Monthly Archives: February 2022

Im done waiting for mainstream media to cover nonreligious people and secular issues fairly and accurately, says Sarah Levin, a woman who wears a number of hats in the institutional secular world. Im done waiting for them to stop reinforcing the Christian Rights framing on issues and failing to challenge religious privilege. And I am absolutely done waiting for them to start seeing nonreligious people as their whole selves, beyond our orientation around religion, Levin goes on, speaking with RD in her role as director of advocacy for OnlySky Media, a new outlet focused on exploring the post-religious perspective. In addition to publishing content aimed at secular readers broadly, OnlySky will be conducting its own research on secular Americans, so it will no longer be necessary to rely solely on research produced by institutions that do not, either by way of their mission or their funding sources, have an explicit interest in serving the nonreligious, Levin explains.

On the issue of media representation of secularism and secular Americans, Levin, the founder and head of Secular Strategies and co-chair of the Democratic National Committees Interfaith Council, has a point. Nonreligious Americans are generally a pro-social bunch, and overwhelmingly in favor of the very rights the anti-social, anti-democratic Christian Right is actively working to take away, like voting rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. Yet, according to the legacy medias punditocracy, Americas rapid secularization is something we should all be terrified of.

Starting from the demonstrably false assumption that religion is essentially the only source of social cohesion, philanthropy, and pro-social behavior, prominent pundits and religion journalists (who should know much better) continually insinuate that secularization is somehow destroying the fabric of American civil society, and that the nonreligious are somehow to blame for American polarization. How, exactly, is unclear, and it could hardly be otherwise, given that both of these premises are entirely without factual basis.

Think piecesand often even supposedly straight reportingtend to ignore the empirically demonstrated fact that the social and political polarization that pervades these not-so-United States is asymmetric and significantly worse on the political Right. Not coincidentally, that side of the proverbial aisle consists largely of the conservative, mostly white Christians from whom the newly nonreligious are fleeing. These same conservative Christians, directly encouraged by their defeated president and a host of powerful Republican leaders, attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by means that included a violent Christian nationalist insurrection in which people were injured and killed, very nearly destroying what was left of American democracy, such as it is. But, you know, there are problems with liberals and progressives too, so

If elite pundits and journalists wont even grapple with the basic fact of asymmetric polarization, instead falling back on a lazy bothsidesism that must be comforting to people of immense privilege, I suppose its far too much to ask for most of them to pay attention to the numerous peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that its precisely the Christian Rights authoritarian culture-warringthe very dynamic that led to Donald Trumps 2016 election with enthusiastic Christian Right backingthat has driven many to empty the pews. But even when journalists acknowledge this fact, theres often a subtext of paternalism and victim blaming, the not-so-subtle message that these whippersnappers ought to stay in their churches and work to make them better, instead of leaving the churches to become ever more radical in their absence.

Spoiler alert: exvangelicals like myself have often spent years, even decades, trying to push evangelical Protestantism in a more humane direction from the inside, only to conclude that evangelical institutions and norms are unreformable. Journalists would know this if they considered us sources worth consulting. On a related note, Levin is far from alone in her concerns about misrepresentation of secular Americans by the press, though you would hardly know this from watching cable news or reading the legacy media, because journalists and pundits have a habit of talking over and about the religiously unaffiliated, exvangelicals, atheists, and secular advocates, rather than talking to us.

If they were to start talking to us, treating us as valuable sources and stakeholders in the national discussion around religion and politics, civil society, and pluralism, they would of course have to grapple with a very different viewpoint on American secularization than the Chicken Little story they insist on purveying, as if they all nodded along with Dostoevskys understanding that if there is no God, everything is permitted when they were undergraduates and never revisited that proposition with a more mature, critical eye, and an awareness of the great Russian novelists reactionary politics, Russian nationalism, and antisemitism.

Levins frustration with the press is thus entirely valid. The legacy medias approach to American secularization and secularism, frankly, constitutes journalistic malpractice.

To take a recent (admittedly far from the worst) example, many secular Americans were dismayed by Michelle Boorsteins January 14 Washington Post report on secularization and the secular movement in America. The report failed to quote a single religiously unaffiliated young American or secular advocate. Instead, it gave pride of place to observers like Georgetown University sociologist Jacques Berlinerblauwho claims that American secularism is lacking in innovation, leadership, and movement coherenceand political scientist and Baptist pastor Ryan Burge, who contends that the secular movement is out of step with the country and the religiously-ambivalent nones.

