Recognizing the Non-religious

This is, in many ways, an important book. Lee's work is part of a new wave of anthropological and sociological studies of secular, atheist, irreligious and non-religious formations. These new studies have asked whether questions that have been asked about religion - questions of embodiment, materiality or performance - might be productive when applied to humanists, atheists (new or old) or agnostics. Lee herself has been an important catalyst for much of this new work: she set up the NRSN (the Nonreligion and Secularity Network) that, through its journal and events, has provided an important platform for new research and experiments. On that basis alone, this book should be on the reading lists of students interested both in theoretical innovations in religious studies as well as new research on secular and non-religious formations. --Paul-Francois Tremlett, Religion This book is both innovative and insightful. In it, Lois Lee recognises non-religious experience as a lived and above all social reality, rather than a reasoned and individualized epistemology. The shift in emphasis from the hollowly secular to the substantively non-religious will, I have no doubt, provoke a lively debate. --Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Exeter This is simply the most analytically sophisticated discussion of non-religion/secularity written to date. Ambitious, thorough, commanding, and piercing, this book takes our understanding of-and theorising about- non-religion to a whole new, and thoroughly satisfying, level. This book is a veritable scholarly feast. --Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College This is a book that expertly binds the empirical and theoretical concerns of an under-researched set of groups in society and comes down in favor of a substantial understanding of the unreligious. Rather than a mere reaction against the dominance of the institutionally religious, unreligiousness is an orientation that produces landscapes and commitments of its own...I would recommend this as a text for any course in the social sciences struggling to escape the unhelpful binaries of theist/atheist, religious/non-religious, orreligious/secular practices. --Religious Studies Review This book is both innovative and insightful. In it, Lois Lee recognises non-religious experience as a lived and above all social reality, rather than a reasoned and individualized epistemology. The shift in emphasis from the hollowly secular to the substantively non-religious will, I have no doubt, provoke a lively debate. --Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Exeter This is simply the most analytically sophisticated discussion of non-religion/secularity written to date. Ambitious, thorough, commanding, and piercing, this book takes our understanding of-and theorising about- non-religion to a whole new, and thoroughly satisfying, level. This book is a veritable scholarly feast. --Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College This is a book that expertly binds the empirical and theoretical concerns of an under-researched set of groups in society and comes down in favor of a substantial understanding of the unreligious. Rather than a mere reaction against the dominance of the institutionally religious, unreligiousness is an orientation that produces landscapes and commitments of its own...I would recommend this as a text for any course in the social sciences struggling to escape the unhelpful binaries of theist/atheist, religious/non-religious, orreligious/secular practices. --Religious Studies Review This book is both innovative and insightful. In it, Lois Lee recognises non-religious experience as a lived and above all social reality, rather than a reasoned and individualized epistemology. The shift in emphasis from the hollowly secular to the substantively non-religious will, I have no doubt, provoke a lively debate. --Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Exeter This is simply the most analytically sophisticated discussion of non-religion/secularity written to date. Ambitious, thorough, commanding, and piercing, this book takes our understanding of-and theorising about- non-religion to a whole new, and thoroughly satisfying, level. This book is a veritable scholarly feast. --Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College