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Recognizing and Categorizing the Secular: Polysecularity and Agendasof Polysecularism John R. Shook Recognizing and Categorizing the Secular: Polysecularity and Agendasof Polysecularism 1Introduction: Seeking the Secular What maycount as a “secular” organization, or a “secular” movement?How should secular societies be studied, classified, and compared?The amount of re- search into group manifestations of secular energy and activism has been limited and disjointed, most likelydue to ageneral lack of clarity and rigor. This chapter offers awell-defined framework for classifying and contrasting the compositions and agendas of organizations for secular people. That frame- work must be assembled graduallyand carefully, which requires initial sections of this chapter for describing how the secular and secularity can be studied sci- entifically. The second section shows how to liberate afree-standingconception of the secular from pre-fabricated contrasts against religious normalcies. The third section explains how to avoid the prevalent fallacies in the social sciences that distort the identitiesofsecular people. Thefourth section introducesthe idea of “polysecularity” to better discriminate the manytypes of secular people. The fifth section introducesthe idea of “polysecularism” to cover primary modes of activism chosen by some secular people in the publicsphere, which need not be characterized onlybynegative opposition to religion. The sixth section orients research into public secular attitudes through the positive self-identities and chosen agendas of secular individuals.The highlydiverse array of choicesfor ex- pressingsecularist views and participatinginsecular agendas in turn sets the stagefor the seventh section, which categoriesavariety of prominent secular or- ganizations in America according to their efforts to serveone or another portion of that diverse array.Thischapter concludes by pointing out under-servedand neglected segments of the sizable secular population in America,using the ex- ample of New Atheism to illustrate how thatregrettable situation could occur in the internet age. The terms “secular” and “secularity” lend themselvestomultifaceted and multidimensional conceptions, applicable in manywaystoindividuals,organi- zations, social institutions, and whole societies (see Rechtenwald and Richter, this volume). Despite their utilityfor analytic frameworks in research, the work of observing secularity, tracking secularity,and explaining features of sec- OpenAccess. ©2017 John R. Shook, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110458657-006 Brought to you by | Sacred Heart University Authenticated Download Date | 1/11/18 4:14 PM 88 John R. Shook ularity continues to be methodologicallychallenging. Expanding the field of Sec- ular Studies on stablyacademicfoundations is difficult enough; presumptions and stereotypes about the nonreligious continue to divert inquiries towards dead ends. Suppositions that the secular is the realm of crudelymaterialistic and utilitarian matters,secularityindicates an insensitivity or impassivity to re- ligious or spiritual wonders,orthat secularism is basicallyabout anti-religious antagonism, continue to exert open or tacit influenceacross academia.Secular Studies could settle down wherereligious studies and theologywishesittore- main, as asubfield subordinatetotheirsupervision. Alternatively,itcan clear its own academic path with philosophical clarity and scientificrigor. In the West,unbelief and its secularity has commonlybeen viewed as ade- viant rebellion against theism. That perspective does simplify methodology. If the secular is onlyperceivable through areligious lens, then secularity seems in- conceivable except in relation to religion, and secularity has no meaning apart from religious structures.Onlythe clarity of religious doctrine about divinity per- mits anyshape and definition to nonreligion, this viewpoint goes on to suggest. Even atheists often assume thattheism presents adoctrinallywell-defined target for atheism’sopposition (Clark 2015). Henceacademia’sapproach, ever since Christian universities arose, has been to let expertsinreligion handle explora- tions into impiety and irreligion. Religious scholars have been devoted to ex- plaining religion’sreasonableness,its universality,its naturalness, and its use- fulness. That devotion has convenientlyset standards of normality for judging unbelief’sdeformities and deficiencies, and protecting society from secularity’s corrosions. Historically(and presently), theologyhas regulated the secular. There is an alternative.Ascholarlyfield concernedwith the secular could control its own methodologies,theoretical terminology, and interpretations of empirical findings. Inquiry into the views, values, and