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2020 Reframing Smiths Atheist Development Model: Developing Metaphysical Beliefs Allen Clay Jr. and Bradley E. Cox

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Reframing Smith’s Atheist Development Model: Developing Metaphysical Beliefs

Allen Clay Jr. & Bradley Cox

Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Florida State University

Abstract

As the most prominent model of atheist identity development, Smith’s model relies on the assumption of atheism emerging from an explicit rejection of Christianity. This revised model presents atheism as more than just the rejection of Christianity, but also the development of a personal belief system independent of a deity.

Keywords: metaphysical belief, fluidity, self-authorship

Reframing Smith’s Atheist Development Model: Developing Metaphysical Beliefs

Within the United States, there is a growing shift from Christianity to a country that is diverse in religion, faith, and belief. Seventeen percent of the US population report no religious affiliation, 5% identify as agnostic, and 5% identify as atheist (Pew Research Center, 2019).

Roughly 36% of the religiously unaffiliated are young adults between ages 18 and 24 (Pew

Research Center, 2015a). Despite this uptick in students who identify as atheists, Smith’s

Atheist Identity Development Model (2011) remains one of the most prominent models that guides postsecondary professionals’ understanding of how to support these students. However,

Smith’s model relies on a number of assumptions, particularly relating to the idea that atheism grows out of an explicit rejection of Christianity, that no longer hold true. Without challenging these assumptions and/or accounting for recent shifts in American religiosity, educators taking guidance from Smith’s model could further alienate students who have already been “othered” for the simple fact that they do not adhere to theistic beliefs that permeate American society

(Doane & Elliot, 2015).

In this paper, we begin by providing an overview of Smith’s (2011) model and describe how we leveraged Dugan’s (2017) tools of deconstruction to challenge several problematic assumptions in Smith’s model. The remainder of the paper explains how we used Dugan’s

(2017) tools of reconstruction and insights from Baxter Magolda’s (2008) pathways to self- authorship to reimagine Smith’s model. By shifting away from Smith’s emphasis on “faith” and expanding the model to be inclusive of more than just those individuals who reject their theistic

(implicitly Christian) upbringing, our revised model describes a process through which

4 individuals develop metaphysical beliefs that need not be predicated on, but could be inclusive of, the existence of a god.

Smith’s Atheist Identity Development Model

Smith’s (2011) model includes four stages through which one progresses on the way to the development of an “achieved” (p. 215) atheist identity. The first stage, the ubiquity of theism, states that most people have a belief and certainty in God’s existence filtered through religious practices during one’s childhood. Stage two, questioning theism, explains how people question and unlearn their previous theistic beliefs through conversations with atheists and reexamining biblical scripture. Stage three, rejecting theism: ‘not theist, or atheism as a rejection identity,’” argues that individuals can only establish an atheist identity after “having explicitly rejected religion and the notion of God itself” (p. 227). In the fourth and final stage,

“coming out” atheist, elaborates on how people accept an atheist identity and can contradict normalized conceptions of God and religion with both atheist and theist believers (Smith, 2011).

Challenging Assumptions in Smith’s Model Theism as Normative

A core underlying assumption is that there is a normative belief in theism. Due to the model’s emphasis on navigating a theistic society within the United States, it omits people who are born into atheistic families who did not participate in religious services. In a survey of 226 atheist parents who have children under the age of eighteen, 90% of the parents do not believe in

God and 86% never attend religious services (2015b). Since there is a population of children who

5 have atheistic parents, religious values would not have been forced upon them and never needed to question theism in the household.

All Atheists Were Christian

Smith (2011) replicates hegemonic beliefs in their model by presenting the United States as a theistic culture largely dominated by Christianity; yet Smith omits other religions’ narratives despite having some non-Christian belief systems represented in their sample population. Since

Smith only gives examples of reexamining the Bible and previous Christians’ interactions with atheists as a means of questioning theism (Stage 2), the model marginalizes evolving atheists of non-Christian traditions. As a result, “atheists are often further subjugated by Christian privilege, which is an ideology characterized by the belief that everyone is or should be Christian… while marginalizing non-Christians” (Zimmerman et al., 2015, p.1). This replicates the hegemonic norms of Christian dominance in the United States by remaining willfully blind to other belief systems (Dugan, 2017).

