Agata Rejowska, Jagiellonian University

Keywords: humanism, marriage, weddings, Poland, sacred, secular

Humanist marriage ceremonies are an emerging form of civic rituality in Poland, and their popularity is on the rise. The first official humanist marriage ceremony was conducted in 2007 by the Polish Rationalist Association. As advocates of this type of rituality argued, this is an alternative to both religious and civil marriage ceremonies. The latter, although secular, meaning in theory suitable for non-religious couples, are often perceived as formulaic, bureaucratic, and devoid of meaning. I conducted empirical research on humanist weddings conducted in Poland between the years 2016 and 2020. As my study shows, as a hybrid phenomenon, humanist marriage ceremonies elude such binary divisions as secular/sacred or non-religious/sacred.

The conducted research reveals the various motivations of couples who decide on such form of celebration. In addition to ‘nonreligious’ or ‘antireligious’ motivation, there are also ‘anti-institutional’, ‘individualistic’, and ‘practical’ motives. It also shows that even if some couples decided on humanist marriage ceremony, that did not necessarily mean that they were deeply steeped in rationalism and materialism. In Europe, the majority of non-religious individuals believe in a ‘spirit or life force’ rather than embracing hard atheism and a rationalist-materialist viewpoint. In the same vein, for some of my research participants, spiritual or religious frameworks were still the important points of reference in their marriage ceremonies.  

But even when they did not refer to spiritual and religious outlooks, the ceremonies remained sacred despite being secular/non-religious. By ‘sacred’ I mean something that ‘people take to be absolute realities that have claims over their lives’ (Lynch 2012, 15). Sacred is not an exclusively religious category, although for a long time it has been reduced to this field. Also, it does not have any actually existing ‘ontological referent’ but it is a social construction. For this reason, people can experience ‘the sacred’ as very diverse social phenomena.

For instance, love and intimacy are feelings that are often experienced as sacred. This is often expressed through terms such as ‘my one and only’ or ‘soulmate’. Sometimes the romantic narrative presents a meeting of two people as an effect of ‘destined coincidences’. The opposition between destiny and coincidence was a subject of reflection at one of the weddings I observed, during the groom’s speech:

I have the impression that you could easily divide people into those who believe in coincidence and those who think there are no coincidences and everything happens for a reason. I belonged to the first group until the ski camp [where the couple met]. And 15 minutes in the bus was enough (…). And then for the first time in my life I felt really calm, an emotion I didn’t know before came over me and I felt somehow looked after by the energy of the world, and since then I think that everything happens for a reason. You are definitely here for a reason.

Sacred is something that needs to be ‘set apart’ and protected from ‘any profanation’ and, by the same logic, the loved person is set apart from other women or men and the relationship is something that needs to be protected (for instance being unfaithful could profane it). Relationship can be symbolically polluted by the interference of the external institutions that represent irrelevant and rejected values, and are ‘inauthentic’.  For this reason one of the research participants, Harry[1], did not want to have a religious ceremony:

It was kind of conflicting to have something that really meant a lot to me, which was my love for my wife, with something that meant nothing to me, which is a belief in God. That means zero to me. So, I didn’t want to mix those two things.

Although advocates of humanist marriage ceremonies consider these rites of passage to be the alternative not only to religious but also to civil marriages (similarly in the UK), in Poland the civil ceremony is still the only legally recognized option for non-religious couples who do not want to be married within any institutionalized religious tradition. Hence, because humanist marriages in Poland do not have legal recognition, contrary to other countries like Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, and some parts of the United States (Kasselstrand, 2018), if couples wish to have a legally valid wedding, an additional civil ceremony is required (usually a modest ceremony at the registry office is held on another day).

The interviewees often complained that civil marriage ceremonies are impersonal and generic. Couples usually associate civil ceremonies not only with something cheesy and anachronistic, but also emotionless and mundane. As Norbert, one of the interviewees, put it: ‘a woman plays some “da-da-da-daa” [imitates Mendelsson’s Wedding March] on a tape recorder and there’s nothing sublime about it and you don’t feel any emotions either’. According to participants, civil marriage ceremonies deploy ossified symbols and meanings that have lost their power. It is either ‘funny’ or grotesque in its seriousness. The civil ceremony represents the secular-profane; it belongs to the mundane, emotionally uncharged everyday life. Many couples I spoke to treated it rather as a ‘necessary evil’ and something grotesque in its ‘seriousness’. Dominika laughed as she described how, when the official told them that ‘the mayor of the district joins in sending wishes’, they were not able to treat it seriously, especially as this was a random district with which they had no attachment.

