Acquiring Atheist Identities

Abstract

This chapter explores people’s accounts of what it felt like to first identify as atheists. In talking about this, they rely on one of two acquisition frames. The teleological frame depicts atheism as an outcome of one’s personal growth, whereas the situational frame casts it in terms of being a consequence of one’s lived context. In providing these accounts, they also say that identifying as an atheist took either a modest or a considerable level of effort on their part. Taken together, these two sets of categories provide four “ideal types” of atheist identity acquisition narratives: inquisitives (teleological frame, modest effort); searchers (teleological frame, considerable effort); consolidators (situational frame; modest effort); and responders (situational frame; considerable effort). Most of this chapter is focused on describing these four narrative types in detail.