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This article proposes a programmatic approach to study nonreligion relationally. \"Nonreligion\" denotes phenomena that are generally not considered religious but whose significance is more or less dependent on religion (atheists are an obvious example). This approach draws on sociological field-theory to outline how different modes of nonreligiosity result from different configurations of the religious field they relate or are related to, influenced by the cultural and socio-political backgrounds of different societies. Furthermore, modes of nonreligion can be distinguished by different ways of relating to religion. While this relationship is primarily \"negative\" in some cases, most examples display \"positive\" characteristics, such as the reference to secular morality through humanism and human rights or the stress of alternative worldviews based on science and naturalism. The article concludes that the diversity of nonreligion ought to be studied in its own right and on the basis of empirical research that focuses on religious-nonreligious entanglements.

Much research in social science concludes that uncertainty surrounding individual beliefs and identities is negative and anxiety-inducing, and that people are continuously searching for certainty. In the context of rising rates of religious disaffiliation in the United States, and the rise of social and political organizations created to promote nonreligious beliefs and values, the nonreligious offer a strategic case to explore the meaning and lived experience of certainty and uncertainty surrounding belief and identity formation. Drawing on an analysis of identity narratives from 50 nonreligious Americans, I find that uncertainty is just as often experienced as positive and motivating as it is isolating or anxiety-inducing, and although certainty-filled beliefs and identities are available for the nonreligious, they are just as often rejected for more uncertain ones. I reveal how some nonreligious individuals fluctuate between different orientations toward certainty and uncertainty regarding their nonreligion, whereas others exhibit more trait-like orientations to certainty and uncertainty. These findings have important implications for understanding how orientations to certainty and uncertainty shape identity and belief development in the modern world.

Nonreligion is often thought to be commensurate with nihilism or fatalism, resulting in the perception that the nonreligious have no source of meaning in life. While views to this effect have been advanced in various arenas, no empirical evaluation of such a view has been conducted. Using data from the 2008 American General Social Survey (N = ~1,200), we investigated whether atheists, the religiously unaffiliated, and persons raised religiously unaffiliated were more likely than theists, the religiously affiliated, and persons raised with a religious affiliation to report greater levels of fatalism, nihilism, and the perception that meaning in life is self-provided. Results suggested that these groups did not differ with regard to fatalism or nihilism. However, atheists and the religiously unaffiliated (but not persons raised in a religiously unaffiliated household) were more likely to indicate that meaning in life was endogenous—that is, self-produced. While atheists and the nonreligious differed from their counterparts on source of meaning in life, this was not associated with any “penalty” for overall existential meaning.

I argue that philosophers of religion should not merely focus on religions but should pay much more attention to the secular outlooks on life emerging in contemporary society. To compare these outlooks, I suggest that we use the notion of worldview, and contrast religious worldviews with secular worldviews − rather than contrasting religions with nonreligions, which scholars of religion have recently tended to do. Accordingly, religious people should be contrasted with secular people and not with religious ‘nones’. I also explore the specific contribution of philosophy of religion to worldviews studies, and discuss why such a contribution is considered controversial within religious studies circles. I contend that it should instead be a legitimate and essential part of the academic study of worldviews.

Abstract The scientific study of nonreligion has been described as being 'under the spell' of religion because the vast majority of research investigates nonbelief in respect to belief. This has resulted in a number of problematic theories, including the leading cognitive science of religion (CSR) theory that claims that religious belief is innate, and so to be a nonbeliever is to violate cognitive predispositions. This article critically analyzes innateness theories and encourages the development of further theories that incorporate social, adaptive, cultural, evolutionary, and biological factors in addition to cognitive contributors. This article details the roles of adaptive and functional aspects of nonbelief, the influence of credibility enhancing displays (CRED s), and the influence of cultural context on nonbelief as they are not sufficiently explained by CSR theories. It is proposed that future theories study nonreligion in its own right, instead of respective to religion, so that a broader range of unique characteristics can be accounted for without inaccurately and inadequately phrasing theories in terms of naturalness.