In the background of humanist marriage ceremonies there is a belief in universal moral order, common values, immanent interconnectedness between people and a universal foundation of humankind. These shared beliefs are another source of potential sacralization. As Helena said: ‘We have something in common because we are human beings. And those values are important to all of us. Like love, relationships, happiness, and things like that’. The equation of humanism with something that is universal often triggered comparisons and allusions to religion (as something particularistic). During the research, I often encountered the narrative that humanist values are something that unify people, while belonging to a particular religion constitutes a dividing factor. In this sense, humanism in general and humanist rites of passage in particular are perceived as the means that help people to function despite or above the already existing divisions and to avoid generating new ones. As Harry put it:

I think it’s important to recognize that there is a way of being spiritual amongst people without being attached to a religion. (…) We have to find a way, or start to find ways to love one another and to be with one another, without turning to any mainstream religious beliefs (…). So I think that’s what humanistic means to me.

This narrative alludes to the understanding of humanism as an ethical project, striving to build a democratic and open society, and humanist ceremonies are one of its tools.  This is relevant especially in Poland, as sociologists note that Poles lack identities other than the religious Polak-katolik one. This lack of other identities means a deficit of ritual alternatives to Catholic rites of passage, which are an important tool for the institutional Church to maintain its power in Poland. Humanist rites of passage, therefore, can be a tool for forging an alternative identity to the Polak-katolik one.

Humanist ceremonies are a sign of the secularization of the ritual sphere, yet do not indicate its desacralization. Participants expressed a rejection of impersonal and formulaic civil ceremonies, but also a need to saturate the marriage rite with meanings that are perceived as contemporary and relevant. Although secularization undermines the authority of institutional religions, secularized social life is not devoid of the sacred. However, secularization also affects ‘the sacred’ and its manifestations, including marriage ceremonies, as its form is flexible and adjusts to the changes taking place throughout society.

Agata Rejowska is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2021 she was a Visiting Assistant in Research at Yale University, Center for Cultural Sociology. In 2023 she received the Best Early Career Article Award granted by the International Society for the Sociology of Religion for the article “Humanist Weddings in Poland: The Various Motivations of Couples” published in Sociology of Religion. From 2024 she has been a member of the research group for the project “Practices of Secularity in Catholic Poland: Forming a New Social Order?” (led by Professor Katarzyna Zielińska).

References

[1] The names of all participants have been replaced by pseudonyms.

Kasselstrand I (2018) ‘We Still Wanted That Sense of Occasion’: Traditions and Meaning Making in Scottish Humanist Marriage Ceremonies. Scottish Affairs 27: 273-293.

Lynch G (2012) The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chris Miller, University of Ottawa

Keywords: death and dying, nonreligion, Death Café, afterlife

Religion has traditionally been a major influence on how people and societies make sense of death. Questions such as why people die, what happens after we die, and what rituals should we perform to mark someone’s death were typically answered by religious authorities. As religion declines, people’s understandings of and responses to death undergoes shifts as well.

As one of the studies conducted by the Nonreligion in a Complex Future project, our research on Death Cafés explores changing conceptions of death and dying. Death Cafés are informal, pop-up events in which people (often strangers) gather to discuss death, dying, and related issues. Events take place in all manner of venues, from coffee shops and restaurants to libraries or churches. Attendees comprise a range of backgrounds, including people in the ‘death care’ field (funeral directors, hospice volunteers, and death doulas), as well as people interested in death for other reasons, whether they are facing a terminal diagnosis, caring for elder parents, or simply curious to explore the topic. Conversations at events flow freely and cover many topics, including navigating healthcare systems, complaining about the funeral industry, and reflecting on how to best remember loved ones.

