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Teemu Taira
Media and the Nonreligious
[Pre-publication draft. The chapter was published in Kennet Granholm, Marcus Moberg and Sofia
Sjö (eds) 2015, Religion, Media, and Social Change. London: Routledge, 110–125.]
In September 2010 the Pope Benedict XVI made a state visit to Britain. Six months before the
arrival one of the most prestigious British newspaper, The Times, published a statement in the front
page by a well-known scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins, who according to the story wanted to
arrest the Pope. When the Papal visit finally took place Dawkins was leading some of the
demonstrations against the Pope, but the British media criticized and in some cases mocked
Dawkins for his mission. This example tells us a lot about how the media deals with people who do
not consider themselves religious. First of all, the main spokesperson was a well-educated male
scientist and ethnically white self-identifying atheist. Secondly, the media was happy to print
provocative statements made by Dawkins and later criticize and even ridicule them. Thirdly, despite
the fact that the media covered other critical voices during the Papal visit, Dawkins became
represented as the embodiment of anti-Catholic sentiment. Fourthly, the media did not write stories
about nonreligious1 people who were supportive of or indifferent to the Pope’s visit. It rather
referred to ‘aggressive atheism’ that is marginalizing Christianity and threatening the future of the
country.2
1 For the purposes of this chapter, ‘nonreligious’ people are understood as those who – in a particular cultural context in which something is deemed ‘religious’ – are considered to have no ‘religious’ beliefs, practices, identities and affiliation. 2 Kim Knott & al., Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular: Representation and Change (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), ch. 5 and 8.
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In his writings on mediatisation of religion Stig Hjarvard has suggested that the mainstream media
are secular by nature and therefore constitute a secularizing force.3 It is obvious that in comparison
to the religious media, mainstream media promotes religion much less and challenges religious
authority structures. The four abovementioned aspects regarding the Papal visit, however, provide
an example of the complex relationship between media, religion and nonreligion. There has been an
increasing interest in exploring religion and media on the one hand and nonreligion, atheism and
secularity on the other hand, but studies of these entanglements have been rare. The aim of this
chapter is to contribute to the study of this area and its implications for theorizing religious change
by outlining some of the key issues and areas requiring further examination. The chapter is
organized around three areas in which nonreligiosity is explored. First, in relation to media
production; second, media use by the nonreligious and, third, media representation. These areas will
be examined with an attempt to extract useful observations, hypotheses and ideas for more general
theorizing on religious change. It will be suggested that rather than asking whether the mainstream
news media and digital media are secularizing or desecularising forces in the modernized western
world, the media make both religion and nonreligion, particularly atheism, more visible. If this
leads to further secularization in the long run, it is an unintended consequence, because the
mainstream media tend to defend moderate and liberal religiosity and oppose antireligious atheism.
1. Media production
3 Stig Hjarvard, “The Mediatisation of Religion: Theorising Religion, Media, and Social Change,” Culture and Religion 12(2, 2011); “Three Forms of Mediatized Religion: Changing the Public Face of Religion.” In Mediatization and Religion: Nordic Perspectives, edited by Stig Hjarvard and Mia Lövheim. (Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2012).
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It is common to hear complaints about the antireligious attitude of media professionals and the
media houses. Already in the early 1980s religious critics suggested that there was ‘a natural
disaffinity’ between religion and the media, with the latter prioritising the success of its own
medium with reference to the audience or reader ratings at the expense of its moral, religious or
educational content.4 Consider the more recent description:
He [Dawkins] speaks to a significant minority – among them the 25 to 30 per cent of
the British population, who will declare in an opinion poll that they have no belief in
God. Such people, it is worth noting, will be predominantly male; they will also be
clustered in certain professions, notably the media.5
It is suggested in the quote that nonreligious people are often working in the media. It does not
argue explicitly that media professionals are also antireligious, but it assumes that the message of
Dawkins appeals to media workers. However, the question of attitudes and preferences of media
professionals needs to be examined in more detail.
Mark Silk maintains that in the early 1980s the American top media elite had a predominantly
‘secularist outlook’: Half had no religious affiliation and 86 per cent did not attend religious
services. Most people felt that the media had a bias against religion.6 Especially conservative
Protestants have tended to say that journalists promote secular values; they find it hard to believe
4 Clifford Longley, “The End of a Road?,” in The End of a Road? Report of the Seventh IBA Religious Consultation. (London, 1983.) 5 Peter Berger & al., Religious America, Secular Europe: A Theme and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 60. Emphasis added. 6 Mark Silk, Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 37–38.
