Abstract
This introduction outlines the different ways in which non-religion has been approached and defined, and how this book fits into this field, particularly with regard to the institutionalisation and regulation of non-religion. It also briefly describes how the different contributions to this book complement existing knowledge and offer new perspectives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
We would like to thank Vegard Ree Ytterbøe for his important help in collecting and formatting the articles and Erlend Hovdkinn From for his significant contribution to the proofreading work.
- 2.
Founded in 2008 with the aim of centralising ‘existing research on the topic of nonreligion and secularity and to facilitate discussion in this area’ (https://thensrn.org/about).
- 3.
- 4.
Led by Professor Lori Beaman from the University of Ottawa.
- 5.
Led by Dr. Lois Lee, Dr. Jonathan Lanman, Dr. Miguel Farias and Dr. Stephen Bullivant with its basis at the University of Kent from 2017 to 2019.
- 6.
See, for example, Pew Forum, “Nones on the Rise”, 2012, https://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/; David Voas, “The power of nones: Why secularisation matters”, European Value Study, 2019 ; https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/?s=nones; Nicola Madge & Peter J. Hemming (2017), Young British religious ‘nones’: findings from the Youth On Religion study, Journal of Youth Studies, 20:7, 872–888, DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2016.1273518.
- 7.
- 8.
Kokkinakis v. Greece, application No. 14307/88, judgement of 25 May 1993, para. 31
- 9.
For state-of-the-art articles, we recommend Cragun and Smith 2019 as well as Bullivant and Lee 2012.
- 10.
Most contributions in this volume stem from a conference Formatting Nonreligion in Late Modern Societies – Institutional and Legal Perspectives which was jointly organised by a 4-year research project at the University of Oslo entitled ‘Good Protestant, Bad Religion? Formatting Religion in Modern Society’ (2014–2018) and the Eurel network (www.eurel.info). It took place at the University of Oslo in September 2018.
References
Årsheim, H., and P. Slotte. 2017. The Juridification of Religion? Brill research perspectives in law and religion 1 (2): 1–89.
Baker, J.O., and B.G. Smith. 2009. The nones: Social characteristics of the religiously unaffiliated. Social Forces 87 (3): 1251–1263.
Baker, J.O., S. Stroope, and M.H. Walker. 2018. Secularity, religiosity, and health: Physical and mental health differences between atheists, agnostics, and nonaffiliated theists compared to religiously affiliated individuals. Social Science Research 75: 44–57.
Berger, P.L., ed. 1999. The desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Blanes, R.L., and G. Oustinova-Stjepanovic. 2017. Being godless: Ethnographies of atheism and non-religion. New York: Berghahn Books.
Bullivant, S., and L. Lee. 2012. Interdisciplinary studies of non-religion and secularity: The state of the union. Journal of Contemporary Religion 27 (1): 19–27.
Bullivant, S., and M. Ruse. 2013. The Oxford handbook of atheism. Oxford University Press.
Campbell, C. 1971. Toward a sociology of irreligion. London: Macmillan International Higher Education.
Coleman, T.J., III, R.W. Hood Jr., and J. Shook. 2015. An introduction to atheism, secularity, and science. Science, Religion and Culture 2 (3): 1–14.
Coleman, T.J., III, R.W. Hood Jr., and H. Streib. 2018. An introduction to atheism, agnosticism, and nonreligious worldviews. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 10 (3): 203.
Day, A. 2012. Non-religious Christians. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 24: 35–47.
Edgell, P., J. Gerteis, and D. Hartmann. 2006. Atheists as “other”: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review 71 (2): 211–234.
Edgell, P., D. Hartmann, E. Stewart, and J. Gerteis. 2016. Atheists and other cultural outsiders: Moral boundaries and the non-religious in the United States. Social Forces 95 (2): 607–638.
Eisenstadt, S. 2000. Multiple modernities. Daedalus 129 (1): 1–29.
G. Alexander, N. 2021. Rethinking histories of atheism, unbelief, and nonreligion: An interdisciplinary perspective. Global Intellectual History 6 (1): 95–104.
Gervais, W.M., M.B. Najle, and N. Caluori. 2021. The origins of religious disbelief: A Dual inheritance approach. Social Psychological and Personality Science 12 (7): 1369–1379.
Gorski, P.S., and A. Altınordu. 2008. After Secularization? Annual Review of Sociology 34 (1): 55–85.
Habermas, J. 2008. Notes on post-secular society. New perspectives quarterly 25 (4): 17–29.
Hayward, R.D., N. Krause, G. Ironson, P.C. Hill, and R. Emmons. 2016. Health and well-being among the non-religious: Atheists, agnostics, and no preference compared with religious group members. Journal of Religion and Health 55 (3): 1024–1037.
Hoge, D.R., and J.W. Carroll. 1975. Christian beliefs, nonreligious factors, and anti-Semitism. Social Forces 53 (4): 581–594.
Johnson, D. 2012. What are atheists for? Hypotheses on the functions of nonbelief in the evolution of religion. Religion, Brain & Behavior 2 (1): 48–70.
