scandinavian coun-
tries. This depends on how an atheist is defined. For the purpose of this
chapter a distinction will be made between an a-religious individual
and an atheist. The a-religious are individuals who are simply not reli-
gious according to any of the measures applied here: Someone who
does not believe, does not attend church, and generally claims not to be
religious when asked directly. A-religious individuals are people for
whom religion makes very little sense. They have no need for religion,
and in their minds religion is basically irrelevant. An atheist on the
other hand is someone who is actively a-religious or maybe it would be
better to say actively antireligious. They share with the a-religious a
lack of belief and religious activities and can be considered a subgroup
of the a-religious. What separates the atheists from the a-religious is
their interest in religion. The a-religious do not care about religion one
way or the other, whereas atheists actively try to curb the influence of
religion. They care about religion but in a negative sense. Using the
word atheist about oneself is not a neutral description but rather a way
to signal a set of particular values regarding religion. It is a way for
individuals to show their surroundings that they find religion a threat
to their own way of life. Either the threat is confined to the public
sphere and the atheist could live with the existence of privatized
religion, or the threat is all encompassing as religion is seen as a threat
to rational thought itself. Since what the atheists are engaged in is a
power struggle, their prime targets should tend to be organized reli-
gion, particularly established majority churches. It is also very likely
that behind the atheists’ skeptical attitude toward religion lies a compre-
hensive worldview much like that of a trained theologian. Atheists fight
religion both outside as well as inside themselves. They need an all
encompassing, well thought through worldview to show themselves (and
the world) that religion is not needed in order to explain the human condi-
tion. The a-religious are much more likely not to think too deeply about
life in general. They do not need religion nor a humanistic answer to it.
As mentioned above, comparatively few Scandinavians attend
church and believe in central tenets of the Christian faith. This means
that the number of a-religious individuals in Scandinavia could be
quite high, maybe as high as 38 percent.4 If the above description of
atheists is true, then it is highly unlikely that athiests would be mem-
bers of an established church. They would most likely make it a point
to be unaffiliated. Because formal membership rates are high in the
Scandinavian countries, the potential number of atheists should be
lower than 16 percent of the population.5 Hence the potential number
of atheists in the most secularized countries in the world is potentially
rather small, which is somewhat surprising.
To find an explanation for this contradictory situation it is prudent
to look at exactly how the process of secularization has run its course
in the Scandinavian countries. Since a theoretical discussion of seculari-
zation is outside the scope of this chapter, the definition proposed by
Dobbelaere will be used here. According to Dobbelaere secularization
Atheism and Secularity: The Scandinavian Paradox 179
is a process that happens at three different levels. At the societal level

secularization is a process whereby the values of church religion lose
their relevance for the integration and legitimization of everyday life in
modern society.6 Because society is divided into autonomous spheres,
e.g. the political, the economic, the scientific, and the religious, the reli-
gious values of the church can no longer function as an overarching
value system for the whole of society. At the organizational level secu-
larization entails the accommodation of the doctrine of religious organi-
zations to the outside world.7 As society becomes secularized, religious
organizations must come to terms with the fact that they can no longer
expect to influence society as a whole nor control their own religious
adherents. Instead they narrow the scope of the religious while at the
same time loosening any demand that their values be taken over com-
pletely by their adherents. Theological arguments become less important
while nonreligious arguments become more important in legitimizing
what the churches do. In this sense organizational secularization is a
reaction to societal secularization. At the individual level secularization
is a decline in church involvement, such as church attendance and
church membership.8 It is not necessarily the decline of individual reli-
giosity as such but a change in what kind of religiosity is prevalent.
Dobbelaere suggests that there are links between the three types of
secularization in that societal secularization promotes organizational
secularization,9 and individual secularization is influenced, though not
solely, by societal secularization.10 The relationship between societal
secularization and church involvement has an intervening component:
compartmentalization. Societal secularization influences compartmen-
talization, which again influences individual church involvement. Com-
partmentalization is secularization-in-mind of the individual, which
means that individuals in their minds separate the religious from the
political, the medical, the scientific, and others.11 It can be argued that
there is a subjective as well as objective aspect to compartmentaliza-
tion.12 The subjective aspect is that individuals feel that religion should
be separated from politics, science, and economics. This could also be
termed secularism, a conscious attempt at promoting societal seculari-
zation. The objective aspect of compartmentalization is that the statisti-
cal correlation between religious values and nonreligious values (e.g.,
political values) disappears at the individual level. Compartmentaliza-
tion is the product of societal secularization, and once it has taken hold
in the individual, it leads to lower levels of church involvement. Hence
one interpretation of Dobbelaere could be that societal secularization
leads to compartmentalization, which again leads to lower church
membership rates, which finally raises the potential number of atheists.
It has been observed above how the Scandinavian countries are con-
sidered highly secularized, but this is based on observations at the
individual level. If the societal level is taken as the starting point,
things look very different. At the societal level none of the Scandina-
vian countries can be said to be secularized to any noteworthy degree
compared to the rest of Europe or the United States.
Denmark has an established church, the Danish People’s Church
(‘‘Den danske folkekirke’’), the existence of which has been established
in the Danish constitution since 1849.13 The Danish People’s Church is a
state church in the sense that it is controlled by the Danish parliament
through both constitutional and common law administered by the state
bureaucracy. According to Espersen, the Danish parliament has the
power to control both administrational matters as well as strictly reli-
gious matters, for example, liturgy and matters of faith.14 The Danish
People’s Church is part of the state bureaucracy in that all newborn
babies must be registered as new citizens by contacting the local parish
office of the Danish People’s Church regardless of the religious heritage
or religious affiliation of the parents. The information on the newborn
is then sent on to the central registration bureau, which has information
on all Danish citizens. Being registered here is the key for gaining
the benefits of the comprehensive Danish welfare state. According to
the Danish constitution, the monarch is obliged to be of the Evangelical
Lutheran faith although not necessarily a member of the Danish Peo-
ple’s Church.15 The Danish People’s Church is financed through a
church tax collected by the tax authorities and through a direct subsidy
from the state, neither of which are available to other religious entities
in Denmark. Only members of the church pay church tax, but all citi-
zens contribute to the direct state subsidy. Most official holidays in
Denmark are Christian (in name), and the Danish People’s Church is
represented at many official ceremonies, including the opening of par-
liament and royal weddings. Christianity is taught in public schools but
is claimed to be nonconfessional. It is however possible to be exempted
from these lessons on religious grounds.
The Church of Norway (‘‘Den norske kirke’’) is the established
church of Norway, connected to the state through the constitution.16
The constitution also states that members of the Church of Norway are
obliged to raise their children in the faith of the church. The king of
Norway is obliged by the constitution to profess the Evangelical
Lutheran religion. It is also stipulated that the Council of State consist-
ing of the prime minister and at least seven members of the government
must have at least half of its members professing the official religion of
the state. This is usually interpreted as half the members of the Council
of State must be members of the Church of Norway. The Church of
Norway is funded primarily by a state grant. This grant is not tied to
church taxes and is paid for by all inhabitants of Norway. In order not
to discriminate on religious grounds, any officially registered religious
community or (beginning 1981) ethical association is entitled to a state
grant approximately equivalent to the sum given to the Church of
Norway based on the number of members of said religious or ethical

association. If a registered religious community has one hundredth of
the members of the Church of Norway, it will be entitled to a grant one
hundredth the size of the grant awarded to the Church of Norway each
year. Religious education (RE) in Norwegian public schools is consid-
ered (by the authorities) neutral, but exemption is possible nonetheless.
Education in Norway, including day care institutions, has as a goal to
give the pupils a Christian and moral upbringing. This applies to all
curriculum in public schools and is not restricted to RE.17
Sweden abolished the constitutional ties between the Swedish state
and the Church of Sweden (Svenska kyrkan) in 1999/2000. The Church
of Sweden is still an established church in the sense that it is men-
tioned by name in common law, though no longer in the Swedish con-
stitution.18 This special section of common law defines certain aspects
of the inner workings of the Church of Sweden. This means that there
is still an intimate relationship between church and state just as there
is in Denmark and Norway. The state is not free from the church
and the church is not free from the state. The Church of Sweden is
funded primarily through a church tax that is collected by the state.
Collection of church tax by the state is, however, also open to other re-
ligious organizations, and several have taken advantage of this offer.
Those individuals who are not members of a state-approved religious
community do not pay church taxes. There is RE in public schools, and
it is not possible, as in Denmark and Norway, to be exempt from this
education. The reason is that RE is considered neutral, and therefore
the lack of exemption is not considered to contradict the European
Convention on the Exercise of Children’s Rights by the Swedish
authorities.19
Summarizing the current relationships between religion and state in
the three Scandinavian countries, it is difficult to argue that they are
secularized at the societal level. In all three countries there is an estab-
lished church that has special privileges vis-a-vis the state and other
religious communities. It could be argued that the tight integration of
the majority churches and the state in the three Scandinavian countries
means that the values of the churches do indeed play a role the inte-
gration and legitimization of society. Even if societal integration
through religion is not possible in a modern society,20 it does not pre-
vent politicians from trying to accomplish this goal through the formu-
lation of laws and often through RE in the public schools. At least at
the societal level the Scandinavian countries cannot be said to be secu-
larized, and hence they should not be secularized at the other levels.
As has already been established, the Scandinavian countries are secu-
larized at the individual level, even though they are not secularized at
the societal level. This is what the Scandinavian paradox is. The ques-
tion is what consequences this has on the organizational level and
what consequences it has for the actual numbers of atheists in the

Scandinavian countries.
It is difficult to ascertain whether secularization has occurred at the
organizational level in the Scandinavian countries. One would either
have to do it by analyzing the official stances of the Scandinavian
churches on particular issues or by analyzing the range of services they
offer their members. This is beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice
it to note that such an analysis would be made highly complicated by
the legal integration of church and state in the Scandinavian countries.
Sometimes the churches can speak for themselves21 whereas at other
times parliamentary politicians do it for them. At the organizational
level secularization is an organizational accommodation of the changed
conditions of the church. Because it is difficult to analyze if and how
the established Scandinavian churches have responded to secularization,
maybe it would be more telling to analyze other organizational
responses to secularization. Because the topic is atheists, it could be
interesting to look at nonchurch organizations that demand external
changes in the majority churches, particularly the relationship between
church and state. Basically there are two types of nonchurch organiza-
tions that are opposed to the established churches (and religion in gen-
eral). One type is organizations that are defined by being atheistic or
nonreligious; the latter usually term themselves humanistic. Another
type is organizations that oppose organized religion as one of many po-
litical viewpoints. The Scandinavian countries have had a tradition for
leftwing political parties and labor unions, some of which (i.e., the com-
munist parties) have been opposed to religion as part of their general
political goals. Here the focus will be the former type of organizations
and not the latter. Unfortunately very little has been written on atheism
in Scandinavia and even less on atheistic and humanistic organizations.
This means that the following is far from an exhausted list of atheistic
and humanistic organizations in Scandinavia. It does however encom-
pass some of the more high-profile and vocal organizations.
There has not really been any tradition for atheistic organizations in
Denmark. Even though there has been an established church since 1849,
the current atheistic organizations are rather recent. The largest atheistic
organization in Denmark is the Atheistic Society (Ateistisk Selskab),
which was founded in 2002. They currently have about 900 paying
members,22 and according to their Web site their main goal is the sepa-
ration of church and state in Denmark.23 They communicate through a
newsletter and by sending written materials to parliamentary politicians
and newspapers. The Atheistic Society has a sister movement of sorts in
the Internet-based debate forum, Atheistic Forum (Ateistisk Forum). The
forum started in 2002 and became a society in 2006. According to their
Web site they have 730 members, since they consider registered users of
the Internet-based forum as members.24 There is no membership fee
and chances are that many of the users of Atheistic Forum are also
members of the Atheistic Society, even though the society has its own
Internet-based debate forum. The Atheistic Society has managed to get
some news coverage, but beyond that they have little power. There has
not been any serious discussion about the separation of church and state
in Danish parliamentary politics, and there seems to be little debate in
parliament on the intricacies of the tight integration of church and state
in Denmark in general. This leaves little room for any initiatives on the
part of the Atheistic Society as they have to raise the discussions all on
their own. Whether the Atheistic Society would be invited if there were
for instance an official government report on the relationship between
church and state is anyone’s guess.
The largest atheistic or humanistic organization in Norway is the
Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund). Founded in
1956, they currently have, according to their own account, more than
72,000 members.25 The large number of members is not the product of
a steady increase over the years but the result of a combination of
aggressive campaigning beginning in the mid-seventies and state and
municipal subsidies. The Norwegian Humanist Association started as
an association consisting mainly of academics in the Norwegian capital
with only 256 members.26 In 1976 the Norwegian Humanist Association
had only accumulated 1,768 paying members, adding up to a net
increase in membership of a little over 1,500 people in 20 years.27 Under
new leadership the association managed to increase the membership
rate dramatically during the late 1970s, and in 1979 the Norwegian
Humanist Association had more than 5,000 members.28 In 1986, thirty
years after it was founded, the association reached 30,000 members.29
While increasing their membership, the association also expanded geo-
graphically and established local branches in most of Norway, changing
from a big city phenomenon to a true national association.30 To finance
their activities, the Norwegian Humanist Association started to obtain
municipal grants beginning in the latter half of the 1960s,31 and in 1981
the Norwegian Humanist Association managed to become the first, and
to this day only, nonreligious organization to get a grant from the state
proportionately equal to that received by the Church of Norway each
year.32 This was the product of the association’s lobbying parliamentary
politicians, but it would not have been possible had the association not
grown to a considerable size during the late seventies.33
The size of the grant from the Norwegian state depends on the num-
ber of members the Norwegian Humanist Association has, but since
adult members still have to pay a yearly fee (members between 15 and
24 years of age are exempt) chances are that the association’s member-
ship rate of 72,000 is not particularly inflated. The Norwegian Humanist
Association runs a string of secular services. They perform rites in con-
nection with birth, coming of age, and death and can perform legally
binding marriages. They run a number of nonreligious support groups

