The Secular Northwest: Religion and Irreligion in Everyday Postwar Life by Tina Block

Abstract

138 OHQ vol. 119, no. 1 will be rewarded with abundant detail, archival photographs, and extensive notes. Makaela Kroin Eugene, Oregon THE SECULAR NORTHWEST: RELIGION AND IRRELIGION IN EVERYDAY POSTWAR LIFE by Tina Block The University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, B.C., 2017. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. 244 pages. $35.95, paper. Religious leaders and social scientists have noted for decades that residents of the Pacific Northwest are less likely than people in other parts of North America to express religious beliefs or to participate in religious services. Using this observation as a point of departure, historian Tina Block explores both lived religion and the role of secularism in the development of a regional culture and identity in the post–World War II Northwest. For her study, Block relied on three different bodies of source material. She analyzed the writings of religious and cultural observers, many of whom lamented the fact that residents of the Northwest rarely attended church. Block also examined quantitative data, particularly information accumulated in decennial censuses in Canada. Since the U.S. censuses did not include questions about religious affiliation, Block was forced to rely on surveys for quantitative data about religious beliefs and practices in the Northwestern states. Finally, Block interviewed fortyfour people who were part of the “religiously uninvolved majority” in the Northwest (p. 3). Block’s careful reading of church leaders’ writings led her to conclude that these clergy members viewed the Northwest as a “frontier” whose economy discouraged religious affiliations and practices. These authors believed that workers, particularly transient miners, loggers, and mill workers, were by nature inclined toward secularity. Church leaders accepted the common belief that women were inherently more pious than men and frequently lamented the absence of men from their congregations. Block’s analysis clearly demonstrates that Christian clergy saw White people, rather than people of other races or ethnicities, as the cause of the “problem” of secularity. The quantitative data show that the number of people without connections to organized religion increased in both British Columbia and the Northwestern United States during the post–World War II years. The quantitative data is limited, however, and it reveals much less about religious beliefs and practices than do the writings of church leaders or Block’s interviews. Drawing on her interviews, Block shows that class and gender influenced people’s religious experiences. Some working-class people insisted that they could not go to church because they had to work, while others saw the churches as bastions of wealth and were repelled by the churches’ fund-raising. Her interviews suggest that wealthy people and working-class men found it easiest to publicly identify as atheists. Middle-class people feared the social ostracism that might accompany a public expression of atheism. Washingtonians were more reluctant than British Columbians to embrace atheism, because many Americans saw atheism and communism as closely linked. Moreover, Block notes, it was easier for men to identify as atheists than it was for women, who felt more pressure than men to attend church and to enroll their children in Sunday school. Ultimately, Block concludes, family relationships help to explain the growth of a secular regional culture in the Northwest after World War II. She points out that previous scholars have noticed the connection between the mobility of the population of the Pacific Northwest and the higher rate of secularism, but she argues that her interviews show that mobility weakened family ties and therefore made it easier for people in the Northwest to abandon religious beliefs and practices. Many Washingtonians and British Columbians left parents and siblings behind when they moved to the Pacific Coast. In their new homes, they felt little pressure to believe or to attend church regularly, even though most of Block’s interviewees bowed to societal expectations and were married in churches and had their children baptized. Debates over laws that requiredbusinessestocloseonSundaysprovide further evidence that a secular culture had solidi- 139 Reviews fied in Washington and British Columbia in the decades after the Second World War. Block’s well-researched and clearly written book constitutes a valuable contribution to the scholarly understanding of religion and secularism in the Northwest. It also raises intriguing questions...