Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians
Sigal
Samuel, The Atlantic, May 31, 2018
A new
study shows how poorly we understand the beliefs of people who identify as
atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular.
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Beyonce
performs at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in 2017. Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
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Americans
are deeply religious people—and atheists are no exception. Western Europeans
are deeply secular people—and Christians are no exception.
These
twin statements are generalizations, but they capture the essence of a fascinating
finding in a new study
about Christian identity in Western Europe. By surveying almost 25,000 people
in 15 countries in the region, and comparing the results with data previously
gathered in the U.S., the Pew Research Center discovered three things.
First,
researchers confirmed the widely known fact that, overall, Americans are much
more religious than Western Europeans. They gauged religious commitment using
standard questions, including “Do you believe in God with absolute certainty?”
and “Do you pray daily?”
Second,
the researchers found that American “nones”—those who identify as atheist,
agnostic, or nothing in particular—are more religious than European nones. The
notion that religiously unaffiliated people can be religious at all may seem
contradictory, but if you disaffiliate from organized religion it does not
necessarily mean you’ve sworn off belief in God, say, or prayer.
The third
finding reported in the study is by far the most striking. As it turns out,
“American ‘nones’ are as religious as—or even more religious than—Christians in
several European countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.”
“That was
a surprise,” Neha Sahgal, the lead researcher on the study, told me. “That’s
the comparison that’s fascinating to me.” She highlighted the fact that whereas
only 23 percent of European Christians say they believe in God with absolute
certainty, 27 percent of American nones say this.
America
is a country so suffused with faith that religious attributes abound even among
the secular. Consider the rise of “atheist
churches,” which cater to Americans who have lost faith in
supernatural deities but still crave community, enjoy singing with others, and
want to think deeply about morality. It’s religion, minus all the God stuff.
This is a phenomenon spreading across the country, from the Seattle Atheist
Church to the North Texas Church of Freethought. The Oasis
Network, which brings together non-believers to sing and learn every
Sunday morning, has affiliates in nine U.S. cities.
Last
month, almost 1,000 people streamed into a church in San Francisco for an
unprecedented event billed as “Beyoncé Mass.” Most were people of color and
members of the LGBTQ community. Many were secular. They used Queen Bey’s songs,
which are replete with religious symbolism, as the basis for a communal
celebration—one that had all the trappings of a religious service. That seemed
completely fitting to some, including one reverend who said, “Beyoncé is a better
theologian than many of the pastors and priests in our church today.”
The
Catholic-themed Met Gala earlier this month was another instance of religion
commingling with secular American culture. Fashion’s biggest night of the year
saw celebrities sweeping down the red carpet dressed in papal tiaras, halos,
angel wings, and countless crucifixes. These outfits, along with the
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s accompanying exhibition, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion
and the Catholic Imagination,” drew the ire of some Christians. But it’s
notable that so many celebrities, not to mention average Americans, embraced
the theme with gusto. It’s easier to imagine this happening in America than in,
say, staunchly secular France.
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| Rihanna shows off her pope-inspired ensemble at the Met Gala (Eduardo Munoz / Reuters) |
The Pew
survey found that although most Western Europeans still identify as Christians,
for many of them, Christianity is a cultural or ethnic identity rather than a
religious one. Sahgal calls them “post-Christian Christians,” though that label
may be a bit misleading: The tendency to conceptualize Christianity as an
ethnic marker is at least as old as the Crusades, when non-Christian North
Africans and Middle Easterners were imagined as “others” relative to white,
Christian Europeans. The survey also found that 11 percent of Western Europeans
now call themselves “spiritual but not religious.”
“I
hypothesize that being ‘spiritual’ may be a transitional position between being
Christian and being non-religious,” said Linda Woodhead, a professor of
politics, philosophy, and religion at Lancaster University in the U.K.
“Spirituality provides an opportunity for people to maintain what they like
about Christianity without the bits they don’t like.”
Woodhead
pointed to another finding in the Pew study: Most Western Europeans still
believe in the idea of the soul. “So it’s not that we’re seeing straightforward
secularization, where religion gives way to atheism and a rejection of all
aspects of religion,” she said. “We’re seeing something more complex that we
haven’t fully got our heads around. In Europe, it’s about people disaffiliating
from the institution of the Church and the old authority figures … and moving
toward a much more independent-minded, varied set of beliefs.”
The U.S.
hasn’t secularized as profoundly as Europe has, and its history is crucial to
understanding why. Joseph Blankholm, a professor at UC Santa Barbara who
focuses on atheism and secularism, told me the Cold War was a particularly
important inflection point. “The 1950s were the most religious America has ever
been,” he said. “‘In God We Trust’ becomes the official national motto. ‘Under
God’ is entered into the pledge of allegiance. That identity is being
consciously formed by specific actors like Truman and Eisenhower, who are
promoting a Christian identity at home and abroad, over against a godless
communism. It’s the Christianization of America—as a Cold War tool.”
The Pew
survey shows that 27 percent of Americans call themselves “spiritual but not
religious.” Even though they’ve left organized religion behind, many still pray
regularly and believe in God. This raises an issue for researchers, because it
suggests their traditional measures of religiosity can no longer be trusted to
accurately identify religious people. “I think people are doing things that
don’t mirror Christianity sufficiently enough for our categories to continue to
be as explanatory as they once were,” said Blankholm. “These categories are at
their limit—they’re in some ways outmoded.”
Sahgal
said she was aware of this problem, and sought to make the survey questions
more granular so they would capture reality more accurately than the traditional
questions alone would have done. So, for instance, the survey didn’t stop at
asking respondents whether they believe in God. It drilled down further, asking
whether they believe in God as described in the Bible or whether they believe
in some other higher power.
As
religiosity takes on forms that scramble our old understanding of that term,
it’s forcing researchers to ask themselves anew what we talk about when we talk
about religion.
“Those
challenges are going to get worse—and they know it,” said Blankholm. “But I
love that they’re developing a new vocabulary, because that’s exactly what we
need.”
