Comparing Contested Conceptions of Science in Two Secular Congregations

Research shows that many nonreligious people identify strongly with science and consider it to be their primary epistemic authority. However, much of this research assumes that scientific worldviews among the nonreligious are largely homogenous and few studies attempt to examine diversity in how nonreligious people understand and engage with science or how those differences might lead to differences in nonreligious identities, values, and politics. In this paper, I argue that nonreligious people in fact have a variety of different approaches to science and they embody their scientific worldviews in different ways. I draw on a comparative case study of two secular congregations in the United States that were founded to celebrate scientific and nonreligious worldviews -- The Sunday Assembly and the Church of Perpetual Life -- to show that nonreligious organizations are doing continuous boundary work to construct and defend specific conceptions of science and that these boundaries are often contested and politicized. I highlight debates within and between these secular congregations regarding what gets counted as "rational" and "scientific," which kinds of science and scientists are promoted during services, and how science is used to justify often contrasting values and politics. These findings suggest that science is not just a set of methods used to make evidence-based decisions, it is a culturally constructed and contested meaning system that can promote a wide range of beliefs and values. And I argue that we need more comparative studies of nonreligious people and organizations to start fleshing out these diverse meanings around science in more detail.