Abstract
Lois Lee has taken the concept of people being non-religious and turned it into a noun – ‘non-religion’ – that is finding its way quickly through contemporary scholarship. This is timely. The latest UK (2011) census showed that the number of people who chose ‘No Religion’ in answer to the ‘what is your religion?’ question nearly doubled since 2001 and represented one-quarter of all respondents. Other surveys show the growing significance of the ‘nones’ in the USA, a country often characterized (vexing secularization theorists) as both ‘modern’ and religious.
Critics of what they describe as the ‘New Atheism’ may be finding that their caricatures of mad-dog-Dawkins atheists are wearing a little thin. Lee takes the ontological question about what non-religious people may think and believe, and adds an ethical nudge to those who may dismiss them. Recognition, in her terms here, does not apply simply to being able to describe what they look like – and who would have thought that there is a secular dress code? – but affording them recognition, perhaps even the privilege of assuming they have good sense, moral values and meaning-making abilities. Much, one might say, like religious people. As I found with ‘nominal Christians’, people who are not religious have rich and well-developed beliefs about life, death, meaning and morality. They just don’t care much about the existence or otherwise of God.
She tells the story of her journey through London, seeking non-religious people and learning how to converse with them. She discusses the challenges involved in finding and interviewing people who are non-religious, and yet also not involved in organizations such as the British Humanist Association or the National Secular Society.
Lee argues that ‘non-religion’ is not an insubstantial category, but one filled with ideals, values and beliefs. Her chapters unfold a series of interesting ideas, phrased in intriguing language: ‘Contradistinctions In Terms: Vocabulary for the Study of Secularity and Non-religion’; ‘The Insubstantial and the Substantial Secular: Theories of Secularity and Non-religion’; ‘The Unwaved Flag: Material and Banal Forms of Non-religion’; ‘Out of the Shadows: Nonreligious and Secularist Bodies in Relief’; ‘Friends And “Anti-Fennelists”: Non-religious Relationships and Solidarities’; ‘Disaffiliation and Misaffiliation: Identifying Non-religion in Public Life’; ‘Beyond Unbelief: Non-religion and Existential Culture’. For those unacquainted with current discourse about non-religion, she adds a helpful glossary.
The book is part of the growing, vibrant sociology of religion list at Oxford University Press, directed by the astute and enthusiastic Tom Perridge. This book, like others in the stable, breaks the mould of thinking about religion solely theologically, although Lee pays close attention to the way theologians and philosophers think. As such, it will suit both the lay person (perhaps a practising cleric) who wants, and needs, to know more about this under-researched category and also academics who will benefit from the exhaustive, learned discussion and methodological innovations. Thinking about the lay person, my only reservation would be that the rich, empirical data is introduced quite late. My advice would be to flick through to about page 100.