ranging from crisis support as well as drug rehabilitation. The Norwe-
gian Humanist Association publishes a periodical and runs a publishing
house focusing on debate books about the relationship between church
and state and other issues of religion in the public sphere. The most
telling aspect of the Norwegian Humanist Association, however, is not
their impressive array of activities nor their large membership rate. The
most telling aspect is their integration into the fabric of public space. As
already mentioned they receive a state grant as the only nonreligious
organization in Norway, but more importantly they participate in the
preparation of government reports. A government report on the future
relationship between church and state in Norway was published in
2006, and the group behind the report included members of the Church
of Norway, the Norwegian parliament, the Council of Free Churches,
and the Norwegian Humanist Association.34 This means that in Norway
the Norwegian Humanist Association is deemed to be an organization
to be reckoned with in matters of the state.
In Sweden the main humanistic organization seems to be the
Humanists (Humanisterna) which was founded in 1979 as the Humanistic-
Ethical Society (Human-Etiska F€orbundet). They later changed their name
after an internal organizational schism in 1999. The Humanists currently
have about 5,000 paying members,35 and their main goal is making
Sweden a secular society.36 To disseminate their views, the Humanists
publish a periodical and a newsletter and generally try to make them-
selves heard in the media. The Humanists have members who are enti-
tled to perform legally binding marriages, and the Humanists offer
secular rituals for birth, marriage, and death. Before the formal separa-
tion of church and state in Sweden in 1999/2000 a number of govern-
ment reports were prepared to suggest how to handle the separation.
The Humanists were not invited to participate in this work,37 probably
because of their comparatively small membership rate. This means that
the Humanists cannot be said to be as influential as the Norwegian
Humanist Association is in Norway.
Comparing atheistic/humanistic organizations in the Scandinavian
countries, they have developed rather differently with regard to size
and influence. In Denmark they are a late and for now somewhat irrel-
evant phenomenon because of their very small membership and range
of offers (basically an Internet-based debate forum), though this may
change with time. In Sweden at least one organization is somewhat
established in that it has a decent membership rate, can perform legally
binding marriages, and offers a wide range of secular ceremonies. It is
however less influential in that it was not involved in the government
report regarding the separation of church and state in Sweden. In Nor-
way the Norwegian Humanist Association has managed to grow to an
organization of some size and is integrated into the fabric of public life,
particularly through its legal privileges (the state grant and the ability
to perform legally binding marriages) and its role in the formulation of
state reports. Even if it is difficult to ascertain whether the established
Scandinavian churches have accommodated to the surrounding society
and its secularization at the societal level something can be said about
the organizations most likely to press for reforms of the churches and
their stance vis-a-vis society as a whole. It could be argued that pres-
sure for secularization at the organizational level is most evident in
Norway and rather weak in Denmark and Sweden. In Norway there is
a major organizational demand for reforms of the way church and state
interact. This demand has not gone unheard as the participation of the
Norwegian Humanist Association in the preparation of the government
report demonstrates. In neither Denmark nor Sweden has the organiza-
tional pressure been so big as to be officially noted.
One way to interpret the differences in size and influence of the athe-
istic/humanistic organizations in the Scandinavian countries could be
that the very tight integration between church and state in Norway has
produced a strong response from organized atheists, whereas the less
tight integration in Denmark and Sweden has not. Because church and
state have been formally separated in Sweden under a social democratic
government, it could be that Swedish atheists have found an organiza-
tional outlet for their atheism through existing political organizations
rather than specifically atheistic/humanistic organizations. It may also
have been important that Norway has been home to a very conservative
interpretation of Protestantism (including belief in demons as late as the
1970s), which the Norwegian Humanist Association managed to capital-
ize on to get the attention of the mass media. This would fit well with
the assumption that atheists are actively nonreligious people. They act
when provoked and need an object at which to direct their anger. An
established church that is highly integrated with the state through the
constitution seem the perfect focusing point for such anger. However,
the stark differences in the sizes of the Scandinavian atheistic/humanistic
organizations suggest that it is not just a question of the degree to which
church and state are integrated. Even though the integration of church
and state may be the tightest in Norway, church and state are still very
tightly integrated in both Denmark and Sweden. This suggests that part
of the explanation for the relative sizes of the atheistic/humanistic organ-
izations in Scandinavia could be the number of atheists in each country.
If so, then it could be expected that the number of atheists will be largest
in Norway, much smaller in Sweden, and almost minimal in Denmark.
From the short discussion of who atheists are assumed to be, several
indicators could be used to delineate atheists in surveys. To cut the opera-
tionalization of atheists short, the easiest thing to do is to let the respon-
dents decide for themselves. This means that in the following, atheists are
individuals who when faced with the choice are willing to define
themselves as atheists. The European Values Study (EVS) was conducted

in 1981, 1990, and 1999, and in all three waves an item asked the respon-
dents the following: ‘‘Independently of whether you go to church or not,
would you say you are . . . A religious person, Not a religious person, or
A convinced atheist.’’ All those respondents who chose the latter option
will be considered atheists. Both Denmark and Sweden participated in the
EVS 1999, and hence data from the EVS 1999 will be used for Denmark
and Sweden. The EVS has a sister survey called the World Values Survey
(WVS), which is based on the EVS 1981 and contains many of the same
questions as the EVS. For most intents and purposes the two surveys are
interchangeable. The WVS is conducted at different intervals from that of
the EVS. In Norway it was conducted in 1996 and again in 2007, although
data were not publicly available at the time of this writing. Hence the data
from the WVS 1996 will be used for Norway, because Norway does not
take part in the EVS. Using survey data to analyze atheism will accom-
plish two things. It will establish the approximate number of atheists in
the three Scandinavian countries and it will allow for an analysis of who
the atheists are vis-
a-vis the rest of the population.
The number of atheists in Scandinavia is rather small. According to
the EVS 1999 and the WVS 1996 about 5 percent of the Danes are self-
proclaimed atheists, and it is about 4 percent among the Norwegians
and about 7 percent among the Swedes (Table 9.1). Looking at the
combined data set (with the appropriate weights applied) about 6 per-
cent of the Scandinavians or a little over one million people out of a
population of over 18 million people could be said to be atheists at the
time of the surveys. The differences between the countries are small, so
small in fact that there is no significant difference in the number of
atheists in Denmark and Sweden and in Denmark and Norway.38
There were, however, significantly more atheists in Sweden than in
Norway, but the difference is still rather small. Because the percentage
of atheists in the Scandinavian countries was so small, it would appear
Table 9.1
Atheists (in percent)
a b a
Denmark Norway Sweden
Atheists 5 4 7
Non-Religious 18 49 54
Religious 77 47 39
Design weight applied
a
EVS 1999
b
WVS 1996
that the number of atheists follows the level of secularization at the

societal level rather than at the individual level. It would also appear
that the size and influence of atheistic/humanistic organizations in the
Scandinavian countries has little relationship with the actual number of
atheists. Strictly speaking Norway has the smallest number of atheists
compared to Sweden, whereas the opposite should have been the case.
The large difference in the proportions of religious and nonreligious
respondents (Table 9.1) is most likely the product of differences in
translation. In Sweden and Norway ‘‘religious’’ was translated literally
(into religi€os and religiøs, respectively), while in Denmark it was trans-
lated into something akin to the English ‘‘believer’’ (troende). Hence in
the following, the variable on being religious will be collapsed into two
categories: atheist and other.39
The repeated nature of the EVS and the WVS makes it possible to
compare the number of atheists in Scandinavia from 1981 to 1999, a
time period of 19 years. There are some minor differences because the
latest data from Norway is from 1996 and the first wave of the EVS
was not conducted in Norway and Sweden until 1982. Nevertheless it
can be concluded that the number of atheists in Scandinavia has
remained unchanged since the beginning of the 1980s (table not
shown). For Denmark, Norway, and Sweden the proportion of the pop-
ulation that identify as atheists has not changed significantly in the
time period in which the EVS and WVS has been conducted. This sug-
gests that being an atheist is not something taken lightly but is rather a
stabile, general disposition just like religious beliefs in general. It is
something that changes slowly and gradually. Most likely as the result
of generational changes rather than life cycle stages or historical events.
The slowly changing nature of the number of atheists also suggests
that using data that are almost ten years old is less of a concern.
Because the Scandinavian countries are very similar with regard to
structural factors (all three are stable democracies with comprehensive
welfare systems) and secularization at the societal level, they will be
analyzed as a whole. A population weight will be applied as well as a
design weight because of a slightly skewed sampling in Sweden. To
avoid the worst pitfalls of simplification, separate analyses will also be
done for each country, but the results will only be mentioned if they
contradict or correct the results of the main analyses, and the tables
will not be shown.
Starting with demographics and education the atheists differ from
the rest of the population on all variables (Table 9.2). Atheists are sig-
nificantly more likely to be males than the rest of the population, and
more than 70 percent of the atheists are male compared to about
48 percent among the rest of the population.40 Atheists are also gener-
ally younger than the rest of the population. The average age of the
atheists is 37 years old compared to an average age of 45 among the
Table 9.2
Demography and education (in percent)
Atheist Other
Female 29 52*
Male 71 48
Age (mean) 37 45*
Size of Town
< 100,000 45 65*
100,000þ 55 35
Education
Less 50 59*
Secondaryþ 50 41
Design and Population weights applied
* Statistically significant at 5 percent level
rest of the population.41 Atheists are significantly more likely to live in

a large city (100,000 citizens or above), which is about 55 percent of
them compared to about 35 percent among the rest of the population.
Finally atheists are slightly but significantly more likely to have com-
pleted secondary school than the rest of the population. Among the
atheists about half have completed secondary school compared to
about 41 percent among the rest of the population.
Before any conclusions are reached it is important to note that the
pattern found for the entire sample does not necessarily hold for the
three national samples separately. The difference in gender composi-
tion and mean age holds in all three Scandinavian countries. The athe-
ists tend to be male and younger. The tendency for atheists to live in
larger cities on the other hand only holds for the Swedish sample. In
neither Denmark nor Norway is there a significant difference between
the atheists and the rest of the population on this variable. Regarding
the difference in education, it only holds for the Danish sample. In
Sweden and Norway atheists are not more likely to have completed
secondary school than the rest of the population. With the differences
between countries being what they are, it can be concluded that athe-
ism in Scandinavia is only a structural phenomenon to the extend that
it is more prevalent among males and those who are younger. That
atheists are more likely to be male is not surprising, taking into consid-
eration that males are generally less religious than females when meas-
ured using traditional Christian beliefs and practices. Because males
are less likely to believe, there are more of them who could potentially
take their unbelief to the next level and declare themselves atheists. If
being an atheist, like being religious in general, is a generational phe-
nomenon, then the younger mean age of the atheists suggests that
atheism only started to make sense for the Scandinavians somewhere

in the middle of the twentieth century, probably in the post-World
War II years. It cannot, however, be concluded that atheism, like Chris-
tian religiosity in general, follows urbanization and education. Living
in a large city and having a high level of education, two variables that
generally predicts a lower level of Christian religiosity, do not seem to
promote atheism in the Scandinavian countries in general.
Since the differences between atheists and the rest of the population
are not entirely demographic nor educationally related a good second
candidate is politics. There is a strong tendency for atheists to be more
left leaning politically than the rest of the population. If a scale on left-
wing/rightwing political self placement is reduced to only three cate-
gories then about 35 percent of the atheists can be considered left wing
compared to about 17 among the rest of the population (Table 9.3).
Generally speaking the atheists seem to be more polarized than the rest
of the population as there are fewer center-oriented atheists than there
are center-oriented in the rest of the population. Atheists seem gener-
ally more likely to take an extreme stance. If they have a political
stance, then they do not compromise but instead tend to seek the
extreme position unlike regular people. By combining five items on
participation or likelihood of participating in petitions, boycotts, dem-
onstrations, strikes, and occupations of buildings, an eleven-point index
of political participation ranging from 0 to 10 can be constructed from
the data.42 Even though the median score on the index is the same for
atheists and the rest of the population, there is a significant relation-
ship between the two variables in that atheists are much more likely to
participate in political activities outside voting. This combined with
their political polarization suggests that in Scandinavia atheists are a
special kind of people who tend to have strong political views and act
Table 9.3
Politics and trust (in percent)
Pol. Orientation Atheist Other
Right wing 11 17*

Centre 55 67
Left wing 35 17
Pol. Part. (median) 5 5*
Social Trust
Trusting 68 66
Careful 32 34
on them. It must be noted that in Norway and Sweden atheists tend to

be more left wing than the rest of the population, whereas in Denmark
they are as likely to be right wing as is the rest of the population but
less likely to be center oriented. This does not change the conclusion
because the point was not that atheists are more left wing but that they
are more clear cut in political matters and go for the outlying positions
on the political scale. In all three countries atheists are significantly
more likely to score higher on the political participation index.
The lack of large atheistic/humanistic organizations in Denmark and
Sweden becomes a little more puzzling taking the participatory tenden-
cies of the atheists into consideration. If the atheists tend to take the
extreme political view and act on it, they should be more active.
Because the Scandinavian countries all have established churches and
can hardly be said to be secularized at the societal level, there should
be more than enough motivation for atheists to act. Only in Norway
has there been a large organizational response to the established church.
The most likely explanation for the apparent lack of activity among the
Danish and Swedish atheists could be that atheists, because of lack of
large and influential atheistic/humanistic organizations, have tended to
find outlets for their (anti-)religious sentiments through established political
organizations like the several left-wing parties that have existed at various
points in the Scandinavian countries throughout the past decades.
Religion and the community it can create is related to the produc-
tion of social trust particularly through church attendance.43 Because
the Scandinavian atheists have had little opportunity for social outlet
through organizations, except in Norway, it could mean that they have
less social trust than others. Social trust as a variable is important as it
tend to predict trust in general, not to mention xenophobia (at least in
Denmark). The idea that atheism should promote less social trust is
rejected by the numbers (Table 9.3). There is no significant difference
with regard to social trust between atheists and the rest of the popula-
tion. Being actively nonreligious does not diminish one’s general trust
of others. This means that atheism in itself is not a threat to society in
the sense that it could lower levels of civic participation or undermine
the parliamentary system.44
With the proportion of atheists being about 6 percent in the Scandi-
navian countries there is ample room for the atheists to be religiously
unaffiliated, even though the established churches of the Scandinavian
countries have more than 80 percent of their populations as members. It
is assumed that being an atheist is not the same as being a nonbeliever.
If it were, the number of atheists should be much higher, maybe about
30 to 40 percent. Instead the Scandinavian countries have a large pro-
portion of nonreligious or nonbelievers. The most likely scenario then is
that the atheists are the ones who have left the established church,
whereas the nonreligious are those who have stayed for whatever
Table 9.4
Church membership (in percent)
Atheist Other
National Church 47 80*

