Believing to Belong: Non-religious Belief as a Path to Inclusion

Abstract

Explicitly non-religious summer camps for children are a relatively new phenomenon in North America, bringing together a diverse group of people identifying themselves using a variety of terms including, but not limited to, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, or even brights. After spending a week at Camp Quest Montana I observed that this community felt themselves to be misunderstood by popular and academic representations of atheism. Most striking was the misconception felt by those at Camp Quest that people like themselves who do not believe in gods or religious belief are thought to have a god-shaped hole in their lives where religious belief once existed or should exist. With the utilization of ethnographic methodologies I hope to show that the diverse community brought together by Camp Quest is not one lacking in beliefs, or that believes in nothing. Instead, this paper argues that this pervasive perception regarding non-religious individuals has caused the actual beliefs of this community to become obscured by discourses concerning the logical coherence of atheist texts and statements. This misguided focus has left the individuals at Camp Quest to feel persecuted, misunderstood, and restricted in expressing their beliefs. A better understanding of this small but growing community may provide insights into how non-religious people cannot only recognize their own community but experience feelings of belonging to this community while also revealing pathways towards inclusion that have been overlooked.