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that there are any Christian journalists.7 However, according to Silk, journalists in general appear
about as religious as the population at large.8 Judith Buddenbaum suggested in the late 1990s that in
the United States surveys repeatedly show that ‘journalists are as likely to have a religion, to be
active in it and to take it as seriously as anyone else’.9 Other studies have shown that nine out of ten
American religion reporters identify with a religion while two-fifths consider themselves as very
active in their religion. Only 20 per cent describe themselves as inactive.10 More recent sources
reveal that journalists are significantly less religious than the American population in general, and
that the typical journalist is a white and male, self-identifying Protestant.11
The knowledge of the religiosity of media practitioners is slightly ambiguous, but the key issue lies
elsewhere. The general religiosity or nonreligiosity of media professionals may be an indicator of
the atmosphere to which newcomers will be socialized, but it is less relevant than the attitudes of
those who regularly cover religion.
Diane Winston and John Green found that American ‘focused producers’ (i.e. those who frequently
deal with religion in their work) tend to be highly religious and markedly more religious than other
media professionals. Slightly more than half of them (51 per cent) considered religion ‘extremely
important’ and 99 per cent of them were affiliated with a religious tradition, whereas of all media
producers the percentages were 20 and 87 respectively.12 This is not to suggest that newspapers do
7 Judith M. Buddenbaum, Reporting News about Religion: An Introduction for Journalists (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1998), 110. 8 Silk, Unsecular Media, 40. 9 Buddenbaum, Reporting, xv. 10 Buddenbaum, Reporting, 129; see also Stewart M. Hoover, Religion in the News: Faith and Journalism in American Public Discourse (London: Sage, 1998), 40. 11 http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/features-the-religion-world/2012/03/19/godless-journalists/, accessed 6 August 2012. David H. Weaver & al. The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of the Millennium (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007), 15. 12 Diane Winston and John Green, Most American Say Religion Coverage Too Sensationalized (Report, 2012), 34–35.
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not have other contributors who may write critically about religion, but this is in line with Silk’s
suggestion that the American media are not antireligious, because people who regularly cover
religion tend to have moderately positive attitudes towards dominant religious forms and
institutions.13
Turning now to the European context, British television broadcasters are less likely to consider
themselves religious than the public at large,14 and there are relatively more atheists and people
without religious affiliation among the BBC staff than in the general British population.15
Furthermore, interviews with Finnish and British media professionals demonstrate that journalists
and editors are not antireligious atheists whose aim is to criticize religion and downplay its role in
society. Of the twelve Finnish journalists interviewed no one identified as atheist while nine were
members of the Lutheran Church and four identified themselves as believers.16 None of the
interviewed British editors and journalists said that they openly support atheism in their work. On
the contrary, a few editors expressed their preference for Christianity. For example, the Telegraph –
the broadsheet with the largest circulation in Britain – was supportive of Christianity in general and
the Church of England in particular, and Religion Editor George Pitcher commented that the
Telegraph – whose owners are Roman Catholics – sees England as a Christian country with an
established church that co-exists with the state and monarchy.17 One of the most popular tabloids,
13 Silk, Unsecular Media. 14 Nigel Holmes, “Religious television: A background paper”. Church of England General Synod: Private Member’s Motion, 2010. 15 Clive Field, “BBC Staff Religion.” British Religion in Numbers, 2011. The result is based on comparing BBC staff survey with Census 2001, but the difference diminishes significantly if numbers are compared with more recent British Social Attitudes survey 2010. Furthermore, if BBC staff is compared with the same age cohort in Britain (BBC staff members are relatively young), their nonreligiosity turns out to be less significant. 16 Annikka Mutanen, To Do, or Not to Do God: Faith in British and Finnish Journalism. (Reuters Institute, 2009), 44. 17 Mutanen, To Do, 41.
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The Mail, was said to be increasingly interested in stories about Christianity being marginalized.18
Even liberal papers, such as The Guardian and The Independent did not express interest in
promoting antireligious views. The Independent’s editor-in-chief, Roger Alton, emphasized that the
paper opposes aggressive secularism.19
According to the preferences of the media, religion is not on top of the priority list of news
production. This structural aspect has been internalized by media practitioners. As Stewart Hoover
suggests, there is ‘little natural tendency among media practitioners to “push the issue” of religion
in their coverage […]’.20 In Britain I participated in a conference where spokespersons of many
religious associations were sharing their thoughts with journalists and academics about religion in
the media. The majority of the religious participants complained about the media coverage and
treatment of their group, particularly spokespersons of religious minorities.21 This, however, does
not mean that when the media cover religion, they would be opposing it and promoting antireligious
views. When religion is considered worth reporting on, it has to adjust to the principle according to
which good news are often no news. It is partly because of this logic that religious communities are
often unsatisfied with the media.22
In a panel discussion held in London in 2010 Martin Beckford, who was the religion correspondent
of the Telegraph at that time, compared religion to elderly people: journalists want to treat them
well and they are often listened to, but they are not always taken seriously. This comparison reveals
that the media see themselves starting from a nonreligious standpoint, but this does not mean that
they would actively and purposefully promote antireligious views. Due to pressure, lack of time,
18 Mutanen, To Do, 43. 19 Mutanen, To Do, 51. 20 Hoover, Religion in the News, 42. 21 Jolyon Mitchell and Owen Gower (eds), Religion and the News (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 22 Jolyon Mitchell, ”Religion and the News: Stories, Contexts, Journalists and Audiences.” In Mitchell and Gower.