Kevin Bolling, executive director of the Secular Student alliance, an organization with chapters on college campuses throughout the US, told RD that reading Boorsteins report was disheartening, particularly given her record as an accomplished religion reporter with a vast catalog of well-written articles. He continued, Boorstein has written about numerous topics of prime interest to secular people; follows multiple leaders in the secular movement on Twitter; is an alumnus of UW Madison [which has] a large and active Secular Student Alliance chapter; and could have easily directly reached any of the twenty national nonprofits in the secular movement for comment.

Boorsteins article is also typical in going to great lengths to distinguish the religiously unaffiliated, aka nones, from atheists, agnostics, humanists, and similar self-defined nonbelievers, painting the typical none as someone who is basically religious but alienated from organized religion as theyve known itsomeone with plenty of spiritual beliefs who could, its implied, perhaps adopt religious affiliation again under the right conditions (something that the American elite public sphere represents as a good thing, full stop). In the case of Boorsteins article, the implication lingers, intentionally or not, in the way she ends the piece with Burges assessment of the nones as ambivalent toward religion as a result of polarization. Should American society return to a less polarized state, this framing implies, perhaps religious affiliation would start to recover as well. Such thinking inevitably casts the nones in an unserious light, as if our often painful and protracted decisions to disaffiliate from religion were not thoroughly thought through.

In fact, data now show that religiously unaffiliated youth are generally no longer returning to religion as adults, as was common in the past. While it would be equally unfair and inaccurate to portray the nones as mostly atheists and agnostics when they clearly are not (although the numbers of atheists and agnostics are rising as well), the subtext that the nones havent fully thought through their choice to disaffiliate from religion is offensiveand its a prime example of how journalists talk over nones instead of to us.

Bolling, by contrast, works directly with students, which gives him valuable insight into their mindset and decision making. Some of our students have experienced significant religion-based harm, been financially cut off, rejected by family, ostracized in their communities, kicked out of fraternities, and verbally and physically harassed, he explains. Seeing the harm many religious believers perpetrate by acting on their religious beliefs has a powerful impact on young people, according to Bolling.

While its true that there are differences and distinctions in the spectrum of spiritual, but not religious to atheist that comprises the nones, Bolling observes, they are rejecting religion, to some degree.Politicians, community leaders, celebrities, and corporations need to understand this younger generation doesnt want religion pushed in their faces, wont stand for religious nationalism, and doesnt want one persons freedoms to diminish their own.

Secular community leaders also take issue with Berlinerblaus assertion that There has been no innovation in secular thought in 50 years, as well as his description of the current third wave of secularism as lacking in leadership. Bolling pointed to the big three advocacy organizationsthe Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and Stateand commented on the increasing diversification of the secular movement, as a result of which the movement has seen a more intersectional approach.

To be sure, movement atheism has long been dominated by cisgender white men, and much work remains to be done both in terms of diversifying leadership and in terms of fully rejecting the misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and anti-LGBTQespecially anti-transgenderanimus that characterize New Atheism. But by the same token, organized movement secularism has made significant strides in addressing both lack of diversity in leadership and bigotry in the movement, and that should be acknowledged.

Asked what she makes of the suggestion raised in Boorsteins article that were in a third wave of secular organizing, Mandisa Thomas, the founder and president of Black Nonbelievers, told RD, If this is a comparison to third wave feminism, in some ways, that could be true. There is now more of a focus on the voices of women, cis and trans alike; our concerns are being taken more seriously; and we are asserting ourselves through our content and events.

Thomas also called Berlinerblaus assertion of a lack of leadership in movement secularism poorly researched, noting that it ignores the work of organizations like American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, and Black Nonbelievers. What does Berlinerblau, and even Boorstein, consider to be leadership, and how narrow-minded is their view? I, too, would like to know the answer to this question.

