Research Note: Talking about a Revolution: Terminology for the New Field of Non-religion Studies

Abstract

The recognition of non-religion as a significant social, cultural, and psychological phenomenon represents a sea change—or revolution—in social scientific thinking about religion and modernity. The speedy expansion of the field has, however, left its terminology lagging behind, with most scholars drawing on concepts familiar to the disciplinary or other cultural settings within which they work. The result is a terminology that is used inconsistently, imprecisely, and often illogically. This research note aims to draw attention to this situation and to suggest a working terminology. Focusing on core terms, I argue for: using ‘non-religion’ as the master concept for this new field of study, demoting ‘atheism’ from its illogically central role in the current discussion, untangling ‘secularism’ and ‘secularity’ from both these concepts. This will allow social scientists to be more precise in how they use the four concepts and better equip them for analysing the relationship between them.

Acknowledgements

I would like thank Dr Stephen Bullivant at St Mary's University College, Dr Patrick Baert at University of Cambridge, and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for their insightful and stimulating comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Dr Abby Day at the University of Sussex and all the participants of the ‘NSRN Terminology’ virtual conference (2011) for advanced and timely discussions of the issues under consideration here.

Notes

1. Although the intention of this research note is a detailed definition, it may be helpful to give a brief introduction to the term ‘non-religion’. Non-religion is an umbrella term for a variety of phenomena which are understood in contradistinction to religion, typical examples being modern atheism, agnosticism, and many forms of secularism. It is more or less synonymous with ‘irreligion’, with which readers might be more familiar with, and with ‘secularity’, but only in the sense given by Kosmin (1).

2. Non-religion has been the topic of my research since early 2006; my current (doctoral) research is a qualitative study and exploration of British non-religious cultures. The dissertation is currently prepared for submission; further details can be found in my publications (see references) or on request.

3. Further details of the NSRN can be found at www.nsrn.co.uk.

4. Although some early contributions indicate that this field of research has existed for some time, it is only recently that work has really begun to amass. It is in this sense that the field can be regarded as new, young or emerging.

5. The concept of ‘indifference’ to religion is, in my view, a misnomer and cannot be empirically substantiated: it is hard to find people who know of religion and do not take some stance (or several stances) towards it. For a brief introduction to this argument, see Lee, “Indifference”. A broader discussion will be in my doctoral thesis.

6. This is consistent with Martin's guidance concerning the difference between atheism and rationalism and the possibility of rationalist theism (“Appendix” 468–9).

7. Ryan Cragun and Joseph Hammer come to a similar conclusion in their recent discussion of terms such as ‘disaffiliate’ (155) and ‘none’ (160) to describe those who do not have a religious affiliation.

8. ‘Worldview’ has been suggested but is currently under-theorised and overly broad in scope. It may be, however, that non-religion studies will be subsumed under ‘worldview studies’, once more empirical and theoretical work has been done.

9. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘secular’ as denoting “attitudes, activities and other things that have no religious or spiritual basis” (OED).

10. This does not mean that the secular and secularism cannot be objects of study. The study of secularism is particularly significant, for reasons that Talal Asad, José Casanova, Tariq Modood, Cannell, and others have outlined: there is no fixed line between religious and secular spaces and where this line is drawn is an important aspect of social and political analyses. Cannell's anthropology of secularism, for example, would involve the study of cases “where people hope or fear that secularism may be an inevitable condition, linked with the processes of modernity” (86). Studies of the secular are arguably much less interesting, as they merely ask what happens when religion is no longer a factor, but they should be an intrinsic part of religious studies: the secular are the control group against which the religious are measured.

11. The opposite of secularity would, in terms of this definition, be something that takes religion as a primary reference point. ‘Theocracy’, understood in general terms, meaning the authority (or rule) of the religious, is getting close, but this term needs further work and is therefore not included in the discussion.