Abstract
Scholarship on people stating that they have no religion is a fast-growing subfield in Religious Studies. While the study of spirituality has developed a fairly robust and lively body of academic work, what other types of people the broader nonreligious group is composed of is a question that has only begun to be more deeply understood. Joel Thiessen and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme’s None of the Above develops this conversation within a broad North American perspective that involves comparison between not only the US and Canada, but different regions of each country, analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data that demonstrate how this group has had, and will continue to have, an impact on these societies.
The book is divided into five main chapters. The first two chapters address the demographics and varieties of so-called religious “nones”—the size of the population, the generational dynamics, and their socialization, as well as some of the means of differentiating between subtypes within the group. In these two chapters, the authors point towards some of the ways the religious none identity is cultivated and reinforced, drawing our attention to the fact that large numbers of people are having no exposure to churches in their upbringing. It is not that people are leaving such institutions in droves; rather, they are simply never being introduced to them. These religious nones are often surrounded by friends and family that are not socialized into such institutions either. A “believing without belonging” framework (influenced by Grace Davie) situates the authors’ discussion regarding some of the beliefs religious nones have regarding God, the afterlife, reincarnation, miracles, and so on, noting that while atheists are a vocal category among religious nones, it is statistically something of a smaller group.
The three chapters that follow delve more deeply into the moral positions that religious nones take on certain politically divisive and newsworthy issues, their level of involvement in politics and community institutions, and the perceptions the religious and religious nones have of one another. In analyzing the positions religious nones tend to take on abortion, same-sex marriage, women in the workforce, and other examples, the authors note that religious nones tend to lean towards the left on the present political spectrum in Canada and the US, and that a significant divide exists between the nonreligious and religious North Americans in regards to these issues. Certainly, this left-leaning tendency is reflected in how the nonreligious have voted in recent Canadian and American elections. The polarization between the religious and nonreligious populations of North America is a major topic of discussion throughout None of the Above, and more specifically, between the American Evangelical Right and the nonreligious. One of the main consequences of the growth in the nonreligious population and this increased social polarization is, thus, a significant gulf in social values. Along with the framework of polarization, the book employs a substantivist understanding of religion and nonreligion, which underpins the analysis of the book’s data. Ultimately, the larger narrative in which these developments are occurring is said to be a process of secularization characterized by “stages of decline,” which draws the reader’s attention to the importance of generational dynamics, while also maintaining a perspective on the secularization thesis that can only be described as controversial.
The book confirms some of the more well-known aspects of the nonreligious population (i.e., they tend to be young, have high populations in the Pacific Northwest, etc.), while also emphasizing the regional nuance regarding nonreligious people: for example, the authors note that while there are relatively low numbers of nonreligious people in the American South, they are much more active in groups such as secular and atheist organizations than other nones, as a response to the dominance of Evangelical Christian forces. The Pacific Northwest, due to a variety of historical factors, has had a longstanding trend of lower rates of churchgoing and a significant population that states they have no religion when compared with the rest of Canada and the United States—a trend it remains known for today. Another element of None of the Above that is sure to interest scholars is its interview data, conducted with Canadian religious nones (the authors also employ other interview data for the American context), which offers much-needed detail in terms of how the nonreligious understand themselves. Drawing from the interviews Joel Thiessen conducted for his excellent previous study The Meaning of Sunday, the ethnographic data is employed here as a supplement to the quantitative data which is perhaps more so the focus of this book.
Creating subcategorizations of religious nones is an important aspect of developing this area of study, and this book effectively illustrates the need to distinguish between different subtypes within this group. An area one anticipates will inspire future scholarly discussion is the categorizations the authors suggest, which is based on a spectrum of belief and behavior; the subtypes offered include inactive nonbelievers, inactive believers, involved seculars, Spiritual But Not Religious people, and involved believers (these subtypes are discussed in the book’s second chapter). The issue here is what is being understood as activity or inactivity, especially given the prevalence of consumer behaviors and their concomitant spiritual and/or religious ethics, beliefs, practices, commitments, and passions that are so crucial to the North American context (cf., the work of Kathryn Lofton, Bethany Moreton, and Craig Martin, among many others). In short, a system that is based on the “activity” or “inactivity” of certain religious nones may lend itself too ably to polemic (i.e., if the suggestion were that consumerist activity is a degradation of “real” religious activity which, to be clear, I am not imputing to the authors) —what activity these religious nones are engaged in is as important as what they are not doing.
Whatever theoretical disagreements there may be in these regards, there should be no hesitation from readers to engage with this timely work, which provides much-needed comparative data on one of the most crucial social transformations occurring in contemporary North America.