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need to please, simplify and entertain, it is still the case that religion is not always covered fairly
and intelligently in the mainstream news media. However, for the same reason – lack of time for
reflection – critics of religion can be covered stereotypically and religion can get positive coverage.
As Silk argues in the US context, ‘reporting on religion is ultimately an expression of values that
derive from American religious traditions.23 He concludes that the ‘news media presuppose that
religion is a good thing’.24 Surely scandals are reported, religion is sometimes ridiculed and people
are warned against dangerous cults. However, this is not evidence of ‘antireligious media’ as the
media often define good and beneficial religiosity ‘via negativa through recounting tales of
intolerance, hypocrisy, false prophecy, and spiritual decline’.25
Extreme and some marginal forms of religion and nonreligion are criticized in the media, because
the preferred religion is domestic, generous and friendly, not revolutionary or hostile to the society
at large.26 Why, then, does the idea of antireligious media persist? Silk argues that ‘a lot of
[positive] religion news does not strike most consumers of news as reflecting any point of view,
precisely because it is the point of view they share’,27 that is, the standpoint of the religious people.
This is not so different in less religious Europe, as those who pay most attention to religion
coverage are religious people. Furthermore, antireligious people complain that religion gets soft
treatment in the media. Therefore, the answer to the media attitude is dependent on the position of
the people who worry about the coverage: the pro-religious see the media professionals biased
against religion and the antireligious see the media professionals as being too soft on religion.28
Still, it remains the case that the media are not as antireligious as is often assumed, but the pro-
23 Silk, Unsecular Media, xi–xii. 24 Silk, Unsecular Media, 57. 25 Silk, Unsecular Media, 63. 26 Silk, Unsecular Media, 142–143. 27 Silk, Unsecular Media, 141. 28 However, there is a huge difference between coverage of, say, Islam and Christianity. Therefore, the idea of religiously positive media applies mainly to mainline Christianity.
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religious postures of media do not imply that the media are opposed to secular institutions and
attitudes. However, media professionals’ attitude to antireligious atheism is rather negative which
proves the point: the majority of media professionals do not consider themselves as spokespersons
for either pro-religious or antireligious points of view, although media production favours
controversial coverage.29
A further area of study in relation to media production is the way in which the media maintains
discourses on religion and draws boundaries between religion and nonreligion, classify groups and
institutions by locating them in different sections and decide whose voices are worth listening to.
An important, more specific question is, if (and how) nonreligious voices are present in ‘religious
broadcasting’. For instance, the BBC has reserved a certain amount of hours to what is classified as
‘religious broadcasting’. The slot itself has widened in recent decades: in addition to the
programmes focusing on worship it now includes speech programmes and debates where
nonreligious voices sometimes also can be heard. On other occasions, they are excluded. An
example is a traditional radio programme broadcasted on BBC Radio 4, Thought for the Day, which
consists of a short speech given by a representative of a religious community. There have been
many debates inside the BBC and in the public sphere on whether the programme should be opened
to nonreligious voices after having been broadcasted for 50 years.30 The worries expressed
demonstrate how organized atheists and humanists increasingly are seen as the kinds of groups
religious programmes should take into account, but so far the Thought has remained the same. This
case exemplifies how the media draws boundaries between what counts as religious, and it raises a
further question: if the programme would be open for nonreligious voices, who would represent
29 Knott & al, Media Portrayals, ch. 5. 30 Kim Knott and Jolyon Mitchell, “The Changing Faces of Media and Religion.” In Religion and Change in Modern Britain, Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto (London: Routledge, 2012), 250–251.
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them? It is obvious that outspoken atheists and leading figures of Humanist and Secular
associations would fill the slot.
Given that the media is such a big player in framing the public understanding of religion and
nonreligion, as well as one of the main institutions in defining their boundaries, the relationship
between media and religious change is understudied at the level of media production, ranging from
the attitudes of media professionals to the agendas of media houses and further to the logics and
habits of the media. At this level, the media has its secularising and desecularising tendencies: it
cashes in on religion-related controversies, but generally has a moderately positive approach to
religion. Both tendencies contribute to the visibility of both religion and its criticism.
