The Nonreligious Understanding Secular People and Societies

The number of nonreligious people has increased dramatically over the past several decades, yet scholarship on the nonreligious is severely lacking. In response to this critical gap in knowledge, The Nonreligious provides a comprehensive summation and analysis of existing social scientific research on secular people and societies. The authors present a thorough overview of existing knowledge while also drawing upon ongoing research and suggesting ways to improve our understanding of this growing population. Offering a research- and data-based examination of the nonreligious, this book will be an invaluable source of information and a foundation for further scholarship. Written in clear, accessible language that will appeal to students and the increasingly interested general reader, The Nonreligious provides an unbiased and thorough account of relevant existing scholarship within the social sciences that bears on lived experiences of the nonreligious.

Phil Zuckerman is a professor of sociology and the founding chair of the secular studies program at Pitzer College. He is the author of several books, including Living the Secular Life (Penguin, forthcoming), Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion (Oxford, 2011), and Society Without God (NYU, 2008). He teaches courses on secularity, religion, and social theory, and his research focuses on various aspects of secular identity and culture.

Luke Galen is a professor of psychology at Grand Valley State University. He teaches in the field of psychology, specializing in the psychology of religion. He is also a co-host of the podcast "Reasonable Doubts". His research interests include: Religious and secular social cognition, psychological well-being, morality and prosociality, and the social perception of nonreligious individuals.

Frank L. Pasquale is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on individual and institutional forms of secularity and the role of the religious-secular construct in the world. His work has appeared in The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford University Press, 2013), Atheism and Secularity (Praeger, 2010), Secularism and Science in the 21st Century (ISSSC, 2008), Secularity and Secularism (ISSSC, 2007), the Archive for the Psychology of Religion, and elsewhere.