Other/None 53 20
reasons they may have. Atheists are, after all, more likely to act (at least
politically) and hence theoretically more likely to leave the established
church. Surprisingly this expectation is contradicted by the survey data.
Among the atheists about 47 percent are members of an established
church compared to about 80 percent among the rest of the population
(Table 9.4). This means that there are about half a million atheists in the
Scandinavian countries who are also members of an established church.
Even though they are ready to declare themselves atheists (rather than
just nonreligious or nonbelievers), almost half the atheists for some rea-
son are still members of an established, and state supported, Christian
majority church. This is very puzzling indeed as the tendency for politi-
cal activity does not seem to readily translate into religious action on
the most basic level. There is of course a marked difference between
atheists and the rest of the population with regard to membership in an
established church as atheists are much more likely not to be members,
but many of them still retain their membership regardless of the fact
that they claim to be atheists.
Traditionally the Christian churches have promoted a specific kind of
morality that their adherents were expected to follow. It could be argued
that secularization has undermined the church-sponsored morality as
the churches can no longer influence society as a whole. It could on the
other hand be argued that this is not necessarily a problem in the Scan-
dinavian countries as they are not particularly secularized at the societal
level. Even with this caveat it could still be argued that in the Scandina-
vian countries atheists should be less inclined to adhere to a strict moral
code because they are actively nonreligious and hence should not be
particularly bound by whatever moral guidelines the established
churches may promote. In fact their antireligious stance may even moti-
vate them to choose a moral standpoint that is exactly the opposite of
that of the churches. Using the EVS/WVS morals can be divided into
civic moral and private moral, the latter often being referred to as per-
missiveness.45 Here civic moral is whether respondents think it can be
justified to claim state benefits one is not entitled to, cheat on one’s
taxes, or accept a bribe. It is a moral that relates to the individual’s role
Table 9.5
Morals (median)
Atheist Other
Civic 25 26*
Private 12 19*
as a citizen and to the individual’s relationship to civil society. Private

moral are whether the following can be justified: homosexuality, abor-
tion, divorce, euthanasia, and suicide. It is a moral that relates to things
that are basically private and do not readily impact society as a whole.
In both cases responses have been combined into indexes.46
With regard to civic moral, atheists tend to be slightly less strict than
the rest of the population (Table 9.5). On an index ranging from 0 to 27,
where 0 is morally lax and 27 is morally strict, atheists have a median
score of 25 compared to a median score of 26 among the rest of the pop-
ulation. The difference is rather small but significant nonetheless. Regard-
less of the minor difference between the two groups the table shows that
the Scandinavians regardless of religiosity have a very strict civic moral.
This is undoubtedly rooted in the comprehensive welfare systems that
have helped promote a view of the nation-states of Scandinavia as bot-
tom-up constructs rather than top-down. The state is there to help its citi-
zens and not vice versa. Checking for differences in civic moral for each
sample separately reveals that there is only a difference between the athe-
ists and the rest of the population in Norway. In both Denmark and Swe-
den atheism makes no impacts on civic morals. This only supports the
notion that civic morals in the Scandinavian countries are a product of
nation-state building rather than individual preferences, religious or not.
The picture is different with regard to private morals. Here atheists
are much more morally permissive than the rest of the population. On
an index ranging from 0 to 45, with 45 being the morally strictest, the
median score of the atheists is 12 compared to a median score of 19
among the rest of the population. This means that the atheists are gen-
erally more accepting of sexual and marital mores that the Christian
churches have traditionally opposed. It would seem that the atheists, in
their active and outspoken nonreligiousness, have rejected the moral
mores of the Christian churches. They may still be members to a high
degree, but they insist on ignoring the moral rules of the church.
Regardless of the marked difference between the atheists and the rest
of the population with regard to private morals, the table also shows
how morally permissive the Scandinavians are. Even the median score
of 19 for the nonatheists is still far from the maximum score of 45.
Compare this to the median score of 25 and 26 on the civic moral

index, with its maximum score of 27. The Scandinavians regardless of
whether they are atheists or not have very strict civic morals combined
with comparatively lax private morals.
In the end, with the data available, a picture is painted of atheists in
Scandinavia as a group that is in some instances unique and in others
indistinguishable from the rest of the population. A Scandinavian athe-
ist is characterized by being a younger male with relatively extreme
political viewpoints and a general inclination toward political action.
Probably as a consequence of their nonreligious standpoint atheists are
more often not members of a church and reject the morals the church
has traditionally preached. Their appreciation of other people and their
respect for society in general and their fellow man is the same as their
nonatheist fellow Scandinavians. In this sense it could be argued that
atheists are secularized individuals to the point where their (non-)
religious viewpoints have lost their impact on the values of other life-
spheres. Their rejection of religiosity has an impact only on those areas
which are related to traditional Christian church religiosity: church
membership and private morals. Being a self-declared atheist does not
seem to entail a comprehensive philosophy of life but is rather a nar-
row concept that is only related to the strictly religious. Outside the
religious sphere a Scandinavian atheist is just like every other Scandi-
navian. Or maybe it is the other way round.
Secularization in Scandinavia is not a straightforward phenomenon.
At the societal level it would, in many respects, be most correct to state
that Scandinavia is not secularized. Large established churches with
special legal privileges and strong popular support in the form of mem-
bership rates rival those of the Catholic Church in southern Europe. At
the individual level, on the other hand, the Scandinavians seem highly
secularized; in fact they seem like the most secularized people in the
world. Very low church attendance rates are combined with weak sup-
port for central tenets of the Christian faith. This is the Scandinavian
paradox: strong churches and a-religious citizens. Secularization is a
societal phenomenon that has the power to create the structural possi-
bility for atheism, but the question is whether it is secularization at the
societal or individual level that is conducive to atheism in Scandinavia:
societal secularization seem to leave rather little room for atheism
because Scandinavia is not particularly secularized, and individual sec-
ularization leaves rather more room for atheism because the low levels
of religiosity make for a large group of potential atheists. There are
rather few atheists in Scandinavia. Only about 6 percent of the popula-
tions of the Scandinavian countries can be said to be atheists as defined
here. This suggests that it is (the lack of) secularization at the societal
level that sets the limits for atheism in Scandinavia. Somehow the pres-
ence of established churches tightly integrated in the state has helped
hold back what could have been a much larger number of atheists.
There is a large group of nonreligious Scandinavians; how many
depends on how they are defined, but for some reason they do not
seem to be attracted by being self-described atheists. If atheism is seen
as a reaction of nonreligious people to the presence of religion in the
public sphere and particularly an opposition to the traditional Christian
majority churches of Europe, then it is plausible that it is the combina-
tion of the Scandinavians’ bottom-up relationship to the state and the
relationship between the state and the established churches that is the
cause of the low number of atheists in Scandinavia. Even though many
Scandinavians are de facto a-religious, they do not feel resentment to-
ward nor threatened by the established churches because they see them
as part of the comprehensive welfare system. Without an ‘‘enemy’’ at
which to direct their resentment of religion, atheists are unlikely to
materialize. Because the established churches are seen as part of the
welfare states, they are part of something that all Scandinavians regard
very highly. The established churches may be the cause of the low lev-
els of religiosity in Scandinavia,47 but it would seem that they are also
the cause of the low number of atheists in Scandinavia.
NOTES
1. Loek Halman et al., eds., Traditie, secularisatie en individualsering. Een studie
naar de waarden van de Nederlanders in een Europese context (Tilburg: Tilburg Uni-
versity Press, 1987); Peter Ester et al., eds., The Individualizing Society: Value
Change in Europe and North America, 2nd ed. (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press,
1994); Loek Halman et al., ‘‘The Religious Factor in Contemporary Society. The
Differential Impact of Religion in the Private and Public Sphere in Comparative
Perspective,’’ International Journal of Comparative Sociology 40, no. 1 (1999): 141–
60; Christian Albrekt Larsen et al., Danskernes forhold til religionen—en afrapporter-
ing af ISSP 1998 (Aalborg: Institut for Økonomi, Politik og Forvaltning, 2002).
2. Larsen et al., Danskernes forhold til religionen—en afrapportering af ISSP
1998, 33.
3. Peter B. Andersen and Peter L€ uchau, ‘‘Tro og religiøst tilhørsforhold i
Europa,’’ in Danskernes srprg, ed. Peter Gundelach (København: Hans Reit-
zels Forlag, 2004).
4. According to data from the EVS 1999 and the WVS 1996 less than 70 per-
cent of the Danish and Norwegian samples believe in God, and in the Swedish
sample it is less than 55 percent. For the combined (and weighted) sample about
62 percent claim to believe in God. If belief in God is considered a minimum of
belief for someone to be considered religious in a Christian sense, then the num-
ber of a-religious could be as high as 38 percent. Those who are religious but
not Christians would have to be subtracted from the 38 percent, but it is difficult
to ascertain how many religious non-Christians there are in Scandinavia because
the current surveys have very few items on non-Christian religiosity.
5. According to data from the EVS 1999 and WVS 1996 about 90 percent of
the Danes and Norwegians claim to be members of a church or other religious
organization. The number for Sweden is more than 75 percent. For the com-
bined (and weighted) sample about 84 percent claim to be members of a
church or other religious organization. If atheists are unaffiliated on principle,
then they would have to be among the 16 percent unaffiliated.
6. Karel Dobbelaere, Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels (Brussels:
P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002), 19.
7. Ibid., 21–22.
8. Ibid., 140.
9. Ibid., 134.
10. Ibid., 167–168.
11. Ibid., 169.
12. Peter B. Andersen et al., ‘‘Religion in Europe and the United States:
Assumptions, Survey Evidence, and Some Suggestions,’’ Nordic Journal of Reli-
gion and Society 21, no. 1 (2008): 61–74.
13. Inger D€ ubeck, ‘‘State and Church in Denmark’’, in State and Church in the
European Union, 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Robbers (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlags-
gesellschaft, 2005).
14. Preben Espersen, Kirkeret. Almindelig del. (København: Jurist—og Øko-
nomforbundets Forlag, 1993), 76.
15. Hans Gammeltoft-Hansen, ‘‘§6’’, in Danmarks Riges Grundlov med kom-
mentarer, ed. Henrik Zahle (København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag,
1999). Gammeltoft-Hansen does however argue that it would not be very prac-
tical for the monarch to be member of a church other than the Danish People’s
Church, and it has in fact never been the case since 1849 when the Danish con-
stitution was established.
16. Njål Høstmlingen, ‘‘The Permissible Scope of Legal Limitations on the
Freedom of Religion or Belief in Norway,’’ Emory International Law Review 19,
no. 2 (2005): 989–1032.
17. Ibid., 1003.
18. Lars Friedner, ‘‘State and Church in Sweden’’, in State and Church in the
European Union, 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Robbers (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlags-
gesellschaft, 2005).
19. Rune Larsson, ‘‘R€atten till befrielse från skolans religionsundervisning i
Sverige,’’ in Religion, skole og kulturel integration i Danmark og Sverige, ed. Peter
B. Andersen et al. (København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2006).
20. Richard K. Fenn, ‘‘Toward a New Sociology of Religion,’’ Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion 11, no. 1 (Spring, 1972): 16–32.
21. This is not possible in Denmark because the Danish People’s church
does not have a synod, church council, or any kind of official organ to decide
an official stance of the church.
22. The secretary of the Atheistic Society; e-mail message to author, August
14, 2008.
23. See http://www.ateist.dk (accessed September 1, 2009).
24. See http://www.ateist.net (accessed September 1, 2009). Being a society
is a Danish legal construct that basically makes the society a legal person with
the rights and duties inherent in such a status.
25. See http://www.human.no (accessed September 1, 2009).
26. Paul Knutsen, Livet før døden. Human-Etisk Forbund 1956–2006 (Oslo:
Humanist Forlag 2006), 10. The book is a history of the Norwegian Humanist
Association written by a professor of history. It was published by the publish-

ing house of the Norwegian Humanist Association.
27. Ibid., 243.
28. Ibid., 250.
29. Ibid., 253.
30. Ibid., 255.
31. Ibid., 258.
32. Høstmlingen, ‘‘The Permissible Scope of Legal Limitations on the Free-
dom of Religion or Belief in Norway,’’ 1001.
33. Knutsen, Livet før døden. Human-Etisk Forbund 1956–2006, 261–262.
34. ‘‘Staten og Den norske kirke,’’ Norges offentlige utredninger 2006, no. 2
(2006):9.
35. The Humanists’ press service, e-mail message to author, August 14,
2008.
36. See http://www.humanisterna.se (accessed September 1, 2009).
37. See ‘‘Staten och trossamfunden,’’ Statens offentliga utredningar 1994, no. 42
(1994), 3–4. The members of the committee were either politicians or employees
of the Church of Sweden.
38. Difference of proportions test used.
39. Using the original variable in the analyses does not change the overall
conclusions. The results from the combined sample are the same although
there are some minor differences when the national samples are analyzed sepa-
rately.
40. Gamma tests have been used to test for statistical significance. In the one
case where a Student’s t-test has been used it is mentioned in a note.
41. Student’s t-test used.
42. The items conform to a Mokken model with a Loevinger’s H of 0.50 for
the entire sample, which means that the items form a strong scale.
43. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
44. See Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Atti-
tudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).
45. See Peter Ester and Loek Halman, ‘‘Empirical Trends in Religious and
Moral Beliefs in Western Europe,’’ International Journal of Sociology 24, no. 2–3
(1994): 81–110.
46. A factor analysis with Varimax rotation conducted on the eight variables
shows that they belong to two different factors. The index on private moral
tests well for scalability (Cronbach’s Alpha ¼ 0.77), while the index on civic
moral does not (Cronbach’s Alpha ¼ 0.47). Since the factor analysis showed
that the items on civic moral were related, both indexes will be used.
47. See Mark Chaves and David E. Cann, ‘‘Regulation, Pluralism, and Reli-
gious Market Structure. Explaining Religion’s Vitality,’’ Rationality and Society
4, no. 3 (1992): 272–90; Rodney Stark and Laurence R. Iannaccone, ‘‘A Supply-
Side Reinterpretation of the ’Secularization’ of Europe,’’ Journal of the Scientific
Study of Religion 33, no. 3 (1994): 230–252.
Chapter 10
Atheism and Secularity in China

Liang Tong
Before we discuss the term atheism, it is necessary to distinguish two

kinds of meaning of the word ‘‘atheism’’ (Wu Shen Lun in Chinese).
One refers to the doctrine that God does not exist and the belief in the
existence of God is false (Jones et al. 2005, 576), whereas the other is
connected with the Chinese character ‘‘Wu (negation) Shen (god),’’
which generally means a negative assertion of the faith or belief held
by different tribes or villages.
In the early time of which there are archaeological records (Chang,
K.C., 130–134), the Chinese character Shen (god) refers to a divine being,
which is regarded as the powerful dominator of the world by people liv-
ing in a certain tribe or village. The mysterious power of divine being
derives from the unpredictable heaven. The divine beings vary with
tribes or villages; however, the people who belong to one tribe (or village)
usually admit faith or belief in their own Shen, but negate that in others.
Nevertheless, the focus of this chapter is on the first meaning of athe-
ism occurring within a particular context of religious institution gener-
ally comprising institutional and diffused religion. In Yang’s opinion,
the institutional religion refers to universal religions such as Buddhism
and Taoism, and other religious groups or organizations, which play
relatively independent parts in the social system of China. And the dif-
fused religion embedded in the ideas, rituals, and structure of secular
life of the Chinese people has theological theories, worshipped objects,
and adherents whose constitution is looser than the former (Yang
2007, 268–270). However, atheism in ancient China developed in such
circumstances as those mentioned above. On that account, atheism is
usually conditioned by the surrounding circumstances in which it
develops, and thus is consequently accompanied with certain emphases
or omissions that constitute the characteristics of the atheism. So it is

necessary to give a brief account of the background of the Chinese soci-
ety and civilization.
Until today, it was known to many Western people that the Chinese
people were less concerned with religion than other people elsewhere.
For example, Professor Bodde thinks that Chinese people ‘‘are not a
people for whom religious ideas and activities constitute an
all-important and absorbing part of life. . . . It is ethics (especially
Confucian ethics), and not religion (at least not religion of a formal,
organized type), that provided the spiritual basis in Chinese civiliza-
tion. . . . All of which, of course, marks a difference of fundamental
importance between China and most other major civilizations, in which a
church and a priesthood have played a dominant role’’ (Bodde 1942, 293).
The statement of Bodde brings out the situation of Chinese religion,
but leaves more questions about religion in Chinese culture in the
meantime. The reason why Chinese people have less concern with reli-
gion is that they have so much concern with the transcendent dimen-
sion of secular life. Chinese people are not as religious as those of the
West because the former are self-cultivated or neighborhood-moralized
in the family system. The family system constitutes the mainstay of
social system of China and provokes the patriarchal clan system, which
has kept up for more than two thousand years (Jin 1984, 30–37). For
economic reasons, the members of a family, including descendants
must live together. Thus there developed the Chinese family system,
which was undoubtedly one of the most complex and well organized
in the world. In the Erh Ya, which is the oldest dictionary of the Chinese
language, dating from before the Christian era, there are more than one
hundred terms for various family relationships, most of which have no
equivalent in the English language.
A great amount of Confucianism, including Confucian ethics, became
the rational justification or theoretical expression of the social system of
China. With their secular life integrated with Confucian ethics, Chinese
people became used to the homiletics of the patriarchal clan system and
fulfilled themselves through their daily practice in pursuit of the eleva-
tion of mind—a reaching out for what is beyond the present actual
world and for values that are higher than moral ones.
It is quite different for ordinary people to fulfill themselves. Under
the guidance of teachers, men have to study ‘‘Six Classics’’ which con-
sist of the Book of Changes, the Book of Odes (or Poetry), the Book of
History, the Rituals (or Rites), the Music (no longer preserved as a sepa-
rate work), and the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle history of
Confucius’ state of Lu extending from 722 to 479 BCE, if they could
fortunately secure an opportunity of disciple in the private capacity.
Furthermore, the outstanding students among those men in the study
had to be well prepared so as to try their best in the imperial
Atheism and Secularity in China 199
examinations. Women, on the other hand, have to scrupulously abide

