Nonreligious Identity in Three Western European Countries: A Closer Look at Nonbelievers’ Self-identifications and Attitudes Towards Religion

Abstract

ABSTRACT The growing secularism generates considerable interest in the manifestations of religious unbelief. In this study, conducted in Finland, Denmark, and the Netherland (N = 4404), we asked participants which of the following terms best describes their religious/spiritual identity: religious believer, spiritual but not religious, spiritual seeker, atheist, anti-religious, agnostic, nonbeliever, secular, or other. We also examined the participants’ God beliefs and their attitudes toward religion. While connotations of identity terms varied considerably across individuals and countries, the nonreligious identification groups consistently differed in the strength and certainty of God belief, and by the valence, ambivalence, importance, and reflection of the attitudes toward religion. The anti-religious had the most negative and unequivocal attitudes, and the agnostics, seculars, and spiritual seekers had the most uncertain God beliefs. By associating distinct attitude profiles with non-religious self-identification labels, the findings improve our understanding of why people choose a specific label in surveys on non-religiosity.