Abby Day transformed research into nonreligion by demonstrating how to talk about belief without asking religious questions. This article aims to go a step further by demonstrating a way of exploring (non)religious imaginaries without asking belief-centred questions. It does so by suggesting that researchers 1) ask what people are willing to commit their precious time to doing and subsequently 2) pay attention to the myths they tell in sustaining these actions and the way that the imagination brings these to life. I suggest that asking people what they believe may force them into a response that forecloses the complexity of their imagination. Focusing on the belief-based distinctions between purportedly ‘religious’ and ‘nonreligious’ people as has proved particularly popular in the psychology of religion reproduces a (post)Protestant understanding of religion as deeply held belief. Recent developments in sociology and anthropology suggest that this is an inaccurate understanding of many religious people. I suggest that it also places conceptual constraints on explorations of nonreligious imaginaries. Perhaps it does not matter whether people believe that a literary figure really existed or whether or not people believe in life after death. Instead what matters is the agentive force the characters they are imagining have over their lives.
{"title":"Imaginary Friends and Made-Up Stories: How to Explore (Non)Religious Imaginaries Without Asking Belief-Centred Questions","authors":"T. Stacey","doi":"10.5334/snr.125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.125","url":null,"abstract":"Abby Day transformed research into nonreligion by demonstrating how to talk about belief without asking religious questions. This article aims to go a step further by demonstrating a way of exploring (non)religious imaginaries without asking belief-centred questions. It does so by suggesting that researchers 1) ask what people are willing to commit their precious time to doing and subsequently 2) pay attention to the myths they tell in sustaining these actions and the way that the imagination brings these to life. I suggest that asking people what they believe may force them into a response that forecloses the complexity of their imagination. Focusing on the belief-based distinctions between purportedly ‘religious’ and ‘nonreligious’ people as has proved particularly popular in the psychology of religion reproduces a (post)Protestant understanding of religion as deeply held belief. Recent developments in sociology and anthropology suggest that this is an inaccurate understanding of many religious people. I suggest that it also places conceptual constraints on explorations of nonreligious imaginaries. Perhaps it does not matter whether people believe that a literary figure really existed or whether or not people believe in life after death. Instead what matters is the agentive force the characters they are imagining have over their lives.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44484423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Do social groups that have a strong ideological basis tend to form a cohesive group identity among group members? This paper investigates how negatively defining an out-group is important, if not integral, for creating a shared identity among members of ideologically based social groups. To explore this connection, I interviewed undergraduate student members of a Christian club and an atheist club at a Midwestern research university. I examined the strength of group identification, how members revealed shared identity, and patterns regarding how participants characterize out-group members. My findings suggest that atheists characterized Christians as less rational and in need of external comfort more than themselves, whereas Christians described atheists as disturbed by suffering and the behavior of some self-identified Christians. Defining one’s in-group and reaffirming the correctness and inherent social benefit of the in-group’s views were essential components of out-group characterizations.
{"title":"Cohesiveness of Group Identity and Characterizations of the Out-Group among Atheist and Christian Student Clubs","authors":"Joshua Doyle","doi":"10.5334/snr.120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.120","url":null,"abstract":"Do social groups that have a strong ideological basis tend to form a cohesive group identity among group members? This paper investigates how negatively defining an out-group is important, if not integral, for creating a shared identity among members of ideologically based social groups. To explore this connection, I interviewed undergraduate student members of a Christian club and an atheist club at a Midwestern research university. I examined the strength of group identification, how members revealed shared identity, and patterns regarding how participants characterize out-group members. My findings suggest that atheists characterized Christians as less rational and in need of external comfort more than themselves, whereas Christians described atheists as disturbed by suffering and the behavior of some self-identified Christians. Defining one’s in-group and reaffirming the correctness and inherent social benefit of the in-group’s views were essential components of out-group characterizations.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47150774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite accumulating evidence of the importance of social capital in predicting health outcomes, no work has yet systematically investigated the structural differences between the social networks of god-believers and atheists. This is an especially important gap in the religion/secularism research because religiosity appears to be declining throughout the Western world (Zuckerman, Galen & Pasquale, 2016). Despite stereotypes of atheists as atomized, psychologically unhealthy and anti-social (e.g., Bainbridge, 2005), a growing body of evidence suggests that strongly-identified atheists are more likely to join secular social clubs as well as benefit from better mental and physical health compared to less affirmatively-identified secular individuals. As a step toward developing this line of research, the present article operationalizes social network structure within the study of secularism, discusses the available research with a focus on atheism in particular, and integrates this research into a schematic theoretical model of atheist self-identity, network structure and health.