The Power of Christianity

Emphasizing former Christians’ narratives not only marginalizes atheists from non-

6 emphasis on Christianity throughout the entire model marginalizes many of those same voices he suggests should be added to the public discourse. American atheists previously affiliated with non-Christian religions are thus intersectionally oppressed twice: first because of their difference from the dominant cultural norms established by Christianity in America, and again when a prominent model of non-Christian identity development omits their perspectives.

The Power of Christianity

Emphasizing former Christians’ narratives not only marginalizes atheists from non-

Christian religions but also exemplifies how “Christianity is the majority, privileged religion in the United States… identifying as religious in general and as Christian, specifically, is perceived as closely associated with US American culture” (Abbott & Mollen, 2018, p.686). As a result, this model reinforces how Christians continue to set the spiritual norms of American society. On one hand, Smith states that emerging atheists must publicly accept their atheist identity to feel empowered, highlighting the importance of inviting and amplifying atheists’ voices to disentangle the Christian faith from the American culture (Smith, 2011). But Smith’s overt emphasis on Christianity throughout the entire model marginalizes many of those same voices he suggests should be added to the public discourse. American atheists previously affiliated with non-Christian religions are thus intersectionally oppressed twice: first because of their difference from the dominant cultural norms established by Christianity in America, and again when a prominent model of non-Christian identity development omits their perspectives.

Developing Metaphysical Beliefs: A Revision and Update to Smith’s Model

Using Dugan’s tools of reconstruction (2017), we present a revised model that disrupts

Christian normativity through changes to language and cultivates agency by reducing the extent to which atheist identity development is grounded in the specific rejection of Christian faith.

While Smith (2011) constrained his model to atheists who explicitly rejected the existence of a deity, not all who identify as atheists agree to that definition (Smith, 2013b). Therefore, while we ground our model in Smith’s, we have crafted the language in our model to expand beyond atheists. Our more inclusive model cultivates agency for people from a wide range of spiritual backgrounds and with a wide range of beliefs, thereby enabling the development of broad coalitions of people concerned with the development of students’ metaphysical beliefs. The revised model specifically describes a process where people are born into a default belief system, subsequently question those beliefs, reject those learned beliefs, and ultimately adopt a personally chosen set of beliefs about the origins, order, and/or operations of the world.

The new model also incorporates elements of Baxter Magdola’s (2008) self-authorship to explain how individuals develop their personalized beliefs. Individuals begin by following formulas consistent with the default belief system instilled by early authority figures. When presented with external information contrary to their socialized beliefs, or when their existing belief structure cannot adequately explain some personal observation or experience, individuals reach a crossroads where they actively question their default metaphysical beliefs. From this point, individuals can explore the three elements of self-authorship: trusting the internal voice, building an internal foundation, and securing internal commitments. All of these elements are

8 essential for an individual to construct their own metaphysical beliefs which may or may not differ from their socialized beliefs.

Stage One: A Spectrum of Default Metaphysical Beliefs

Every individual, at all ages and in all contexts, constantly make sense of the world they encounter by using a set of metaphysical beliefs. Their earliest set of such beliefs are established as individuals are socialized by their initial environments (e.g., family, neighborhood, schools, places of worship) in a way that establishes their “default” metaphysical belief system.

Influences such as parents, community, schools, etc. can impose values upon a child as a normative belief within their own environment. These environments affect individual’s development of default metaphysical belief system regardless of whether these environments include explicit reference to such beliefs (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, 1980).

While Smith (2011) presumes that all individuals’ initial belief structures are derived from environments where theism is universal, our model recognizes that today’s children are born into households that can no longer be assumed to operate from or transmit to their children metaphysical beliefs grounded in theism. Accordingly, we disrupt Smith’s (2011) implicit assumptions that situate theism as normative by labeling our first stage as “a spectrum of default metaphysical beliefs.” In this first stage, individuals lack the metacognition to recognize that they even have a default belief system. Instead, individuals unknowingly use sense-making formulas consistent with the default beliefs learned from others within their early environments

(Baxter Magdola, 2008).