Thomas began her organizing work in 2011 because, while data indicated that more and more young African Americans were questioning and disaffiliating from religion, there was a lack of resources available to bring them together and address their needs. Black Nonbelievers, which now has affiliates in seven cities across the United States, became a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2014. Like the other secular leaders who spoke to RD, Thomas is frustrated with poor media representation of secular Americans and the secular movement. Her frustration extends to the paucity of coverage of BIPOC secular organizing relative to the (still sparse and often poor) coverage that majority white secular organizations and the (dead or aging and problematic) New Atheist leaders get. Despite improvement, Thomas agrees that the secular movement itself still has a diversity and inclusion problem, and maintains that the best way to address it would be for allies to highlight the work of organizations like BN and encourage more support for us.

Since the removal of David Silverman as its president amid allegations of financial conflicts of interest and sexual misconduct in 2018, American Atheists has also been at the forefront of diversifying the secular movement in practicing and promoting a broader, more intersectional approach to secular advocacy. The organizations staff includes queer people, women, and African Americans in prominent roles. And, as its shifted away from Silvermans firebrand approach to anti-religious messaging, American Atheists has begun to robustly and frequently make the case that anti-racist, feminist, and LGBTQ concerns are key church-state separation issues and should be an integral part of secular advocacy.

American Atheists current president, Nick Fish, told RD, I view American Atheists role as providing opportunities for members of our community to more fully participate in American society, whether that be in politics, cultural institutions, or any number of other areas of life. That means doing more than simply being right about this one thing: the nonexistence of gods. It means finding partners who share our values and interests and working together to make this world a better place to live. Clarifying that latter point, Fish noted, Our advocacy is going to continue working to find areas of common ground with partners, regardless of their religious beliefs, while holding true to our own values around equality for all.

Asked for his take on Berlinerblaus comment about secularisms lack of leadership, Fish asserted that its unfair to say theres no coherence or collaboration within the secular movement, which is advocating on behalf of the nonreligious. He admitted, however, that the lack of centralization and hierarchy means that secular organizers face challenges that simply arent present for religious groups. He knowingly adds, There are certain things that we wouldnt want to replicate from the Religious Right even if it were structurally possible to do so because they run counter to our values as atheists and humanists. Perhaps critics of the secular movements less centralized approach to leadership lack the imagination to conceive of models of leadership that differ from those employed by many religious institutions.

Regarding media representation, Fish lamented the tendency of the media to focus on New Atheist leaders and their angry, often bigoted style of atheist advocacy, when journalists should be looking to actual policy advocates, community leaders, and grassroots activists. Says Fish, Its certainly easier to always go back to the same people, but this does a tremendous disservice to promoting understanding of this community as it exists today. As Fish sees it, journalists dont quite know how to talk about this elephant in the room: the fact that almost a third of Americans are no longer part of an organized religious tradition, and no legacy media outlet does a particularly good job.

To speak of this significant percentage of the population as merely having lost something, or lacking something is at once offensive and ignorant. And so long as the legacy media continue to portray the nones in this way without actually talking to us, their reporting will inevitably imply that the nonreligious do not deserve to be taken seriously.

This brings us back to the new secular media project, OnlySky. Founded by Silicon Valley tech veteran Shawn Hardin, who now acts as its CEO, OnlySky already boasts an impressive group of contributors who are well known in secular circles. These include Pitzer College Professor Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist whose books on lived secularism are highly valued in the atheist and humanist communities.

Speaking to RD as a columnist, feature writer, and editor for OnlySky, Zuckerman explained that the outlet, which was in development from early 2020, quickly became a haven for popular atheist bloggers, including Hemant Mehta and Captain Cassidy, who were pushed out of the blogging site Patheos by onerous new guidelines requiring bloggers to avoid politics and criticism of other worldviews, two things increasingly important to our writers since the merging of evangelicalism and conservative politics in 2016.

But while Patheos Nonreligious was focused tightly on the self-declared atheist and humanist demographic, OnlySky aims to serve a much broader audiencethe 1 in 3 Americans who identify as having no religion, says Zuckerman.The hope is that OnlySky will be the main go-to media hub for secular, post-religious Americansor for people simply interested in a secular slant on the world and on current events.

Zuckerman and Levin, OnlySkys director of advocacy, both share the general frustration with media misrepresentation of secularism that RD found among secular advocates. But is a secular media outlet the best way to address that issue, given that American atheist and humanist thought already exists largely in a silo, exerting little influence on anyone not already in the club?

