"Really I'm an atheist, but I'm not the kind that yells at people":

Atheist Readers of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium

I submitted my abstract (*points up at title of this post*) to the Tolkien Society/Glasgow Centre for Fantasy & the Fantastic organizers today for the Fall 2023 Seminar:

Secondary Believers, Secondary Worlds: Tolkien and Religion in the Twenty-First Century

The deadline isn’t until September 8, 2023, but I tend to be a bit compulsive about not waiting for the last minute if at all possible because things will always go wrong!

Abstract: "Really I'm an atheist, but I'm not the kind that yells at people": Atheist Readers of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium¹

Scholarship on public attitudes toward atheists in the United States show that atheists are among the groups who are perceived most negatively by Americans although in recent years those attitudes are beginning to change as a greater percentage of Americans identify as secular, humanists, or as "nones," meaning never attending any religious institution (Pew). A 2017 study consisting of 3000 participants in thirteen countries of attitudes toward atheists shows that negative attitudes are held in the majority of countries.

Little scholarship on religious or atheist readers' reception of literary texts exists. The religious scholarship primarily focuses on identifying Pagan and/or Christian elements in the fiction itself and tends to assume that readers are either Christian, or pagan. In my "Queer Atheists" presentation for the Tolkien Society's 2021 Seminar, I analyzed the responses from the 38 asexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, pansexual, and queer respondents (34%) who were, variously, atheist, agnostic, and animist.

In this presentation I analyze the responses from the 45% (51/112) respondents to my original survey who identified themselves to varying degrees as atheists, 63% of whom are American citizens. While I have not found any significant differences between their responses and those who identify as agnostics, animists, humanists, or secular in my earlier analysis of the data, given the historical and contemporary prejudice against atheists that exists in the U.S. and in the world, I consider the question of how atheist readers of Tolkien's define themselves and their interpretation of Tolkien's work in the context of such wide-spread hostility.

Gervais, W., Xygalatas, D., McKay, R. et al. Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0151 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0151.

Tevington, Patricia. "Americans Feel More Positive Than Negative About Jews, Mainline Protestants, Catholics." Pew Research Center, March 15, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-feel-more-positive-than-negative-about-jews-mainline-protestants-catholics/.

Also found a really fascinating article challenging the extent to which scholars of atheism have focused on it as a theological/intellectual/philosophical (or some combo of all of the above) phenomenon and argues for expanding things somewhat:

Eric Chalfant, “Material irreligion: The role of media in atheist studies.” Religion Compass. 2020; 14:e12349. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rec3, https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12349

Abstract

Despite the material turn in the study of religion and the humanities and social sciences more broadly, many scholars still tend to treat atheism as a purely intellectual or philosophical position. Recent scholarship has begun to seriously examine the emotional, material, and sociopolitical bases of contemporary and historical atheism, but more work remains to be done. In particular, scholars of atheism need to pay close attention to the role of media in the emergence of atheism as a collective self-identity. Atheism appears particularly vulnerable to a scholarly cognitivist bias that overemphasizes the importance of religious belief or lack thereof. Media studies, by emphasizing the importance of materiality in the fashioning of human subjects, can provide an important corrective to this bias.

1. In the presentation, as opposed to the abstract which is limited to 300 words, I will cover that there are countries where atheists face the death penalty (or a good chance of being targeted and murdered) which is far from the case in the U.S.