Over roughly the past decade, as rates of religious unaffiliation and disidentification have increased, a growing body of academic literature has explored those people categorized or self-identified broadly as “secular,” “nonreligious,” “spiritual-but-not-religious,” and “nones,” as well as those who identify more specifically as atheists or agnostics. Phil Zuckerman, Luke W. Galen, and Frank L. Pasquale have contributed extensively to this work, and thus it is fitting that the three would come together “to compile, in one cohesive volume, what existing social scientific research reveals about nonreligious men and women in the world today” (223). Among the successes of The Nonreligious is that the authors employ a highly readable style while effectively synthesizing a wide range of research in anthropology, psychology, religious studies, and sociology as well as sharing stories of people who see themselves as variously nonreligious (though it is a disappointment that so little of this research is original to the volume).

Divided into two sections, The Nonreligious first explores social and cultural aspects of secularity (chapters 1–4), beginning with a robust discussion of the academic discipline of secular studies that highlights the challenges of defining “the secular” and “secularity” at the level of the social, the institutional, and the individual and of describing processes of secularization and practices of secularity without reliance on religious categories and terminologies. Though the book focuses primarily throughout on nonreligious institutions and individuals in North America—particularly, the United States—the authors take care in chapter 2 to broaden the view with a survey of secularity in Western Europe, East Asia, India, the former Soviet Union and Orthodox countries, Latin America, the Islamic world, Africa, and among Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. The authors likewise provide an overview of social, political, and historical forces that have contributed to the growth of secularity or the persistence of religion over time.

The research presented illustrates that as existential and economic security increases, individual autonomy and choice increase, with the effect that religiosity declines and secularity advances. The authors clearly understand this trend toward secularity as an unalloyed social and cultural benefit. Their open sympathy for secularism, however, sometimes slides into apology, as in a discussion of the relationship between totalitarianism, antireligious coercion, and nonreligion (85–87). Here, the authors fail to consider that the individualist orientation they have highlighted as a critical engine for secularization can be deployed to undermine features of religion such as notions of collective identity and a common good that transcends the individual that often press against totalitarianism.

These background chapters provide important grounding for a rich exploration of nonreligious individuals and invite further research on global practices of secularity and processes of secularization. The second part of the book (chapters 5–10) examines nonreligion at the level of the individual, considering the development of secular identification, the personalities of secular individuals, the well-being of the nonreligious, morals and values, the political and social outlooks on secular people, and how the secular do (or often do not) gather in ways that promote or threaten social cohesion.

The material related to psychological well-being and morals and values responds effectively and with equanimity to characteristic critiques of the nonreligious—that they are less psychologically stable and ethically grounded than their religious counterparts. The chapter on social organization among nonreligious people likewise takes on the assumption that increasing secularity foments a degree of individualism that erodes social bonds by illustrating diverse practices of social engagement by nonreligious people even though they are less likely to organize on the basis of their secular orientation in itself. All of this allows the authors to deftly challenge what remains a prevailing attitude in the United States, at least, that one cannot be a well-balanced, moral, socially engaged individual without religion.

Overall, the authors have made an important contribution to our understanding of nonreligion that will be of value to those beginning an exploration of secular culture and society and individual practice.