Asked this very pointed question, Levin was ready with a powerful answer. If we reach even a quarter of the 29% of unaffiliated [in the American population], our reach will certainly match if not exceed that of many mainstream publications.

Marketing, too, will play an important role in getting the public to understand that the nonreligious constitute a relatively cohesive demographic worthy of attention from both advertisers and politicians. We are often dismissed as this nebulous, loosely connected group of people that cant possibly be reached in a targeted way that would meaningfully impact, for example, a candidates election prospects or a businesss bottom line, says Levin.

OnlySky is taking on the ambitious task of changing this perception, and I can only wish them godspeed, so to speak. The nones are not the only large and complex demographic out there, Levin observes. Complexity hasnt stopped politicians or advertisers from targeting the Latino community, for example. But unlike Latinos, the nones are not generally treated as a group worth researching and targeting. Levins a smart strategist, and her enthusiasm for the project is contagious. In success, she maintains, OnlySky will prove that nonreligious Americans are a cultural, political and economic force to be fully reckoned with. Given the disproportionate political power of the Christian Right and the progressive and pluralistic tendencies of the nones, lets hope shes right.

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Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn't Know it From the Media - Religion Dispatches

A TATTOO fan has caused a stir on social media with their Virgin Mary inking.

A video showcasing the tattoo was shared on TikTok by Kay Wilder, as she praised "one of the best worst tattoos I have ever seen".

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The tattoo, on a woman's upper arm, showed the Virgin Mary with a halo of light above her head, wearing a flowing pink robe.

The inking also featured the words, "You thought God was an architect, now you know" written in a somewhat bizarre order around the image.

But it was the saint's robe that provoked the most response among commenters on the video - with many people suggesting they could see a vulva in the design.

"Now I want a vulva mary as a tat," one person commented, while another added: "Holy Lady Garden, Batman."

"I never even got to the words," someone else commented.

Others wondered if the design had been a deliberate move by the tattoo artist.

"This had to have been intentional right?" one person wondered.

While another asked: "Atheist tattoo artist wanted to see how far they could go?"

"This tat is probably the worst I've ever seen," another person added.

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Speaking of bad tattoos, this mum had a cat tattooed on her bikini line but the inking now looks trashy.

This mum cried over her daughter's tattooed sleeve, but some people have said she needs to get a grip.

And this OnlyFans model is labelled a demon due to her tattooed body and ink-injected eyes, but had a traditional, Christian upbringing.

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Tattoo fan left red-faced after Virgin Mary inking looks rather rude thanks to shape of robe... - The US Sun

Emily Kawasaki and Mark Horton Smith in a disused LDS church in Salt Lake City, Utah. In Mormon culture, many people feel the pandemic and general discord are signs the second coming of Jesus is nigh, even to the neglect of the science and reason behind the turmoil, Horton Smith said. To me, thats terrifying. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Homeschooled in a strict Christian household in western Maryland, Laura Parks* would murmur to herself thank you so much, God when things went well; and help me, God when they didnt. She huddled in prayer almost every night with her parents and five siblings, and remembers peeking out during prayers to catch the eye of an equally curious brother or sister grinning back. But once she was away from home to study at Princeton, a freshman year philosophy class and a friendship with a gay classmate began to tug at the threads of her tightly wound upbringing and the worldview she had inherited.

The next summer she gathered the nerve to tell her parents she no longer believed in God, and they refused to continue paying her university tuition. She spiraled into a major depressive episode.

When I first left my religion, I felt quite isolated, she said. I started group therapy that helped me regain trust in a community. I used to gain a sense of calm from prayer and my Bible. Now I find it in other places.

*Name altered at request of subject.

The tumultuous state of the world has revealed the importance of maintaining an inner balance and sense of hope. But hope can be harder to cling to as an ex-religious person, said Parks, who volunteered at Princetons suicide hotline. Because so much of my life feels shaken loose, I try to get out of my own tangled thoughts by making a pot of tea or dancing in front of the mirror or folding laundry. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

The doldrums of isolationfeelings now well known to many in the pandemic eraare especially heavy for anyone shunned by family and friends for choosing to shed their former beliefs.

This demographic has been steadily increasing in the United States. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of religious composition reveals nearly 30 percent of the U.S. is now religiously unaffiliated, and the ranks of self-described atheists and agnostics have almost doubled to 9 percent in the past decade.