2. Consumers and prosumers: uses of the media
The second area is media use. While it is still relevant to study the reception of mainstream media
stories among nonreligious people, the scholarly interest has recently become focused on ‘new’,
digital and social media. They offer plenty of opportunities for marginalized groups to spread their
message and reach potentially interested people without the mediation of a sometimes unfavourable
or indifferent mainstream media. More than that, digital media provides arenas to find like-minded
others, to hear more heterogeneous voices and to find information that is not highlighted in
mainstream media. 31
However, the same applies to nonreligious people in general, and organized atheists in particular.
The internet plays an important role in facilitating more active and visible identities among atheist
31 Heidi Campbell, When Religion Meets New Media (London: Routledge, 2010), 82, 155, 180.
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and secularist groups via online social networks.32 It helps people to communicate anonymously if
needed and find support from other atheists. An example of how that possibility is harnessed for
campaigning is the Clergy Project online community which is designed for supporting unbelieving
clergymen.33 As the project indicates, in digital space people are not simply media users and
consumers, but ‘prosumers’34 as they are co-creators, both producing content and using it.
‘Prosumerization’ is one of the reasons why the internet has proved to be a prolific terrain for
atheistic activism: Richard Dawkins’s website offers a major platform for sharing information and
discussion; YouTube provides opportunities to watch, listen and share views on atheistic debates
and lectures; by following atheistic consciousness-raising in various Twitter accounts people get the
latest news related to their cause and can post their own contribution; discussion forums help people
to find like-minded others and thus empower each other; and websites of local organisations are
often the first contact points for potentially interested future activists. Hence, it is difficult to
overestimate the significance the development of digital media has had for people with no religion,
but it has also meant that the digital visibility is dominated by antireligious atheistic activism.
The Internet does not simply offer more possibilities, but it also directs the self-representation of
nonreligious people. For instance, Richard Dawkins’s website, where visitors can leave their
message in a convert’s corner, is structured surprisingly similarly as religious websites.
Furthermore, due to its accessibility the Internet is fostering debate, but it includes highly polarizing
32 Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith, “The New Atheism and the formation of the imagined secularist community,” Journal of Media and Religion, 10 (2011); Christopher Smith and Richard Cimino, “Atheisms Unbound: The Role of the New Media in the Formation of a Secularist Identity,” Secularism & Nonreligion 1 (2012); Dan Gilgoff “‘Where Was God in Aurora?’: Comments Show Internet as Church for Atheists,” CNN Belief Blog 1 August 2012. 33 Dan Merica, “Unbelieving Preachers Get Help to ‘Come Out’ as Open Atheists,” CNN Belief Blog 13 June 2012. 34 ‘Prosumer’ is a portmanteau word combining producer and consumer. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (London: Atlantic Books, 2008).
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views and its logic supports presenting opinions in a polarized manner. Christian commentators
have even suggested that the internet reveals how atheists – not only religious people – can be
uneducated and uncivilized,35 but none of this decreases the significance of digital technology and
spaces it provides for multiple voices to flourish.
Despite the possibilities that digital and social media outlets have opened to all kinds of
nonreligious voices to be heard and identities to be formed, the abovementioned forums are less
important for people who are not specifically looking for information about atheism. Many digital
tribes living in fragmented digital ghettos can hardly be satisfied with bonding only; they need to
find ways of bridging with the mainstream public discourse. There are examples of bridging (i.e.
initiating discussion and introducing topics for debate), but not clear evidence that the activism has
really changed the ways in which media and other institutions deal with issues concerning religion
and atheism. For instance, the fact that campaigning atheists uploaded pictures from protest
marches and organized themselves with the help of websites during the Papal visit to Britain in
2010 put more pressure on the mainstream media to cover their part of the story, but it did not
prevent the mainstream media from describing the Papal visit as a success.36 However, partly
because of successful bridging there has been a consciousness-raising among the population at
large. It is not necessarily so that the attitudes towards atheism, for instance, have become more
positive because of the media visibility, but, according to a comparison of recent Finnish surveys, at
least people are starting to have an expressed opinion.37 It is likely that this has happened as a
combination of activist bonding work and its bridging with the mainstream media.
