Non-belief and ethical subjectivities

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

The rise of the “non-religious” across many former Christian liberal democracies has been rapid (Woodhead 2016, 2017; Inglehart 2021). In Britain, “no religion” has now replaced Christianity as the cultural default, especially amongst younger age groups (Woodhead 2017), while only around half the overall population now express some sort of belief in some kind of God (Voas & Bruce 2019).

The rise of the “nones” has led to a burgeoning literature on non-religion and atheism. Yet while existing research has demonstrated that socialization within both the family and education are contributing to the rise of the “nones” and to declining religious belief, we lack investigations based on data from children which account for the formation of non-religion in early life.

In this paper, findings from a qualitative study (Strhan and Shillitoe forthcoming) examine how children become non-religious and non-believing, based on ethnographic fieldwork with primary schools in three contrasting areas of England and in-depth interviews with children, parents, and teachers. Examining the relation between socialization processes within the family, educational settings, and broader national and media contexts, Rachael Shillitoe will describe how an ethic of authenticity and autonomy comes to be privileged by children, parents, and school staff, and consider how this is distinctively shaping children’s non-religious sensibilities and non-belief in God(s) within a broader landscape of growing religious and nonreligious diversity.

In comparing how children and their parents talk about and engage with religion and how this is interwoven with particular ethics and cultural values, this talk reveals the shifting ethics of non-religion across generations. It will be argued that ethical sensibilities in relation to religion are shifting across generations, with more anti-religious stances held by many of the non-religious parents in this study giving way amongst their children to an ethic of respect for religious – and other kinds of – difference, within a wider social context in the UK of growing religious diversity, and how this enhances our understanding of “non-religion” and “non-belief.”