Protagoras's Assertion Revisited
American Atheism and its Accompanying Obscurities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v14i3.257Keywords:
American atheism, culture, cultural frame, spirituality, conversionAbstract
How scholars (and others) culturally frame what we mean by atheism matters when it comes to our analysis of it. Because we tend to frame it as something quite simple and certain—as a firm conviction that God does not exist, in other words—we seldom examine our presumptions in doing so or truly appreciate atheism’s connection to the oft-underestimated degree of religious uncertainty among Americans. We also tend to overlook the fact that the variety of atheism with which Americans are most familiar is actually one among conceivable others, a reality that this article examines with respect to its “official” iterations and then more fully in terms of what I call “non-official” or “lived” atheism. For this latter category, I explore two strands of atheist literature—atheist conversion accounts and atheist spirituality books—to argue that, at this popular level, atheists’ cultural frames are surprisingly similar to those deployed by other Americans, including religious ones, when thinking about their own lives.References
Ammerman, N.T. 1997. “Golden Rule Christianity: Lived Religion in the American Mainstream.” In Lived Religion in America: Toward a Theory of Practice, edited by D.D. Hall, 196–216. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
———. (ed). 2007. Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives. New York: Oxford University Press.
Armstrong, K. 2009. The Case for God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Aronson, R. 2008. Living Without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.
Baggett, J. 2009. Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith. New York: Oxford University Press.
Barker, D. 2008. Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press.
Baumeister, R.F. 1987. “How the Self Became a Problem: A Psychological Review of Historical Research.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52(1): 163–176.
Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. 2006. “American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the U.S.” http://www.isreligion.org/research/surveysofreligion/surveysofreligion.pdf.
Bellah, R.N., R. Madsen, W.M. Sullivan, A. Swidler, and S.M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Berger, P., B. Berger, and H. Kellner. 1973. The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness. New York: Vintage Books.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Translated by R. Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Buckley, M.J. 1987. At the Origins of Modern Atheism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Burke, K. 1984. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Campbell, C. 1971. Toward a Sociology of Irreligion. New York: Herder and Herder.
Caplow, T., H.M. Bahr, and B.A. Chadwick, B.A. 1983. All Faithful People: Change and Continuity in Middletown’s Religion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Chaves, M. 2004. Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Comte-Sponville, A. 2007. The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. Translated by Nancy Huston. New York: Penguin Books.
Dawkins, R. 2006. The God Delusion. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Dennett, D.C. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Penguin Books.
Ebaugh, H.R.F. 1988. Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Edgell, P., J. Gerteis, and D. Hartmann. 2006. “Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society.” American Sociological Review 71: 211–234. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100203
Epstein, G.M. 2009. Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe—Finding Purpose, Compassion, and Community. New York: William Morrow.
Erikson, E.H. 1968. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton.
Fergusson, D. 2009. Faith and its Critics: A Conversation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Feuerbach, L. 1957[1841]. The Essence of Christianity. New York: Harper and Row.
Financial Times / Harris Interactive. 2006. “Religious Views and Beliefs Vary Greatly by Country.” www.harrisinteractive.com/news/allnewsbydate.asp?NewsID=1131
Gallup, G., and D.M. Lindsay. 1999. Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing.
General Social Survey: Cross-Section and Panel Combined. 2008. http://www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Codebooks/GSS08PAN_CB.
Geroulanos, S. 2010. An Atheism that is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hadaway, C.K., P.L. Marler, and M. Chaves. 1993. “What the Polls Don’t Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance.” American Sociological Review 58: 741–752. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2095948
Hammond, P.E. 1992. Religion and Personal Autonomy: The Third Disestablishment in America. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Harris, S. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hart, D.B. 2009. Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Haught, J.F. 2008. God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.
Hecht, J.M. 2003. Doubt: A History. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Hegel, G.F.W. 1967[1821]. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. New York: Oxford University Press.
Herberg, W. 1960. Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
Hitchens, C. 2007. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve.
d’Holbach, B., trans. H.D. Robinson. 1832. The System of Nature: or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World. New York.
Hout, M., and C.S. Fischer. 2002. “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations.” American Sociological Review 67: 165–190. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3088891
Hunsberger, B.E., and B. Altemeyer. 2006. Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Kant, I. 1990[1785]. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Lewis White Beck. New York: Macmillan.
Kosmin, B.A., and A. Keysar. 2006. Religion in a Free Market: Religious and Non-Religious Americans. Ithaca, NY: Paramount.
Lobdell, W. 2009. Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America – and Found Unexpected Peace. New York: HarperCollins.
Loftus, J.W. 2008. Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Lynd, R.S., and H.M. Lynd. 1957 [1929]. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Maisel, E. 2009. The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without Gods. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Mark, J. 2008. Christian No More: A Personal Journey of Leaving Christianity and How You Can Leave Too. Cincinnati, OH: Reasonable Press.
Marty, M. 1967. “The Spirit’s Holy Errand: The Search for a Spiritual Style in Secular America.” Daedalus 96: 99–115.
McGrath, A. 2004. The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World. New York: Doubleday.
McGuire, M.B. 2008. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Montesquieu, C. 1966 [1721]. The Persian Letters. New York: Meridian Books.
“Newsweek / Beliefnet Poll Results.” 2005. http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2005/08/Newsweekbeliefnet-Poll-Results
Nieztsche, F. 2001. The Gay Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity, 1st Wave. 2006. (www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Descriptions/psare.asp).
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2008a. “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.”
———. 2008b. “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey—Religious Beliefs and Practices: Diverse and Politically Relevant.”
———. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths.”
Rambo, L.R. 1993. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Rieff, P. 1966. The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Roof, W.C. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sartre, J.P. 1978. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. New York: Pocket Books.
Sherkat, D.E. 2008. “Beyond Belief: Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theistic Certainty in the United States.” Sociological Spectrum 28: 438–459. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02732170802205932
Sewell, W.H. 1992. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98(1): 1–29.
Smith, J.M. 2011. “Becoming an Atheist in America: Constructing Identity and Meaning from the Rejection of Theism.” Sociology of Religion 72: 1–23
Smith, G. 2008. A Short History of Secularism. New York: I. B. Tauris.
Smith, W.C. 1978. The Meaning and End of Religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Taylor, C. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press.
Thrower, J. 2000. Western Atheism: A Short History. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Turner, J. 1985. Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wolfe, A. 1998. One Nation After All: What Middle-Class Americans Really Think About God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left, and Each Other. New York: Viking.
Wuthnow, R. 1994. Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community. New York: Free Press.
———. 1998. After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2005. America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Zuckerman, P. 2007. “Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns.” In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism edited by M. Martin. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521842700.004
———. (ed). 2010. Atheism and Secularity, Volume One: Issues, Concepts, and Definitions. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