35 Alister McGrath, Why God Won’t Go Away: Engaging with the New Atheism (London: SPCK, 2011), 26–27. 36 Knott & al., Media Portrayals, ch. 8. 37 Between 2008 (ISSP) and 2011 (Gallup Ecclesiastica) the percentage of “Don’t know” -answer to the question of what is your opinion of atheists decreased from 25 to 12 per cent. The positive opinion had slightly increased from 18 per cent in 2008 to 22 in 2011, but so had the negative, from
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There is a great potential in digital and social media for empowering people and for generating
interest and awareness in the mainstream media. Both are potentially changing the authority
structures of traditional religious institutions and thereby facilitating religious change. There are
opportunities for interaction and bottom-up impact, but it applies to both religion and nonreligion.
The uses of digital and social media make people more aware of the presence of religious and
nonreligious points of view, and therefore contribute to the general awareness, and potentially to the
increased mainstream visibility, of both religion and its critics.
3. Media Representations
In addition to production and use, media representations of people with no religion has been an
overlooked area of study. This section focuses on representations of nonreligious people in the mass
media, especially newspapers and television, with special attention paid to recent documentaries. It
argues that media find it convenient to cover antireligious atheists, but difficult to render visible
people of no religion who are not interested in campaigning against religion. Therefore, the media
promotes a special image and narrative about people with no religion.
Newspapers and television
There are patterns that characterize the content of religion reporting in the mass media. Religion is
likely to be covered in connection to conflicts and controversies, extraordinary events, and in
connection with interesting persons, especially celebrities. This is true for people with no religion as
22 to 26 per cent. The rest had neutral attitude. See Teemu Taira, “More Visible but Limited in Its Popularity: Atheism (and Atheists) in Finland,” Approaching Religion 2(1, 2012a), 32n19.
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well. This is one reason why moderate, neutral and indifferent people with no religion are not often
rendered visible in the media. Another difficulty in tracing representations of the nonreligious is
that the various positions that the term encompasses are typically defined via negativa. This is
apparent in a picture circulating in internet in which two persons are sharing pamphlets from door
to door. One resident looks at the paper and says: ‘This pamphlet is blank.’ The ‘preachers’ respond
immediately: ‘We’re atheists.’38
While the picture is revealing, it would work better with the answer ‘we’re nonreligious’, as vocal
celebrity atheists often have an identifiable, antireligious message. The case of other positions is
more complicated: they are almost invisible as a positive identity in the media. If most news sources
and voices heard in religion coverage are Bishops, church leaders and theologians rather than local
clergy or laypersons, the same applies to people without religion: there is a tendency in the media to
cover activist atheists at the expense of other, often more moderate views. Furthermore, if religion
coverage is dominated by major events, value conflicts and scandals, sometimes pointing to
hypocritical clergymen, the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to nonreligion: conflicts, public
campaigns and demonstrations are typical reasons for the coverage and then the media turn their
attention to atheist spokespersons and associations.
Every now and then the media get curious to know what people with no religion do when religious
people engage in rituals. Do the nonreligious people celebrate name giving? What kind of marriage
ceremony do they have? Even then, the focus is seldom on nonreligious people who have invented
rituals themselves, but on organizations providing particular forms of such rituals. Those
38 See http://s206.photobucket.com/user/VeganTiger/media/bizarro_atheists.jpg.html; accessed 13.1.2014, or google ”This pamphlet is blank”.
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organizations are usually led by Humanists and Freethinkers who are active in antireligious
activities, too.
Furthermore, it is true that nonreligious people engage with televised media rituals, such as
mourning of the death of Princess Diana, in relation to humanitarian disasters and homecomings of
dead soldiers,39 but they are not perfect examples of representations of the nonreligious in the
media. These rituals often take place within the framework of the dominant religious institution –
for example the funeral service takes place in a church and the media uses soundbites from church
leaders in covering the story. In addition, they are not designated as nonreligious events in the
media and they do not specifically address nonreligious people. Moreover, they are not designed as
alternatives for religious rituals.
If self-identifying nonreligious people have not been particularly visible in the mainstream media
outside the stories related to survey results concerning the lack of religious identification or
affiliation, the opposite is the case with atheists. This is the case even though, according to religious
identification surveys, being nonreligious is far more common than being an atheist. According to a
study conducted in 2008-2010, British media reports on atheism much more frequently than in the
early 1980s.40 It is referenced less than established religions, but references to atheism and
secularism have increased more than references to any non-Christian religious tradition, with the
exception of Islam. Furthermore, atheism is typically covered in comments, letters, editorials,
factual broadcasting and current affairs, and more frequently in quality broadsheets than tabloids. It
is thus meant to be taken seriously.41
39 Callum Brown and Gordon Lynch, “Cultural Perspectives.” In Religion and Change in Modern Britain, edited by Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto (London: Routledge, 2012), 340. 40 Teemu Taira & al., “Religion in the British Media Today.” In Religion and the News, edited by Jolyon Mitchell and Owen Gower (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 33. 41 Knott & al., Media Portrayals, 103–104.