by the cardinal guide ‘‘husband guides wife’’1 and diligently tackle
domestic chores in perfect order. It can be regarded as a form of fulfill-
ing oneself whether to prepare for the imperial examinations or tackle
the domestic chores.
Moreover, following along with the principle Chung (the golden
mean)2 (Yang 1980, 64), which means neither too much nor too little,
i.e., just right, and doing common and ordinary things with under-
standing of their full significance, one can gain the harmony of inner
heart and outer world, which represents the Confucian way of elevating
the mind. In this way one can achieve other-worldliness, yet at the
same time not lose this-worldliness. Nevertheless, Western readers may
feel puzzled about the coexistence of incompatible this-worldliness and
other-worldliness based on their cultural inheritance of knowledge. The
inheritance of knowledge of Western culture emphasizes the articulate
concepts, cogent arguments, and valid reasoning so as to draw a clear
dividing line between different things. However, the Confucian way of
elevating the mind in Chinese culture strives for the synthesis out of
such antitheses as this-worldliness and other-worldliness. It doesn’t
mean that antitheses are to be abolished; on the contrary, they are still
there. They have been made into a synthetic whole (Mu 1997, 101–103).
So what the Confucian way pursues is nor either wholly this-worldly
nor wholly other-worldly, yet both of this world and of the other world,
that is, very practical though not superficial.
While fulfilling oneself, one must also see that others are likewise
fulfilled. One cannot fulfill oneself while disregarding the fulfillment of
others. The reason is that one can develop one’s nature to the utmost
only through the human relationships, that is, within the social system,
especially the family system. To fulfill oneself is to develop to the
utmost what one has received from heaven, and to help others is to
assist the transforming and nourishing operations of heaven and earth
according to Confucius ethics. By fully understanding the significance
of these things, one is enabled to form a unity and harmony of heaven,
earth, and human beings.
In terms of elevation of mind, Chinese people gain a good deal of
enlightenment and inspiration from an immense number of ancient
Chinese books. Those books are accustomed to expressing ideas in the
form of aphorisms, apothegms, or allusions and illustrations, which
perhaps gives the reader an impression of briefness and disconnected-
ness of the sayings and writings of their authors. The whole book of
Lao-tzu consists of aphorisms, and most of the chapters of the Chuang-
tzu are full of allusions and illustrations. Even in writings such as Con-
fucian Analects and Mencius, both of which have a good few systematic
reasoning and arguments, there are still so many aphorisms, allusions,
and illustrations in contrast to writings of the West, which are full of
elaborated reasoning and careful arguments. In general, aphorisms

sound very brief, and allusions and illustrations sound disconnected.
Aphorisms, allusions, and illustrations are thus not articulate enough,
but their insufficiency in articulateness is compensated for by their sug-
gestiveness. Articulateness and suggestiveness are certainly incompati-
ble. The more an expression is articulate, the less it is suggestive—just
as the more an expression is narrative, the less it is poetic. The phrasing
and wording of ancient Chinese books are so inarticulate that their sug-
gestiveness is almost boundless (Hall and Ames 2005, 201–206). Given
the language barrier, an intelligent reader should learn to read not only
what is inside the book, but also what is between the lines.
FORMATION AND FORERUNNERS OF ATHEISM IN

ANCIENT CHINA
Transitional Views toward the Ghosts and Spirits
Given less concern with religion, it doesn’t mean that Chinese peo-
ple are not religious whether in ancient or present time. The religious
belief system of China has usually been regarded as beginning in
ancestor worship, but this is not totally true. Ancestor worship was
present from the early time before the Xia dynasty, for which there are
archaeological records (Chang, K. C., 130–134), but only as one element
in Chinese religion. The other element is the worship of the spirits of
nature, which is based on naturalism (Sivin 1995, ch. IV, 1–2). The nat-
uralism brings about the nurturing of atheism during the Spring and
Autumn period extending from 770 to 476 BCE (Li 2002, 121–137),
which will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Chinese people approached the riddle of human life by supposing
that a person has two souls: the po (animal soul or life soul), and the
hun (spiritual soul or personality soul). Both souls become separated
from the body at death, and both can be kept alive by sacrifices upon
which they feed. The life soul (po), however, gradually decays with the
body, whereas the personality soul (hun) survives as long as it is
remembered and receives due sacrifices from the living. It can become
a deity of power and influence, can respond in divination to the ques-
tions and requests of its descendants, and can even postpone their
deaths. If the po is neglected, it may become a gui (demon) and haunt
the living, whereas the neglected hun in a similar case will become a
pitiable ghost but also is capable of working harm. Hence it is of para-
mount importance for male descendants to perform the family ances-
tral sacrifices so as to comfort both souls of ancestors.
In fact, the family ancestral sacrifices are correlated with the pao
(response or return) probably coming from the deity of deceased ances-
tors or spirits of nature. Here the pao is regarded as a form of reciprocity
of actions between people and supernatural beings, and therefore the per-
son who bestows favors on ancestors normally anticipates a response or
return from them in the future. Favors done for others are often consid-
ered what may be termed ‘‘social investments,’’ for which handsome
returns are expected. The more a certain ancestor who is esteemed by his
worshipers wins offerings, the more he will potentially reciprocate favors
(Yang 1976, 357–358). The interaction between worshipers and ancestors
with reference to pao can be looked on as a vivid example of the special
Chinese ‘‘relation-faith pattern’’ (Li 2006, 80–81) and as a theoretical
explanation for the principle of Chinese ancestor worship.
Since the Shang dynasty, there are formal and systematic rituals of
family ancestral sacrifices, which are classified as communicative behav-
iors or magic ones (Leach 1966, 403), and the Chinese characters zu
and zong (ancestors), which are originally two ritual names, eventually
combined into the general name of family ancestral sacrifices (Li 1998,
172). With the development of patriarchy, the rituals of family ancestral
sacrifices seem to focus on the legitimacy of the orthodoxy and ortho-
praxy of a religious belief system (Watson 1988, 9–11). It can be inferred
that old male members, particularly admired or respected ones, are
linked more and more closely with sacrifice rituals of the family
system. Thus there develops the ancestor worship, which lasts several
thousand of years and maintains the consistency and integrality of
Chinese culture.
Besides the ancestor worship, certain spirits of nature also receive
worship in ancient China. In the Shang dynasty, there is mention of a
series of spirits of nature, such as the Eastern Mother, the Western
Mother, the Ruler of the Four Quarters, the Dragon Woman, the Snake
Spirit, and the Wind, who were reverenced deities (Strassberg 2002,
48–49). Mention of these names is in honor of nature spirits and deities
of fertility. The loess soil of north China is quite fertile on the condition
that it receives sufficient rainfall. On the other hand, the Yellow River
flowing through loess country has historically deposited silt, which built
up its bed above the surrounding land in such a way that, when floods
did occur, the damage was enormous and widespread. Hence the balance
of nature, between too little rain and too much, is obviously regarded as
a delicate one, and it is necessary for the chieftain of a certain tribe or
village to preserve the balance of nature by due sacrifices not only to
heaven but also to the gods of the earth (Granet 1989, 168–170).
Crude and primitive as the forms of worship of ancestor and spirits
of nature are, the presence of the above worship with an emphasis on
fertility is clearly attested in China, as elsewhere in the world. The
characters for zu (ancestor) and she (god of the soil) both contain a
phallic symbol that honors reproductive humans (Fan et al. 1998, 472)
or grain (Yuan 1985, 18–19, 209). The before-mentioned forms of wor-
ship enjoy equal concern, with shrines placed east and west of the
entry to the palace, as if designed to ensure good crops of sons to the

ancestors and of grain in the fields.
In the ancient classics and inscriptions of the Shang dynasty (c. 1750–
1100 BCE), there are frequent references to a supreme dominator in
heaven known as shang-ti. This god is not known as the creator, but he
was undoubtedly a divine supervisor over human society, whose decrees
determine the course of events on earth (Chang 2002, 192–193). When
the Shang dynasty was supplanted by the Zhou dynasty (c. 1100 BCE),
the name T’ien appeared alongside of Shang-ti as a designation for the
supreme dominator in heaven. However, the word t’ien, rendered as
either ‘‘heaven’’ or ‘‘sky’’ and sometimes as ‘‘nature,’’ gradually lost the
connotation of a personal being and came to suggest the more universal
conception of a cosmic rule that impartially determines the affairs of
people on earth by their conformity to a moral order. Closely related to
t’ien, the ultimate ordering principle of things, was the completely imper-
sonal Tao, literally ‘‘way’’ or ‘‘road.’’ By extension it means the way to
go, the truth, the normative ethical standard by which to govern human
life. In the famous book Lao-tzu, which in later time was also known as
the Tao Te Ching (Classics of the Way and Power), it brings forward a belief
that the metaphysical principle Tao governs the world. Tao cannot be
described in words, but can be dimly perceived within the complicated
balance and harmony of nature. Tao, which is not understood as God or
as a god, is the law or order of nature identified with nature itself. Thus
the belief of Tao brings about the rise of naturalism and atheism.
Forerunners of Atheism and Humanistic Enlightenment

Before Confucius put forward his skeptical arguments of theism,3 a
senior official of the state of Zheng named Tzu Chan (c. 580–522 BCE),
brought forth the famous statement, ‘‘the will of God is remote while
the humanism is close at hand’’ (Li 1998, 1087), when he was asked
whether to perform the sacrifice for keeping fire away (Fang et al. 1994,
57–58). Though it cannot be inferred the religion faith of Tzu Chan only
from one statement of his, Tzu Chan does make his valuable step out of
prevalent theistic conceptions of his era. Tzu Chan’s statement places
more emphasis on humanism than mysterious conceptions of heaven,
which separates ordinary life from the constant sacrifices to the God or
gods. As a forerunner of atheism, Tzu Chan also has an insight into the
ascription of some diseases. One day, Tzu Chan was sent to ask after a
high official of state Jin who fell ill. When he inquired about the symp-
toms of the high official, Tzu Chan ascribed the cause to disorders
between work, rest, and diets, whereas the witch doctor insisted on spi-
rits working harm (Li 1998, 915–916). In the era full of magic and super-
stition, Tzu Chan manifests the humanism by his words and actions,
which objectively sing higher praise for the rationality of human than
the god’s will. And there comes the trend of skepticism of the existence
of God or gods. Consequently the atheism comes into being.
Confucius is the latinized name of the person who has been famous
in China as K’ung Tzu or Master K’ung. His family name was K’ung,
and his personal name Ch’iu. He was born in 551 BCE in the state of
Lu (Fang et al. 1994, 170), in the southern part of the present Shandong
province in eastern China. His ancestors had been members of the
ducal house of the state of Sung, which was descended from the royal
house of Shang, the dynasty that had preceded the Chou. Because of
political troubles, the family had lost its noble position and migrated to
Lu before the birth of Confucius (Kuang 1990, 18–23).
Confucius was impoverished in his youth, but entered the govern-
ment of Lu, and by the time he was fifty had reached high official
rank. On account of political intrigue, he was soon forced to resign his
post and leave his homeland. For the next thirteen years he traveled
from one state to another, invariably hoping to seek an opportunity to
realize his ideal of gradual political and social reform. However,
nowhere did he succeed, and finally as an old man he returned to Lu,
where he died three years later in 479 BCE (Kuang 1990, 86–88).
So far as modern scholarship can determine (Kuang 1990, 286–268),
Confucius was the first person in Chinese history to teach large num-
bers of students in a private capacity, by whom he was accompanied
during his travels in different states. In regard to tradition, he had sev-
eral thousand students, of whom several tens became famous thinkers
and scholars. The former number is obviously a gross exaggeration,
but there is no question that he was a very influential teacher, and
what is more important and unique, China’s first private teacher (Wu
1997, 55–56). His ideas are best known through the Lun Y€ u (Analects), a
collection of his scattered sayings and apothegms that was compiled
by some of his disciples.
As the founder of the Ju school (Confucian School), Confucius was
more than a ju (literatus) in the common sense of the word. Confucius
wanted his disciples to be ‘‘rounded men’’ who would be useful to
state and society, and therefore he taught them various branches of
knowledge based on the different classics especially on ‘‘Six Classics.’’
In the eyes of Confucius, his primary function as a teacher was to
interpret to his disciples the ancient cultural heritage. That is why, in
his own words as recorded in the Analects, he was ‘‘a transmitter and
not an originator’’ (Yang 1980, 66). By teaching the ancient classics,
Confucius and the descendant Ju School inherit the ancient cultural leg-
acy and carry forward the skeptical soul of rationalism and necessary
intellect resources for atheism as well.
On the other hand, while transmitting the traditional institutions
and ideas, Confucius gave his disciples interpretations derived from
his own moral concepts, which are involved with the transcendent
dimension of secular life. It is by reason of Confucius’ interpretation

and persistence that Confucian ethics infiltrate step-by-step into the
explanation system of the secular life in ancient China. For example,
Confucius adopted the suspension standpoint4 and made no comment
on ghosts and spirits in his interpretation of the prevalent custom of
the sacrifices to ancestors. In the book Analects, as the saying goes:5
He sacrificed [to the dead], as if they were present. He sacrificed to the

spirits, as if the spirits were present.
The Master (Confucius) said, ‘‘I consider my not being present at the
sacrifice, as if I did not sacrifice. ’’ (Legge 1870, 21)
Confucius ingeniously avoided clarifying his standpoint on ghosts

and spirits by using ‘‘as if,’’ which can be regarded as an elucidation
of his suspension standpoint. Some scholars straightforwardly by claim
that Confucius takes the theistic stand to vindicate the slave-owning
system (Ji 1951, 5), whereas others infer that Confucius is no more than
a halfway theist, for he presents himself at the sacrifice, while he
doesn’t acknowledge his theistic belief straightforward (Guo 1981, 61–
62). But I think that whether Confucius is a halfway theist or not can-
not merely depend on the saying quoted above. Anyway, there are
other pivotal sayings in Analects that can help us to deal with the ques-
tion about Confucius’ suspension standpoint:
Tzu-lu (one disciple of Confucius) asked about serving the spirits [of the
dead], the Master said, ‘‘While you are not able to serve men, how can
you serve [their] spirits?’’6 [Tzu-lu added], ‘‘I venture to ask about
death?’’ He was answered, ‘‘While you do not know life, how can you
know about death?’’7 (Legge 1870, 57–58)
Instead of serving the spirits of the dead, Confucius told his disciples
to show concern for secular business of the living, which seems to foster
the filial piety of young generations (Ya and Wang 1992, 67). Thus the
essentials of sacrifice were replaced on the quiet by the Confucian idea
of self-cultivation. Atheist as Confucius may not be, he risked universal
condemnation to ingeniously carry out his humanistic propositions in
the era of prevalent theistic conceptions. If Confucius did not take the
suspension stand, he would hardly be a teacher in the midst of a long
career during the turbulent but worshipful Spring and Autumn period.
Generally by speaking, Confucius scarcely talked of supernatural
beings in terms of his disciples’ recordation because he acknowledged
the inevitability of the world as it exists, and so to disregard his exter-
nal success or failure (Lao 2005, 102–103). Suppose one does his duty,
which is normally done through his very act, regardless of the external
success or failure of his action. The subjects on which the Master did
not talk, were extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and

spiritual beings8 (Legge 1870, 39).
On the whole, Confucius believed that people could cultivate their
moral character with the practice of human-heartedness (jen) and righ-
teousness (yi). Human-heartedness means ‘‘loving others,’’ whereas righ-
teousness means the ‘‘oughtness’’ of a situation in correlation with a
categorical imperative (Lao 2005, 106). For instance, the father acts
according to the way a father should act who loves his son; the son acts
according to the way a son should act who loves his father. Hence Con-
fucius says: ‘‘Human-heartedness is to love [all] men.’’9 (Legge 1870, 67).
The person who really loves others is the one able to perform his
duties in society. Consequently, the word jen in some sayings of the
Analects denotes not only a special kind of virtue, but also all the vir-
tues combined, so that the term ‘‘man of jen’’ becomes synonymous
with the man of all-round virtue. However, it is not practicable to be a
‘‘man of jen’’ if straying from the daily life even trifles. Human-heart-
edness and righteousness is so concrete that everyone has to learn and
exercise in life with regard to Confucius’ view, because the value of
learning and exercising what he ought to do lives in the doing itself,
but not in the external result (Lao 2005, 101–102).
It is necessary for everyone to eat and drink at regular physiological
intervals. Hence eating and drinking are the common and ordinary activ-
ities of mankind. They are common and ordinary exactly because they are
so important that no one can live without them. The same is true of human
relations and moral virtues. They appear to some people as so common
and ordinary as to be of little value, yet they are, quite simply because they
are so important that no one can live without them, especially in an agrar-
ian country during the less developed era. To eat and drink and to main-
tain human relations and moral virtues is to follow the nature of man. It is
nothing else but the Way (Tao). What is called spiritual culture or moral
instruction is nothing more than the cultivation of this Way. The function
of spiritual culture is to give people an understanding that they are all,
more or less, secularly following the Way so as to incite them to be con-
scious of what they are doing. For a better understanding of the conception
of Way, it is necessary to discuss the Chinese pattern of thought that is key
to go into the development of atheism in Ancient China.
ANCIENT CHINESE PATTERN OF THOUGHT AND DEVELOPMENT

