Colin Campbell ([1971] 2013) called for a sociology of irreligion over 40 years ago.
But it was the emergence of public atheism (otherwise referred to as“New Athe-ism”) in the early 21st century that finally put American secularism³ on the radar of scholars across various social science and humanities disciplines. Philoso-phers and theologians wasted no time examining the ideological components of non-theistic worldviews. Political scientists and religious studies scholars fol-lowed suit, reevaluating the intertwining of religion, nonreligion, and politics in the public sphere. As for sociologists, our primary concern was with the implica-tion of public atheism on broader trends of secularizaimplica-tion. Eventually, studies of the nonreligious began diversifying as scholars from subfields like gender/sex-ualities (Brewster 2013; Foster et al. 2016; Linneman and Clendenen 2009; Miller 2013; Schnabel et al. 2016; Stinson and Goodman 2013), family (Manning 2015;
Merino 2012; Zimmerman et al. 2015), deviance (Fazzino, Borer, and Abdel Haq 2014; Cimino and Smith 2007), and communications/media (Cimino and Smith 2011; Smith and Cimino 2012) conducted research, expanding what had been a nearly non-existent body of literature. There is still, however, much work to be done.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the lack of research on the organized American Secularism Movement by social movement scholars.⁴There are those who utilize a movements lens to examine the contours of nonreligion in the US, however, they: (1) are often not movement scholars, (2) do so narrowly, focusing on just one ideological segment, rather than being inclusive to the much larger nonreligious constituency, and/or (3) use concepts like collective identity, collec-tive action, and framing in their analysis, but do not explicitly apply the social movement label to their findings or treat different ideological sentiments as dis-tinct but related movements (Cimino and Smith 2007;Cimino and Smith 2007;
When discussing secularism in this chapter, we are referring to intentional efforts to normalize nonreligion.
A handful of scholars have used a social movement lens to examine issues such as commun-ity, identity politics, collective action, organizational dynamics, and the strategies and goals of activism.
Guenther, Mulligan, and Papp 2013; Kettell 2014; McAnulla 2012; Schulzke 2013;
Smith 2013).
This ambiguity–Is it a movement? Is it not a movement?–has been connect-ed to characteristics, such as ideological diversity, movement infighting, compet-ing strategies, tactics, and goals, and the lack of an agreed upon set of doctrines/
beliefs that unify all nonbelievers (Cimino and Smith 2007). Although internal dissension and conflict are very common in contemporary American movements, schisms and splits in the secular movement are often understood as a sign of movement decline/demise (Gamson 1990). Such perspectives have an overly-nar-row conception of effective structural dynamics and ignore how factionalism and splitting can be beneficial to movements. The seminal work of Gerlach and Hines (1970) examined the structure of a handful of American movements in the post 1960s era, including Pentecostalism, Black Power, and“Participatory Ecology”
and found that the most common type of organizational structure was not cen-tralized, bureaucratic, or amorphous, but rather movements that had a segment-ed (multiple diverse groups), polycentric (decentralizsegment-ed authority; multiple lead-ers/centers of leadership), and reticulate (form a loosely integrated network) structure. In other words, social movements are rarely single organizations with a clear vision and goal; social movements are messy.
It’s not often that scholars try to pinpoint the exact moment when collective efforts become a legitimate social movement. Movement origins are often con-tested, making them difficult to trace. Because movement scholars are rarely his-torians, sociological approaches to social movements can sometimes yield a structurally essentialist view of movements, creating a biased perception that sees a diffuse and decentered structure as a symptom of dysfunction, rather than as anoutcomeof movement growth, change, and institutionalization. Con-trary to the obituarist view of some scholars, we argue that ideological and or-ganizational diversity does not make American secularism disorganized – it makes it dynamic. It makes it a movement!
In what follows, we identify key events, leaders, and dynamics that facilitat-ed the evolution of a handful of very small nontheist and freethought organiza-tions on the verge of collapsing into the segmented, polycentric, reticulate move-ment it is today.
3 Methods
This chapter is based in part on data derived from interviews with 15 past and present leaders of various secular SMOs in the US (see Table 1 below). The inter-views, lasting between one to three hours, were conducted either via phone or in
person by Cragun, recorded, and later transcribed by Fazzino. Because all of the individuals who participated are public individuals, the identities of our partic-ipants are not anonymous.
Table 1.Interviewees.
Participant Organizational Affiliation Position(s) Held Term Louis Altman Society for Humanistic Judaism
American Humanist Association
Secular Student Alliance Founder & Executive Director
–
Bette Chambers American Humanist Association Board Member President
Tom Flynn Council for Secular Humanism Editor,Free Inquiry Executive Director
–
–
Mel Lipman American Humanist Association Board Member President
Herb Silverman Secular Coalition of America American Humanist Association
Roy Speckhardt American Humanist Association Executive Director –
Table.Interviewees. (Continued)
Participant Organizational Affiliation Position(s) Held Term Todd Stiefel Stiefel Freethought Foundation
Michael Werner American Humanist Association President –
Frank Zindler American Atheists Interim President Editor,American Atheist Board Member
until
The chapter also draws on internal organizational records and previously pub-lished material. As we describe aspects of the history of the various groups, we have done our best to confirm what our informants shared with us by trian-gulating interview data with archival and textual data. We analyzed organiza-tional materials, such as board meeting minutes, websites, news media, and bi-ographical works. Where there are conflicting accounts of events, we have described events in a general way or noted the differing accounts. The aim of the project was not to develop a comprehensive history of the movement but rather to gain a better sense of the dynamics of organized American secularism in the 21 century.