Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-211).

In recent years, the number, size, and budgets of America's nonbeliever organizations have all grown. Though these groups participate in avowedly "secular" coalitions, they relate to religion in diverse ways that the scholars who study them have thus far overlooked. Some groups want nothing to do with religion, some seek to emulate it, and others are avowedly religious. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the leaders and activists who run these groups and promote secularism. Relying on sixty-five in-depth interviews with group leaders and members, as well as more than two years of participant observation, it situates organized nonbelief within the evolving landscape of American religion. Because existing studies have mapped nonbeliever groups onto a polarized secular/religious spectrum, they have failed to account for the religious diversity within the secular. To make it legible, I argue for a rhizomatic framework that attends to the many different ways in which organized nonbelievers imagine the secular/religious boundary and their relationship to it. Working from the discipline of Religious Studies, I unite two emerging fields that have thus far stood apart: the social scientific study of nonbelievers and the study of the secular and secularism. Drawing from recent theoretical work on the secular, I argue for a more nuanced understanding of the secular/religious boundary, and I demonstrate how it shifts over time and across groups. Drawing from my ethnographic and historical research, I argue for a new framework that can account for the everyday forms of secularism that bear little resemblance to the pervasive, structuring condition described by theorists. In turn, I argue that scholars should adopt a more reflexive approach that acknowledges their entanglement in making the American secular.

This thesis explores the use of identity politics within the atheist movement at both the national and individual levels. I conducted a content analysis of two national atheist groups and three best-selling atheist authors in order to assess the use of atheist identity politics at the national level. I then conducted 15 in-depth interviews with a sample of atheists in Portland, Oregon about their atheist identity and their reactions to and identification with national atheist movement strategies. Findings suggest that national atheist organizations and atheist authors are using a strategy of identity politics that encourage atheists to "come out" as atheists, complain about church/state violations, and criticize religion's influence in American society. They liken their movement to the gay identity movement and argue that as more atheists "come out", they will see less stigma and more respect towards atheists. However, individual atheists do not always identify with these movement strategies. Most participants said that atheism is not a particularly salient identity for them and thus most did not see themselves participating in atheist activism. Further, they implied that they experience little stigma in their everyday lives and are more concerned with promoting religious tolerance and secular policies. I argue that the lack of social identification with atheism, combined with limits to the gay analogy, are likely inhibitors to the success of an atheist movement.