Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions

by Phil Zuckerman

  However, despite enjoying many aspects of being in the Unitarian church community, Ian wanted something more, something different, something that was a little more true to his secular worldview. He felt that if he was going to be a member of a church, so be it, but he also needed to be a member of a group that affirmed his atheism. When a couple of older members, also atheists, expressed similar sentiments, the idea to form the group arose. “A handful of us started meeting throughout the summer of 2010, and by the end of the summer there were ten or twelve regular members. So we began trying to think of events that we could put on to promote our naturalistic worldview.”

  Their first public event took place the following fall, held in the church sanctuary, and it included a lecture by Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University and author of Good Without God. Ian worked hard to publicize the event, and it paid off, as there were nearly two hundred people in attendance. “That event really put us on the map within the congregation. Since then, we’ve put on a number of other talks, and just last week we did a big barbecue in the church courtyard with this group called Generation Atheist—a meet-up group that caters to nonbelievers in their twenties and thirties—and we had over sixty people for that. We also just held a dinner party with the guest of honor being a woman who recently edited a new edition of the Jefferson Bible. Since Thomas Jefferson was ambassador to France, we cooked up a French meal, we got a bunch of Bordeaux wine, and we had this great discussion about Jefferson’s views on religion, the separation of church and state, and the First Amendment.”

  This community within a community has been very rewarding for Ian. He gets the best of both worlds: he is part of the Unitarian Universalist church, which makes his wife happy and provides a nice community atmosphere for his family, and now he is also part of AAHS, which satisfies him intellectually and allows him to be part of something collective that is more closely aligned with his secular identity. And the fact that many other people out there seem interested in what he is doing is quite affirming. “I’ve been contacted by members of other Unitarian churches in the area saying, ‘Hey, we’ve heard about your group. We’d like to start something like that here as well—can you give us a hand?’”

  The last time I touched base with Ian, he was branching out; the new Sunday Assembly of Los Angeles was just starting up, and he was on the governing board. Dubbed by the media as an “Atheist Church,” Sunday Assembly is drawing impressive crowds for once-a-month gatherings of people coming together who are seeking to experience the best of religion—community, music, fellowship, charitable opportunities, and inspiration—but without any reference to or invocation of the supernatural.

  Secular Identity and Individualism

  Whatever the disparate reasons for joining such groups as those profiled above, there is one thing that these individuals all share: a sense that being secular is an important, defining aspect of their identity. It is a big part of who they are. They may be lots of other things—a woman, an American, a motorcycle enthusiast, a probation officer, a vegetarian, a flight attendant, a father, an accordionist—but being secular is also high on their list.

  This is certainly the case with me; being secular is an undeniably huge part of my identity. But it strikes me that while most of the kids I grew up with were secular and still are as they wade through middle age, and while many of my current friends and colleagues are secular, hardly any of them think, talk, or even seem to care much about being so.

  Unlike most of these friends and colleagues, for me being secular has tremendous significance. My personal heroes include unabashed freethinkers like Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I subscribe to magazines like Free Inquiry. I am a member of the American Humanist Association. I am regularly invited to speak to groups such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation. I teach courses on secular life, I read books about secularism and secularization, and I write books about secular culture. And so if I had to make a list of the interests or passions that most define who I am as an individual, they would certainly include (though not in ranked order): apples, all things Scandinavian, music made between 1966 and 1973, and secularity.

  And all of this brings me back to Camp Quest, and why I wanted Flora to go there. After all, if being secular wasn’t such a big deal for me, I probably would have not been so attracted to the Camp Quest Web site. But I was. It drew me in. It spoke to me. And since being secular is a big part of who I am, I didn’t want Flora to go to just any old camp that didn’t have a religious element. No—I wanted her to go to a camp that was affirmatively secular.

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  BUT OF COURSE most secular people are not like me in terms of having such a pronounced secular sense of self. For most nonreligious people, being secular is way down on the list of who they are and how they see themselves. It isn’t at the forefront of their identity. It isn’t something they think too much about. They don’t read about it, they don’t write about it, and they don’t obsess about it. And they certainly wouldn’t be attracted to something like Camp Quest. In fact, only a tiny minority of secular people would even bother to get involved in the sort of secular groups described in this chapter.

  How small a minority? “I would estimate that only somewhere between 1 and 2 percent of secular people actually get involved with organized secular communal life.” That sober assessment comes from Dr. Frank Pasquale, an anthropologist who lives in Portland, Oregon. Frank has been studying contemporary secular groups in America longer than anyone—about thirteen years now.

  As an ethnographer, he has spent time among and carefully observed numerous secular groups of various types—atheist groups, humanist groups, Unitarian humanist groups, Jewish humanist groups, skeptical/rationalist groups, and many more—mostly in the Pacific Northwest, but also in the Northeast. He’s attended their meetings, their potlucks, their lectures and discussions, their film festivals, and other activities. He’s interviewed them and surveyed them. And one of the main things that he has noticed is what I have just broached above—that people who affiliate with secular groups are generally people who place being secular at the core of how they see themselves.

