Book Review: Society without God

Society without God - What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment by Phil Zuckerman

About 10 years ago, while I was studying full time, I had a part-time job in the evenings. One evening, when I was at work, I was talking with my colleagues, and the subject of our talk turned to religion. This is not an usual subject to talk about in Denmark, except in general terms and not touching upon personal opinions. This time was no different, and we somehow touched the idea that some people take the Bible literally, believing in a seven day creation etc. Much to my surprise, even shock, one of my colleagues told us that she believed exactly that. I was stunned, and after asking if she really believed that the world had been created by the Christian God in seven days, we all dropped the subject.

At the time, I was 24 or 25 years old, and that was the first time in my life I experienced a biblical literalist (or at least one who told me that he or she was one), and I have yet to meet another such in Denmark.

Depending on where you live, this story could surprise you in different ways. If you live in the Bible belt of the US (or even most of the rest of the US), you'd be surprised that I've only worked with one biblical literalist in nearly 35 years of life. On the other hand, if you're Danish, you'll surprised that I've actually met a biblical literalist, and that she admitted it.

The difference between these two cultures are really that stark.

It was these differences that Zuckerman experienced when he moved to Denmark for 14 months in 2005, and being an atheist, he appreciated the differences. What's more, Zuckerman noticed that while fundamentalist, evangelistic Christians in the US always claim that non-religious societies will descend into amoral atheistic anarchy, this was far from the picture he saw in Denmark and the neighboring Sweden, two of the least religious countries in the world. As a matter of fact, a good case could be made that those two countries could be considered among the best to live in in the world (he argues for this by presenting a number of metrics by which this could be measured, in which Denmark and Sweden usually rank among the highest in the world).

Given this fact, his atheism, his profession as a sociologist, and the simple fact that he, as he admits, has an axe to grind, he decided to set out to find out what godless countries like Denmark and Sweden might teach religious countries like the US.

Very early in the book Zuckerman made a distinction between a society without religion and a society without God, since Danes and Swedes to a large degree are members of the official churches and call themselves Christians, but don't believe in God, the divinity of Jesus, nor heaven and hell. Outside Denmark and Sweden, these concepts would seem essential for being Christian, but here, being a Christian is considered a cultural thing. People consider themselves Christian since they come from a country with a Christian background, and because they like the Christian ideals, not because they actually believe in the supernatural baggage the Christian faith carries along.

Unrelated to anything in the book, I should perhaps mention that this is something that causes problems with integrating immigrants and children of immigrants. You'll frequently hear people refer to others as Muslims, even though the people being referred have grown up in Denmark, and don't hold any religious faith. Since their parents come from a predominantly Muslim country, people think of them as Muslims, and thus non-Christians (and thus non-Danish).

Well, back to the book. Zuckerman tried to get to understand the religious feelings of Danes and Swedes better by interviewing both religious and non-religious people from both countries, trying to get them to answer questions about religion and their views on life. Based on these answers, Zuckerman has written a book with chapters focusing on such issues as "Fear of Death and the Meaning of Life", frequently referring to the answers he got, and the experiences he had while interviewing these people.

Now comes the part where my review will probably differ from what the experience people from religious countries will have.

What I found interesting about the book wasn't so much the answers to the questions, since they were pretty much as I would have expected, but rather the absolute astonishment that shines through the pages. Let me give you an example.

The first noteworthy part of the "group interview" [of 3 Swedes on a train] came when I asked them if they believed in God. Two of the women immediately said no. But the third, Katarina, hesitated before answering. She sat there, paused in thought. We quietly awaited her reply. She looked out the window, at the night blurring by. And then she said that she hadn't really thought about it before. She didn't know whether she did or didn't believe in God - not because she was philosophically agnostic, per se, but rather, because she found it somewhat a novel question. She asked for some time to think it over. Finally, after several moments, she came to her conclusion: no, she didn't think so. What struck me as so remarkable about her response was not that it was in the negative (I was quite used to that), but that she had needed time to mull it over, having admitted that it just wasn't something she had pondered much before. This was a slight shock to me. Never thought about belief in God before - come again? How is it possible to be in one's thirties and not yet have formed an opinion in God

Emphasis in the original. While not having thought about religious questions is a bit unusual, even in non-religious countries like Denmark and Sweden, it's not really that unusual (I believe Zuckerman found approx. 15% mot having done so), yet Zuckerman acts as I felt when I experienced a perfectly intelligent person tell me that she actually believed that a God created the Universe, Earth, and life in literally seven days (and not figuratively as Danish religious people usually do).

