“SOFiA is a network of Australians interested in openly exploring issues of life and meaning through reason, philosophy, ethics, religion, science and the arts. We want to explore for ourselves what we can believe and how we can find meaning in our lives.”
“SOFiA has no philosophical or religious position beyond a desire to ‘openly explore’: it is a forum for discussing ideas, experiences and possibilities.”
“Any who find themselves in sympathy with our purpose – exploring life and meaning in an open and non-dogmatic manner – are most welcome to join us.”
SOFiA website
This draft SoFiA position statement does not seek to change the IDEAL of the above statement, the ideal, though, it does not reflect our current reality. Exploring life and meaning in an open and non-dogmatic manner means accepting the philosophical reality. The ideal can be retained but a position statement should not be vague about how reality is shaping the thinking within the SoFiA organisation. There is no conflict between the SoFiA’s ideal and the fact that the organisation will advance its thinking in diverse ways.
What is the current philosophical reality in SoFiA?
In the last decade there has merged three positionings of thinking, not merely within SoFiA but also in the world that examines “issues of life and meaning through reason, philosophy, ethics, religion, science and the arts.”
NONES: declared no religious or organisational affiliation;
DONES: declared no institutional or formal affiliation;
MAINS: where there is declared affiliation, opposite of “nones” and “dones” and this is the traditional and mainstream outlook (a horizon worldview), and in the “main”, which has not caught up in the “historical delay.”
Lets be clear and frank. All three positions within SoFiA are legitimate, valid in reasoning, and are most welcomed with the SoFiA organisation.
The literature (see references below) has been developing on these three positions, and the point is that, in all three positions, within the positional thinking, the “issues of life and meaning through reason, philosophy, ethics, religion, science and the arts” are all contested. This does not mean that there is no actual positional thinking. The “Nones” most certainly have given up on religious or organisational affiliation. The statistics declare that the “Nones” as the fastest and largest growing grouping in belief systems for intellectually western nations. However, the statistics are most vague what the “Nones” means in terms of positive affirmations. The “Dones” are likely wise not easy to discern and there is some overlap with “Nones.” The difference with “Dones” is the no institutional or formal affiliation which means more than not having religious or organisational affiliation. It is a complete rejection of organised belief.
In reality, that is, in the unthinking ‘congregations’ of society, many of the “Mains” can also be hidden “Nones” or “Dones” and are persons only playing a game of convention. However, there are genuine intellectual “mains” who honestly declared their particular affiliation. They are also welcomed into the SoFiA family. Tradition evolves which means that the ideal and shifting reality can co-exist.
REFERENCES
Allen, I., & Allen, S. (2016). God Terms and Activity Systems: A Definition of Religion for Political Science. Political Research Quarterly, 69(3), 557–570. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44018555
Ammerman, N. T. (2013). Spiritual But Not Religious? Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52(2), 258–278. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24644008
Baker, J. O., & Smith, B. G. (2009). The Nones: Social Characteristics of the Religiously Unaffiliated. Social Forces, 87(3), 1251–1263. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40345160
Baurain, B. (2011). Common Ground With A Common Faith: Dewey’s Idea of the “Religious.” Education and Culture, 27(2), 74–91. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5703/educationculture.27.2.74
Boutyline, A., & Vaisey, S. (2017). Belief Network Analysis: A Relational Approach to Understanding the Structure of Attitudes. American Journal of Sociology, 122(5), 1371–1447. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26545920
Burge, R. P. (2020). How Many “Nones” Are There? Explaining the Discrepancies in Survey Estimates. Review of Religious Research, 62(1), 173–190. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45286731
Condran, J. G., & Tamney, J. B. (1985). Religious “Nones”: 1957 to 1982. Sociological Analysis, 46(4), 415–423. https://doi.org/10.2307/3711157
Djupe, P. A., Neiheisel, J. R., & Conger, K. H. (2018). Are the Politics of the Christian Right Linked to State Rates of the Nonreligious? The Importance of Salient Controversy. Political Research Quarterly, 71(4), 910–922. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26600637
Duncan, A. W. (2017). Sacred Pregnancy in the Age of the “Nones.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 85(4), 1089–1115. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48556268
Edgell, P., Hartmann, D., Stewart, E., & Gerteis, J. (2016). Atheists and Other Cultural Outsiders: Moral Boundaries and the Non-Religious in the United States. Social Forces, 95(2), 607–638. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26166844
García, A., & Blankholm, J. (2016). The Social Context of Organized Nonbelief: County-Level Predictors of Nonbeliever Organizations in the United States. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 55(1), 70–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26651414
Glendinning, Tony. (2006). Religious Involvement, Conventional Christian, and Unconventional Nonmaterialist Beliefs. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 45(4), 585–595. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4621937
Goldstein, Michael. “Adjusting Belief Structures.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological) 50, no. 1 (1988): 133–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2345816.