OF ATHEISM IN CHINA
It is unwise to talk about the development of atheism in China with-
out considering the conception of Way. Though the two main schools
of Chinese thought, Taoism (Taoist School) and Confucianism (Confu-
cian School), have different arguments in various doctrines; they
agree on a theory concerning both the sphere of nature and that of
Human. It is called ‘‘reversal is the movement of Tao.’’ The theory tells

us when the development of anything brings it to one extreme, a rever-
sal to the other extreme takes place. In other words, everything
involves its own negation,10 which is one of the major theses of Lao
Tzu’s philosophy and also that of the Book of Changes as interpreted by
the Confucianists. The theory probably draws inspiration from the
movements of the sun and moon and the succession of the four sea-
sons, to which peasants must pay special heed in order to carry on
their own work in the agrarian country (Liu 2000, 11–18).
In the Appendices of the Book of Changes, it is said: ‘‘When the cold
goes, the warmth comes, and when the warmth comes, the cold goes.’’
(Zhou 1991, 260) and further: ‘‘When the sun has reached its meridian,
it declines, and when the moon has become full, it wanes.’’ (Zhou
1991, 195). Such movements are regarded as ‘‘returning’’ in the Appen-
dices. Thus the first volume of the Appendix says: ‘‘In returning we
see the mind of Heaven and Earth.’’ (Zhou 1991, 86). Analogously in
the Lao-zu we discover the words: ‘‘Reversal is the movement of the
Tao.’’11 (Zhu 1984, 165). According to Lao Tzu, the theory is the most
fundamental one among all the laws that govern the changes of thing.
It means anything that develops extreme qualities will invariably revert
to the opposite qualities (Guo and Wang 2002, 171).
This theory has had stupendous influence on the Chinese people
and has contributed a lot to their success in overcoming the various
difficulties that they have encountered in the long history of China.
Convinced of this theory, they remain cautious even in time of
prosperity and hopeful even in time of extreme danger (Wan 1989,
141–143). In the decades of civil war, the concept provided the Chinese
people with a sort of psychological weapon, so that even in their dark-
est period, most people lived on the hope that was expressed in the
phrase: ‘‘The dawn will soon come.’’ It was this ‘‘will to believe’’ that
helped the Chinese people to go through the war.
This theory has also provided the principal argument for the doc-
trine of the golden mean, favored by Confucianist and Taoist alike.
‘‘Never too much’’ has been the maxim of both. For according to it, it
is better for one to be wrong by having too little, than to be wrong by
having too much, and to be wrong by laving things undone, than to be
wrong by overdoing them. For by having too much and overdoing,
one runs the risk of getting the opposite of what one wants. As an old
Chinese proverb says: ‘‘Humility often gains more than pride.’’12
Ancient Chinese Pattern of Thought: Everlasting and

Dynamic Holism
The conception of Way provides the thread for tapping into the
Chinese pattern of thought, yet that does not mean we count on the
conception only. However, it is quite necessary to make reference to

Wu Hsing, Yin-yang, and Ch’i, which comprise the Chinese pattern of
thought. Working as the naturalistic explanation mechanism of natural
and social changes (Sivin 1995, ch. IV, 29), they are put at a premium
in the ancient society of China. Deeply embedded as they are in an-
tique classics or scriptures that last hundreds of years, Wu Hsing, Yin-
yang, and Ch’i remain fascinating to those who are eager to learn the
essentials of the development of Chinese atheism.
The Wu Hsing theory

The term Wu Hsing is usually translated as the Five Elements (Bene-
dict and Heller 1999, 55–56; Li-Ling 2003, 993–94), i.e., five fundamental
constituents of the universe. However, they are not static elements, but
rather as five dynamic and interacting forces. Historically, Wu Hsing
emerged as an analogous set of fivefold divisions, also complementary,
of configurations of processes. ‘‘Phase’’ is an elegant English counter-
part of the hsing in Wu Hsing, a concept that occurs in the Springs and
Autumns of Master L€ u and thereafter. It reflects the common, nontechni-
cal sense of ‘‘phase’’, i.e., ‘‘any one aspect of a thing of varying aspects;
a state or stage of change or development’’ (Lloyd and Sivin 2002, 197).
Thus ‘‘Five Phases’’ can be regarded as the appropriate translation of
the term Wu Hsing.
Further, the first really authentic account of the term Wu Hsing is found
in the Hung Fan (‘‘Great Plan’’ or ‘‘Grand Norm’’) section (Wang 1982,
115–129) of the Book of History. Traditionally, the ‘‘Great Plan’’ is said to
be the record of a speech delivered to King Wu of the Chou dynasty by
the Viscount of Chi, a prince of the Shang dynasty, which King Wu con-
quered at the end of the twentieth century BCE. In this speech, the Vis-
count of Chi in turn attributes his ideas to Y€ u, traditional founder of the
Xia dynasty who is said to have lived in the twenty-second century BCE.
These traditions are mentioned as examples of the way the writer of this
treatise tried to give importance to the Wu Hsing theory. As to the actual
date of the ‘‘Grand Plan,’’ modern scholarship inclines to place it within
the range of the early period to the middle one of the Western Zhou
dynasty, i.e., the tenth or ninth centuries BCE (Chen 2003, 91; Li 2004, 82).
In the ‘‘Great Plan’’ we are given a list of ‘‘Nine Categories.’’ ‘‘First
[among the categories] is that of the Wu Hsing. The first [of these] is
named Water; the second, Fire; the third, Wood; the fourth, Metal; the
fifth, Soil. [The name of] Water is to moisten and descend; of Fire, to
flame and ascend; of Wood, to be crooked and straighten; of Metal, to
yield and to be modified; of Soil, to provide for sowing and reaping.’’
(Wang 1982, 118–119).
In the ‘‘Great Plan,’’ the conception of the Wu Hsing is still crude and
naive. With reference to them, its author is still thinking in terms of the
actual substances, such as water and fire, instead of abstract forces bear-
ing these names, as the Wu Hsing came to be regarded later on. During
the third century BCE, Wu Hsing became vaguer in its meaning because
the Chinese character hsing had acquired its transferred meaning ‘‘to
act’’ or ‘‘to do.’’ Therefore the term Wu Hsing, literally translated, would
mean the Five Activities, or Five Agents. They are also known as the
Wu Te, which means Five Powers (Needham 1990, 260–262).
According to the well-known ancient Greek figures Aristotle and
Hippocrates, everything in the world consists of four fundamental ele-
ments: earth, air, fire, and water. Similarly, the ancient Chinese consid-
ered metal, wood, water, fire, and earth to be fundamental. There are
two important differences between the theory of Five Phases and that
of Four Elements in ancient Greece. First, the Five Phases were consid-
ered as the basic components of the universe, yet they did not apply to
exploring the substantial constitution of particular things because of
the unfavorable technical and social conditions. Nevertheless, the Five
Phases are five basic categories13 for classifying things according to
their properties and relationships to other things. Second, the Five
Phases are not independent of one another, but have significant rela-
tionships and laws of transformation among them. The ancient Chinese
showed much concern for the relationships and laws among five
phases rather than five phases themselves, which was inspired by the
concept of nature in the organic philosophy (Needham 1990, 311–312).
There are two basic kinds of relation or sequence among the five
phases: Mutual Promotion (production or Sheng in Chinese) and Mu-
tual Subjugation (conquest or Ke in Chinese). The principle of Mutual
Promotion says that five phases may activate, generate, and support
each other. It is through these promotions of the substances that five
phases continue to survive, regenerate, and transform. The sequence of
Mutual Promotion is as follows: wood promotes fire, fire promotes
earth, earth promotes metal, metal promotes water, water promotes
wood, and wood again promotes fire.
However, the principle of Mutual Subjugation, concerns relations
such as restraining, controlling, and overcoming. Mutual restraint
keeps the dynamic and conditional balance and harmony among the
five phases. Wood subdues earth; earth subdues water; water subdues
fire; fire subdues metal; metal subdues wood; wood in its turn acts on
earth. Figure 10.1 shows the mutual promotion and mutual subjugation
relationship among the five phases.
The meaning of the above principles comes from experience yet not
merely experience. Fire is created when wood is burned. Ash (earth) is
left after burning. All metals come from earth and liquefy on heating,
while water is indispensable for growing trees and vegetation. These
relations support the principle of Mutual Promotion (Production). On
the other hand, the ancient Chinese noticed that trees grow on earth,
Mutual Promotion
Mutual Subjugation
Figure 10.1. Mutual Promotion and Mutual Subjugation relations

among five phases
impoverishing the soil. To prevent floods, dams and channels are built
with earth. Water puts out fire while metals can be softened and
melted by fire. A sword or ax made of metal can be used to fall a tree.
These relations are summarized in the principle of Mutual Subjugation
(Conquest). In addition, five phases have their origin in the observation
and recordation of breadthways, apparent motions of five planets
including Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, in contrast with
the lengthways ones of twenty-eight Chinese hsiu (constellations; Liu
1991, 197–199). Thus it seems that more than experience can account
for the meaning of mutual relationships of the Five Phases.
Most things in the world can be classified into one of the five basic
categories according to their properties, function, and relations with
others. Table 10.1 shows some objects relevant to nature, human, and
their secular relations. For example, the liver is similar to wood with
respect to its mild features, and the heart warms the whole body so it is
analogous to fire. The spleen is responsible for assimilation of nutrients
and corresponds to the earth. The lung is clear, analogous to metal. The
kidney is similar to water by virtue of its responsibility of regulating
fluids in the body. On the whole, the classification and correspondence
in terms of the Five Phases illustrate the mutual relationship between
the human body, the seasons, climate factors, senses, and emotions.
Table 10.1
The five phases as five categories and their correlations adapted from science and civilisation in China
(Needham 1990, 285)
Five
Heaven (Nature) Phases Human (Society)
Yin-Yang Taste Colors Devel- Weather Cardinal Seasons Viscera — Sense Body Affective Dynasty
opment Points organs State
Less Yang Sour Green Birth Wind East Spring Wood Liver Gall Eyes Muscles Anger Xia
Yang Bitter Red Growth Heat South Summer Fire Heart Small Lingua Pulse Joy Zhou
intestine (blood)
Equilibrium Sweet Yellow Change Wet Center Later Earth Spleen Stomach Mouth Flesh Think Yellow
summer (desire) Emperor
Less Yin Acrid White Reaping Dry West Autumn Metal Lungs Large Nose Skin & Sorrow Shang
intestine Hair
Yin Salt Black Storing Cold North Winter Water Kidneys Bladder Ears Bones Fear Qin
(marrow)
The Yin-yang theory

The theory of the Five Phases interpreted the structure of nature,
human, and society, but did not explain the origin of the world. This
was provided by the theory of the Yin and Yang.
The word yang originally meant sunshine, or what pertains to sunshine
and light; that of yin meant the absence of sunshine, i.e., shadow or dark-
ness. Both words have come into use in ancient works of Chinese philoso-
phy no earlier than fourth century BCE (Needham 1990, 296). In their later
development, the Yang and Yin came to be looked on as two cosmic prin-
ciples or forces, representing masculinity, activity, heat, brightness, dry-
ness, hardness, etc., for the Yang, and femininity, passivity, cold, darkness,
wetness, softness, etc., for the Yin. Through the interaction of these two
primary principles, all phenomena of the world are produced.
This concept has remained dominant14 in Chinese cosmological
speculation down to recent times. An early reference to it can be found
in the Kuo Y€ u (Discussions of the States). The historical work noted that
when an earthquake occurred in the year 780 BCE, a savant of the time
explained: ‘‘When the Yang is concealed and cannot come forth, and
when the Yin is repressed and cannot issue forth, then there are earth-
quakes.’’ (Xu 2002, 26).
The Yin and Yang are complementary to and independent on each
other, even though they are opposites. For every individual object, the
yin and yang it contains do not remain in a static state, but are con-
stantly in a dynamic equilibrium affected by the changing environ-
ment. Like everything else, the human body and its functions are all
governed by the principle of Yin and Yang. Remaining healthy and
functioning properly require keeping the balance between the yin and
yang in the body. Diseases appear when there is in equilibrium of yin
and yang inside the body. This principle is central to traditional Chi-
nese medicine, and its application dominates the diagnosis, treatment,
and explanation of diseases. In light of Inner Canon of the Yellow
Emperor: Basic Questions (Huang-ti Nei Ching Su Wen), one of the most
significant and original classics of traditional Chinese medicine, ‘‘the
principle of yin and yang is the way by which heaven and earth run,
the rule that everything subscribes, the parents of change, the source
and start of life and death.’’ (Wang 1963, 31).
The integration of Ch’i