To better understand these events and their attendees, our team conducted focus groups and interviews with religious and nonreligious individuals who have attended Death Cafés in Canada, the US, and the UK.[i] Although, like Death Cafés themselves, our research explores a range of topics, one common theme that emerged among participants was the afterlife. Lori G. Beaman and I recently explored such changing conceptions of the afterlife that emerge in these spaces. In what follows I will discuss our key findings, from which we identify four categories of ‘afterlife imaginaries’: cessation, energy, unknown, and transition.

Cessation

Death for some is seen as the end of human activity and consciousness. This reflects a concept in afterlife research that is often labelled extinction or annihilation, which was often framed as the default ‘secular’ or nonreligious outlook.[ii] Participants who maintain this outlook often referred to science, suggesting matter-of-factly that, as one participant stated, “when the brain stops working, it seems likely … that will be the end of my own personal experience.” While most of the participants within this category identified as atheist, there were also some religious believers who see death as a finite end.

Energy

Energy was by far the most popular category that we uncovered, but we encountered several different understandings of how people might continue as energy. Some referenced this in a purely scientific manner. Vanessa[iii] talked about the atoms in her body breaking down, then becoming “all of the things that I love, like waterfalls and sunsets.” Others referenced science indirectly, vaguely alluding to quantum physics and a general understanding that “energy never dies.” For others, energy connected to a more poetic outlook, believing that their energy will continue, in some form, to reverberate throughout the world.

Despite the range of perspectives this category includes, it is important to highlight the pervasiveness of the term. Energy was the exact language that many used, whether referencing scientific or spiritual understandings. This malleability may explain the term’s popularity. Considering all our participants attend Death Cafés, the common use of this term may also point towards a specific discourse that emerges in death positive spaces.

Unknown

Some are content with death being mysterious. These participants often defaulted to the idea that no one truly knows what happens after death, so it remains a mystery. While Terror Management Theory suggests that mortality can invoke fear (especially if one doesn’t find a comforting explanation, like heaven), some were “fascinated” or even “excited” about possible outcomes. These ranged from the continuation of human consciousness to complete cessation. Though open to many potentialities, these participants would ultimately resort back to saying they aren’t quite sure, and that they are okay with not knowing.

Transition

The final category we identify encompasses more definite visions of human consciousness carrying on. Some described traditional religious beliefs in an afterlife where they would reunite with loved ones. Others saw death as a transition to some new world, using such allegories as birth or the wardrobe to Narnia. Finally, some who had experienced near-death experiences spoke with certainty about what happens after death, namely, returning to a peaceful place they had already (briefly) experienced.

Conclusion

Each category we identify reveals an immanent understanding of death. Participants all see death as an important event, and they believe that many important things happen when death occurs. However, most do not see death as dependent on some transcendent or external power. Instead, the significant transformations that will occur are connected to the world here and now. Nature is particularly influential in how people understand death. This includes people like Vanessa, who sees her atoms breaking down into waterfalls and sunsets (or a less romantic possibility which she acknowledges: a parking lot). This also includes people like Abigail, who want a green burial so that their ‘energy’ can re-join the Earth. Finally, this includes participants who believe that consciousness will continue, and that one can experience continuing bonds with deceased relatives through the wind, water, or birds.             As religion declines and transforms, afterlife imaginaries also evolve. We do not seek to identify which categories or beliefs are religious, and which are nonreligious. Indeed, such an attempt would face the challenge that each of our four categories included both religious and nonreligious participants. By mapping the categories that people posit, we identify strong overlap among both religious and nonreligious people. The perspectives that support each outlook reflect a range of influences, including religion, science, literature, and popular culture. By exploring these imaginaries among people who attend Death Cafés, we also uncover new spaces in which people can explore and reflect on this major life event.

Chris Miller wishes to acknowledge that the research on which this post is based was conceptualized, collected, and analyzed in collaboration with Dr. Lori Beaman

Dr. Chris Miller is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Nonreligion in a Complex Future project at the University of Ottawa. Through projects that focus on Death Cafés, obituaries, and green burial, his work explores death, dying, and nonreligion. His broader research interests include New Religious Movements, and religion and popular culture

References

[i] At the time of writing, researchers working in Norway, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil have also begun exploring Death Cafés. The present reflections, however, are based only on data from participants in Canada. This research was conducted by a team led by Lori G. Beaman, and I would like to thank Hannah McKillop, Sohini Ganguly, Hinna Hussain, Edmundo Maza, and Mathilde Vanasse-Pelletier for their research assistance.