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Public campaigning has been one of the main strategies that have prompted the media to report and
debate about nonreligion, atheism and secularism. For example, the ‘atheist bus’ campaign was
launched in Britain in early 2009 and later replicated in sixteen countries. Furthermore, the media
prefers to focus on easily identifiable groups who have a clear message. Therefore, atheists with an
antireligious message fit well with the interests of the media.
It is possible that without any provocations and key figures, such as Dawkins, public discourse on
atheism would have remained weak and less visible. The provocations can also be seen as political
tactics in a struggle for a religiously neutral state.42 In addition to the deliberate tactics of the
protagonists it is also – and perhaps primarily – the media logics that enhances polarization between
religious voices and antireligious atheists. The campaigning increases and intensifies the media
presence of both atheists and religious voices. While religious campaigning is nothing new, recently
intensified atheist activism has made religious voices more active. Furthermore, the overwhelming
presence of Dawkins in the (British) mainstream media has left other potential voices relatively
silent. This, however, does not mean that the media agrees with Dawkins – usually it disagrees
strongly – but that it is willing to let him speak. In order to understand the pattern, it is worth noting
that despite the presence of Dawkins in the media, the debate takes place mainly among the elites
and reaches only a small fraction of the general public: according to the 2010 YouGov poll on
British National Treasures, 38 per cent of the sample did not know who Richard Dawkins is.43 On
the basis of mainstream media reporting it can be concluded that even though antireligious voices
are exceptional, and not supported or celebrated by the media, they are still given space to create
controversies and maintain discussion.
42 Stuart McAnulla, “Radical Atheism and Religious Power: New Atheist Politics,” Approaching Religion 2(1, 2012). 43 http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-YouGov-NationalTreasures-260810.pdf
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Media profile of atheists
If people with no religion are represented by outspoken atheists in the media, it is worth examining
further, what atheism looks like in the media.
Gender is a key issue. It is one of the least contentious findings of the scholarship on the topic that
women are generally more religious than men. Furthermore, men are more likely to identify as
atheists and become active in nonreligious associations. Hence, it is not surprising that men are
typically representing all varieties of nonreligious positions and that recent atheist celebrities are
men. Some have started to think about how to get women to become more involved in activities so
that secularist associations would not remain ‘boys’ clubs’.44
The gender bias is visible throughout the history of media representations of atheism. A well-known
female atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who was identified by Time magazine in 1964 as the most
hated woman in America, was an exceptional figure.45 More recently, Ariane Sherine, a relatively
young (b. 1980) non-white woman, became a perfect figure for initiating the atheist bus campaign
in Britain, because her presence diversified the media image and arguably facilitated the success of
44 Jacques Berlinerblau, “View from America: Is Secularism a Boys’ Club?” New Humanist blog, 2012 http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2012/07/view-from-america-is-secularism-boys.html?spref=tw, accessed 26 July 2012; see also Tina Beattie, The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion (London: Darton, Longmann and Todd, 2007). 45 S. T. Joshi, The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism (Amherst: Prometheus, 2011), 167–179.
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the campaign. In Germany and Finland, the recent media discussion around atheism has mainly
been carried out among men.46
The overall ethnic representation of atheism is predominantly white in the Western world. While
this is mainly accurate, there is more ethnic variety in ‘nones’ in the UK, for instance. According to
the 2001 UK Census, 95 per cent of nones were white, but 23 per cent of mixed ethnicity and 34 per
cent of Chinese said they have no religion.47
Atheists in the media are not only white men, but often also natural scientists. Dawkins is a typical
example, but there are others, some of which are known only in their own respective countries.
Because science and mainline religion are both valued in the media, there are other, more pro-
religious natural scientists, such as Robert Winston in Britain, who are often invited to speak in the
media.
It is not easy to describe the exact political positions of these white men of science, but at least
some of them are liberals, despite obvious differences and contempt between, say, Dawkins and
many explicitly leftist thinkers.48 According to surveys, nonreligious people and atheists are more
likely than religious people to be left wing. This brings us back to the idea of ‘antireligious media’:
if the popular media is slightly pro-Christian and politically right-of-centre, it is not surprising that
their view on atheism is not simply positive. In Britain it is especially conservative tabloids that
paint a gloomy picture of ‘left-wing atheists and multiculturalists’, who try to take the joy out of
46 Thomas Zenk, “‘Neuer Atheismus’: ‘New Atheism’ in Germany,” Approaching Religion 2(1, 2012); Taira, “More Visible.” 47 Paul Weller, Religious Diversity in the UK: Contours and Issues (London: Continuum, 2008), 17–18. 48 Teemu Taira, ”New Atheism as Identity Politics.” In Religion and Knowledge: Sociological Perspectives, edited by Mathew Guest and Elizabeth Arweck (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012b), 108–109.