This article analyses the spread of unbelief among conservative Egyptian and Syrian Muslims in the post-Arab Spring period. In this period, social media gave an unprecedented visibility to transgressive expressions of fiducial doubt, creating the impression of a ‘wave of atheism’ within the conservative milieu. Based on original sources and interviews, the article argues that what the participants called ‘atheism’ (ilḥād) must not be read from the perspective of preconceived notions of atheism, but examined inductively as an emergent phenomenon of nonreligion in a specific social context, the conservative Muslim and Islamist milieu. Its appearance can be traced to a multifaceted overlay of different developments and factors, including cultural and media globalisation, the unsettling social effects of the Arab Spring, and the severe doubts and disappointments suffered by sympathisers of political Islam in the post-2013 period. It is conceivable that a significant number of people defected from conservative Islam to other shapes of religion and nonreligion, but their personal trajectories await further research. More manifestly, the crisis provided an opportunity for a new generation of conservative religious guides and thinkers who have been leading an updating of religious socialisation and propagation methods among conservative Muslims.

Death Cafés are informal events that bring people together for conversations about death and related issues. These events connect strangers from across a range of backgrounds, including healthcare workers, hospice volunteers, and funeral directors, among others. Based on an analysis of focus groups and interviews with Death Café attendees, this paper explores how participants construct and express conceptions of the process of dying and what happens after we die. Ideas about the afterlife have historically been shaped by a religious outlooks and identities. However, nonreligious lifestances have shifted how people understand death and dying. We suggest that notions of continuity of life are not the purview of religious people. Rather, participants in Death Cafés draw simultaneously on many ideas, and reveal ways of conceptualizing life after death—in various forms—without the guidance of religion. Based on conversations with attendees about their outlooks on death (and what may happen after death), our data reveals four main typologies of afterlife imaginaries, which we label cessation, unknown, energy, and transition. Among the diverse perspectives shared, we argue for the emergence of an immanent afterlife outlook.

Abstract This essay starts with reference to \"grapefruits\" in Oliver Freiberger's (2019) Considering Comparison and to \"apples\" and \"oranges\" in Bruce Lincoln's (2018) Apples and Oranges: Explorations In, On and With Comparison. It disagrees with Freiberger when he compares \"grapefruits\" with some generic categories in Religious Studies including \"shrine.\" The category of \"shrine\" resembles more \"fruits,\" for example, because two shrines could have completely different genealogies, just like apples and oranges, but still belong to the same generic category. Then, the essay compares the categories of \"religion\" and \"tree.\" The boundary between \"religion\" and \"nonreligion\" is as arbitrary as that of \"tree\" and \"non-tree.\" At the same time, \"religion\" and \"nonreligion\" share common characteristics just like \"tree\" and \"non-tree\" do. Given this, it concludes with the suggestion that, when the \"religiousness\" of ostensibly \"nonreligious\" modernity is articulated, the category \"religion\" functions as a useful rhetorical tool to subvert modernity's claim of universality and factual reality.

Looking at the diverse experiences of former Muslims shows that becoming and being nonreligious encompasses more than a rational one-time decision that can be studied from a mere ontological-cognitive perspective. It is deeply linked to personal experiences, relations, and emotions. While previous research has often focused on organized, coherent, and cognitive forms of nonreligion, more and more scholars have started to embrace material, embodied, and emotional aspects in their studies on nonreligion. This ongoing development can be described as turning toward a lived nonreligion framework that pays more attention to the everyday experiences of ‘ordinary’ nonbelievers. Applying this approach to the experiences of young Moroccan nonbelievers, I explore the extent to which the lived nonreligion framework manages to capture the ethnographic complexity that their narratives offer.

This article reflects on the question of how culture and religion enter legal cases and public debates about the place of majoritarian religious symbols in diverse societies that have some democratic will to inclusion. In the context of the new diversity, the article considers how the articulation of “our culture and heritage” as a strategy for preserving “formerly” religious symbols and practices in public spaces excludes particular groups from the narrative of who “we” are as a nation. The reader is invited to consider how challenges to such symbols and practices might be articulated as a challenge to privilege and power and that a refusal to acknowledge those power relations puts the reputation of democracy and human rights at risk.