Jong, J. 2015. On (not) defining (non) religion. Science, Religion and Culture 2 (3): 15–24.
Kasselstrand, I. 2019. Secularity and irreligion in cross-national context: A Nonlinear Approach. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 58 (3): 626–642.
Lanman, J.A. 2012. The importance of religious displays for belief acquisition and secularisation. Journal of Contemporary Religion 27 (1): 49–65.
Lee, L. 2012a. Research note: Talking about a revolution: Terminology for the new field of non-religion studies. Journal of Contemporary Religion 27 (1): 129–139.
———. 2012b. Talking about a revolution: Terminology for the new field of non-religion studies. Journal of Contemporary Religion 27 (1): 129–139.
———. 2015. Recognizing the non-religious: Reimagining the secular. Oxford: OUP.
Lindeman, M., M. van Elk, J. Lipsanen, P. Marin, and U. Schjødt. 2019. Religious unbelief in three western European countries: Identifying and characterizing unbeliever types using latent class analysis. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 29 (3): 184–203.
Lindeman, M., P. Marin, U. Schjoedt, and M. van Elk. 2020. Nonreligious identity in Three Western European countries: A closer look at nonbelievers’ self-identifications and attitudes towards religion. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 30 (4): 288–303.
Manning, C. 2018. Meaning making narratives among non-religious individuals facing the end of life. New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging, Routledge: 59–85.
Murphy, J. 2017. Beyond “religion” and “spirituality”: Extending a “meaning systems” approach to explore lived religion. Archive for the Psychology of Religion 39 (1): 1–26.
Oraby, M., and W.F. Sullivan. 2020. Law and religion: Reimagining the entanglement of two universals. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 16 (1): 257–276.
Park, C.L., and L.H. Cohen. 1993. Religious and nonreligious coping with the death of a friend. Cognitive therapy and research 17 (6): 561–577.
Propst, L.R. 1980. The comparative efficacy of religious and nonreligious imagery for the treatment of mild depression in religious individuals. Cognitive Therapy and Research 4 (2): 167–178.
Propst, L.R., R. Ostrom, P. Watkins, T. Dean, and D. Mashburn. 1992. Comparative efficacy of religious and nonreligious cognitive-behavioural therapy for the treatment of clinical depression in religious individuals. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 60 (1): 94.
Quack, J., C. Schuh, and S. Kind. 2019. The diversity of nonreligion: Normativities and contested relations. London: Routledge.
Richardson, J.T., ed. 2004. Regulating religion. Case studies from around the globe. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Sharpe, E.J. 1986. Comparative Religion. A History. 2nd ed. Duckworth.
Silver, C.F., T.J. Coleman III, R.W. Hood Jr., and J.M. Holcombe. 2014. The six types of nonbelief: A qualitative and quantitative study of type and narrative. Mental Health, Religion & Culture 17 (10): 990–1001.
Smith, J.M., and R.T. Cragun. 2019. Mapping religion’s other: A review of the study of nonreligion and secularity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 58 (2): 319–335.
Smith, J.M., and C.L. Halligan. 2021. Making meaning without a maker: Secular consciousness through narrative and cultural practice. Sociology of Religion 82 (1): 85–110.
Speed, D., and K. Hwang. 2019. Heretic, heal thyself! Atheism, nonreligion, and health. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 11 (3): 297.
Stark, R. 1999. Secularization, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion 60 (3): 249–273.
Stausberg, M., ed. 2009. Contemporary theories of religion: A critical companion. London: Routledge.
Sumerau, J.E., and R.T. Cragun. 2016. “I think some people need religion”: The social construction of nonreligious moral identities. Sociology of Religion 77 (4): 386–407.
Swatos, W., and D.V.A. Olson, eds. 2000. The secularization debate. Boston: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Taira, T., K. Ketola, and J. Sohlberg. 2021. Normalization of nonreligious identity in Finland. Journal of Contemporary Religion.
Taves, A., E. Asprem, and E. Ihm. 2018. Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 10 (3): 207.
Thiessen, J., and S. Wilkins-Laflamme. 2020. None of the above: Nonreligious identity in the US and Canada. New York: NYU Press.
Thomas, S., D. Tutu, and D.M. Tutu. 2005. The global resurgence of religion and the transformation of international relations: The struggle for the soul of the twenty-first century. Springer.
Urstad, S.S. 2017. The religiously unaffiliated in Norway. Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 30 (01): 61–81.
Uzarevic, F., and T.J. Coleman III. 2020. The psychology of nonbelievers. Current Opinion in Psychology 40: 131–138.
Woodhead, L. 2016. The rise of ‘no religion’ in Britain: The emergence of a new cultural majority. Journal of the British Academy 4 (2016): 245–261.
Zuckerman, P. 2020. Society without god. New York: New York University Press.
Zuckerman, P., and J.R. Shook. 2017. The Oxford handbook of secularism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Årsheim, H., Mauritsen, A.L., Zwilling, AL. (2022). Introduction – Non-religion in Late Modern Societies. In: Zwilling, AL., Årsheim, H. (eds) Nonreligion in Late Modern Societies. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92395-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92395-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-92394-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-92395-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)