Secularizing is an unusually bumpy ride when it involves leaving behind the familiar structures of a daily life governed by rules and conformity. Dr. Marlene Winell, a psychologist whose work was inspired by her own exit from fundamentalism, described the PTSD-like emotional and mental turmoil as religious trauma syndrome.

For Pesach Eisen, it was a gradual exodus from an Orthodox sect of Hasidic Jews in Borough Park, Brooklyn, but it was no less turbulent. I left home because the person I turned into couldnt exist in that environment. I needed freedom, he said. I lost my faith in religion and God. My family threatened me and tried to make me feel guilt and shame. I struggled financially. Making friends and dating was rough because Id never spoken to a member of the opposite sex. I had to restructure my identity and moral system with therapy. Leaving an insular religious community is not for the faint of heart.

I always wondered about the saying no atheists in foxholes. Now I know there are, Eisen said. During the pandemic in New York City, not even for a second have I wished I still had religion and faith. I find myself wishing for a world where even devoutly religious folks look to science, medicine, and reason to guide their choices. In my former community, immeasurable harm and death transpired because of anti-science misinformation and conspiracies. This is not only a fundamentalist problem; its an American problem. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

The internet allowed Eisen to compare notes and bond with other people on similar journeys, and it did the same for Delissa McAdoo. Initially she went online as a convenient way to worship. As streaming church services gained popularity, McAdoo traded the crowded pews of local prosperity gospel megachurches in Fayetteville, Georgia, for the comfort of watching from home.

During this time, I started vigorously studying the Bible and other religions, she said. The more I dug in, the more I found Id been lied to and brainwashed. The silver bullet was when I realized preachers wereexploiting members for their own financial gain. This revelation made me sick. I was a member of a finance ministry teaching tithing to seniors and poor single mothers. I went into a deep depression because Id been teaching a lie to people of limited financial means.

In the heavily religious South, McAdoo, who is a small-business owner, found community and camaraderie with Black Nonbelievers, an Atlanta area non-profit founded by Mandisa Thompson for Blacks and allies living free of religion who might otherwise be shunned by family and friends. There, she met Drai Salmon, a student at Spelman University whose views were shaped by witnessing similar misdeeds. Salmon had seen her grandmother struggle financially after donating large chunks of her retirement savings toward church renovations that never materialized as promised.

In this so-called cultural consciousness environment of being woke, people cannot be truly woke if their life centers around unprovable non-historical events, biblical contradictions, and lies. Wokeness and religion cannot coexist, McAdoo said.Ive received mixed reactions upon revealing Im a staunch non-believer. While dining with a group of friends, I was cursed out. When I told my aunt, she became physically ill and lost her appetite. Ive been a victim of cancel culture with former church friends. Yet, I completely understand their actions because of the roles Ive held in the church. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

The seeds of doubt for an apostate can take root in silence for a long time before curiosity and courage finally pry open a window. Neftaly Aldana, a former Jehovahs Witness who spent nearly all his life within the border lines of the austere religion, says he always felt deep down that something wasnt right.

But it wasnt until his mid-forties, during a rough patch in his marriage and a visit with an estranged sister whod already distanced herself from the church, that he finally put his faith under a microscope.

When I got home from that trip, it was the first time I allowed myself to question my beliefs. I needed to know if what I believed was real or not. Within a week or so it all came tumbling down, he said.

Im 45 and didnt even realize my birthday was in October because you dont celebrate those things. I will celebrate my birthday and other holidays now. Ive even donated blood twice, which was a huge sin, said Aldana, pictured in a suit he once wore to proselytize as a Jehovahs Witness in New York City. Im grateful I can think for myself and have self-determination now and can give that to my children. I look at my kids and just think if someone had talked to me about this stuff, how different my life could have been. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Hoover Street in South Los Angeles, California, January 12, 2021. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

An afterlife of hellfire is an ever-lurking threat in many fundamentalist religions. The idea of a spiritual plane designed to maximize suffering might seem redundant when news headlines are filled with reports of mass death and sickness, climate catastrophes, toxic political polarization, gaping wealth inequality, and rampant conspiracy theories, but for someone raised under the guillotine of eternal damnation the concept is less abstract.

