Welcome to Week 4 of my series on gender and spirituality: Intersections: Exploring Gender and Spirituality. You can read the other interviews here.

***

This week we’re going to consider the sizable number of people in the world who simply don’t identify with religion, belief, or spirituality at all: agnostics and atheists. Interestingly as an interviewer, I found that my questions were flawed as a religious person and they didn’t acknowledge or cater to folks who hold a lack of belief. I appreciate my interviewees grappling with these flawed questions; it made for some thought-provoking answers.

The strict definition of agnostic is “a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable” while an atheist is defined as "a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods". Their commonality comes from the defining trait of non-belief. As Sarah frankly put it, "I don't practice a religion because I don't believe in a religion.” One of my interviewees, Emmy, noted that she identifies with both words depending on the context of the situation due to the connotations of the words.

Interestingly, the idea of family and religion came up more with my atheist/agnostic interviewees. Sarah was “never raised with a particular religion” but their family is “culturally Catholic”. Taya felt she’s “not sure if [becoming atheist] was a choice," as she is from a spiritual family. Her “life experiences and other people made [her] atheist rather than agnostic”. Emmy, at the request of her father, spent a good while “doing a bunch of research” to explore other religious options. He challenged Emmy to “make a case to [him] that [another religion] is better than Protestant[ism]”.

Emmy found that she loved certain parts of other religions, “different levels of Heaven in Mormonism” or “the belief in goodness in Buddhism”, but no religion as a whole felt compelling to her. She did note that she “didn’t give [Islam] a full chance” because she had patriarchal preconceived notions about Islam and covering as a woman (Read the perspective of two Muslim feminists here).

Emmy “wanted a complete commitment or nothing at all […] a perfect fit in how [she] identif[ies]”. She also wanted a religious community to belong to which limited her search being from a mostly Christian area. Then Emmy began to consider that she doesn't "have to check all the boxes, [she] could believe in little snippets” and began wondering “Could [she] be happy not believing in another [religion] at all?" It was a gradual realization that a “life without belief” wasn’t necessarily a deficient one. However, Emmy feels the journey isn’t over: “religion is a lifelong question, especially when you die”. Right now, as a busy student, she says "the search has been put on hold […] later on when I need a religion, I’ll come back”

Regarding gender, Sarah felt that agnosticism was neutral because it’s a “non-religion” without “a holy book that would espouse patriarchal views […] [but] there are a lot of misogynistic atheist men out there, for what that’s worth”. For Emmy, as a cis woman who is agnostic/atheist, these “two widely identifiable traits in society, doesn't change the way people think about [her]”. Taya felt similarly; gender and religion “don’t really at all for [her]”; however “I feel like religion in general is rather masculine […] when I think of religion I think of power and generally male power […] not being open to different gender identities”. The image of a male Catholic priest generally came to mind for Taya.

Taya and Sarah considering themselves part of “culturally Catholic” families raises an interesting point. Religion and belief systems aren’t simply deeply personal connections (or lack thereof) with a higher power or philosophy; they have cultural power and often political power as well. Sarah spoke eloquently on this point “Religiously I have privilege along with people [who] don’t need to notice that part of themselves.” As for their gender, “[They] don’t have privilege”, even though being non-binary and being agnostic are both “defined by [their] lack”. Society, in Sarah’s case, makes a larger issue of their gender rather than their (lack of) religion.

I’d like to thank my interviewees for discussing their non-beliefs with me. I think that’s an important perspective to consider when discussing gender and religion. For some folks, both are a central part of their identity, but for others, one is salient while the other isn’t. For some, neither identification has significance in their lives.