The Varieties of Nonreligious Experience is emblematic of the second of three main streams of atheist books published in the West over the past two decades. On the one hand, Jerome Baggett’s nuanced sentiments resemble the countercultural work of others—such as Alain de Botton’s study of atheist reclamation(s) of religiosity in Religion for Atheists (2012)—that confronts reductionist conceptions of atheists and theists by showcasing the symmetry between their respective worldviews. On the other hand, Baggett differs from the militant first wave tenor of atheist apologists such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006) and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great (2007). In contrast to the New Atheist defenders of atheist orthodoxy who dominate the media landscape, Baggett illuminates the humanity and humility of ordinary atheists in his survey of more than 500 American nonbelievers. Most atheists, he concludes, are not antireligious as they are so often characterized, but rather freethinkers with multifaceted personalities.The Varieties of Nonreligious Experience has several strengths. The book is the second published in New York University Press’ Secular Studies series, which is edited by the leading sociologist of atheism Phil Zuckerman. Baggett is cognizant of major and minor debates, including whether, and in what ways, atheists contribute to American public life and the inextricable linkages between modern conceptions of God and atheism. In a society bedeviled by self-aggrandizement, Baggett’s self-effacement is quite refreshing. He muses that his book will certainly not become an instant classic. He under-promises hoping to over-deliver. Baggett lucidly takes readers on a narratological trek of case studies to map the perplexities of atheists moving from belief to nonbelief. In the Acknowledgments, Baggett confesses he aspires only to capture interviewees’ stories.Baggett makes coherent arguments and modest inferences too. His expertise as a thinker and writer are on full display. He nimbly situates the current mood of public atheism, from the outset in the Preface, within the broader perspectives of scholarship, theories, and concepts about atheism. Avoiding needless jargon, he introduces rich and relevant analytical categories—empirical, critical, agnostic, and immanent—to contextualize the varying styles of unbelief. The book aptly develops its organizing principle through two clear sections—one on the atheist identity, the other cultivating atheist sensibilities—to highlight how “ordinary atheism” is not an affront to theism. The mirror imaging of the theist versus the atheist stems from a false binary consciousness. Because neither group, the author insinuates, has a monopoly on truth, theists and atheists should be able to learn from one another.In terms of limitations, Baggett’s survey methodology reinscribes facets of a white normativity in the reimagining of atheism in American culture, which reinforces the invisibility and the angst nonreligious people of color face on a daily basis. Mimicking William James’ overreliance on Christian-framed psychological analysis in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Baggett focuses on white atheists’ testimonials, based on the racial and ethnic demographics of the 518 respondents (detailed in Appendix B): 3 percent Asian/Pacific Islanders, 4 percent “others,” 6 percent African Americans, 7 percent Hispanics/Latinos, and 80 percent whites.The issue extends, however, beyond the nonrandom sample size of people of color to the ahistorical and decontextualized questionnaire (detailed in Appendix A). Contrary to western European and white North American atheist populations, African American atheists often become atheist not through the ruminations of Enlightenment scientific rationalism, but through the ramifications of historic-traumatic events, such as the injustices of institutional racism. Baggett could be more intentional in examining how race and ethnicity as well as gender, class, and non-heterosexual subjects and sources color analyses of irreligious literacy to allow for fresher, multilayered meanings of cultural atheisms. In my own undergraduate course in “Atheism, Humanism, and Secularism” at San Diego State University, I will assign Baggett’s text alongside the third book in Zuckerman’s series, Nathan G. Alexander’s Race in a Godless World (2019). When used in tandem, the books offer a counterbalanced cultural, theological, and historical overview of the diversity within, and discrimination encountered by, atheists in America and globally.Despite the limitations of the book, the veracity of Baggett’s central thesis regarding the primacy of incorporating lived atheism in the sociology of religion is difficult to refute. He provides a compelling and complex portrait of rank-and-file nonbelievers living meaningful lives, who cautiously rethink the real and the imagined boundaries of religious constraints. Scholars in the fields of New Religions Studies as well as Third Wave Liberationist-Atheist Studies will surely welcome the challenge to stigmas and stereotypes combatted by a misunderstood community on the margins of society.
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Open Access
Oct 1, 2021
Elisa Kriza 