  “There is a small percentage of secular people who focus on secularity itself as a central or core of their identity. And they then are the ones who tend to become actively involved with secularist groups—and by ‘secularist’ I mean that they maintain a focus on secularism or secularity in such a way that they turn it into an identity, almost analogous to a religious identity, and it becomes an ideological core of people’s sense of self. But again, they are a very small percentage.” According to Dr. Pasquale, the “natural resting state” of secularity for most people is thus not active atheism or passionate irreligion, nor is it one of secular advocacy or secular group affiliation. Rather, it is mere indifference concerning religion—and indifference or lack of interest concerning secularist groups as well.

  While Dr. Pasquale readily acknowledges that secular groups are currently exploding across America and that more and more are being created, with increasing membership and activity, he nonetheless doubts that they will ever match—or even come close to—the level of communal engagement one finds among the religious. Why? Because the very nature of being secular is such that it does not lend itself to joining large groups of like-minded people specifically on the basis of their secularity. At the very heart or core of being secular, at least for many people, is a degree of suspicion toward communal dictates, group conformity, or social immersion, particularly when based on religion, nonreligion, or irreligion. Psychological studies back this up; recent research indicates that atheists and agnostics tend to value the autonomy of the individual rather than loyal bonds to a collective. And a recent Pew study found that while nearly half of all Americans say that belonging to a community of like-minded people is very important to them, only 28 percent of nonreligious Americans say as much.

  As Dr. Pasquale explains, being secular is strongly linked to and is very mu
ch a manifestation or expression of individualization and individualism, which involve (1) an emphasis on increased personal autonomy, (2) reserving the right of individual choice in many aspects of one’s life, (3) a rejection of traditional worldviews, and (4) a reluctance to join or be a part of traditional forms of association purely on the basis of metaphysical beliefs (or the lack thereof). “If religion, as Emile Durkheim suggested, is a kind of social glue, reinforcing a sense of connection and a sense of societal solidarity, then secularity is a reaction to that—an individualistic reaction. It is, in a sense, saying, ‘I’m deliberately distancing myself from the unquestioned authority of tradition, particularly traditions associated with supernatural ideas, and I am detaching myself from that.’”

  Rather than becoming a member of a large-scale group where a lot of the beliefs and activities are essentially laid out—like a prix fixe menu—most secular people prefer to take an à la carte approach to constructing their worldviews, their lives, their social networks, and their contributions to society. “So when people become secular they are not only distancing themselves from supernatural thinking or religious institutions, but they are reserving the right of personal choice and also taking on personal responsibility for many aspects of their lives. They are saying, ‘I am an autonomous human being and that means I have the right and responsibility to evaluate all of the traditions that have been handed down to me and of deciding where I think they are right or wrong.’ Again, secularity really is a species of individualism.” Other scholars agree with this assessment, such as University of San Francisco professor John Nelson, who notes that increased personal agency in determining one’s own individual life course—a hallmark of our modern world—is significantly correlated with secularity.

  Professor Pasquale is emphatic, however, on one point: just because secular people tend to strongly value autonomy and be more individualistic, this does not mean that they are all a bunch of antisocial hermits. It does not mean that they do not enjoy meaningful social connections. It does not mean that they don’t get involved in causes or clubs or corporations or volunteer groups. They do. But they tend to develop these meaningful social connections and contributions by choice—through their relationships with their family, their friends, their colleagues, or with people who share similar personal interests, ideals, and passions. They tend not to find it by affiliating with formal, structured groups or organizations specifically on the basis of their secularity.

  As Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau has quipped, “Secularism has a ‘we’ problem. Secularists don’t do ‘we.’” And while I would argue that this may be a bit of an overstatement—the mere existence of organizations such as Camp Quest and groups like AAHS clearly counter his assertion—Dr. Berlinerblau is certainly on to something about secular people’s less than impressive communal inclinations. Recent research within the realm of psychology is relevant here. Dr. Catherine Caldwell-Harris is a professor of psychology at Boston University, and she has published several important papers looking at what might distinguish nonreligious people from their religious peers—personality-wise, that is. Some of the key differences that she has found are predicated upon the fact that nonbelievers generally tend to be much less social, less conformist, and more individualistic than believers on average, and ultimately “less in need of social support.”

  If Professors Pasquale, Caldwell-Harris, and Berlinerblau are correct—that the very nature of being secular involves an inherent reluctance toward joining or associating with structured, cohesive, like-minded groups—then attempts to create explicitly secularist communities in America may be, if not necessarily doomed, then certainly limited. The ironic fact is that even though secular groups like Humanist Friendship Group of Central Indiana or the Hawaii Secular Society or Alaskan Atheists are ostensibly antireligious in content and mission, such secular groups may still be too “religious-like” in form, structure, and style to attract most secular people.