Another fundamental concept in Chinese culture is Ch’i, which plays
a pivotal role in the theoretical background to integration of the Wu
Hsing and the Yin and Yang. In the ordinary Chinese language, the
term Ch’i refers mostly to air or gas, and sometimes is also used to
indicate a kind of emotion—anger. But as for its general academic
connotation, Ch’i means the material and energetic basis of things and
their transformations. Further, there are three points worth considera-
tion. First, Ch’i is not a type of substance and has no fixed shape or
constitution. Second, it is indispensable for explaining the dynamic
changes or transformations that take place among nature, human, and
society. Third, it is responsible for the resources of the function and
operation of the organic whole, i.e., the vivid human body or balanced
ecosystem. Ch’i has variously been interpreted in terms of the Greek
pneuma, vital force, or energy (Lloyd 1996, 8, 65, and 110), and there-
fore it serves a dual purpose of spirituality and materiality.
Ch’i seems to become a philosophical concept no earlier than the
publication of the book Mencius (Onozawa 1990, 37). Mencius thinks
that Hao Jan Chih Ch’i (Great Morale) is a matter concerning humans
and the universe and therefore is a super-moral value. It is the morale
of the man who identifies himself with the universe, so that Mencius
says of it that ‘‘it pervades all between Heaven and Earth’’ (Yang 1960,
62). As the bridge of understanding correlations between heaven,
human beings, and earth, Ch’i integrated with Wu Hsing and Yin and
Yang offered ancient Chinese people an efficient and rational pattern of
thought instead of a theistic and teleological one as in other nations.
Whatever confronted them—the natural phenomena, secular life or
social institution, the ancient Chinese pattern of thought provided peo-
ple with correlative, coherent, and conditional explanations in spite of
its disadvantages (Schwartz 2004, 363–368). Hence, in virtue of everlast-
ing and dynamic holism inspired by the pattern of thought, atheism
sprang up vigorously in ancient China.
An Outline of the Development of Atheism in China

In the history of atheism in China, there are so many distinguished
figures15 who broach various statements of merit that we cannot intro-
duce to readers one by one in this chapter. However, we can still pro-
vide an outline of the development of atheism in China from the
following discussion.
Several important figures need to be recognized in the development
of atheism in China (Wang 1999, 3–4). First is Confucianist Hs€un Tzu.
He interpreted the human as one power of the three of the universe:
Heaven, Earth and Human, each of which has its particular vocation.
And the vocation of Human is to utilize what is offered by Heaven
and Earth, hence creating his own culture and forming a unity and
harmony with Heaven, Earth, and himself (Chao 2001, 16–17). Hs€ un
Tzu attributed the highly active character to the human, which imper-
ceptibly diminished the status of God or gods at the same time.
The second figure is Eastern Han thinker Wang Ch’ung. In his mas-
terpiece Discourses Weighed in the Balance (Lun Heng), Wang Ch’ung
Table 10.2
The latest survey data of Chinese religious affiliation (Grim 2008)
Chinese Religious Affiliation

2007 2006 2005
% % %
Total Religious 14 18 16
Believers
Buddhist 12 16 11
Christian 2 1 4
Protestant 1 1 2
Catholic 1 <1 2
Muslim <1 1 1
Taoist <1 <1 <1
Other — <1 <1
None 81 77 77
Refuse or DK 5 5 7
Total respondents 4,104 2,180 2,191
Sampling error þ/ 1.6 þ/ 2.3 þ/ 2.3
Question wording: What is your religious faith?
Note: The differences in the three estimates may be due to sampling error and the cities
sampled rather than significant shifts in religious adherence among years.
Source: For 2007, Horizon survey reported by C100; Source: For 2005 and 2006, Horizon
survey reported by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
proposed the vitality theory to maintain that everything in the world

develops on the basis of the natural law rather than the teleological or
theistic explanation (Zeng 2001, 116–119). Most of all, he achieved the
task of theorizing of atheism based on the study of his predecessors.
Finally, Fan Tzen, the thinker of Liang era of Southern dynasties, is
famous for his harsh criticism on the doctrine of eternal soul claimed
by Buddhism. He wrote a thesis, Refutation of Doctrine of Eternal Soul
(Shen Mie Lun), to argue against the existence of the soul separated
from the body. He regarded the relation between body and soul as that
of substance and function (Zhao 2003, 103–104) to demonstrate that the
soul cannot live without body. Fan Tzen’s theory and stand against
eternality of soul were followed by the successors Liu Ts’ung-yuan and
Liu Y€u-hsi, thinkers of Tang dynasty.
Chinese Religious Affiliation

Brian J. Grim, from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life,
reports data on Chinese religious affiliation compiled by the Horizon
Research Consultancy Group’s self-sponsored survey ‘‘Chinese People
View the World’’ (Grim 2008). Table 10.2 shows the number of people
who belong to China’s five main recognized religions: Buddhism, Pro-

testantism, Catholicism, Islam, and Taoism. The proportion of nonbe-
lievers in China showed a considerable increase of 4 percent from 2006
to 2007. As for the doctrine of religious belief in the Party Constitution,
the members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formally hold
communist beliefs, i.e., atheism, instead of the other religious ones.
However, quite a few nonbelievers may not be authentically atheists
but general skeptics of religious belief, and thus we should take cau-
tiously the reported value of 81 percent in the 2007 survey.
ATHEISM INTERACTED WITH LIFE AND SOCIETY IN

CONTEMPORARY CHINA
Since the CCP established the People’s Republic of China in 1949,
atheism has been emphasized and elevated theoretically in the national
ideology because of the consideration of uniting people and their
thought. In the ideological dictionary of the CCP, atheism is a basic
doctrine that manifests in two major forms: scientific atheism and mili-
tant atheism. Scientific atheism as the outcome of the European
Enlightenment Movement, regards religion as illusory or false con-
sciousness, nonscientific, and backward, so that atheist’s propaganda is
necessary to cripple religion with the advancement of science and edu-
cation. In contrast, militant atheism, as advocated by Lenin and the
Russian Bolsheviks, treats religion as the dangerous opium and nar-
cotic of the people, a wrong political ideology serving the interests of
the antirevolutionary forces; thus force may be necessary to control or
eliminate religion. Scientific atheism is the theoretical basis for tolerat-
ing religion while carrying out atheist propaganda, whereas militant
atheism leads to antireligious measures (Dai 2001, 38–57). Militant athe-
ism is so radical and left-leaning that it merely lasted 30 years or so
(i.e., 1949–1979) and dwindled away with the launch of ‘‘economic
reforms and open-door policies’’ at the end of 1978.
Scientific atheism had been flourishing in the New Culture Movement
(1915–1923),16 which was incited by Enlightenment thinkers like Chen
Du-hsiu (1879–1942), Hu Shih (1891–1962), and Lu Hsun (1881–1936). In
the opinions of Enlightenment thinkers at that time, ‘‘Te Hsian-hseng
(Sir Democracy)’’ and ‘‘Hsai Hsian-hseng (Sir Science)’’ were two hot
issues in that movement because the Chinese people had become used
to the sophisticated homiletics of the patriarchal clan system and quite a
few unjustified conceptions from mysticism or superstition.
The New Culture Movement encouraged people to use vernacular
Chinese frequently rather than classical Chinese. Under the efforts of
Hu Shih et al., what children at the stage of elementary education
needed to learn was no longer ‘‘Six Classics,’’ which their ancestors
had to study well under the guidance of teachers, but was Chinese
literature (Yu Wen in Chinese), mathematics (Shu Xue in Chinese), Eng-

lish learning, physical education, arts education, nature study and ide-
ology, and morality lessons instead.
The ideology and morality lessons have their special function in pass-
ing on the basic ideas, including the general knowledge about human
life, social morality, local custom or tradition, and scientific atheism. The
basic ideas of scientific atheism are, for example, respect for knowledge
and science but resistance to ignorance and superstition; also other doc-
trines such as devoting one’s love to the homeland, faithfulness to the
people, and loyalty to the Party now are taught to children in the pri-
mary schools. There is no particular order from the local or central
authority to indoctrinate children with detailed rules of scientific atheism.
In China, there is easy of access to scientific atheism not only from
the slogans in the streets, the popular readings, and academic books or
journals, but also from the popular media including TV programs,
radio broadcasts, and Internet resources. The China Central Television
Station (CCTV), which is the only official TV institution and is subsi-
dized by the central government of China, has established a special
channel, CCTV-10, for broadcasting programs concerning popular sci-
ence, science education, and scientific atheism. The government clearly
knows that there will be no better means of crippling religion than by
showing the advantages of science and scientific atheism, rather than
showing its disadvantages.
The legitimate rights and interests of religious adherents today are
protected by the Chinese Constitution, which means that any official or
unofficial institutions and groups cannot persecute religious adherents
ad arbitrium. The first constitution of People’s Republic of China clari-
fied that every Chinese citizen has the right and freedom of religious
belief (The First Session of the 1st National People’s Congress 1954, 29).
During the ‘‘Cultural Revolution’’ (1966–1976), even the little free-
dom for writing about religious studies vanished. From 1967 to 1974,
not a single article on religion was published in journals, magazines, or
newspapers in the People’s Republic of China (Huang 1998, 102). It
was during this period of time when the American observer Donald
MacInnis visited China in 1973, reporting a totally secularized society
with empty churches and temples and willing atheist young people.
What he saw was only on the surface, which was maintained by a ter-
rifying dictatorship (Strong and Strong 1973, 321–330):
During the Cultural Revolution, under the slogans of ‘‘class struggles are
the guiding principle’’ and ‘‘completely break up with conventional
ideas,’’ religion was listed as part of the ‘‘four olds’’ [old ideas, old cul-
ture, old customs, and old habits] and of ‘‘feudalism, capitalism and revi-
sionism’’ that should be eradicated. Religious beliefs of the great masses
were said to be reflections of class struggles in the sphere of ideology
and signs of political backwardness and reaction; religious believers were

cracked down as ‘‘ox-monsters and snake-demons,’’ resulting in many
framed and fabricated cases. Religion was a realm of heavy catastrophes.
The Religious Affairs Administration was dissolved; religious affairs
cadres were censured for their crime of following ‘‘the wrong political
line.’’ All religious venues were closed. Many religious artifacts were
destroyed. Religious research completely halted. The ‘‘criticism of the-
ism’’ quickly became in practice the theoretical declaration for struggling
and eliminating religion in society. (Dai 2001, 43)
Though the religious adherents were treated in an illegal and abnor-

mal way, they have been depurged and redressed by the government
since Deng Xiaoping emerged as the paramount leader of the CCP and
brought order out of chaos derived from the Cultural Revolution.
In light of the past unjust and painful treatments, religious adherents
won’t set their hearts at rest until the report To build a modernized, demo-
cratic and law-based country: the general theory of the study report of China’s
politics reform (The Studying Team of ‘‘Studies of China’s Politics
Reform’’ 2007, 52) was published in late 2007. The report sings high
praise for the positive function of religion and calls for the comprehen-
sive participation of all forces and quarters of the society comprising
not only nonreligious believers but also religious adherents. It will be of
good prospect for religious people to advance in Chinese society with
the wise and considerate leadership of the latest generation of CCP.
NOTES
1. ‘‘Husband guides wife’’ is one of the three cardinal guides that belonged
to the moral laws in olden times of Chinese society, and the other two are
‘‘ruler guides subject’’ and ‘‘father guides son.’’ Moreover, women had to obey
the three obediences: (1) to father before marriage, (2) to husband after mar-
riage, and (3) to son after the death of husband, and the four virtues consisting
of morality, proper speech, modest manner, and diligent work. The three obe-
diences and four virtues are spiritual fetters that were imposed on women in
the patriarchal society (Fairbank 1958, 30–32).
2. The famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle has made a point of
‘‘mesotees (moderation).’’ He said, ‘‘For both temperance and bravery are
destroyed by excess and by defect, and are preserved in perfection by modera-
tion’’ (Williams 1869, 39). The ‘‘moderation’’ of Aristotle and the ‘‘golden-
mean’’ of Confucius are different in approach but equally satisfactory in result.
3. In the case of Confucius’ attitude toward theism, most scholars hold that
Confucius is a theist, some even think that he is a pantheist, and a few scholars
insist on the atheistic stand of Confucius (L€
u 1987, 184–85). However, I maintain
that Confucius takes a skeptical stand in theism and gives neither affirmative
nor negative comments on the existence of God or gods. However, it doesn’t
mean Confucius takes no account of sacrifice to ancestors. Confucius thinks
highly of the moral value of rituals (li in Chinese) in sacrifice to ancestors
instead of the divine connotation. Moreover, Confucius and other Confucian

scholars endow the antique sacrifice rituals with their new interpretations in
transmitting the traditional institutions and ideas, because nothing other than
sacrifice to ancestors can shed light on the veneration of elder members of a
family (Hall and Ames 1996, 64–65).
4. ‘‘The suspension standpoint’’ is quite similar to the research method of
phenomenology founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the well-known
German philosopher in modern phenomenology. Husserl uses ‘‘phenomeno-
logical epoche’’ (suspension) and ‘‘parenthesizing’’ to investigate the objective
world (Husserl 1960, 20–21).
5. The saying of Confucius quoted above has another English transla-
tion by Arthur Waley, whose translation is also popular as one of the Analects
in the West. In the following quotations of sayings of Analects, Waley’s transla-
tion will be given as well as Legge’s so that readers can make comparisons
between them:
Of the saying, ‘‘The word ‘sacrifice’ is like the word ‘present’; one should
sacrifice to a spirit as though that spirit was present’’, the Master said, if
I am not present at the sacrifice, it is as though there were no sacrifice.
(Waley 1998, 31).
Waley’s translation has a little difference from Legge’s in the connotation of ‘‘spi-
rit.’’ In Waley’s translation, the ‘‘spirit’’ seems to denote ghosts, some of which
originates from the deceased, and spirits including nature gods. In contrast,
Legge’s translation distinguishes the ghosts and the spirits, since ‘‘the dead’’ sug-
gests not only those ghosts originating from the departed people but also
deceased ancestors, and ‘‘the spirits’’ refer to spirits of nature and other deities.
6. The word ‘‘spirits’’ here refers to the hun (spiritual souls or personality
souls) rather than spirits of nature and other deities.
7. Waley’s translation is as follows: ‘‘Tzu-lu asked how one should serve
ghosts and spirits. The Master said, ‘Till you have learnt to serve men, how
can you serve ghosts?’ Tzu-lu then ventured upon a question about the dead.
The Master said, ‘Till you know about the living, how are you to know about
the dead?’ ’’ (Waley 1998, 133).
8. Hereinafter is Waley’s translation: ‘‘The master [Confucius] never talked
of prodigies, feats of strength, disorders or spirits’’ (Waley 1998, 87).
9. Waley translates the saying into ‘‘the Good (ruler) loves men’’ (Waley
1998, 157). Waley regards the saying as Confucius’ illustration of the proper
way that a ruler treats his subjects.
10. Similar philosophical expression can be found in Hegel’s works. The Ger-
man philosopher Hegel says: ‘‘though in determinate being there is involved an
element of negation, this element is at first wrapped up, as it were, and only
comes to the front and receives its due in Being-for-self’’ (Hegel 1980, 203).
11. The saying has an English version of liberal translation from Chinese
original text by Paul Carus: ‘‘Homeward is Reason (Tao)’s course’’ (Carus
1903, 118).
12. The English translation for the proverb can also be ‘‘Pride leads to loss/
downfall while modesty brings benefit’’ (Wang et al. 1996, 248).
13. Five Phases (fivefold divisions) emerged as one kind of several analo-
gous sets for classifying things. Besides, there were fourfold and sixfold divi-
sions that were less popular than the fivefold one (Liu 1998, 144–146).
14. Besides the dichotomy of the Yin and the Yang, there were other division
methods such as trichotomy and quartation in the ancient history of China
(Pang 2003, 174–194). The trichotomy cited in ancient Chinese classics was no
less than dichotomy.
15. Anyone who is interested in their statements or remarks on atheism in
the history of China can read the book The History of Atheism in China (Ya and
Wang 1992) for further acquaintance.
16. For additional reading to learn more about the New Culture Movement,
please browse the Web page: New Culture Movement, Wikimedia Foundation,
2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Culture_Movement (accessed Septem-
ber 2, 2009).
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Index
Abd-al Karim Qasim, 130 Ananthapur Rationalist Association,

