Atheist Awakening
Secular Activism and Community in America
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
Surveys over the last twenty years have seen an ever-growing number of Americans disclaim religious affiliations and instead check the "none" box. In the first sociological exploration of organized secularism in America, Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith show how one segment of these "nones" have created a new, cohesive atheist identity through activism and the creation of communities.
According to Cimino and Smith, the new upsurge of atheists is a reaction to the revival of religious fervor in American politics since 1980. Feeling overlooked and underrepresented in the public sphere, atheists have employed a wide variety of strategies-some evangelical, some based on identity politics-to defend and assert themselves against their ideological opponents. These strategies include building and maintaining communities, despite the absence of the kinds of shared rituals, texts, and laws that help to sustain organized religions.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with self-identified atheist, secularist, and humanist leaders and activists, as well as extensive observations and analysis of secular gatherings and media, Cimino and Smith illustrate how atheists organize and align themselves toward common goals, and how media-particularly web-based media-have proven invaluable in connecting atheists to one another and in creating a powerful virtual community. Cimino and Smith suggest that secularists rely not only on the Internet for community-building, but on their own new forms of ritual.
This groundbreaking study will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the growing atheist movement in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Books on atheism often emphasize the individuality of the atheist, a person who has broken away from religious dogmatism to personally determine a worldview and morality. By welcome contrast, Cimino and Smith study the social aspects of atheist culture. At the core of atheist identity, they argue, resides an inherent tension between the needs for inclusion and autonomy. Their work historically situates the atheist movement, unearthing ways in which atheists have adapted social group behaviors and strategies from using evangelical Christian-style conversion to mobilizing via identity politics. The authors also consider the signal role of social media in the formation of atheist communities, suggesting that technology has shifted the ways in which people conceive of relationships and interact within them. This is a meticulous study that embeds atheist community in a larger context of subcultures, showing identity formation, the assertion of that identity, and the need to be included. The authors excel in demonstrating the inevitably social dimensions of human identity.