  Humanist Community Centers

  But don’t tell any of this to Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University. I mentioned him earlier—he is the author of Good Without God, and he spoke at the inaugural event of AAHS in Santa Monica. Greg has devoted his life to creating humanist community, and his work in Boston has been very successful: hundreds of students are involved with his Humanist Community Project, whose mission is “to develop opportunities for connection, ethical development, and the celebration of life based on human reason, compassion, and creativity, not religious dogma” and to “organize, facilitate, promote, and/or study a wide range of educational programs, social meetings, service projects, human rights work, counseling, ceremonies, and contemplative practices that contribute to the growth of diverse and interconnected groups of Humanists, atheists, agnostics and the nonreligious.”

  Greg takes all of this stuff very seriously. It is his life’s work. He is passionate, energized, smart, charismatic, articulate, driven—in short, if ever there was a humanist man on a mission in America, it is undoubtedly Greg Epstein. And in flagrantly optimistic dismissal of what anthropologist Frank Pasquale or psychologist Catherine Caldwell-Harris may say about secular people not being open to or interested in such endeavors, Greg is moving forward with his goal: to establish dynamic, successful humanist community centers in every city in America. As he passionately preached while speaking to the members of AAHS in the Unitarian Universalist church sanctuary in Santa Monica (I happened to be there for his talk), “We can have a thriving ethical, moral community for this ever-growing population of secular Americans. We can unite as humanists. And humanism will do best when it expresses itself organizationally as a network of local, multigenerational, multicultural communities spread across the country.”

  In order for such humanist communities to become a reality throughout the land, much is required: more charismatic leaders like Greg, lots of money, and a lot more people interested in gathering with others like them—not under the banner of being antireligious, because being against something isn’t the quality of communal glue needed here, but rather under the banner of humanism, which is an affirmative, positive, optimistic alternative orientation.

  If secularism is to be understood as a political ideology or social-movement agenda that advocates (at least) the separation of church and state or (at most) the diminishment of religion in society, then humanism can be understood as a related and yet distinct phenomenon; it is more of an optimistic cultural expression or personal worldview, defined by what beliefs it eschews as well as what beliefs it affirms. Simply put, humanism rejects belief in heaven, hell, God, gods, and all things supernatural, while at the same time affirming belief in the positive potential for humans to do and be good, loving, and altruistic. Humanism rejects faith in favor of reason, it rejects superstition in favor of evidence-based thinking, and it replaces worship of a deity with an appreciation for and love of humankind and the natural world. According to the proclamation of the Ethical Culture movement, founded by Felix Adler in 1877, humanism is based on the ideal that “the supreme aim of human life is to create a more humane society.” Humanism is thus deeply moral in its fervent commitment to improving and enhancing life, and Greg believes that Americans would do well to gather and congregate as humanists in much the same way religious people do. “If you join a moral community that asks you to be a better person, well—surprise, surprise—you might find that this community actually helps you in becoming just that: a better person.”

  Greg grew up in Flushing, Queens, New York. His parents were Jewish, but purely in the cultural, ethnic sense, not in the religious, believing sense. Despite their own lack of faith, religion was definitely a topic of interest, fascination, and debate in the Epstein household, and the bookshelves were full of volumes on religion, spirituality, and related philosophy. And in Greg’s neighborhood, things like faith, belief, ritual, and the search for ultimate truth and meaning were everywhere. As he explained to me, “Flushing is the most rel
igiously diverse neighborhood in the most religiously diverse city in the most religiously diverse country in the world. I had friends from every religious background imaginable. And I saw that there were all these different things that people ostensibly believe in, and it made me ask a lot of questions. Which ones were true? Which ones weren’t?”

  These questions were pressing for Greg, even when he was just a kid. They lingered throughout his teenage years, and by the time he got to college he decided to be a religious studies major. “I wanted to know: What is true? What is meaningful? What is the good life?” Although not a convinced believer himself, he was open to whatever insights religion could offer on these matters, and he was drawn to the glow of religious inquiry and philosophy. He double-majored in Chinese so that he could simultaneously immerse himself in Eastern approaches to these existential, spiritual questions. Not compelled or moved by what he found within Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, but intrigued by Eastern spirituality, Greg headed off to China after graduating from college. He saw himself eventually becoming an ordained Taoist priest.

  But that wasn’t to be. In the words of acerbic atheist Christopher Hitchens, “There is no Eastern solution”—and that’s certainly what Greg was to personally find out. “I got to China and I met the people that I would ostensibly be studying with and learning from and just being around them and being in that world—there was this really intuitive sense that I got about them that they were just people like anybody else. I think I was expecting some kind of transcendence. I was expecting them to be fully self-realized spiritual masters. And they were just people. They were no more fully self-realized than anybody else. Suddenly I just saw that Buddhism and Taoism were very much humanly created, just like every other religion I had ever studied. I realized that people are people and all religions are created by human beings for human purposes.”