Abstract
In earlier studies of indifference to religion, I have been largely critical – of (i) conceptual imprecision, (ii) the exaggeration of indifference to religion as an empirical reality, especially in so-called secular societies, and (iii) the claims to power that self-identification as ‘indifferent’ can be bound up with – an critique that has some similarities to critical religion and critical secular approaches to the ‘secular’. This chapter shifts attention to the more constructive ways that social researchers might work with indifference to religion – as an undeniably significant feature in many contemporary societies, as a crucial component to theories about religion and modernity, as a methodological challenge, and even as an ethical imperative. This chapter proceeds on the understanding that each of these has a bearing on the other, whilst explorations of each and all contribute to the ongoing task of refining conceptual understandings of ‘indifference to religion’.
This chapter has been developed as part of research considering religion and its ‘others’ for the European Research Council (ERC) project, ‘Is Religion Special?’ (grant 283867). I am also grateful to participants at the ‘Indifference to Religion’ meeting, Frankfurt, Oct 2014, and to the members of the Religion and Political Theory (RAPT) Centre, UCL, for their careful and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
I differentiate between ‘nonreligion’ and ‘secularity’ according to the model developed in Lee (2012a, 2014 and 2015b). In this, nonreligion indicates phenomena that are identified in contradistinction to religion – New Atheism, for example, Secular Humanism or more informal practices such as declining to participate in religious traditions – whilst secularity indicates the primacy of ‘this-worldly’ concerns and the subordination of religious, spiritual and nonreligious concerns to those (though religious, spiritual and nonreligious concerns may still be present as secondary concerns in secular contexts). According to this model, we can contrast a secular school curriculum, the typical curriculum provided by liberal states, with a nonreligious curriculum, examples of which can be found in State Atheist regimes. ‘Areligiosity’ is used to denote the absence of any connection with religion (or nonreligion) (ibid.); and ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ are differentiated in this chapter according to the model suggested in Heelas and Woodhead (2005), in which traditional theist religion is distinguished from subjectivist modes of spirituality in which the existential is channeled through the individual rather than experienced as an external force.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
This argument is particularly developed in Recognizing the Non-religious: Reimagining the Secular (Lee 2015b).
- 5.
But see Blankholm (2017 – this volume) on complications with the concept of ‘ignorance’.
- 6.
My approach may be seen as consistent with different approaches, such as Catto’s (2017 – this volume) distinction between indifference and nonreligion in her work and Quack and Schuh’s (2017 – S 12f) view of indifference as a special form of nonreligion. Highlighting the ambiguity of the notion of indifference is about recognising that these apparently contradictory proposals may both be true, whilst different conceptual approaches to the nonreligious (see cf. Lee 2012, 2015b and Quack 2014) are also impactful. Indifference to religion is a position set apart from religion, making it nonreligious (in both Lee and Quack’s senses), but it may also be a position set apart from the ‘religion-related’ (Quack 2014) too, making it neither religious nor nonreligious (in Lee’s sense) but veering instead towards the ‘areligious’ (Lee 2015a, b; Wallis 2014 also takes this approach). Even in this model though, indifference occupies a grey area between the nonreligious and the areligious.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
For an extended discussion of complexity and hybridity in nonreligious populations, see af Burén (2015).
- 10.
Pseudonyms are used to preserve participants’ anonymity, and some details of participants’ work and cultural lives are changed for this reason.
- 11.
One interesting methodological prospect would be to investigate engagement with religion alongside engagement with other things. This would help ascertain the extent to which indifference to religion is a particular characteristic, rather than an expression of a generally indifferent attitude; or maybe part of a wider category of subjects provoking indifference.
- 12.
Cf. Simeon Wallis’s 2014 study of indifference of young people in UK.
- 13.
See also Cotter (2017 – this volume).
- 14.
Atko Remmel’s (2017 – this volume) attempt to apply the question schedule used in my UK-based research to an Estonian sample – and the challenges he encountered in that attempt – is a fascinating and powerful demonstration of how a cross-cultural exploration of indifference is needed, as is the retuning of methodological instruments in response to such differences.
- 15.
Cf. Lee (2013) on pervasiveness of indifference, and its stability over time.
- 16.
I am grateful to David Voas for discussion on this point.
- 17.
See also Lee (2015a, b) on the distinction between secularity (as the subordination of religious matters) and nonreligion (as difference from religion); and Wallis (2014) on my distinction between nonreligion and areligion (that is, the total absence of engagement with religion). Wallis argues that what many researchers identify as ‘indifference’ are really occasions of areligion rather than nonreligion, and that my suggestion that indifference is a form of difference from religion, albeit a minimal or mild one, may be confusing.
- 18.
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Lee, L. (2017). Religion, Difference, and Indifference. In: Quack, J., Schuh, C. (eds) Religious Indifference. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48476-1_6
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