{"title":"Atheism, Social Networks and Health: A Review and Theoretical Model","authors":"Kevin McCaffree","doi":"10.5334/snr.101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.101","url":null,"abstract":"Despite accumulating evidence of the importance of social capital in predicting health outcomes, no work has yet systematically investigated the structural differences between the social networks of god-believers and atheists. This is an especially important gap in the religion/secularism research because religiosity appears to be declining throughout the Western world (Zuckerman, Galen & Pasquale, 2016). Despite stereotypes of atheists as atomized, psychologically unhealthy and anti-social (e.g., Bainbridge, 2005), a growing body of evidence suggests that strongly-identified atheists are more likely to join secular social clubs as well as benefit from better mental and physical health compared to less affirmatively-identified secular individuals. As a step toward developing this line of research, the present article operationalizes social network structure within the study of secularism, discusses the available research with a focus on atheism in particular, and integrates this research into a schematic theoretical model of atheist self-identity, network structure and health.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41275421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This contribution to the special issue draws on ethnographic fieldwork exploring pluralities of Jewish life across adjacent urban neighbourhoods in London in order to engage with the conceptual questions and empirical omissions that are currently of concern to scholars of nonreligion. Learning from some illustrative moments in my fieldwork in which articulations of non-belief in God serendipitously arose, I first consider how marginal Jewish perspectives trouble the conceptual framing of ‘religion/nonreligion’ within (post)Protestant cultures. I then show how an ethnographic approach focused on the specific contexts in which piety or belief in God is othered can deepen understanding of the heterogeneous formations of ‘nonreligion’, even within relatively well-researched settings such as contemporary London.
{"title":"On Learning from the Margins: Jewish Nonreligious Grammars within a Secular-Protestant Landscape","authors":"R. Sheldon","doi":"10.5334/snr.107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.107","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution to the special issue draws on ethnographic fieldwork exploring pluralities of Jewish life across adjacent urban neighbourhoods in London in order to engage with the conceptual questions and empirical omissions that are currently of concern to scholars of nonreligion. Learning from some illustrative moments in my fieldwork in which articulations of non-belief in God serendipitously arose, I first consider how marginal Jewish perspectives trouble the conceptual framing of ‘religion/nonreligion’ within (post)Protestant cultures. I then show how an ethnographic approach focused on the specific contexts in which piety or belief in God is othered can deepen understanding of the heterogeneous formations of ‘nonreligion’, even within relatively well-researched settings such as contemporary London.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45161598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This brief article aims to draw the attention of nonreligion researchers to a growing interdisciplinary research field: the study of death online. In digitally networked societies, the dead are remembered online, and their survivors can use digital resources to express grief, find support and construct memorials. New norms and languages of mourning are emerging, including new references to heaven, angels and communication with the dead. The boundary between religion and nonreligion is blurred in these new practices, but we know very little as yet about what this blurring actually means to the bereaved. This article will outline the main approaches to religion in studies of death online, draw on nonreligion research to critique these approaches, and call for new directions and methods in future studies of nonreligion and media. It will argue that scholars of religion and nonreligion have much to offer to the study of death online, and this article acts as an introduction and an invitation to future interdisciplinary exploration.
