Ninety-Eight Atheists: Atheism among the Non-Elite in Twentieth Century Britain

Matt Sheard

doi:10.5334/snr.ar

Abstract

Widespread atheism in the general population is one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century British society, yet until very recently, it has largely been unregarded by historians. This study attempts to contribute to the remedy of this omission by considering autobiographies and oral histories of non-elite atheists between 1890 and 1980. It shows that atheisation (the transition from religious belief to atheism) is principally a phenomenon of childhood and adolescence, with 80% of the sources becoming atheist by the age of twenty. The reasons the subjects gave for their irreligion were varied, of greatest significance were nearly two thirds who regarded religion as irrelevant to their lives, showing a lack of engagement with religion, its concepts and rituals. Many of these were from weakly religious or irreligious backgrounds who experienced ‘irreligious socialisation’, rendering religion irrelevant and contributed significantly to the progress of atheisation. Religious trauma, criticism of religion, personal trauma, radical politics, and rationalism accounted for similar proportions of reasons, and were mentioned by only 12–18% of sources. The potential influence of parental attitude to religion, other childhood experiences, religious education, reducing existential threat, historic events, and the social revolution of the 1960s are also considered as ‘unarticulated causes’ of the subjects’ irreligion.

Highlights

There is only one social history of atheism in Britain in the twentieth century focussed on non-elite atheists: Susan Budd’s Varieties of Unbelief (1977)
This study revisits Budd’s objective, to show how irreligion was incorporated into the lives of ordinary men and women, by using sources that are more representative of the population than hers, taken from oral history archives and autobiographies of Britons from non-elite backgrounds, whose parents had received no higher education and had little economic influence
The increase in the proportion of women in the decadal groups starting in the 1950s and becoming the majority in the 1970s is marked, and possibly supports Brown’s theory about second wave feminism, though the presence of women in the data from all decades and the relatively high proportion of women between 1900 and 1919 shows that women have always been a significant part of the atheist population

Summary

Matt Sheard*

Widespread atheism in the general population is one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century British society, yet until very recently, it has largely been unregarded by historians. This study attempts to contribute to the remedy of this omission by considering autobiographies and oral histories of non-elite atheists between 1890 and 1980 It shows that atheisation (the transition from religious belief to atheism) is principally a phenomenon of childhood and adolescence, with 80% of the sources becoming atheist by the age of twenty. The reasons the subjects gave for their irreligion were varied, of greatest significance were nearly two thirds who regarded religion as irrelevant to their lives, showing a lack of engagement with religion, its concepts and rituals Many of these were from weakly religious or irreligious backgrounds who experienced ‘irreligious socialisation’, rendering religion irrelevant and contributed significantly to the progress of atheisation. The potential influence of parental attitude to religion, other childhood experiences, religious education, reducing existential threat, historic events, and the social revolution of the 1960s are considered as ‘unarticulated causes’ of the subjects’ irreligion

Introduction

Autobiography Oral History

Findings

Discussion