Atheist Awakening ─ Secular Activism and Community in America

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 these "nones" have created a new, cohesive atheist identity through activism and the creation of communities.

According to Cimino and Smith, the New Atheism movement is a reaction to the resurgence 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.

Richard Cimino received his doctorate in Sociology in 2008 from the New School for Social Research. Since then he has been a research fellow at the Ecologies of Learning Project and ChangingSEA, which studied the religion of emerging adults. He is the co-author of Shopping for Faith, author of Trusting the Spirit, and editor of Lutherans Today. He is a research associate at Religioscope Institute in Fribourg, Switzerland and founding editor of Religion Watch, a bi-monthly publication reporting on trends and research in contemporary religion. He is also an adjunct professor in Sociology at Hofstra University.

Christopher Smith received his M.A. in Sociology at the New School for Social Research in 2006. He currently teaches and advises students at Seminole State College in Oklahoma, He specializes in sociology of the media, culture, and religion, and has co-authored several articles and book chapters on atheism and secularism.