{"title":"Angels and the Digital Afterlife: Death and Nonreligion Online","authors":"Tim Hutchings","doi":"10.5334/SNR.105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/SNR.105","url":null,"abstract":"This brief article aims to draw the attention of nonreligion researchers to a growing interdisciplinary research field: the study of death online. In digitally networked societies, the dead are remembered online, and their survivors can use digital resources to express grief, find support and construct memorials. New norms and languages of mourning are emerging, including new references to heaven, angels and communication with the dead. The boundary between religion and nonreligion is blurred in these new practices, but we know very little as yet about what this blurring actually means to the bereaved. This article will outline the main approaches to religion in studies of death online, draw on nonreligion research to critique these approaches, and call for new directions and methods in future studies of nonreligion and media. It will argue that scholars of religion and nonreligion have much to offer to the study of death online, and this article acts as an introduction and an invitation to future interdisciplinary exploration.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49223496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As interest in the nonreligious has grown, attention has turned to how to measure both the growth of and variation within the nonreligious. This interest has also revealed that prior measures of religiosity are often problematic. In this research note, I detail some of these problems. For instance, some measures fail to contrast nonreligiosity with religiosity. Other measures are double-barreled or one-and-a-half barreled, making them impossible for nonreligious individuals to answer. Finally, I note that how questions are worded can result in very different estimates of how many nonreligious people and atheists there are in a population.
{"title":"Questions You Should Never Ask an Atheist: Towards Better Measures of Nonreligion and Secularity","authors":"Ryan T. Cragun","doi":"10.5334/SNR.122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/SNR.122","url":null,"abstract":"As interest in the nonreligious has grown, attention has turned to how to measure both the growth of and variation within the nonreligious. This interest has also revealed that prior measures of religiosity are often problematic. In this research note, I detail some of these problems. For instance, some measures fail to contrast nonreligiosity with religiosity. Other measures are double-barreled or one-and-a-half barreled, making them impossible for nonreligious individuals to answer. Finally, I note that how questions are worded can result in very different estimates of how many nonreligious people and atheists there are in a population.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46917326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family scholars have documented how powerful institutions intrude upon marginalized parents. Yet, few have examined the effect that intrusion on parenting takes on a more intimate level. Guided by insights from theories of emotion management and family inequality, I compare how two religiously marginalized groups in the Bible Belt cope with a ubiquitous experience they face as parents—unwelcomed proselytizing by Christian family members. Based on participant-observation and forty in-depth interviews, I document nonbeliever and Pagan parents’ experiences with proselytizing by Christian family members to be common, intrusive, and often perceived as potentially harmful to children. Failing to enforce desired boundaries between children and proselytizers, many parents resort to constructing narratives of equality to describe a condition of inequality. They do so by claiming a “we just don’t talk about religion” arrangement. This narrative, though seemingly equitable, serves as a family myth, obscuring painful truths about power and inequality. Nonbeliever and Pagan parents differ in their reliance on this rhetoric. While nonbeliever parents cling to the family myth as an emotion management device, Pagans more readily acknowledge the “we just don’t talk about religion” strategy as more fiction than fact. I analyze how differences in social class explain nonbelievers’ and Pagans’ differing levels of commitment to this family myth. I place this phenomenon within the culture of Christian hegemony in the Bible Belt, where proselytizing is normative and prevailing norms of privatization within parenting are overridden by a culture of evangelism.
{"title":"Social Class and the Stubbornness of Family Myths: How Nonbeliever and Pagan Parents Cope with Intrusions on Parenting by Proselytizing Christian Family Members in the U.S. Bible Belt","authors":"Amy I. McClure","doi":"10.5334/SNR.92","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/SNR.92","url":null,"abstract":"Family scholars have documented how powerful institutions intrude upon marginalized parents. Yet, few have examined the effect that intrusion on parenting takes on a more intimate level. Guided by insights from theories of emotion management and family inequality, I compare how two religiously marginalized groups in the Bible Belt cope with a ubiquitous experience they face as parents—unwelcomed proselytizing by Christian family members. Based on participant-observation and forty in-depth interviews, I document nonbeliever and Pagan parents’ experiences with proselytizing by Christian family members to be common, intrusive, and often perceived as potentially harmful to children. Failing to enforce desired boundaries between children and proselytizers, many parents resort to constructing narratives of equality to describe a condition of inequality. They do so by claiming a “we just don’t talk about religion” arrangement. This narrative, though seemingly equitable, serves as a family myth, obscuring painful truths about power and inequality. Nonbeliever and Pagan parents differ in their reliance on this rhetoric. While nonbeliever parents cling to the family myth as an emotion management device, Pagans more readily acknowledge the “we just don’t talk about religion” strategy as more fiction than fact. I analyze how differences in social class explain nonbelievers’ and Pagans’ differing levels of commitment to this family myth. I place this phenomenon within the culture of Christian hegemony in the Bible Belt, where proselytizing is normative and prevailing norms of privatization within parenting are overridden by a culture of evangelism.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42152873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the formation of British Secularist ethics in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The Secularist movement, initiated by George Jacob Holyoake in 1851, was a primarily artisan working-class social movement that sought to ground social ethics upon a rational, scientific, and non-theological foundation. This article examines how the quest for a science of morals informed Secularist expectations and judgements. In this article, I trace how the idea of a rational science of ethics was integrated into the secularist movement. I begin by briefly situating the Secularist movement within the wider moral and epistemological debates of the mid-Victorian period. I address the implications that atheism had on the development of Secularism, and on its contemporary reputation and respectability. I then examine how Holyoake sought to establish the non-theological grounds of morality and the tensions that arose from debates between Secularists regarding the necessity of atheism to Secularism. Finally, I argue that despite significant fissures within the movement created by the question of the necessity of atheism, Secularism nevertheless evinced a high degree of conceptual unity concerning the nature and grounds of morality.
