Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About

Contentment, by Phil Zuckerman, New York, New York University Press, 2008, ix +
227 pp., $21 (paperback), ISBN 13: 978-0-8147-9723-5

Review for Mortality

This beautifully written and carefully argued book comprises a study of the mentality
of Scandinavians in regard to God, religion and the afterlife. The author, a secular
Jewish American sociologist of religion, spent 14 months living with his family in
Aarhus, Denmark; he interviewed 149 individuals, mainly in Denmark but also on
short visits to Sweden. Religion is booming around the world, with the exception of
western Europe, especially Scandinavia which contains possibly the most secular
societies the world has ever known, with very low levels of belief in God and life
after death, and low levels of church attendance. Unlike some dictatorships in which
atheism has been imposed, Scandinavia comprises democracies whose people have
chosen to be secular. What then is it like to live in a truly secular society?
Zuckerman’s interviews, in line with a multitude of international indicators,
show Denmark to be a particularly healthy, happy, contented, law abiding, good
society. He argues that this clearly falsifies the predictions of religious
fundamentalists (whether Christian or Islamic) that a society without God, and one
that tolerates homosexuality and abortion, will descend into all manner of social
malaises.
Okay, so what has this study of secularity got to do with mortality? According
to Zuckerman, quite a lot. As well as being a test case for the fundamentalists’
predictions, Denmark is also a test case for the view, held by several scholars, that a)
fear and anxiety about death are universal, b) religion is motivated by this universal
anxiety/fear, and c) if the consolations of religion are lost, anxiety about death will
resurface. What, then, does Zuckerman find in his interviews with Danes?
They turn out to be as unconcerned about death and dying as they are about
religion. They accept that, like all animals, we expire, and that is the end. Eternal
souls and heaven are not part of their picture, still less fears of hell. Nor are Danes
much bothered about the ultimate meaning of life. But this acceptance of death does
not lead to fatalism, nor does the lack of interest in ultimate meaning lead to
shallowness. Rather, Danes live their lives fully, in relation to more proximate
meanings, making a good life for themselves and their family, with a good dose of
creativity and civic engagement added in for good measure. (Compared to most
countries, Danes are more likely to belong to voluntary associations, and to vote.)
How does Zuckerman explain his Danish utopia? He draws on Norris and
Inglehart’s thesis that the more secure a society, and also the more egalitarian (so that
even the affluent are not anxious about falling back into insecurity), the less religious
it need be. And if oneself and one’s children can lead a happy, prosperous life, free of
war and the fear of crime, if there is good health care, and more to the point, good
elder care, what is there to fear about death? And what is to be gained by an afterlife?
Other scholars may possibly be correct that religion is connected to a fear of death,
but not universally – the relation may hold only in those societies (historically, the
vast majority) where insecurity generates both widespread death anxiety and
widespread needs for religious consolation.
Most studies about death anxiety are either philosophical treatises (e.g. Becker
1973), or entail the administration of psychological scales to comparatively religious
North Americans. Zuckerman takes a usefully different approach, first by looking at a
more carefully chosen society, and second by probing its very secular citizens’ lived
experience. Easy reading, but some may find this book challenges their cherished
assumptions.

BECKER, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press.

NORRIS, P. & INGLEHART, R. (2004). Sacred and secular. Cambridge University
Press.

TONY WALTER
University of Bath, UK