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ordinary (‘Christian’) people’s lives with their ‘aggressiveness’ or ‘political correctness’.49 Even
though the approach in so-called broadsheets is less explicit, their attitude towards antireligious
atheism is not particularly favourable.
More generally, the current debate – as it happens between defenders of religion and its opponents
who are typically white men of sciences – is polarized and it excludes ordinary and moderate
nonreligious people whose attitude towards religion is more ambivalent, indifferent or positive.
Quantitatively speaking there are more of those than critics of religion, but perhaps there is nothing
exotic in that segment that would make interesting news, a fascinating story or an entertaining
television programme.
Documentaries
Documentaries promoting atheism and criticising religion have become popular in the twenty-first
century. They merit a closer look, particularly as examples of atheist activism and as data for
studying (self-)representations of atheists. One of the well-knows is Atheism: A Rough History of
Disbelief (2004) (released in the United States as A Brief History of Disbelief) which introduces a
standard history of Western atheism, but paints a gloomy picture of religious beliefs and practices
as irrational – a view enhanced by an antireligious host Jonathan Miller. Other popular ones are
hosted by Richard Dawkins: The Root of All Evil? (2006) and its successor The Enemies of Reason
(2007), which took irrational religiosity, superstition and alternative medicine as their targets.
49 Knott, Poole and Taira, Media Portrayals, 166–169.
19
The experts speaking in these documentaries are predominantly male scientists or those who
identify with them. According to quantitative studies, such as World Values Survey -surveys, men
are less religious than women, men are more likely to identify themselves as atheist and scientists
are more likely to be nonreligious than the population at large.50 This is the case in Europe and
North America. However, at least in the US, natural scientists are more likely to be religious than
scholars in the humanities and social sciences. 51 Therefore, it is interesting that in these
documentaries mainly natural scientists qualify as public spokespersons for atheists. The
highlighting of the natural sciences in media representations functions at least in four ways: (i) it
provides scientific credibility for atheism; (ii) it aims to offer an alternative explanatory system for
religious ones; (iii) it frames religion in terms of propositional statements about the world – the
game at which science is far superior to religion in providing explanations – and (iv) it distances
itself from the traditional humanist intellectuals, some of whom are not considered worthy of
speaking in the name of reason according to contemporary vocal atheists.
The documentaries mentioned above are traditional in style. The relatively successful American
‘comic documentary film’ Religulous (2008), directed by Larry Charles and hosted by comedian
Bill Maher, is different in its humorous style, yet fairly similar in content. The film caricatures
religious beliefs and organizations, and it laughs at people’s beliefs. It does not portray a
nonreligious lifestyle, but by ridiculing others it offers an imagined self-portrait of its own ideals.
The host Bill Maher is a white, western male with a mixed religious background (Jewish mother,
Catholic father). He rejected his religious background and as such his figure is in many ways an
embodiment of a person with no religion. Even his mixed religious background is important,
because the likelihood of nonreligiosity increases if parents do not have a shared religious
50 http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/index_surveys, accessed 13.1.2014. 51 Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 106–117; Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 53.
20
affiliation.52 Maher claims to be an agnostic by preaching ‘the gospel of I don’t know’, but his
position in the film is explicitly antireligious, when he suggests that religion is detrimental to the
progress of humanity and that religion prevents people from saving the world from going under. It
is the task of the nonreligious to save the world, because they are rational, they know better, they
dare to live and enjoy their lives and they are also sincere as opposed to the alleged hypocrisy of
religious people. This image conveyed in the film is far from Maher’s statement according to which
‘doubt is humble’; it is much closer to a self-conscious, arrogant and even conceited image. The
message is not just that religious people are wrong, but the film also includes a call for action on the
part of nonreligious people: ‘This is why rational people, antireligionists, must end their timidity
and come out of the closet and assert themselves.’53
In painting a bleak picture of religion Religulous refers to the percentage of the US nonreligious
population (16 per cent), but rhetorically exaggerates it by claiming that these people do not believe
in God and do not want to have anything to do with religion. This trick is at odds with surveys
which reveal that many people who identify as nonreligious (as opposed to a religious person or a
convinced atheist) often believe in God or a life force, are members of religious associations and
have positive attitude towards religious institutions – not only in the US but elsewhere too.54
Moreover, the only specialist who is seen on-screen is Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist and a
neurotheologian. Again, there are no scholars from the humanities or social sciences. Rather than
providing a representation of a nonreligious lifestyle or the variety of people with no religion,
Religulous constitutes another example of antireligious campaigning that uses popular media form.
