In recent years, the extent to which contemporary societies are secular has come under scrutiny. At the same time, many countries, especially in Europe, have increasingly large nonaffiliate, "subjectively secular" populations, while non-religious cultural movements like the New Atheism and the Sunday Assembly have come to prominence. Making sense of secularity, irreligion, and the relationship between them has therefore emerged as a crucial task for those seeking to understand contemporary societies and the nature of modern life.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in southeast England, Recognizing the Non-religious develops a new vocabulary, theory, and methodology for thinking about the secular. It distinguishes between separate and incommensurable aspects of so-called secularity as insubstantial - involving merely the absence of religion - and substantial - involving beliefs, ritual practice, and identities that are alternative to religious ones. Recognizing the cultural forms that present themselves as non-religious therefore opens up new, more egalitarian and more theoretically coherent ways of thinking about people who are "not religious." It is also argued that recognizing the non-religious allows us to reimagine the secular itself in new and productive ways.
This book is part of a fast-growing area of research that builds upon and contributes to theoretical debates concerning secularization, "desecularization," religious change, postsecularity, and postcolonial approaches to religion and secularism. As well as presenting new research, this book gathers insights from the wider studies of non-religion, atheism, and secularism in order to consolidate a theoretical framework, conceptual foundation and agenda for future research.
Industry Reviews
Lee's book should be studied by theologians, seminary professors, those engaged in the sociological study of religion, secularization, and by the secular and non-religious. * Lois Lee, Reading Religion *
Lois Lee offers a nuanced account of how secular society sits in relation to religion ... The book is well written and carefully argued ... The book contributes to the vocabulary, theory and methodology of studying and understanding religion and secularity and will be of interest to anyone versed in these sociological debates ... However, there is value too for non-specialists; for anyone interested in engaging with society around them, it expands how we might think about people's relation to religion. * Fran Porter, Anvil *
This is, in many ways, an important book. Lee's work is part of a new wave of anthropological and sociological studies of secular, atheist, irreligious and non-religious formations. These new studies have asked whether questions that have been asked about religion questions of embodiment, materiality or performance might be productive when applied to humanists, atheists (new or old) or agnostics. Lee herself has been an important catalyst for much of this new work: she set up the NRSN (the Nonreligion and Secularity Network) that, through its journal and events, has provided an important platform for new research and experiments. On that basis alone, this book should be on the reading lists of students interested both in theoretical innovations in religious studies as well as new research on secular and non-religious formations. * Paul-Francois Tremlett, Religion *
For those of us working directly within non-religion and secularity studies, Lee has provided a very valuable service, laying the groundwork for a common language for a still nascent but rapidly developing field, as well as expanding the horizons of research possibilities. * Stephen LeDrew, Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
This is simply the most analytically sophisticated discussion of non-religion/secularity written to date. Ambitious, thorough, commanding, and piercing, this book takes our understanding of--and theorising about-- non-religion to a whole new, and thoroughly satisfying, level. This book is a veritable scholarly feast. * Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College *
This book is both innovative and insightful. In it, Lois Lee recognises non-religious experience as a lived and above all social reality, rather than a reasoned and individualized epistemology. The shift in emphasis from the hollowly secular to the substantively non-religious will, I have no doubt, provoke a lively debate. * Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Exeter *
