Non-religion as an emerging tradition: atheism, agnosticism, non-affiliation with belief, and autonomous spirituality as forms of negative belonging

Abstract

This article analyzes the emergence of non-religion in Brazil, rejecting interpretations that view it merely as an absence, a statistical gap, or the result of linear, homogeneous secularization. Drawing on sociology and the study of religion, the study conceptualizes non-religion as a heterogeneous field of "negative belonging," where identity and social affinity are paradoxically formed through the rejection of, distancing from, and criticism of confessional religious institutions. To this end, the work establishes a rigorous comparative analysis of four distinct conceptual positions: atheism (the ontological and political denial of God), agnosticism (the epistemological suspension of certainty), the category of the "non-religious with belief" (institutional disaffiliation combined with the preservation of faith and memory), and "autonomous spirituality" (the individualized reconstruction of meaning and practices without confessional exclusivity). The investigation demonstrates that the growth of the non-religious population in Brazil reflects, above all, a crisis of inherited belonging and the deinstitutionalization of belief, rather than necessarily the unchecked advance of philosophical disbelief. It concludes that non-religion is consolidating itself as an emerging, post-traditional tradition, characterized by its own historicity, vocabulary, sociability networks, memory repertoires, and public agendas focused on secularity and freedom of conscience. Finally, the research warns against analytical simplifications that either secularize every instance of disaffiliation or "religionize" every absence, asserting the urgent need for precise interpretive categories to recognize non-adherence as a historically legitimate form of individual and social positioning regarding the sacred.