Nathan Schneider reports in the Boston Globe that secularity has become the new target of religion research, concluding that religions “can be better understood by paying attention to what irreligion looks like”:
But as the academic interest in religion has mounted, some scholars have begun to call this picture [of religion being linked to physical well-being] into question. What’s missing, they believe, is a comparable examination into the lives of nonreligious people and even the potential benefits of nonbelief. Galvanized by a desire to even the scales, these researchers have been organizing academic centers to study the irreligious, conducting major surveys, and comparing their findings. They’ve already found that convinced atheists appear just as well equipped to cope with hardship as convinced believers, and that some of the world’s healthiest societies have the lowest levels of piety.
“There now seems to be a critical mass of people studying secularity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College, “and I think that is a big new development.”
Philosophical reflection about nonbelief has been common since Nietzsche declared the death of God more than a century ago, but scientific research on it has been rare. Though still preliminary, the new work has already begun shining new light on the lives of the nonreligious. They are a difficult-to-define minority in the United States, where the vast majority identify themselves as religious in some sense. But this research is leading to a more sophisticated understanding of how people believe—and of how the lines between religion and irreligion are less certain than we realize.
Read his full piece here.