Greer, B. A., & Roof, W. C. (1992). “Desperately Seeking Sheila”: Locating Religious Privatism in American Society. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31(3), 346–352. https://doi.org/10.2307/1387125
Hadaway, C. K., & Roof, W. C. (1979). Those Who Stay Religious “Nones” and Those Who Don’t: A Research Note. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 18(2), 194–200. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385940
Hilbert, R. A. (1987). Bureaucracy as Belief, Rationalization as Repair: Max Weber in a Post-Functionalist Age. Sociological Theory, 5(1), 70–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/201996
Hout, M., & Fischer, C. S. (2002). Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations. American Sociological Review, 67(2), 165–190. https://doi.org/10.2307/3088891
Jenkins, J. R. (2020). Is Religiosity a Black Thing?: Reading the Black None in Octavia E. Butler’s “The Book of Martha.” Pacific Coast Philology, 55(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.55.1.0005
Jung, J. H. (2015). Sense of Divine Involvement and Sense of Meaning in Life: Religious Tradition as a Contingency. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(1), 119–133. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24644249
Kalmoe, N. P. (2020). Uses and Abuses of Ideology in Political Psychology. Political Psychology, 41(4), 771–793. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45295275
Lim, C., MacGregor, C. A., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Secular and Liminal: Discovering Heterogeneity Among Religious Nones. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 49(4), 596–618. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40959050
Lim, C. (2015). Religion and Subjective Well-Being Across Religious Traditions: Evidence from 1.3 Million Americans. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(4), 684–701. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26651391
Miller, C. (2016). “Spiritual But Not Religious”: Rethinking the Legal Definition of Religion. Virginia Law Review, 102(3), 833–894. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43923324
Olson, P. J., & Beckworth, D. (2011). Religious Change and Stability: Seasonality in Church Attendance from the 1940s to the 2000s. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(2), 388–396. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41307082
Packard, J., & Ferguson, T. W. (2019). Being Done: Why People Leave the Church, But Not Their Faith. Sociological Perspectives, 62(4), 499–517. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26746198
Salinas, A. (2010). Political Philosophy in Borges: Fallibility, Liberal Anarchism, and Civic Ethics. The Review of Politics, 72(2), 299–324. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20780307
Schnell, T., & Keenan, W. J. F. (2011). Meaning-Making in an Atheist World. Archiv Für Religionspsychologie / Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 33(1), 55–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23918907
Sepulvado, B., Hachen, D., Penta, M., & Lizardo, O. (2015). Social Affiliation from Religious Disaffiliation: Evidence of Selective Mixing Among Youth with No Religious Preference During the Transition to College. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(4), 833–841. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26651399
Sheils, Dean. (1980). The Great Ancestors Are Watching A Cross-Cultural Study of Superior Ancestral Religion. Sociological Analysis, 41(3), 247–257. https://doi.org/10.2307/3710401
Strhan, A., & Shillitoe, R. (2019). The Stickiness of Non-Religion? Intergenerational Transmission and the Formation of Non-Religious Identities in Childhood. Sociology, 53(6), 1094–1110. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26972328
Tamney, J. B., Powell, S., & Johnson, S. (1989). Innovation Theory and Religious Nones. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 28(2), 216–229. https://doi.org/10.2307/1387060
Thiessen, J., & Wilkins-Laflamme, S. (2017). Becoming a Religious None: Irreligious Socialization and Disaffiliation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 56(1), 64–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26651857
Vernon, G. M. (1968). The Religious “Nones”: A Neglected Category. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 7(2), 219–229. https://doi.org/10.2307/1384629
Wilkins-Laflamme, S. (2016). Secularization and the Wider Gap in Values and Personal Religiosity Between the Religious and Nonreligious. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 55(4), 717–736. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26651610
Zwingmann, C., & Gottschling, S. (2015). Religiosity, Spirituality, and God Concepts: Interreligious and Interdenominational Comparisons Within a German Sample. Archiv Für Religionspsychologie / Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 37(1), 98–116. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43973388
Neville Buch
Historian,
President, Sea of Faith in Australia Inc. (SoFiA)
Professional Historians Australia (Queensland)
Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES)
Convenor, Sociology of Education Thematic Group, The Australian Sociological Association (TASA).
President, Southern Brisbane Suburban Forum (SBSF).
Director, Brisbane Southside History Network (BSHN).
MPHA (Qld), Ph.D. (History) UQ., Grad. Dip. Arts (Philosophy) Melb., Grad. Dip. (Education) UQ.
Neville Buch
Latest posts by Neville Buch (see all)
- Let’s See - November 7, 2024
- It is Not Good - November 6, 2024
- The Lost Intellect of Corporate, Entrepreneurial, Employment Companies - November 6, 2024