Effervescent Atheism: Embodiment and Collective Identity at the Global Atheist Convention

doi:10.1558/firn.v9i2.17523

Fieldwork in Religion, Vol 9, No 2 (2014)

Effervescent Atheism: Embodiment and Collective Identity at the Global Atheist Convention

Cale Leslie Hubble

Issued Date: 3 Aug 2015

Abstract

The Global Atheist Convention (GAC) held in Melbourne, Australia on 13-15 April 2012 gave participants an opportunity to instantiate their atheist identities in the context of embodied, shared activity. The existence of “experiential atheism” – the embodied, collective, physical realization of the ideological position – has been proposed but not widely studied. This article uses the interaction ritual model of Randall Collins to understand the Global Atheist Convention as an example of experiential atheism. Being surrounded by a crowd of like identifying bodies, sharing a mood, behaviours and a focus of attention with them and having a boundary to outsiders created the conditions for collective effervescence at the convention. This ratified attendees’ shared representations of the atheist collective and emotively affirmed their affiliation with those representations.

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DOI: 10.1558/firn.v9i2.17523

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