{"title":"Grounding Non-Theological Morality: The Victorian Secularist Movement, Secular Ethics, and Human Progress","authors":"Patrick J. Corbeil","doi":"10.5334/SNR.93","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/SNR.93","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the formation of British Secularist ethics in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The Secularist movement, initiated by George Jacob Holyoake in 1851, was a primarily artisan working-class social movement that sought to ground social ethics upon a rational, scientific, and non-theological foundation. This article examines how the quest for a science of morals informed Secularist expectations and judgements. In this article, I trace how the idea of a rational science of ethics was integrated into the secularist movement. I begin by briefly situating the Secularist movement within the wider moral and epistemological debates of the mid-Victorian period. I address the implications that atheism had on the development of Secularism, and on its contemporary reputation and respectability. I then examine how Holyoake sought to establish the non-theological grounds of morality and the tensions that arose from debates between Secularists regarding the necessity of atheism to Secularism. Finally, I argue that despite significant fissures within the movement created by the question of the necessity of atheism, Secularism nevertheless evinced a high degree of conceptual unity concerning the nature and grounds of morality.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47966874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The influence of organized religion is decreasing in the West, and trends show a growing number of people abandoning their religious beliefs, or deconverting. However, this phenomenon has received relatively little attention in the psychology of religion. The current study asks “How do religious people become atheists?” and aims to further the understanding of the process of religious deconversion by offering a proposed model of deconversion. The main findings within the literature are examined, and consideration is given to the concept of deconversion itself and to biases within the psychology of religion. Employing an inductive grounded theory approach based on Strauss and Corbin’s guidelines, we investigated the process of deconversion among a sample of atheist individuals who previously identified as religious. The data consists of 30 testimonies obtained from former clergypersons and six semi-structured interviews with atheist participants recruited through an advocacy group. The resulting model of deconversion is comprised of three core categories: reason and enquiry, criticism and discontent, and personal development. Despite being closely interlinked, these categories were clearly distinct and represent an intellectual impetus, moral and ethical judgments of religion, and overcoming personal issues, respectively. For all participants deconversion developed gradually within the close context of family and local community and the wider cultural context of society at large. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research and psychological theory.
