When discussing religion, I like to inform people that I have been an atheist for almost fifty years. As is common with unfamiliar groups, we tend to get lumped into a uniform monolith, which is particularly peculiar for a group of people whose only unifying quality is that they don't deal with gods. There are in fact many varieties. Their attitudes toward other people's religion vary widely. This does not include other forms of unbelief such as agnosticism, igtheism, apatheism, etc. Some of us unbelievers are in more than one category.

In reading this book, published in 1964, I am reminded that some things are very different. There was a resurgence in religion, or at least religious practice, after World War II. This has ebbed, and other religions are increasingly important in the United States. When Marty was writing, there was little interest in the varieties of unbelief -- in polls they were all lumped together. Now, polls are beginning to distinguish among the varieties, atheists, agnostics, spiritual by not religious, etc. I do wonder why Marty has put so much effort into a phenomenon that he thinks is so trivial. The Christian Bible warns that many unbelievers are to be expected, seeds fall on stony ground or among weeds as the Parable of the Sower has it. Matthew 7:14 says "Narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way, which leads to life, and few find it." This was recommended by another book that I read, as being particularly good on unbelief, but at this time, there are plenty of works by pantheists, atheists, agnostics, and others, which would give the reader a better idea of what they actually think.

Marty is focusing chiefly on Christianity in the United States. In the opening chapters of his book, Marty works very hard on his definitions, trying to be both clear and fair. At the same time, he is stating that secularism and modernity are bad. Since the evidence he offers is chiefly from other religious people, this isn't much of a discussion. He concedes that agnostics and atheists probably want to be where there are, but quoting Auden: "Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there," makes that a slap on the face. He also talks about the coercion involved in fascism and communism, as opposed to the freedom in Christianity. He looks back to a non-existent time when the society was unified by the Christian faith. This is a somewhat odd point of view for a Lutheran clergyman. Viewing Christian religious warfare by the light of burning martyrs and heretics, it doesn't look nearly as lovely as Marty would have it.

Certainly, when more people were Christians, they shared more of a cultural base, but that doesn't mean that they got along. There is a reason why there are hundreds of Christian sects (I read different numbers at different times), and they frequently disliked and distrusted one another and discouraged intermarriage. One of the impetuses for a secular government in the United States is said to be a desire to avoid religious conflicts, which are exacerbated when one religion dominates and tends to try and eliminate its rivals.

He seems to believe that to anyone who really pays attention to the world, it is obvious that there is a god, his God specifically (see his epigraph) and therefore unbelievers are dead to the natural world and wonder. A lot of people would take exception to that, scientists chief among them. He complains that unbelievers have de-sacralized nature, but I think it is truer that the Christians did that when they stamped out paganism.

Marty considers nihilism, anomie, and accidie as forms of unbelief, but that is not necessarily part of the 1% of nonbelievers. This seems rather like the idea that real Christians are necessarily always cheerful and confident. Marty uses the Incarnation and the Trinity, as the basic description of Christianity, but there have been and are thousands of people who believe in neither yet consider themselves to be Christians, and may be serious and ardent church-goers. Gretta Vosper managed to retain her clerical status in the United Church of Canada while being an avowed atheist. The polling figures must therefore be used with caution: it doesn't follow that how Marty defines a believer and how other people define themselves match up.

More than halfway through the book, Marty finally gets to agnostics and atheists. He is eager to distinguish between the two, considering that agnostics and Christians might be able to work together -- or perhaps agnostics might be more open to conversion, which Marty defends several times as loving and caring. Another reason to distinguish is because generally agnostics don't like to be lumped with atheists -- indeed between the more militant members of both persuasions, there has been a great deal of sniping, with mutual accusations of arrogance and cowardice. Marty dismisses Communists and Nazi as not being atheists, because those two systems in themselves are religions, as have other people. In the first place, I think it is dubious to classify the Nazis as atheists; Hitler used a lot of religious language, whatever he himself believed, which would seem to indicate that he expected it to appeal to his followers. Many modern Christian apologists would be upset because they like to use the two groups as weapons against atheists. In a tyranny, moreover, it cannot necessarily be assumed that everyone agrees with the official beliefs, but of course, that would raise questions about how many people throughout history have gone along with religious observances, not because they believed in them, but because there were severe penalties for not going along with them. Even in America today, most people assume that atheists have no morals, and would not vote for an openly atheist political candidate.

Marty spends a great deal of time on nominal Christians who may attend church, but are not what he considers to be proper Christian. This again cuts into the value of the statistics. These people are probably counted into the statistics, since they are self-reports, but clearly, by his standards the numbers of unbelievers is a lot more than 1%. Marty seems to consider this to be entirely the fault of the individuals in the congregation, and never considers that the church hierarchies may be failing. My church was my impetus for leaving Christianity. Many people think that going to college promotes unbelief, but according to some studies, this is only because people in college are adults. Most people, like me, decide to leave when they are in high school, and only wait until they are legal adults to make it official. ( )