During Harley Hancheys teenage years in a Southern Baptist household, her fear of sinfulness was so great that intrusive thoughts and feelings of shame led to self-harm as a way to relieve the pressure.

By the time I left, I was firmly atheist, and still terrified of hell, Hanchey said. For years the terror stuck around. The fear that I would suffer and burn when I died. Even after rejecting the hypocrisy, the fear is hard to shake. It took years, but I am so content with who I am now. I feel like a good person.

Now raising three children in the rural township of Galien, Michigan, where she works as a mail-carrier, Hanchey allows her kids to choose their own beliefs, rather than prescribe them. Her youngest identifies as a Christian, while her oldest, Trent, identifies as an atheist, like her.

My kids dont believe in Santa because they asked me and I told them, she said. I love being genuine. And my kids appreciate it too. Theyve learned to be genuinely themselves. Especially with me. They know I wont lie to them and were very close. Its not always smooth sailing, but what family is?There are a lot of microaggressions and intrusions on rights involved in being an atheist in America. If youre like me and from a religious family, as a kid you lie and lie and lie and are scared a lot of the time. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Torah Bontrager wasnt given such a choice on the midwestern Amish farms where she grew up without electricity and English was only spoken as a second language. If she hadnt escaped out a window one night as a teenager, she would likely have only received a rudimentary high school education from Amish teachers with limited educations themselves.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder that a parents freedom of religion outweighed the states interest in educating their child, opening the door for religious parents to homeschool their kids beyond the 8th grade.

Only Justice William O. Douglasan appointee of FDRwrote a dissenting opinion in the case: On this important and vital matter of education, I think the children should be entitled to be heard. The education of the child is a matter on which the child will often have decided views. He may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanographer. It is the future of the students, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by todays decision.

Bontragers views were decided enough that she risked everything to start over as a teenager. Hungry for a serious education and new opportunities, she went on to graduate from Columbia University in New York, and now lives in Harlem, where she works to help overturn Wisconsin v. Yoder.

My lifes work is about making sure that not another American child is forced to escape in the middle of the night just for a chance to go to school, she said. Children are not property; they have inalienable rights and those rights need active protection.

The pandemic helped me realize that I need the physical presence of humans who are strangers, Bontrager said. The experience of social isolation helped me understand that humans are wired to be social in order to stay healthy. I hadnt believed that applied to me because of my negative childhood experiences. Now I see that simply by virtue of being human, I need other humans around me. (All photos by Elijah Hurwitz)

Adjusting to life after religious disaffiliation takes resilience and patience. Today Jana Fisher works as an artist-manager in Los Angeles, but she was raised in a family of evangelical ministers and likely would have followed in their footsteps if women were allowed to become pastors in her church. After attending college and experiencing bigger cities, she immersed herself in queer communities where she finally became comfortable with her identity and found a feeling of camaraderie she had missed since leaving church.

Fisher credits the exvangelical community on Reddit and podcasts like Born Again Again for helping her break old thought patterns, but she says it was the writings of outspoken atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins that forced her to reckon with the idea of a godless world.

To my surprise, I found the prospect devastatingly lonely. I found myself driving down a highway sobbing when I realized that I was in fact completely alone, she said. But confronting the absence of God pushed me to connect more deeply with other people. I believe we are all inherently worthy and capable of great good.

Religion was the driving force of my life, and rather than being anti-religion, I am now in a place where religions role or its absence in my life is not something I think about, Fisher said. I cant imagine putting myself back in a box where I worry about what other people believe or what I should believe.

In the early 1900s, the German poet Rainier Maria Rilke veered from a Catholic upbringing and wrestled with his beliefs in various poems and letters. One of his famous lines, Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final, reads like a mantra against despair, a reminder that existence drifts onward, and time can heal.

The pandemic years have tested everyone in surprising ways, with some believers even saying it strengthened their faith. But for a growing number of American non-believers, it is the cushion of new communities, trust in evidence-based science and self-care, and confidence in their rebuilt identities that propels them to just keep going.

Elijah Hurwitz is a photographer based in Los Angeles, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, WIRED, The Atlantic, TIME, and Politico Magazine.Follow his work on Instagram and elijahsol.com.

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States of Disbelief: Non-Believers Wrestle with Life After Religion - Religion & Politics