52 Phil Zuckerman, “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions,” Sociology Compass 3(6, 2009), 957–958. 53 Religulous. Directed by Larry Charles. Lions Gate Entertainment, 2008. 54 Taira, ”More Visible,” 25; “Atheist Spirituality: A Follow on from New Atheism?” In Post-Secular Religious Practices, edited by Tore Ahlbäck (Turku: Donner Institute for Religious and Cultural History, 2012c), 397–398.
21
The documentaries strengthen what has been suggested in exploring other media. The
representation of nonreligion often happens through activism, campaigns and controversies, thus
foregrounding antireligious atheists rather than other positions. Furthermore, the representations
emphasize attributes such as male, white, western, liberal, and portray the natural sciences and
religion as incompatible opponents.
4. Concluding Remarks: Media Visibility and Religious Change
This chapter has refined the stereotypical image of ‘antireligious media’ and argued that digital
media offer spaces for both marginal religious and nonreligious voices and debates which
sometimes generate mainstream interest. Furthermore, it has demonstrated that antireligious atheists
rather than relatively moderate or indifferent nonreligious people are providing the public face and
voice for all nonreligious people, thus maintaining a public image that portrays the nonreligious as
aggressive men of science. All these aspects contribute to the increased visibility of religion and its
criticism in their own ways.
Scholars have been writing about the visibility of religion from early 1990s onwards in particular.
Different concepts have been introduced, such as return and resurgence,55 desecularization56,
deprivatization57, re-publicization58 and new visibility and new awareness59 of religion. After
55 Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity, 1994). 56 Berger, Peter (ed.), The Desecularization of the World: The Resurgence of Religion in World Politics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). 57 José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994). 58 David Herbert, “Theorizing Religion and Media in Contemporary Societies: An Account of Religious ‘Publicization’,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 14(6, 2011); “Why Has Religion
22
discourse on religion started to gain a stronger presence in public life Jacques Derrida posed a
question, ‘What would the said “return of the religious” have to do with media?’,60 and commented
in another context that ‘digital culture, Jet and TV’ are three things ‘without which there could be
no religious manifestation today’, 61 thus emphasizing the constitutive nature of media and
technology in the so-called ‘return’ of religion. The same can be said about the recent growing
visibility of atheism: without mainstream media, social media and the increased global mobility of
people and information the increased visibility of atheism would not have occured as we know it.
Often people infer from the current trends either that religion is in decline or that ‘God is back’,62
but it seems to me that what is going on is an increase in the visibility of discourses on religion and
its criticism at the same time. The churches, mosques and synagogues are not full of believers. The
streets are not full of self-identified atheists. However, the discourse flourishes in the media. The
media are willing to maintain a polarized discussion and contribute to the ways in which society
gets organized by employing categories such as ‘religion’ and ‘atheism’, and to a lesser extent
‘nonreligion’, without handing authoritative voice to any involved party in particular. From the side
of nonreligion, the new visibility has primarily revolved around antireligious viewpoints which
have been promoted mainly by educated white men who refer to the authority of the natural
sciences.
The media can constitute a secularising force and simultaneously cherish proreligious positions in
its attitude if the secularizing effect is conceptualized as an unintended consequence of how the
Gone Public Again?: Towards a Theory of Media and Religious Re-Publicization.” In Media, Religion and Culture, edited by Gordon Lynch & al. (London: Routledge, 2012). 59 Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl (eds), The New Visibility of Religion (London: Continuum, 2008). 60 Jacques Derrida, “Above All, No Journalists!” In Religion and Media, edited by Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber (Stanford. Stanford University Press, 2001), 61. 61 Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: the Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone.” In Religion, edited by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 20. 62 John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God is Back: How Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World (London: Allen Lane, 2009).
23
media affects religious institutions. It is the case that secularization occurs at some level (decline in
attendance, beliefs and affiliation) in the Western world,63 but the media are disseminating
discourses on religion and nonreligion, especially atheism, at the same time. It is, therefore, useful
to conceptualize the current situation as a reconfiguration of various positions in the public sphere.
This can be viewed in terms of a special case of a much wider ‘post-traditional’ setting in which all
traditions – including Christianity after the ‘loss’ of its historical monopoly – have to be
discursively justified in media discourse by recognizing the presence and claims of other
standpoints.64 Being nonreligious is only one possible – itself heterogeneous – position from which
participation in the negotiation of the organization of society can be carried out, and to suggest that
the media are simply promoting antireligious views is an assumption that is in lack of compelling
evidence. This is not, however, the final word about the complex relationship between media,
religion and nonreligion, and its implications for theorizing religious change. But it is, hopefully, a
start.
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