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Varieties of Nonreligion: Why Some People Criticize Religion, While Others Just Don’t Care

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Religious Indifference

Abstract

This paper explores why indifference towards religion shifts into a critique of religion. Using everyday life-definitions and based on interview data, it develops and tests the hypothesis that experiences with religious people and the way they treat and impact others is a primary factor in how the non- or irreligious evaluate religion, and whether they remain indifferent or begin to criticize it. This calls for a context-based approach, rather than a mere typology of responses toward religion or the classification of personality types. Furthermore, it sheds light upon a feature that is often overlooked: Religion—depending on its role in society—affects not only its adherents, but the lives of the irreligious, too. Therefore, the article calls for a new understanding of religion and an approach to the study of religion and irreligion which studies the two in relation to one another.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I use the terms irreligion and nonreligion interchangeable.

  2. 2.

    For the United State, for example, the religious supporters for the separation of church and state reach from Roger Williams, not only seen as a father of American Baptism, but also a theorist of the “wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world” (1932, p. 435) to the several religious minorities in today’s United States society (for an overview see Boisi Center).

  3. 3.

    Within psychology there exists a broad variety of approaches that relate religion and ir- or nonreligion to different psychological parameters. For an overview: Wildman et al. (2012) and other articles in this issue, for a comparison of religious and irreligious people among others Hunsberger and Altemeyer (2006).

  4. 4.

    Next to the participants in the study, I want to thank the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG), University of Leipzig, Pitzer College Claremont, University of Texas and University of Bremen for the support provided for the realization of this research project, as well as Marc Burckhardt and Tom Byrne for their help in countless ways.

  5. 5.

    To increase the readability of the interviews the interviewer’s interjections like “Hmm” and “Uhh” were removed from the transcript, although in all the interviews the interviewer signalized interest with verbal and nonverbal expressions in order to encourage people to continue their narratives.

  6. 6.

    These are factors that Bruce would reconnect with the proportion of religious people in society. The purpose of Bruce’s book was not to explain indifference but to defend the secularization theory and therefore to make assumptions about whole societies and their development. As I studied individual cases, I cannot comment on this topic here.

  7. 7.

    Furthermore, Bullivant does not count the increase in immigrants religiosity and the terror attacks as an increase in the religious influence upon society but as a growing “visibility”—and therefore redefines the explanans as the explanandum: While he sees the rising “visibility” of atheism as a fact that requires explanation, the increased “visibility” of religion is seen as an effect of the growing atheism, rather than a potential explanation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for the Study of Religion and Religion Education, University of Bremen, Badgasteiner Straße 1, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Petra Klug

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  1. Petra Klug
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Correspondence to Petra Klug .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Johannes Quack

  2. Emmy Noether-Project “The Diversity of Nonreligion”, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Cora Schuh

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Klug, P. (2017). Varieties of Nonreligion: Why Some People Criticize Religion, While Others Just Don’t Care. In: Quack, J., Schuh, C. (eds) Religious Indifference. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48476-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48476-1_11

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