{"title":"How Do Religious People Become Atheists? Applying a Grounded Theory Approach to Propose a Model of Deconversion","authors":"Sergio Pérez, F. Vallières","doi":"10.5334/snr.108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.108","url":null,"abstract":"The influence of organized religion is decreasing in the West, and trends show a growing number of people abandoning their religious beliefs, or deconverting. However, this phenomenon has received relatively little attention in the psychology of religion. The current study asks “How do religious people become atheists?” and aims to further the understanding of the process of religious deconversion by offering a proposed model of deconversion. The main findings within the literature are examined, and consideration is given to the concept of deconversion itself and to biases within the psychology of religion. Employing an inductive grounded theory approach based on Strauss and Corbin’s guidelines, we investigated the process of deconversion among a sample of atheist individuals who previously identified as religious. The data consists of 30 testimonies obtained from former clergypersons and six semi-structured interviews with atheist participants recruited through an advocacy group. The resulting model of deconversion is comprised of three core categories: reason and enquiry, criticism and discontent, and personal development. Despite being closely interlinked, these categories were clearly distinct and represent an intellectual impetus, moral and ethical judgments of religion, and overcoming personal issues, respectively. For all participants deconversion developed gradually within the close context of family and local community and the wider cultural context of society at large. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research and psychological theory.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41458100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Given the growth of atheism in the Western world (including activist organizations), and atheists becoming more political, it is essential to understand the identities and values that motivate atheist activism. One avenue for exploring these identities and values is through an examination of individual political attitudes. Although the scholarship on atheist activists’ political attitudes is limited, some scholars have identified the apparent growth of right-wing sentiments within the US atheist movement (LeDrew 2016). Others have identified a contentious relationship between prominent atheists’ political attitudes and egalitarian views (e.g., anti-sexism and anti-racism) (Amarasingam, Amarnath, and Brewster 2016). Of those scholars who have commented on atheists’ viewpoints, most emphasize the liberalism of the broader population of atheists. The purpose of this article is to examine the political attitudes of atheist activists in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and highlight a core set of political attitudes and values that atheists share despite intra-movement disagreements about the relationship between atheist identity and political ideology. My findings show that some Canadian atheist activists’ share a cluster of liberal and Enlightenment ideals that includes personal liberty, individualism, and an absolutist view of free expression. This article will be of interest to scholars of atheist activism as well as social movement scholars.
鉴于无神论在西方世界的发展(包括激进组织)，以及无神论者变得越来越政治化，理解激发无神论激进主义的身份和价值观是至关重要的。探索这些身份和价值观的一个途径是考察个人的政治态度。尽管关于无神论活动家政治态度的学术研究有限，但一些学者已经确定了美国无神论运动中右翼情绪的明显增长(LeDrew 2016)。其他人已经确定了著名无神论者的政治态度和平等主义观点(例如，反性别歧视和反种族主义)之间有争议的关系(Amarasingam, Amarnath, and Brewster 2016)。在那些对无神论者的观点发表评论的学者中，大多数强调的是更广泛的无神论者群体的自由主义。本文的目的是研究加拿大艾伯塔省埃德蒙顿的无神论者积极分子的政治态度，并强调无神论者共享的一套核心政治态度和价值观，尽管运动内部对无神论者身份与政治意识形态之间的关系存在分歧。我的研究结果表明，一些加拿大无神论活动家“分享了一系列自由主义和启蒙运动的理想，包括个人自由、个人主义和对言论自由的绝对主义观点。”这篇文章将会引起无神论学者和社会运动学者的兴趣。
{"title":"Politics, Individualism, and Atheism: An Examination of the Political Attitudes of Atheist Activists in a Canadian City","authors":"Jonathan Simmons","doi":"10.5334/SNR.112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5334/SNR.112","url":null,"abstract":"Given the growth of atheism in the Western world (including activist organizations), and atheists becoming more political, it is essential to understand the identities and values that motivate atheist activism. One avenue for exploring these identities and values is through an examination of individual political attitudes. Although the scholarship on atheist activists’ political attitudes is limited, some scholars have identified the apparent growth of right-wing sentiments within the US atheist movement (LeDrew 2016). Others have identified a contentious relationship between prominent atheists’ political attitudes and egalitarian views (e.g., anti-sexism and anti-racism) (Amarasingam, Amarnath, and Brewster 2016). Of those scholars who have commented on atheists’ viewpoints, most emphasize the liberalism of the broader population of atheists. The purpose of this article is to examine the political attitudes of atheist activists in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and highlight a core set of political attitudes and values that atheists share despite intra-movement disagreements about the relationship between atheist identity and political ideology. My findings show that some Canadian atheist activists’ share a cluster of liberal and Enlightenment ideals that includes personal liberty, individualism, and an absolutist view of free expression. This article will be of interest to scholars of atheist activism as well as social movement scholars.","PeriodicalId":42349,"journal":{"name":"Secularism & Nonreligion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45783650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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