Ph.D., Columbia University
About
My research focuses on the variety among the nonreligious, including atheism and spirituality. My first book, The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious, was published by NYU Press in 2022. It’s an ethnography that relies on several years of fieldwork among nonbelievers in the U.S. to explain why being secular can feel so weirdly religious.
I’m currently writing a book about secular and spiritual traditions that are popular among the nonreligious. It’s under contract with W. W. Norton, and it’s based in part on an intergenerational study of religion, spirituality, and values that was funded by a $2.8m grant from the John Templeton Foundation. That research continued the Longitudinal Study of Generations, which sociologist Vern Bengtson began in 1970. The study’s last wave included the fifth-generation descendants of the original participants.
My next project, “Metaphysical Spirituality and the Future of Religion: From the Margins to the Mainstream,” is funded by a $1.55m grant from the John Templeton Foundation. I’m co-leading it with Matthew Harris, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Our goal is to understand the spiritual beliefs and practices that are becoming more common as religion declines in places like Europe and North America. If you’d like updates on the project, including announcements of events, please email us at metaphysical@religion.ucsb.edu.
In the spring of 2021, I fielded the largest survey ever of organized nonbelievers in the U.S. (n=12,370). Relying on that data, I co-authored an essay on the beliefs of nonbelievers, and I’m working on several others. In the past I’ve conducted research among born-again Christians in America and Zambia, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I continue to be interested in how evangelicals and nonbelievers imagine one another.
In 2024, I taught a class which took place mostly in virtual reality because I’m fascinated by the pedagogical possibilities of VR. For several years, I’ve also been working as an expert witness in civil and criminal cases. This includes describing the role of religion during the formative years of defendants on death row and determining whether a marijuana church is legally “religious.” I’m especially interested in cases involving religious freedom.
Publications
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Conversion to Sensuous Secularism, or How to Stop Being So Negative All the Time.” Forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Apostasy and Religious Deconversion, edited by Phil Zuckerman and Alexandr Zamușinski.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Human Rights and Religious Freedom: Transatlantic Perils and Possibilities.” A response to Méadhbh McIvor’s Representing God (Princeton 2020). Forthcoming in Religious Studies Review.
- Blankholm, Joseph and Lucas McCracken. “The Secular Tradition Within and Without Religion.” Forthcoming in History and the Secular, edited by Lorenz Trein and Jonathan Sheehan (DeGruyter).
- Blankholm, Joseph. Not Nothing: Who the Nonreligious Are and Why They Matter (under contract with W. W. Norton).
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Reality Is Already Virtual: Lessons about Religion and Media from Teaching in Virtual Reality.” Forthcoming in New Media and New Religiosity: Dynamics of Religious Representation and Participation in a Mediatised Age, edited by Anna Hippert, Dunja SharbatDar, and Martin Rademacher (Bloomsbury Academic).
- Blankholm, Joseph. “A Swinging Pendulum and Future Possibilities: A Response to ‘Exploring the Secular Paradox.’” Author’s response to a forum on The Secular Paradox. Secular Studies 7:1 (April 2025): 153–173.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “There’s Something Queer about the Secular Paradox.” Author’s response to a symposium in a special issue on The Secular Paradox. Critical Research on Religion 13:1 (April 2025): 112-116.
- Blankholm, Joseph, Ryan Cragun, Abraham Hawley Suárez, and Shakir Stephen “The Beliefs of Nonbelievers: Exclusive Empiricism and Mortal Finitude Among Atheists and Agnostics.” Sociology of Religion 86:1 (Spring 2025): 27–49.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “The Religiosity of the U.S. Nonprofit Sector and Its Impact on Secular Women.” In The Non-Religious and the State, edited by Jeffrey Tyssens, Niels de Nutte, and Stefan Schröder (De Gruyter, 2024), 167-182.
- Brown, Maria T., Joseph Blankholm, Dusty Hoesly, Woosang Hwang, RianSimone Harris, and Merril Silverstein. “Intergenerational Evolution of Religiosity and Spirituality in Sexual Minorities in an American Sample.” In Religious and Spiritual Change and Continuity Across Generations: Passing on Faith in Six European and North American Nations, edited by Merril Silverstein, Christel Gärtner, and Maria Brown (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), 157-193.
- Hwang, Woosang, Joseph Blankholm, Dusty Hoesly, Maria T. Brown, RianSimone Harris, and Merril Silverstein. “Spiritual Beliefs and Practices of the Non-Religious in an American Context: A Cross-Generational Perspective.” In Religious and Spiritual Change and Continuity Across Generations: Passing on Faith in Six European and North American Nations, edited by Merril Silverstein, Christel Gärtner, and Maria Brown (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), 195-218.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Foreword: The Frustrating and Wonderful Ambiguity of Secular Publics.” In Global Sceptical Publics: From Nonreligious Print Media to ‘Digital Atheism,’ edited by Jacob Copeman and Mascha Schulz (London: University College London Press, 2022), xv-xix.
- Blankholm, Joseph. The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious. New York: New York University Press, 2022).
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Feeling Out Alternatives Within Secularity.” Religion 51:4 (2021): 593-605.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Remembering Marx’s Secularism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88:1 (March 2020): 35–57.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Self-Critique and Moral Ground: Saba Mahmood’s Contribution to Remaking Secularism and the Study of Religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 87:4 (December 2019): 941–954.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Secularism and Secular People.” Public Culture 30:2 (May 2018): 245-268.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “The Limits of Religious Indifference.” In Religious Indifference: New Perspectives From Studies on Secularization and Nonreligion, edited by Johannes Quack and Cora Schuh. (New York: Springer, 2017), 239-258.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “Secularism, Humanism, and Secular Humanism: Terms and Institutions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Secularism, edited by Phil Zuckerman and John Shook (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 689-705.
- García, Alfredo and Joseph Blankholm. “The Social Context of Organized Nonbelief: County-Level Predictors of Nonbeliever Organizations in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55:1 (March 2016): 70-90.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “The Political Advantages of a Polysemous Secular.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 53:4 (December 2014): 775-790.
- Blankholm, Joseph. “No Part of the World: How Jehovah’s Witnesses Perform the Boundaries of Their Community.” ARC 37 (January 1, 2009): 197-211.