Stage Two: Recognizing and Questioning Default Beliefs

In the second stage, specific life events lead individuals to both recognize and question their default metaphysical belief systems. This stage includes two types of experiences that cause individuals to recognize and question default metaphysical beliefs. It largely parallels

Baxter Magolda’s (2008) “crossroads,” where individuals begin to recognize the limitations of formulas grounded in their default belief structures. For many individuals, initial recognition may occur when individuals encounter situations that they cannot make sense of using their default metaphysical beliefs. These events may be extremely personal (e.g. physical abuse, parental divorce) or more distant or abstract (e.g. reading about the Holocaust, seeing pictures of refugee camps). Individuals whose default belief systems are theistic in nature may ask questions like “How could God let something like this happen?” For those whose beliefs are agnostic or atheistic, the inability to satisfactorily explain the sources of or reasons for such events may begin to question the adequacy of their default metaphysical beliefs. While it may seem logical to presume that individuals must first recognize their own belief systems before they can consciously challenge those beliefs, the very act of asking such questions may stimulate the metacognition necessary to recognize and define one’s own default metaphysical beliefs.

For others, such recognition of their own metaphysical belief system occurs when they directly encounter metaphysical beliefs different from their own. Such encounters may occur, for example, when a student takes a course in world religions, Eastern philosophy, or logic.

They may occur when a friend opens up about their own struggles making sense of the world

10 around them, or when individuals encounter ideas in books or on the internet (Smith & Cimino,

2012). Through these sources students are presented with different perspectives which cause them to reevaluate their previous beliefs and begin to question those beliefs to begin forming their own metaphysical perspectives.

In this stage which emphasizes the questioning of metaphysical beliefs broadly (not just theistic beliefs) agency is cultivated (Dugan, 2017) as an individual of a minoritized belief structure is now included without the presence of Christianity to question their learned set of beliefs as Smith (2011) implies. In order to serve more populations, this revised model includes people across non-Christian religions who became atheist. The revised stage of “Questioning acceptance of learned beliefs” goes beyond Smith’s (2011) assertion that steps of “unlearning” religious indoctrination depend upon questioning the Bible to acknowledge that one can

“unlearn” preconceived beliefs however they see fit. Even if an individual does not identify with a specific religion, they can still question their acceptance of the learned beliefs socialized by their environment.

Stage Three: Rejection of learned beliefs

At this point, individuals begin to create a self-authored internal foundation which differs from formulas that they followed previously, thus exiting the crossroads from questioning specific socialized beliefs to rejecting those chosen beliefs. They begin to trust their internal voice but may also sometimes struggle to fully accept these beliefs as they differ from their socialized beliefs. Focusing on their internal foundation also assists in their confidence of

11 not only their own values, but also how to navigate their external environment that may not agree with their newer metaphysical beliefs (Baxter Magdola, 2008).

Similarly to Smith’s (2011) model, individuals in this revised third stage move from questioning to rejecting their learned beliefs. However, the revised third stage highlights the fluidity of multiple non-religious and atheistic beliefs in ways that enable coalition building to challenge the oppression (Dugan, 2017) of belief systems unaffiliated with Christianity.

Emphasizing atheism and non-religiosity as a spectrum encapsulates the various beliefs and perspectives of their self-authored values. For atheists as a group, atheists do not agree on a single definition of atheism (Smith, 2013b). George Smith (1979) describes implicit atheism, where people are unaware of the presence of deities and do not reject theism, while explicit atheism confidently believes that deities are nonexistent. Since there are different sects of atheism, we must avoid over-simplifying them as a monolithic group.

For those who are non-religious, they may reject previous beliefs of a specific religion(s) without necessarily rejecting a deity. For example, agnostics believe that awareness of a higher power is unknown or unknowable, especially by human understanding. However, they do not explicitly reject the possibility of a higher power, just as not all atheists completely reject theism

(Draper, 2017). To group these fluid belief systems into rigid identity structures would be similar to someone placing another individual who identifies as “bisexual” exclusively to the

“homosexual” category, reinforcing oppressive binaries controlled by hegemonic norms without recognizing the fluidity of an identity (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017).

While the revised third stage retains Smith’s assertion that people start to construct an identity around the rejection of beliefs and practices they were initially socialized, the revised stage acknowledges that those prior beliefs and practices may not necessarily have been

Christian or even theistic at all. Moreover, the revised stage name, which incorporates fluidity, reinforces the sentiment that individuals’ sense of identity can change over time--especially during this stage of negation where they are experimenting with a new belief structure different from their socialized one. This stage specifically, as well as the model as a whole, emphasizes how fluid identities cannot be grouped into a specific category, thus generalizing these belief structures as a spectrum within non-religious and/or atheistic identity development.

