At the end of August 2021, Harvard University Chaplains elected Greg Epstein as the chaplain of the religious community at the prestigious educational institution. They represent a wide range of religious backgrounds.
Epstein's election captured media attention, with some portraying the idea of an atheist cleric as another battle in America's famous culture wars.
Some media outlets have commented that his promotion is supposed to be a message of openness to larger numbers of Americans who consider themselves to be believers in some kind of spirituality, but are not religious, and Epstein once said, "There is a growing group of people who no longer identify with any tradition. religious, but they still face a real need for dialogue and support about what it means to be a good human being and live an ethical life.”
Between 1981 and 2007 the United States was ranked as one of the world's most religious countries, with little change in levels of religiosity, but it has since shown the highest rates of aversion to religion of any country.
Towards the end of that period, Americans averaged 8.2 points on the importance of God in their lives on a 10-point scale.
And in the most recent US survey in 2017, the number fell to 4.6, an astonishingly steep drop.
A study published by the Pew Research Center in 2019 indicated that religiosity in the United States is in sharp decline, as the number of people who do not adhere to any religion is increasing rapidly, at a time when church attendance has declined sharply.
Recent studies show that leavers of religion around the world rank in the middle between the non-religious and the religious, in terms of thoughts, feelings and behavior, and many of them retain some characteristics of the religious, such as volunteering and charitable work.
new transformations
In the joint article published by sociology professors Penny Edgell and Winnie Cage, the authors argue that the trends reflected in Epstein's position are not new;
The number of non-religious Americans, sometimes referred to as "non-religious," has increased from 7% of the population in 1970 to more than 25% today, while 35% of millennials say they do not belong to any particular religion.
The two writers added - in their article to The Conversation - that as researchers in the sociology of religion, they have studied these transformations and their effects, and in a recent study with their colleagues at the University of Minnesota shows that although Americans are becoming more accepting of alternative forms of spirituality They are still less receptive to what they consider to be completely secular.
The authors argue that Epstein's election represents a shift that demonstrates the increasing visibility and acceptance of non-religious Americans in the country, while the hype around his position demonstrates the continuing moral unease of many Americans about atheism.
It seems that Epstein understands this cultural dilemma and affirms his commitments to social and human justice, and adopts a philosophy that rejects transcendental beliefs about nature, and thus - according to the two writers - he becomes a spokesman for something new in the American context: atheism that explicitly affirms his moral commitment.
Religious ranks
Atheism has long generated controversy in the colonial-era United States, but the "golden age" of free thought in the late 19th century gave rise to the first public expressions of skepticism about religion.
Attorney and public orator Robert Ingersoll angered religious leaders when he lectured about agnosticism in packed halls across the country.
In the 1920s, the "Monkey Trial" about the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools highlighted struggles over religious authority in American laws and institutions.
Meanwhile, black skeptics of religion, often overlooked by scholars, influenced artists such as Zora Neale Hurston and, later, James Baldwin.
Many Americans know activist Madalene Murray O'Hare, who challenged Christian prayer and Bible readings in public schools in the 1960s and founded the organization called American Atheists.
More recently, a growing number of atheist organizations have promoted the separation of church and state, fought discrimination, supported pro-science policies over religion, and encouraged public figures to "show" their atheism.
Black atheists, who do not always feel welcome in white-led organizations, have formed their own organizations, often focused on social justice.
Faith and trust
Despite this organization and increased visibility, a large percentage of Americans do not trust atheists to be good neighbors and citizens, and a 2014 US national survey found that 42% of Americans said atheists do not share their "vision of American society", and 44% do not want to be married. Their children are an atheist.
These percentages are virtually unchanged in the 2019 follow-up.
These attitudes affect young people, such as those served by Epstein. A third of atheists under the age of 25 say they have experienced discrimination in school settings, and more than 40% say they have to hide their agnostic identity at times for fear of stigma.
As a chaplain, Epstein's mission is to provide spiritual guidance and a moral board to students, with a particular focus on those who do not identify with religious traditions.
He himself identifies as an atheist, but he is also a humanist, he believes.
In American society, "humanitarian" approaches are increasingly accepted as an alternative moral system to religion, with which some interact more positively than atheism, which is seen as a rejection of religion, yet the idea is not widely accepted and efforts to include atheist priests have not succeeded In the army.
Epstein represents a different approach from the prominent, more radical atheists, particularly the Brights movement and so-called new atheist intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.
Epstein does not take a position "against religion" but does seek cooperation with religious leaders on matters of common moral concern.