[ii] For studies that include this category, see for example Walker 2000; Cave 2015; DeSpelder and Strickland 2015; Haimila and Muraja 2021. While Haimila and Muraja note that their participants mainly endorse a view of annihilation, similar to our findings, many also allow for continuation in some form.

[iii] The names of all participants have been replaced by pseudonyms.

Samuel D. Stabler, Hunter College | Shai M. Dromi, Harvard University

Keywords: Nones, irreligion, secularism, Sunday Assembly, moral repertoires, sociology of religion

Social scientists employ a diverse set of moral repertoires to justify their research as morally worthy. By moral repertoires, we mean the logics defining the type of social good research ought to produce (e.g., research that promotes civic equality; studies that give voice to underrepresented populations; work that demonstrates particular methodological or theoretical creativity; etc.). In our work, we overview debates on secularization in the sociology of religion as a field rife with moral repertoires, along with other fields. We claim that the recent research on nones actively worked to move beyond questions about whether religion will ultimately die out, and towards questions that appealed to broader social concerns of their times. As this research has matured – in part, as the result of work by thinkers at the Secularity and Non-Religious Research network – it has increasingly justified itself by framing non-religious believers as making an active spiritual decision, rather than simply opting out. As the research on non-religious reveals, new research domains utilize the diversity of justifications for research that circulate amongst scholars of religion to both enliven research on the new topics and challenge old antinomies.

Varieties of Un-religion: Secularists and Sunday Assemblers

The shifting scholarly perspective on the irreligious is partly the culmination of a generation of post-secular theorists who emphasized that existing secularization narratives neglected the content of secular beliefs. At the most abstract level, philosopher Charles Taylor[i] insisted that “subtraction stories”—accounts of secularization that envisioned the process as the gradual negation of religion, rather than an active pursuit of alternatives to religion –missed the meaty core of changing religious landscapes. According to Taylor, secular ideas were not simply based on a vacuous empiricism that triumphed in the face of religious challengers. Instead, the idea of the secular was itself a result of shifting attempts to make life within an immanent frame worth living.

Today’s non-religion scholars adopt this substantive approach to secularity by interrogating the activities of the nonreligious as meaningful in their own right. They highlight the distinct perspectives of the of avowedly secular – the atheists, self-described secular, and variety of civic minded non-religious groups like the Secular Coalition for America, which replicate the organizational and meanings structure of religious groups in the hopes of advancing secular lifestyles. This statistical minority has increasingly taken center stage in the scholarship. Researchers have emphasized how practices of making meaning without theological commitments allow groups to form and identities to be deepened. Research has not only adapted by analyzing the prevalence of these actively non-religious folks. As scholars have increasingly focused on their activities, the process of concept reconstruction has led to new types of arguments. These new arguments justify continued research on the non-religious as a worthy means to help foster the civic inclusion of the non-religious, to promote their accurate representation in research and media, and to celebrate their inventiveness.

In an influential essay, Quack defines this strain of nonreligious studies by highlighting its connection to existing religious structures. Arguing that “no matter how ‘religions’ is understood in a distinct study, a religious field is always surrounded by a religion-related field that is constituted by a diverse set of religion-nonreligious relation”. Quack draws on what we call the efficiency repertoire, which is a logic that defines concepts and research as justified when they accurately represent reality and account for empirical evidence with precision. Here, research is justified according to the idea that more empirical information will improve our understanding of the phenomenon.

Given the historical links between religion and politics, it’s unsurprising that research on secular political advocacy has also grown popular in the field. Here authors draw on the civic repertoire, which concerns itself explicitly with the study of social problems, the fight for equality, and various processes of social change. Examining the activist work of the Secular Coalition for America, Blankholm argues that the group’s polysemous definition of secularity in terms of the separation of church and state, secular public engagement, secular forms of governance, and secular identity lifestyles gives it key political advantages. Thus, the secular’s importance is not in the way it entails a loss of meaning over time, but rather in the new attachment to alternative structures of meaning it offers. The twin goals of civic activism in the name of the secular and accurate representation of secular people motivate this research.

