A Best Book of 2014, Publishers Weekly
“Zuckerman is a sociologist who in this groundbreaking book writes clearly, offers
unobtrusive statistical support, and provides a persuasive and comprehensive look at the
growing contemporary phenomenon of people who choose to live without religion, but
with ethics and meaning in their lives.”
Over the last twenty-five years, “no religion” has become the fastest-growing religion in the
United States. Around the world, hundreds of millions of people have turned away from
the traditional faiths of the past and embraced a moral yet nonreligious—or secular—life,
generating societies vastly less religious than at any other time in human history. Revealing
the inspiring beliefs that empower secular culture—alongside real stories of nonreligious
men and women based on extensive in-depth interviews from across the country—Living
the Secular Life will be indispensable for millions of secular Americans.
Drawing on innovative sociological research, Living the Secular Life illuminates this
demographic shift with the moral convictions that govern secular individuals, offering
crucial information for the religious and nonreligious alike. Living the Secular Life reveals
that, despite opinions to the contrary, nonreligious Americans possess a unique moral code
that allows them to effectively navigate the complexities of modern life. Spiritual selfreliance,
clear-eyed pragmatism, and an abiding faith in the Golden Rule to adjudicate
moral decisions: these common principlesare shared across secular society. Living the
Secular Life demonstrates these principles in action and points to their usage throughout
daily life.
Phil Zuckerman is a sociology professor at Pitzer College, where he studied the lives of the
nonreligious for years before founding a Department of Secular Studies, the first academic
program in the nation dedicated to exclusively studying secular culture and the sociological
consequences of America’s fastest-growing “faith.” Zuckerman discovered that despite the
entrenched negative beliefs about nonreligious people, American secular culture is
grounded in deep morality and proactive citizenship—indeed, some of the very best that the
country has to offer.
Living the Secular Life journeys through some of the most essential components of human
existence—child rearing and morality, death and ritual, community and beauty—and offers
secular readers inspiration for leading their own lives. Zuckerman shares eye-opening
research that reveals the enduring moral strength of children raised without religion, as
well as the hardships experienced by secular mothers in the rural South where church
attendance defines the public space. Despite the real sorrows of mortality, Zuckerman
conveys the deep psychological health of secular individuals in their attitudes toward
illness, death, and dying. Tracking the efforts of nonreligious groups to construct their own
communities, Zuckerman shows how Americans are building institutions and cultivating
relationships without religious influence. Most of all, Living the Secular Life infuses the
sociological data and groundbreaking research with the moral convictions that govern
secular individuals, and demonstrates how readers can integrate these beliefs into their
own lives.
A manifesto for a booming social movement—and a revelatory survey of this overlooked
community—Living the Secular Life offers essential and long-awaited information for
anyone building a life based on his or her own principles.