Concerning Religion and Secularism: A Review

I was immediately drawn to Jonas Atlas’s book by virtue of its title – Religion: Reality Behind the Myths. Too often oversimplifications and unexamined assumptions distort exploration into various religious traditions, including one’s own. While I have discovered a number of scholarly ethnographies well-equipped to illuminate the complexity and internal diversity of various religions, it is difficult to find a short, accessible text to first identify and challenge assumptions commonly held about the nature of religion. Atlas’s book, with its inductive approach and concrete examples, fills this need, especially its first third.  

While Atlas structures Religion around seven key myths, the book itself focuses on three areas of concern. The first section tackles myths one through three, all centered on the category of religion, and closes with an interlude which contextualizes these myths through a history of religion as a concept, highlighting its evolution and its political and racist functions. Atlas specifically addresses misconceptions that religion is marked by dogmatic beliefs, well-defined rules, and hierarchical structure and further, that religious traditions can be clearly distinguished from one another. Through examples primarily drawn from Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, he highlights the limits of these narrow parameters as they exclude certain traditions and ignore the internal diversity of others. Though Atlas’s work is primarily deconstructive in this first part, he makes small constructive moves which challenge understandings of religion as a product, a package “of beliefs, rules of conduct, symbols, and rituals, which are offered by specific brands,” and advocates, instead, that religions are best thought of as languages, with porous and fluid boundaries (62). Atlas argues that the metaphor of multilingualism captures well multiple religious belonging and the concept of dialect reflects the internal diversity within every tradition. While this first section provides solid reasons for questioning the usefulness of the category of religion, Atlas suggests that demarcating traditions and experiences as religious is valuable if understood properly.  

In the second part of the book, Atlas turns his attention to the binary oppositions in which religion is often placed – against spirituality and science – to highlight how such arrangements contribute to misunderstandings and distortions. For example, in myth four, Atlas introduces the reader to Perennialism and connects spiritualism to the esoteric and religion, especially its ritual elements, to the exoteric to argue that religious traditions feature both elements. By engaging myths four and five, Atlas primarily adds nuance to understandings of spirituality and science rather than religious traditions. A key element of this project, which becomes more evident in this section, is challenging the binary oppositions which circle the category of religion and contribute to misinformation and unfounded assumptions. 

In the third part of the book, which covers myths six and seven as well as the conclusion, Atlas turns his attention to the most dangerous binary opposition of all – religion vs. secularism. In this last section it becomes clear that Atlas has undertaken this project about religious myths to prompt further examination of secularism. Though Atlas is concerned with misconceptions surrounding religion and seeks to address these, including the mischaracterization that religion encourages violence, his main aim is to highlight how distortions of religion have encouraged uncritical valorization of secularism. In the end, the simplistic binary of religion vs. secularism has not only exalted secularism by diminishing religion but has given life to a dangerous secular fundamentalism. While the exploration of the category of religion helpfully sets the stage to examine its key antagonist more critically – secularism – the project ends before any significant exploration into secularism itself can take place. Another interlude, this time focused on the definition, origin, and political dimensions of the concept of secular would have been a welcome addition.  

Atlas promises to offer an accessible exploration into the myths that surround religion and on this he delivers. The first section of the book provides a unique and engaging introduction to the category of religion. It will prompt deeper exploration into other methods or theories for understanding religion and interest in the complexity and internal diversity of various traditions. While Atlas is successful in disrupting uncritical assumptions about secularism, the structure of the book hinders a dive into its history and complexity. Fortunately, other works exist to further deepen one’s religious literacy and examine the multifaceted character of secularism within the U.S. context. 

Suggestions for further reading: 

Hedges, Paul Michael. Understanding Religion: Theories and Methods for Studying Religiously Diverse Societies. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 

Baker, Joseph O., and Buster G. Smith. American Secularism: Cultural Contours of Nonreligious Belief Systems. New York: NYU Press, 2015. 

Sehat, David. This Earthly Frame: The Making of American Secularism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.