So, while the book will give Americans a good introduction into what a non-religious country can be like, it also will give Danes and Swedes an idea of how prevalent religion is in the US. This is probably not something Zuckerman had in mind when he wrote the book, but is just a lucky side effect.

In other words, I highly recommend the book, whether you are an American trying to understand non-religious countries, or you're a Dane or Swede trying to understand how our societies appear to outsiders.

Religion in Denmark and Sweden

A couple of days ago, the NY Times had a really great article on religion in Denmark and Sweden, which I thought I'd comment a bit on. The article is about both Denmark and Sweden, but I'll focus on the Danish perspective.

Scandinavian Nonbelievers, Which Is Not to Say Atheists

Phil Zuckerman spent 14 months in Scandinavia, talking to hundreds of Danes and Swedes about religion. It wasn’t easy.

I understand Zuckerman's problem when talking about religion. There are some very vast cultural differences between Danes and Americans relating this - the most easily apparent probably being the fact that it's considered rude to ask about peoples' religion. It's okay to talk about religion as a concept, but what peoples' personal religious views are, is not a subject which people feel comfortable asking about.

A simple example of this, is the simple fact that I have no clue about the religious views of neither my co-students nor my co-workers. I assume they are atheists, or at least agnostic, but I don't really know (my assumption is based upon the fact that all surveys show that majority of the younger generations in the area of Copenhagen are non-religious).

The many nonbelievers he interviewed, both informally and in structured, taped and transcribed sessions, were anything but antireligious, for example. They typically balked at the label “atheist.” An overwhelming majority had in fact been baptized, and many had been confirmed or married in church.

Though they denied most of the traditional teachings of Christianity, they called themselves Christians, and most were content to remain in the Danish National Church or the Church of Sweden, the traditional national branches of Lutheranism.

Many Danes are what can be called "cultural Christians", in the sense that they identify as Christian, but don't really believe in any god. Even if they don't identify as Christian, it doesn't mean that they are not members of the state church. I've been an atheist all my life, but even so, I was a member of the church for years.

The Danish atheist society (Ateistisk Selskab) try to convince people to leave the church by explaining how much they pay in church taxes, rather than arguing that they shouldn't be members when they don't believe in a god.

At the same time, they were “often disinclined or hesitant to talk with me about religion,” Mr. Zuckerman reported, “and even once they agreed to do so, they usually had very little to say on the matter.”

Were they reticent because they considered religion, as Scandinavians generally do, a private, personal matter? Is there, perhaps, as one Lutheran bishop in Denmark has argued, a deep religiosity to be discovered if only one scratches this taciturn surface?

“I spent a year scratching,” Mr. Zuckerman writes. “I scratched and I scratched and I scratched.”

And he concluded that “religion wasn’t really so much a private, personal issue, but rather, a nonissue.” His interviewees just didn’t care about it.

Beyond reticence, Mr. Zuckerman found what he terms “benign indifference” and even “utter obliviousness.” The key word in his description of their benign indifference is “nice.” Religion, in their view, is “nice.” Jesus “was a nice man who taught some nice things.” The Bible “is full of nice stories and good morals, isn’t it?”

Beyond niceness came utter obliviousness.

People don't really care about religion. If someone talks about their personal religion, or perhaps even tries to argue for a specific viewpoint, based upon religion, they are generally considered very religious, bordering on being extremist. On the other hand, people who are too vocal in their opposition of religion are also considered somewhat extremist. "Can't we all get along without pushing our religious views on others" seems to be the general view.

When Danes travel in the US, they are always taken aback by questions on religion and religious views, as these are taboo in Denmark.

As I said, it's a really great article, so if you haven't read it, go read it. Hopefully it gives people something to think about.