motivations of nonreli- gious people could begin with observations of them in theirown livedworlds, instead of starting from theological portraits of religious people in theirs. Any presumed naturality and normality to religion (Barrett 2012; contra position in Shook 2012)can be bracketed away from sound methodology. Scholars and sci- entists studying nonreligious people, in non-Western as well as Western societ- ies, can investigate the affinities and affirmations behind aperson’spreferred secular views and activities (Beit-Hallahmi 2007;Zuckerman 2010;Caldwell-Har- ris 2012; Coleman,Silver, and Holcombe 2013;Norenzayan and Gervais 2013; Guenther 2014; Burchardt et al. 2015;Bilgrami 2016). Not believing in adeity, or not behaving religiously, by itself tells us little about what aperson does ac- cept and affirm. The field of Secular Studies and allied disciplines are readyfor closer re- search into phenomenaofindividual secularity using secular methodologies Brought to you by | Sacred Heart University Authenticated Download Date | 1/11/18 4:14 PM Recognizing and Categorizing the Secular 89 and sensitivities to secularity’sown histories and agendas. The reality of “poly- secularity,” as Iterm it,awaits exploration at the individual level. Polysecularity, in brief, refers to the broad diversity to secularitydisplayedbypeople throughout their mundane lives. Secular people needn’tbedefined in terms of deviancy any more. Some secular people are secularists offering resistancetoreligion, by par- ticipating in the advancement of secularism’saffirmativeagendas. The diversity and positivity inherent to secularist attitudes and activist agendas is here labeled as “polysecularism.” This chapter concludes by situating secular organizations in America within this polysecularity-polysecularism framework. The framework’sclassification of ideological niches situates wherevarious typesofsecular organizations can find their corresponding sorts of supporters.The phenomena of polysecularity at the individual level is accompanied at the social level by the polysecularism of or- ganizational diversity observedinthe United States.This framework accounts for the kinds of disagreements, and even inevitable antagonisms, among secular organizations. 2SituatingSecularity Researchinto secularitytoo often proceeds as though being secular or not being abeliever is predicable upon some basic, static, and singular construct.Theolo- gy helpfullycleared the wayfor that procedure. With onlyone path up the moun- tain to the sacred, there is onlyone path down. Secularization is just de-sacral- ization; secular people descendingtothe mountain’sbase are secular onlyfor having taken the path in the wrongdirection. However,scholarlyresearch into the pluralism of religions exposes difficulties for objectivelydefining religion or faith. Whymust research into the secular wait upon anyfragile consensus about which mountain is “religion” or which meaning to the “religious” is best?Noreligion’stheologycould serveasagood guide for this rough terrain. How about history?Historians have been heard proclaiming that irreligion is but amodernist creation, emerging about the time when “religion” as aconcept was invented. If “religion” is as artificiallyconstructed as some historians of modernity think (consultNongbri 2012), wouldn’tde-centering modernist frame- works bring authentic and non-essentialized secularity back into view?Besides, atheists could not be as constructed to the samedegree as “religion” by modern- ity,since real unbelief could not be produced by an unreal religion. Hence, his- torians should not classify atheism as areligion’smodern spinoff or sect.Medi- eval scholastics read about atheism from ancient Greeks (Shook 2015), and atheists are visibleduringthe Renaissance (Wotton 1992). Brought to you by | Sacred Heart University Authenticated Download Date | 1/11/18 4:14 PM 90 John R. Shook Either way, whethertheology’sunreliablemap or history’sdubious framings arefollowed, confused theorizing ratherthanmethodical observationendsupdic- tating whoisinhabitingsocieties.Thatsituation is notsustainable forascholarly fieldaspiringtoany scientificstatus. Empiricalresearchalreadypoints towards immensequalitative andquantitative variancesinthe beliefs, values,motivations, andpsychological characteristics of individual nonbelievers.The people lacking belief in deities maybemorevariedthanall thosewho do believeinadeity. Stud- iesinto personal secularity areconfirmingthatpossibility;recentresearchhas ac- cumulatedimpressive results(Hunsbergerand Altemeyer2006; Beit-Hallahmi 2007;Kosminetal. 2009;Streiband Klein2013; Silveretal. 2014;Keysar2015). Despite what religion’stheologians or modernity’shistorians mayclaim, sec- ularity is not reducible to
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