Abdel Rahman al-Kawakibi, 125 141
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, 115, Anglican Church, 93, 95, 102, 103–4;
121 behavioral drift and, 104
Ibn Abi-l-Awja, 121 Annadurai, C. N., 143
Active atheists, 2–10; Amazing Anwar Sadat, 131
Apostates and, 5–7; dogmatism, 8; Aqwam al-masalik fi ma’rifat ahwal al-
happiness, joy, and comfort, 9–10; mamalik (The Road Most Straight to
origins, 4–5; personalities, 8–10; Know the Conditions of the State),
religious ethnocentrism, 9; zeal- 125
otry, 8–9 Arab Resurrection Party, 130
Adil Husayn, 133 Arab world, 113; Arab secularism
Adil Hussain, 131 and future prospects, 131–35;
Aflaq, Michel, 130 Arab secularism from independ-
African Independent Churches, 74 ence to present, 127–31; Arab sec-
African Traditional Religions (ATRs), ularism in modern era, 122–27;
75 secularism and religion in, 115–18;
Agnostics. See ordinary agnostics secularism in pre-modern Islam,
Ahmed bin Habit, 120 118–22
Akram Howrani, 130 A-religious individuals: comparison
al-‘Alam al-‘arabi, 131, 135 with atheists, 178
al-‘Alamaniyyah(secularism), 117, 118 Aristotle, 216n2
Alfeyev, Hilarion, 59 Armenian Apostolic Church, 50
Algeria, 115, 129, 132 Asian Values Survey (AVS), 34, 37
Ali Abd al-Raziq, 119, 127, 130, 134 Ataturk, Kemal, 128, 130
Altemeyer, Bob, 1 Atheist, 146
Amazing Apostates, 5–7; loss of faith Atheist Centre, 141, 144–45, 151
by, and active atheists, 7; unique- Atheistic Forum (Ateistisk Forum),
ness of, 6–7 182, 183
Amazing Believers, 7 Atheistic Society (Ateistisk Selskab),
Ambedkar, Bhimrao, 140, 148 182, 183
224 Index
Austria, 123, 155 Caldwell, Melissa, 60, 61

Ayaan Hirsch Ali, 135 Caliphate, 119
Ayatollah Khomeni, 134 Campbell, Colin, 98, 99
Ayatullah/ ayatollah, 116 Canada, 2
Ayer, A. J., 93 Center for Inquiry India, 151–52
Charvaka, 150
Ba’athism, 130 Chen Du-hsiu, 214
Ba’ath Party, 130 Ch’i, 211–12
Babu, G. R. R., 150 China, 197; ancestral rituals, 201;
Bagg, Samuel, 91 ancient Chinese atheistic thought
Balasubramanian, D., 151 and development, 205–14; atheism
Barrett, David B., 55 development in, 212–13; Ch’i,
Behavioral drift phenomenon, 101–2, 211–12; contemporary, atheism
106 and life and society, 214–16;
Belgium, 155 forerunners of atheism and
Berbers, 115 humanistic enlightenment, 202–5;
Berdyaev, Nikolai, 46 religious affiliation, 213–14;
Berman, David, 92 transitional views toward ghosts
Bharatiya Rationalist, 147 and spirits, 200–202; Wu Hsing
Bhargava, P. M., 151 theory, 207–10; Yin-Yang theory,
Bhattacharya, Ajit, 149 210
Bichara Khader, 132 China Central Television Station
Bihar Buddhiwadi Samaj. See Bihar (CCTV), 215
Rationalist Society (BRS) Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 214
Bihar Rationalist Society (BRS), 147–48 Christian Church of Moscow (CCM),
Blair, Tony, 91 60
Bociurkiw, Bohdan R., 66n23 Chuang-tzu, 199
Bolshevik revolution, 46 Chung, 199
Book of Changes, 198, 206 Church adherence and attendance,
Book of History, 198, 207 158–59
Book of Odes (or Poetry), 198 Churches, in former Soviet Union, 50
Borowik, Irena, 66n24 Church membership, and benefits,
Bradlaugh, Charles, 92, 105 61
Britain, 91; attendance for secular, Church of England, 106, 107
102–4; beliefs, transforming, 104–6; Church of Norway, 180–81
British secularity, 97–99; Christian Civic moral, 191–92
affiliation, falling appeal of, 106–7; Clark, Andrew, 168
generational effects, 101–2; history Clegg, Nick, 91, 92
of avowed atheism in, 92–95; Cohen, Chapham, 93
Monarchy and Established Church Compartmentalization and
in, 95; religious decline, theoriz- secularization, 179
ing, 99–101; social scientific Confucian Analects and Mencius, 199
approaches, 95–97 Confucianism, 198
British Humanist Association (BHA), Confucius, 203, 216–7n3
93 Crimps, Susan, 135
British Social Attitudes survey, 97 Croatia, 60
Brown, Callum, 100, 107 Cultural diffusion, 105
Buddhism, 28, 29, 30, 31 Cultural Revolution, 215
Butrus al-Bustani, 125 Czech Republic, 156
Index 225
Dabholkar, N., 148 Federation of Indian Rationalist

Dakshina Kannada Rationalist, 141 Associations (FIRA), 141, 150, 152
Dalwai, Hamid, 140 Federation of Rationalist, Atheist and
Danish People’s Church, 180 Humanist organizations of
Datt, Kiran Nath, 147 Andhra Pradesh, 151
Datta, Amlan, 150 Fiqh (jurisprudence), 117
Datta, Manoj, 149 Flores, Alexander, 113
Dawkins, Richard, 94, 151 France, 123, 155
Declaration des Droits de l’Homme and Froese, Paul, 45, 52
du Citoyen, 130 Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN),
Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, 129
49 Fu’ad Zakariya, 133, 134
Deng Xiaoping, 215 The Future of Culture in Egypt, 127
Denmark, 177, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, Fuzzy fidelity, 97–98
186, 187, 190, 191
Depillarization, 156 Gaidar, Yegor, 53
Diffusion process, 105 Gallup Poll, 2
Din wa dawla (religion and state), Gallup survey, 97
117, 118 Gemal Abdel Nasser. See Jamal
Din wa dunya (religion and world), Abd’ul Nasir
117 General Social Survey (GSS), 1
Discourses Weighed in the Balance (Lun Georgie Zaidan, 127
Heng), 212 Germany, 155, 177
Dobbelaere, Karel, 178, 179 Ghana, 73; atheism and changing
Dravidar Kazhagam, 142–44 cultural context, 84–85; find-
ings78–84; identifying atheists,
Edamaruku, Joseph, 146 75–77; methods, 77–78; views on
Edamaruku, Sanal, 146, 147, 150 atheism, 81
Eenadu magazine, 145 Ghana Demographic and Health Sur-
Egypt, 123, 129, 130, 133 veys (GDHS), 78, 81, 82
Eller, Jack David, 113 Glasnost program, 49
Entelis, John, 128 Goa Science Forum, 152
Erh Ya, 198 Gopalakrishna Murthy, Avula, 141,
Espersen, Preben, 180 147
Esposito, John, 128 Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra rao),
Estonia, 156 144, 145–47
Eurasia, 65n2 Gora, Saraswathi, 144, 146
European Centre for Social Welfare Gora, Vikas, 146
Policy and Research, 168 Gorbachev, 49, 53
European Social Survey, 97 Govindan, 146
European Values Study (EVS), 156, Grim, Brian J., 213
161, 170, 186, 187
Habib Bourguiba, 129
Fan Tzen, 213 Hadith, 117
Farah Antun, 127 Halman, Loek, 155
Faraj Fawda, 134 Hao Jan Chih Ch’i (Great Morale),
Farid Wajdi, 127 212
Faris al-Shidyaq, 125 Harris, Sam, 151
Fazlur Rahman, 122 Harris-Decima Survey, 2
226 Index
Health and Faith (H&F) survey, 34, Indian Rationalist Association (IRA),
37 147
Heelas, Paul, 98 Indian Secular Society, 140
Hegel, 217n10 Indian Skeptic, 141
Hetuvadi, 146, 151 Inglehart, Ronald, 67n46, 103
The History of Atheism in China, 218n15 Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor:
Hitchens, Christopher, 94 Basic Questions (Huang-ti Nei Ching
Hobbes, Thomas, 92 Su Wen), 211
Holyoake, George Jacob, 92, 93, 94, Intellectual rejection, of religion, 99
105 International Humanist and Ethical
Hormel, Leontina, 45 Union, 62
Hosni Mubarak, 131 International Social Survey Program
Hostility: towards homosexuals, 11; (ISSP), 58, 177
towards religion, 99 Iran, 132
Hourani, Albert, 114, 125, 127 Iraq, 115, 129, 130
Hsai Hsian-hseng (Sir Science), 214 Islam, 116. See also Arab world; in
Hs€un Tzu, 212 former Soviet Union, 52–53;
Hubb al-watan (love of country/ anti-Islamic propaganda, 49
territorial patriotism), 125 al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm, 119
al-Hukm (governance and Isma’il Pasha, 123
government), 117
Humanistic-Ethical Society Jahiliyyah (era of religious ignorance),
(Human-Etiska F€ orbundet). See 116
Humanists (Humanisterna) Jamaat al-Jihad (Society of Holy War),
Humanists (Humanisterna), 184 131
Hume, David, 92 Jamal Abd’ul Nasir, 130, 131
Hun (personality soul), 200 Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, 125, 126
Hungary, 60 Jana Vigyana Vedika, 151
Hung Fan (Great Plan), 207 Japan, 23; atheism in contemporary,
Hu Shih, 214 36–39; political secularity in,
Husserl, Edmund, 217n4 27–31; religiousness in, 24–26;
Hyderabad Rationalist Forum, 141 secularity in modern, 26–; social
secularity in, 31–36
Ibrahim Abu-Rabi, 119, 128, 132, 133 Japanese General Social Surveys
al-‘Iilmaniyyah (secularism), 117 (JGSS), 33, 41n4
Ijma (consensus), 117 Jen (virtue), 205
Ijtihad (independent reasoning), 117 Junichiro Koizumi, 30
Imam (leader), 116
India, 139; Andhra Pradesh, 150–51; Kafir (infidel), 116
Atheist Centre, 144–45; Bihar state, Kami, 28
147–48; Center for Inquiry India, Kawaljeet, 147
151–52; Dravidar Kazhagam, 142– Kerela Bangalore Rationalist
44; Gora, 145–47; Indian rationalist Humanist Association, 141
movement, 141; Indian secular Khairuddin al-Tunisi, 125
movement, 140–41; Maharastra Ibn Khaldun, 119
state, 148–49; Periyar movement, Khalid Muhammad Khalid, 133
141–42; Radical Humanist move- Khalifah (successor to authority of
ment, 140; Satyashodhak marriage Muhammad), 117
ceremony, 149; West Bengal, 149–50 Khrushchev, 49
Index 227
King Wu, 207 al-Mawardi, 118

Komala, Venigalla, 151 Mencius, 212
Kovoor, Abraham, 146 Militant atheism, 214
Kufr (disbelief or infidelity), 116 Mishra, Nirmal, 150
K’ung Tzu. See Confucius Mitter, Megh Raj, 150
Kuo Y€u (Discussions of the States), 211 Modernization: in Arab world, 117,
Kurds, 115 123–24, 125, 128–29, 132; in
Kurtz, Paul, 151 Ghana, 84; in Netherlands, 155,
166, 168; in Japan, 24, 27, 29, 30;
Laicisme, 129 Soviet, 48, 50, 52, 53, 59, 63
Lao-tzu, 199, 202, 206 Modern Rationalist, 143
Lao Tzu, 206 Moral Rational Movement (Vivek
Lapidus, Ira M., 120 Vahini), 149
Lavanam, Hemalatha, 146 Moral rejection, of religion, 99
League of the Godless (Soyuz Moral restraint, 208
bezbozhnikov), 48, 49 Morocco, 115, 130

l’Ecole de Economie, 168 Mother Theresa, 149
Lelkes, Orsolya, 168 Muhammad ‘Abduh, 125, 126
Lenin, V. I., 46 Muhammad ‘Imara, 133
Lewis, Bernard, 121 Muhammad Ali, 123
Liberty and religion, 103 Muhammad Ibn al-Hassan
Liberty of Conscience Institute, 62–63 al-Wazzani, 130
Liu Ts’ung-yuan, 213 Muhammad Imarah, 131
Liu Y€u-hsi, 213 Muhammad Rashid Rida, 126, 127
Logic of relative contrasts, 27 Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawi, 119,
Lohia, Ram Manohar, 139 134
Lokhandawala, 141, 147 Muhammed Talbi, 119
L€uchau, Peter, 177 Mukhabarat (Arab police state), 131
Lufit al-Sayyid, 127 Munir Shafiq, 131
Lu Hsun, 214 Ibn al-Muqaffa, 120
Lun Y€u (Analects), 203, 204, 205, 217n5 Murtadd (apostate), 116
Lutheran church, 158 Music, 198
Muslim, 116. See also Arab world
Maaru, 146 Muslim Brotherhood, 131, 135
MacInnis, Donald, 215 Muslim Politics, 141
al-Madaniyyi wa’l-Islam(Islam and Mu’tazilites, 120
Civilization), 127 Mutual Promotion, 208, 209
Maharashtra Andhashraddha Mutual Subjugation, 208, 209
Nirmoolan Samiti, 149
Mahmed II, 123 Naastika patrika, 146
Ma’mum al-Hudaybi, 135 Naik, Narendra, 141
Manahij al-albab al-misriyya fi mabahij Naik, Prafulla Kumar, 149
aladab al-‘asriyya, 124 Narasimhaiah, H., 141
al Manar, 126 Narisetti, Innaiah, 139, 141, 147, 150, 151
Manavatavadi, 152 Nasir Hamid Abu Zayd, 133
Manavendra, Shivendra, 147 National Charter of Rights, 130
Mandal, Ramanand, 147 National Secular Society, 92;
Mann, Horace, 100 comparison with British Humanist
MANS, 148 Association, 93
228 Index
National Security Service, Ottoman state, 123