Stage Four: Adoption of Chosen!Beliefs

Our fourth stage, “adoption of chosen beliefs” cultivates agency (Dugan, 2017) by including atheists who practiced a different belief structure in their childhood without generalizing atheistic beliefs as Smith (2011) does. Similarly to Smith’s (2011) model, individuals also grapple with inherent tensions between the stigmatized status of atheism that society places on the population. They can also contradict normalized conceptions of God and religion with both atheists and theists. However in this model, individuals accept their chosen beliefs within the spectrum of atheism as there are various beliefs of atheism other than solely rejecting a deity. Even Buddhism, which is an organized religion, contains beliefs that are included in the spectrum of atheistic beliefs.

According to Luke Wayne of Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (2016),

“Buddhism is not compatible with belief in a personal God… one cannot be meaningfully and

13 consistently Buddhist and believe in anything like a theistic God” (p.1). Not all atheists need to reject religion like Smith (2011) states in the fourth stage: “Coming out” atheist as people must

“disassociate themselves from religion” (Smith, 2011, p. 229). In fact, this new model removes

“religion” from the fourth stage so Buddhists can be included in the atheistic demographic since they do not believe in a God but have religious practices, bridging misconceptions of atheism being anti-religion vs. anti-God.

For non-religious individuals, the word “chosen” is also necessary in the revised model.

It cultivates agency (Dugan, 2017) for the fluidity of what constitutes a non-religious and/or atheistic belief based on the individual's self-authored identity and worldview. Although beliefs and identity are fluid in nature, individuals at this point are securing their internal commitments and exploring how to confidently express their new beliefs based on their own self-authored criteria (Baxter Magdola, 2008).

Their self-authored ideals also connect to the concept of self-authored worldview as explained by Mayhew et al. (2016). Specifically, self-authored worldview commitment

“represents individuals’ ability to make meaning of their knowledge about worldviews, of their own worldview identity, and of others’ worldviews” (p. 363). In relation to stage four, individuals construct their own self-authored worldview based on the acceptance of their challenged socialized beliefs. These newly accepted beliefs can be fluid in nature as they may encompass non-religious and/or atheistic ideals in various ways, shapes, and forms without the individual directly identifying with those identities if they choose not to. For example, someone who calls themself “spiritual but not religious” may share beliefs with someone who identifies as “agnostic,” but they may choose not to identify with agnosticism because they still may hold

14 some theistic beliefs without the presence of a specific religion. Considering how Meyhew and colleagues (2020) emphasize how self-authorship is complex and nuanced, allowing individuals to have non-religious (as well as atheistic) ideals without placing them in a specific category respects the fluidity of belief without labeling these individuals as “other” for not following popularized theistic practices and/or beliefs.

Implications for Student Affairs

As a result of the revised model’s more inclusive language acknowledging a broader spectrum of atheists and non-religious beliefs, universities that promote opportunities for atheistic/non-religious dialogue could provide a safe space for students to converse and share their own beliefs. Some students may not be able to do this at home if their family is unsupportive of their atheist beliefs (Zimmerman et al., 2015). Universities can also reexamine campus events that emphasize God. For example, Goodman & Muller (2009) suggest that graduation ceremonies, invocations, and benedictions can relinquish the usage of God in speeches and traditions as a means to include atheist and non-religious students.

Campuses can also include information on atheism in interfaith centers to deconstruct inherent theistic environments. These pamphlets can include various types of atheism, non- religiosity, agnosticism, Buddhism as a form of atheism, and emphasize how diverse the population of atheists are in the United States across race, sexuality, and previously affiliated religions. Additionally, those pamphlets can emphasize common language that marginalizes these populations, such as “God only knows” or “God willing” (Paulos, 2008). Through these

15 methods, atheistic and non-religious beliefs can become more normalized and suffer from less marginalization on college campuses.

Since Christianity is so ingrained into American culture (Abbot & Mollen, 2018), changes in culture will take time to occur. However, due to the recent growth of atheistic and non-religious beliefs in the United States, institutions of higher education must adapt accordingly as a “growth industry” though increased diversity as it slowly breaks the oppression of minoritized groups through more opportunities of expression (Thelin, 2019). There are steps of progress being made in relation to the development of atheistic and non-religious beliefs, but there is still much work to be done.

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