While civic notions animate some secular people, other secular notions like those related to “wonder and goodness” also animate many non-religious people’s engagement and are notably central to the activities of the Sunday Assembly Movement. Started in 2013 in London by two comedians who “wanted to do something that was like church but totally secular and inclusive of all—no matter what they believed”, the group holds regular worship-like services on Sundays. Research on the Sunday Assembly Movement often draws on the creativity repertoire to justify itself, by emphasizing that the groups unique social practices force researchers to find ways to transcend old theoretical antinomies, generate novel concepts, and propel innovation across the field more generally.

Using ritual theory and ethnographic evidence of a Sunday Assembly’s changing activities, Frost claims the group has developed something like a “‘trial-and-error’ approach to ritual creation”, working through different elements of religious ritual in the hopes of finding experiences which produce ritual fusion. Rather than being weakened by this approach, Frost reports that, “the important takeaway from my findings is that for at least some nonreligious people, ritual and rationality can go hand-in-hand, and many find a rational approach to ritual creation more meaningful than religious rituals”. Here the representation of non-religious people accurately is not merely a scientific concern, but also an explicitly moral one about how the analyst limits’ their own creativity by insisting that ritual’s must be inherited from tradition instead of being actively made up by actors.

“Good without God”: Weird Sociology of Religion

In their weirdness – their commitments to be “Good without God” as respondents often say[ii]  – the contemporary non-religious use a wide range of narratives about moral worthiness. The scholarship replicates this trend: as secular people have increasingly entered the public stage by a diverse means of social projects, the study of non-religion has flowered into a lush field of inquiry, rife with morally diverse understandings about its justification for researching these behaviors. In our book, we identify seven distinct repertoires that justify sociological research, with the point being that the diversity of distinct viewpoints enriches scholarship and helps advance social science.

Moreover, by amplifying the ambiguity (or ‘weirdness’) that results from a commitment to be “good without god” using religious tactics, the weird nones also help to paint a new vision for post-secular sociology. Rather than the tired questions about the potential demise of religion, the actively non-religious show that a sound sociology of religion works to map all the distinct ways that the traditions previously associated with religion are being transmuted into quasi-religious systems of social organization and meaning making. Exemplary in this regard is scholarship like Courtney Bender’s on New Age religious enthusiasts’ beliefs in past lives, which “place metaphysicals [non-believers] in multiple histories” and “bring to our [scholarly] attention the possible pleasures and terrors of living in conflicting temporalities”. Here, the scholarly study of religion draws attention to the way social actors participate in and are influenced by seemingly contradictory, or impossible happenings. Indeed, like many of the studies of weird nones, such research has much to teach scholars of religious life more general – when studying the sacred, the weirder the better.

Sam Stabler is a doctoral lecturer in the Sociology Department at Hunter College, CUNY and completed his PhD in Sociology at Yale University. His research examines how moral ideals shape, and are shaped by, conflicts surrounding the built environment, infrastructural development, and the management of religious diversity. By theorizing how moral landscapes are transformed into material settings, his research contributes to enduring debates in the sociology of religion, cultural sociology, and comparative-historical sociology. Beyond this, in three collaborative projects, he examines the moral implications of routine sociological debate, the links between humor and sociology, and the history of demographic research. His writing has appeared in Sociology of Religion, Demography, and Theory and Society.

Shai M. Dromi is Associate Senior Lecturer on Sociology at Harvard University. He is the author of Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2020) and Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2023, co-authored with Samuel D. Stabler). He is co-editor of the Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2 (Springer, 2023). His work has appeared in journals such as Theory & Society, Sociological Theory, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Rural Sociology. He publishes on religion, humanitarian aid, morality, organizations, and social knowledge production.

References

[i] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).

[ii] Epstein, Greg M. Epstein,  Good without God : what a billion nonreligious people do believe (1st ed. New York]: William Morrow, 2009).