Uzbekistan, 57 Outspoken secularism, 113
National Ukrainian Church, 55 Owen, Robert, 92
Naturalism, 200
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 139 Padhi, D. N., 150
The Netherlands, 155; acceptance of Panda, B. C., 150
varied behaviors in, 170–71; athe- Pao (response and return), 200–201
ism and secularity in, 159–63; Parliamentary Humanist Group,
atheists and disbelief, 163–65; Britain, 94
atheists and secular people, 166– Parvez Manzoor, 118
68; moral guidance and religion Patel, D. N., 150
in, 168–72; religion in, 157–59; sol- Patra, A. K., 150
idarity perspective of, and reli- Pattathanam, Sreeni, 147
gion, 171–72 Peris, Daniel, 48
New Atheists, 94 Periyar movement, 141–42
New Culture Movement, 214 Petrovna, Aleksandra, 60, 61
New K omeito, 30 Pew Research Center survey, 1
New Quest, 141 Phule, Mahatma Jotirao, 149
New York Times, 31 Pillarization, of Dutch society, 155
Norris Pippa, 67n46, 103 Po (life soul), 200
North America: active American Poland, 60
atheists, 2–10; Amazing Apostates, Political Islam, 134
5–7; demographic tendencies Political secularity, in Japan: early
among nonbelievers, 2; ordinary modern, 27–29; post-World War
agnostics, 14–15; ordinary atheists, II, 29–31
10–14; origins, of atheism in Politics and religion, in Islam, 120
America, 4–5; theists, 16–20 Prasad, Rahul, 147–48
Norway, 177, 180–81, 183–84, 185, Premanand, Basava, 141, 147, 150
187, 190 Private moral, 192
Norwegian Humanist Association Prophet-politician paradigm, 118
(Human-Etisk Forbund), 183–84, Protestant Church in the Netherlands
185 (PKN), 157
Purnachandra, Aramalla, 150
O’Hair, Madalyn Murray, 105, 146
On Pre-Islamic Poetry, 127 Qur’an, 115–16, 126
Ordinary agnostics: origins, 14–15;
personalities, 15 Rachid al-Ghannouchi, 129
Ordinary atheists: authoritarian fol- Ramachandran, N., 144
lowers, 11; Canada’s Bill of Rights, Ramanamurthy, M. V., 141, 147, 150
willingness to revoke, 13; charity, Ramasamy, Periyar E. V, 141
13; dangerous world, belief in, 13; Ramendra, 147
dogmatism, 12; ethnic and racial Ramet, Pedro, 50
prejudice, 11–12; group cohesive- Ranarekha, 147
ness, 13; happiness, 14; hostility Rao, R. G., 152
towards homosexuals, 11; origins, Rao, Sambasiva, 151
10–11; parent atheist personalities, Rashid al-Ghannouchi, 131
11–14; religious ethnocentrism, 12; Rationalist Association, 141, 147
zealotry, 12–13 Rationalist International, 147
Orissa Rationalist Society (ORS), 150 Rationalist Press Association, 106
Index 229
Rawat, V. B., 152 Selim III, 123

Ray, Shib Narayan, 150 Sen, Triguna, 143
Ray, Subhankar, 149 Sex Science, 145
Refutation of Doctrine of Eternal Shah, A. B., 140
Soul(Shen Mie Lun), 213 Shang dynasty, 201, 202
Reischauer, Edwin, 26 Shang-ti, 202
Renan, Ernst, 125 Sharif (title for descendants of
Richardson, Joel, 135 Fatima), 117
Ricoeur, Paul, 84 Shaw, George Bernard, 106
Rifa’a Badawi Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, 124 Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali, 133
Rituals (or Rites), 198 Shaykh Yusif al-Qaradawi, 133
Roemer, Michael K., 23 Shelley, Percy, 92
Ro’i, Yaacov, 49 Shibli Shumayyil, 127
Roy, Manavendra Nath, 140, 141, Shinto, 28, 30, 31; State Shinto, 28–29
147, 151 Sinha, V. K., 141
Ibn Rushd, 127 Slovania, 60
Russell, Bertrand, 93, 106 Social Development Foundation
Russian Orthodox Church, 49, 59, 61, (SDF), 152
63 Social secularity, in Japan: qualitative
analysis, 31–32; quantitative
Saddam Hussein, 130 analysis, 32–36
Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm, 133 Soka Gakkai, 30
Salama Musa, 127 Solidarity, 158, 171, 172
Samaram, 145, 146 Solomon, Abraham, 141, 147
Sameeksha, 146 South Indian Liberal Federation
Sankar, Jyothi, 150 (Justice Party), 142
Satya Shodak Mandal, 140 Soviet League of the Militant
Satyashodhak marriage ceremony, Godless, 47
149 Soviet Union, former, 45; atheists in,
Sayyid Qutb, 131 62–64; early debates on religion,
Scandinavian paradox, 177 48–49; legal treatment of religious
Scientific atheism, 45, 214, 215 freedom in, 55, 57–58; post-Soviet
Scientific Attitude Promotion Van atheism and religiosity, 53–62; re-
(Vidnyan Bodh Vahini), 148 ligiosity in, 58–62; religious and
Scientific materialism, 47 cultural diversity, 50–53; state-
Scientific Method, 141 imposed atheism, history of, 46–53
The Secularist, 141 Special Marriage Act, 144
Secularization. See also individual ‘‘The Spirit of Anglicanism,’’ 104
entries; alternative to traditional, Spiritual Administrations, in former
98; in Arab world, 113, 123, 124, Soviet Union, 52
132; British, 99, 100; campaigns, Spring and Autumn Annals, 198
53; in China, 215; church-spon- Springs and Autumns of Master L€ u, 207
sored morality and, 191; in Ghana, State-imposed atheism. See Soviet
84–85; in Japan, 23, 26, 27, 40; in Union, former
Netherlands, 156–57, 166, 169; Statistics Bureau, 33, 34
organizational, 179, 182, 185; in Subbamma, Malladi, 151
Scandinavia, 177, 178–80, 182, 185, Sukur, D. Sahoo Md , 150
191, 193; societal, 179, 181, 190 Superstitions, dispelling, 144–45
Self-Respect Movement, 142 Sur, Bhaskar, 149
230 Index
Sweden, 177, 181, 184, 185, 186, 187, Unmai, 143

190, 191 al ‘Urwat al Wuthqa, 126
Switzerland, 155
Syria, 115, 129, 130 Vaikom Satyagraha, 142
Syrian Arab Socialist Party, 130 Veeramani, K., 142, 143
Venkatadri, R., 141, 147
T’ien (sky or heaven), 202 Venkatadri, Ravipudi, 146
Taha Hussain, 127 Vidnyan Bodh Vahini, 148–49
Tainaya vlast’ (Secret Power), 60 Vidya, Chennupati, 146
Takfir (denouncing a person or group Vijayam, 146
as infidel), 116 Viscount of Chi, 207
Takyi, Baffour K., 73 Voas, David, 91, 97
Tanzimat, 124 Voll, John, 132
Tao(way), 202
Taoism, 206 Waley, Arthur, 217n5
Tao Te Ching (Classics of the Way and Wang Ch’ung, 212–213
Power). See Lao-tzu Wanner, Catherine, 55, 61
Ttaqlid (blind imitation of the past), Ibn Warraq, 120, 121, 135
117 Wataniyyah (nationhood), 125
Tariq al-Bishri, 131, 133 Way, 205, 206
Tarksheel Society, 141, 150 Weber, Max, 84
Tawhid(oneness/unity), 116 Wells, H. G., 106
Ibn Taymiyya, 119 Why We Left Islam, 135
Te Hsian-hseng (Sir Democracy), 214 Witchcraft and sorcery, 145
Theists: atheist parents and funda- Wolf, William, 104
mentalist parents, comparison Woodhead, Linda, 98
between, 18–20; authoritarianism, Woolly middle phenomenon, 97–99
18–20; inactive, 16–17; modestly World Values Survey (WVS), 35, 37,
active, 17; regular church-goers, 63, 67n46, 103, 161, 186, 187
17–18 Wu Hsing (five elements) theory,
Titarenko, Larissa, 60 207–10
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 103
Tokugawa era, 41n2 Xia dynasty, 207
Tomka, Mikl os, 59
Tong, Liang, 197 Yasukuni shrine, 30
Tunisia, 129 Yin-Yang theory, 210
Tzu Chan, 202 Yirenkyi, Kwasi, 73
‘‘Young Turk’’ movement, 129
Ukraine and religious freedom, in Y€u, 207
former Soviet Union, 55, 57 Yukthirajyam, 147
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Yusuf al-Qardawi, 133
Church, 49
Ulema/ ulama(leaders and teachers), 116 Zaki Badawi, 125, 127
Umma (community of believers), 116 Zen atheist, 36–39; statistics,
Unitarian-Universalists, 76 37–39
United Nations Educational Scientific Zhou dynasty, 202
and Cultural Organization Zindiq (heresy), 120
(UNESCO), 143 Zrinscak, Sinisa, 60, 66n26
About the Editor and Contributors
EDITOR
Phil Zuckerman is an associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College.

He is the author of Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations
Can Tell Us about Contentment (2008) and Invitation to the Sociology of Re-
ligion (2003), and he is currently on the editorial board of the journal
Sociology of Religion. He lives in Southern California with his wife and
three children.
CONTRIBUTORS
Bob Altemeyer earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in

1962 and his Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1966. He taught
for two years at Doane College in Nebraska and was at the University
of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, from 1968 to 2008, when he retired.
He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including
Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers, with Bruce
Hunsberger (Prometheus, 2006).
Samuel Bagg graduated from Yale in 2009 with a degree in ethics, pol-
itics, and economics, for which he concentrated in social theory. He
grew up in Durham, North Carolina, where he first became interested
in the social science of atheism because of conversations with his reli-
gious peers. Academically, he is primarily interested in the relationship
of religion—or its absence—to civil society and national identity.
Jack David Eller is assistant professor of anthropology at the Commu-

nity College of Denver. He has conducted fieldwork on Australian
232 About the Editor and Contributors
Aboriginal religion among the Warlpiri people of central Australia and

is the author of Introducing Anthropology of Religion (Routledge 2007).
He has also published a number of articles on atheism and secularism,
as well as two books: Natural Atheism and Atheism Advanced: Further
Thoughts of a Freethinker, both with American Atheist Press.
Loek Halman is an associate professor of sociology in the department

of sociology of the faculty of social and behavioral sciences at Tilburg
University in the Netherlands. He is secretary to the board of the Euro-
pean Values Study Foundation and codirector of the European Values
Study. He has published widely on cross-national and longitudinal
comparisons of basic human values and attitudes.
Leontina M. Hormel is assistant professor of sociology in the depart-

ment of sociology, anthropology, and justice studies at University of
Idaho, Moscow. Her research examines the effects of structural adjust-
ment on work, gender, and class relations in Ukraine, and her article
on post-Soviet labor migration has been published in Europe-Asia Stud-
ies. Current projects include examining how everyday activities trans-
late into local efforts of resistance to globalization in the former Soviet
Union and in the United States.
Liang Tong, a member of the Chinese Society for the History of Sci-
ence and Technology, graduated from Sun Yat-sen University with a
master’s degree in philosophy of science. Liang considers himself a col-
umnist who is interested in the culture, philosophy, and religion of an-
cient China.
Peter L€uchau is a postdocotoral fellow at the University of Southern

Denmark. He has a Ph.D. in sociology of religion from the University
of Copenhagen. His main interests are quantitative studies of religion
in modern Europe. He is currently involved in both the European Val-
ues Study and the International Social Survey Programme 2008—Reli-
gion III Survey.
Innaiah Narisetti is the chairman of the Center for Inquiry India. He

has written several books in English and Telugu and translated into
Telugu books by Paul Kurtz, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitches,
Sam Harris, Agehananda Bharati, A. B. Shah, and Sib Narayan Ray.
His research focuses on child abuse with religion.
Michael K. Roemer is an assistant professor of religious studies at Ball

State University in Muncie, Indiana. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Texas at Austin in the sociology of religion (May 2008),
and his research and teaching interests include religions of East Asia,
rituals and festivals in Japan, and religion, health, and aging. Recent
publications include a book chapter in the Sociology of Religion’s Religion
and the Social Order series (2006) and articles in the Journal for the Scien-
tific Study of Religion (June 2007) and in the Review of Religious Research
(March 2009).
Baffour K. Takyi, is an associate professor of sociology and also the

director of the University of Akron’s Pan African Studies Program. He
received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the State University of New York at
Albany (SUNY) and his B.A. from the University of Ghana, Legon. His
varied research interests include reproductive-related behavior, includ-
ing the intersection between religion and HIV/AIDS, family dynamics,
and immigration. His published works have appeared in such journals
as Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science and Medicine, Sociological
Focus, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, and many
others. He is coauthor of The New African Diaspora in North America:
Community Building, and Adaptation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books),
with Kwadwo Konadu-Agyeman and John Arthur, and African Families
at the Turn of the 21st Century (Westport, CT: Praeger), with Yaw Ohe-
neba-Sakyi.
David Voas is Simon Professor of Population Studies in the Institute

for Social Change at the University of Manchester. He is particularly
interested in the social mechanisms of secularization, cross-national
comparisons of intergenerational change, and related topics. His work
has been published in Sociology, the British Journal of Sociology, American
Sociological Review, Population and Development Review, and elsewhere.
He is setting up an online center for British data on religion, with the
support of the United Kingdom funding councils.
Kwasi Yirenkyi is a full professor in the religious studies department,

Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in religious
studies and sociology of religion from the University of Pittsburgh in
1984. His varied research interests and publications are in church and
political development, the charismatic churches, the church and mod-
ernization, and African ethics, personhood, and development.

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Introduction: The Social Scientific Study of Atheism and Secularity

Chapter 9: Defining Religion and Modifying Religious ‘‘Bodies’’:

Granted, in most nations, the irreligious may represent but a small

Contentment,28 and finally, this publication. The essays in this two-volume

Dudley, ‘‘Alienation from Religion in Adolescents from Fundamentalist Reli-

More than a century after Nietzsche announced the death of God,

ATHEISM, THEISM, AND A-THEISTIC RELIGIONS

philosophies and social sciences based on it have presupposed that

DEFAULT THEISM AND NATURAL ATHEISM

In other words, Wesley admitted that atheism, not theism, is the

material out of which a religion may be constructed. This native and

ATHEISM AND ITS VICISSITUDES

never even heard of jukurrpa. Christians are, if you will, natural

exist, then this constitutes ‘‘positive atheism.’’ In a word, positive athe-

ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM

Notice—and this is of critical importance—that agnosticism is explicitly

tentative atheism. From the conventional descriptions of the Christian

ATHEISM, SECULARISM, AND OTHER ISMS

apparent even in the work of David Martin, who confesses in his A

Humans, even the most stubborn fundamentalists, live in the real

. Decline—the reduction in quantitative measures of religious identification

religion’’ in the United States; it moderates its more controversial and

THE ‘‘NEW ATHEISM’’ AND THE FUTURE OF ATHEISM

What is the future for atheism, in a god-saturated world? There are

What Nietzsche described is the classic condition of nihilism, and

What may be most interesting of all about twenty-first-century atheism

3. Thomas Huxley, Agnosticism, http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/

THE PERCEIVED CONNECTION BETWEEN RELIGION AND FAMILY

The identification of religion with family is also rooted in bias and

Secularization and Family Structure

homosexual relationships. Liberals dispute those claims, emphasizing

technology based economy and the associated expectation that every

Secularization and Children

The association of secularism and childhood risk factors is far more

THE CAUSAL LINK BETWEEN RELIGION AND POSITIVE

WE LACK GOOD DATA ABOUT ATHEIST AND SECULAR FAMILIES

research about the impact of religion on raising children, there has

SECULAR FAMILIES VARY CONSIDERABLY

ultimately rejected religion ‘‘because I find that, and no matter how

respondents, naturalists rejected theism, but unlike pure secularists they

naturalists often look to Native American culture as an ethical model.

ok for me to simply go to synagogue but not be kosher and not hold

variety of secular worldviews, our findings will only confirm existing

4. Robert Fuller, Spiritual, But Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America

‘‘Atheism’’ and ‘‘secularity’’ are windows into a complex domain in

within a dichotomy between something-called-religion and its absence,

SAMPLE AND METHODS

1. Participant observation (2001–2006) in local and regional secularist groups

upbringing, the development of their ways of thinking over time, atti-

An effort was made to identify all free-standing secularist groups in

than one questionnaire) was provided by a survey item on respondent

variation in usage is not restricted to the groups sampled here. A check

Humanist/Secular16 4 (256) 3 (129) 385 (42.3)

WHO ARE THEY?

available evidence on age distribution in secular humanist organiza-

Group type/ Mean Standard

Secular Humanist 65.61 377 13.582 67.00

fellowships; some, who have tired of trying to hold a secular line

Secular Humanist 210 (55.4) 169 (44.6) 379 (100.0)