Blog
Jerry Johnston Interviews Lois Lee – Founding Director of the Nonreligion and Secularity Network
Lois Lee had just arrived back in London, England after her honeymoon when Cristie Jo Johnston and I filmed with her. She is quite unique and very articulate. Lois writes: “I joined the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent in 2017 as a Research Fellow, and will take up my post as lecturer in 2019. I am Principle Investigator on the Scientific Study of Non-religious Belief project (UCL Institute of Advanced Studies) and the Understanding Unbelief programme (Religious Studies, University of Kent), both majorly funded by the John Templeton Foundation. I have a strong interest in working with research communities in the wide dissemination of research. I am founding director of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN), co-editor of the journal, Secularism and Nonreligion (S&N) and co-editor of the NSRN book series, Religion and Its Others: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion and Secularity (De Gruyter). I also work with community groups as well as national and local media to disseminate my own and NSRN research outside of academia.”
NONES are the third largest religion? An “increasing large population”? People attend “atheist” churches? What’s going on? If anyone understands secularity and non belief Lois Lee does. Listen to this clip. Lois refers to “doing a lot of studies with psychology students in the U.S.” – and then she adds, “so a lot of what we know about the atheist mind is really the atheist mind of some students in the U.S.” (United States). Whoa! That is a bit puzzling. Again, Lois is one of the world’s foremost leaders in secularity.
That is why Cristie and I am on an investigative journey. Why is there such an alarming high number of university students from Christian backgrounds who leave the church after their years in college? There seems to be an easy check-out system going on. It is time to drill down and discover why.