Pre-publication draft 1 CZECH REPUBLIC: THE PROMISED LAND FOR ATHEISTS? Roman Vido, David Václavík, Antonín Paleček In recent years, the sociology of religion has faced an increasing interest in the topic of non- religion (Bullivant, Lee 2012). Among the main impulses for this trend, we can name a paradigmatic shift from the secularization paradigm approaching non-religion in modern societies as a “norm”, while seeing religious phenomena as representing a “problem”, to alternative perspectives that “problematize” the opposite pole. In the new context, secular societies are viewed in a different light – not as “automatic” products of advancing modernization, but as results of non-self-evident social, cultural and political factors (Wohlrab-Sahr, Burchardt 2012). I. The most atheist nation? The Czech Republic is regularly rated among the least religious countries in many international comparative surveys countries (Lužný, Navrátilová 2001; Greeley 2003; Voas 2009; Smith 2013). In a sense, the country may thus symbolize “the promised land for atheists”. 1 For illustration, the data from the 2008 European Values Study (EVS) and the Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism study (GIRA) of 2012 can be used. In the first study, 16.6 percent of Czechs labeled themselves as “a convinced atheist”; a higher percentage among the surveyed countries was found only in the former East Germany (23.6 percent). In the second study, the Czech Republic ranked third in the list of the most atheist countries in the world: 30 percent of Czech respondents consider themselves “a convinced atheist”; a higher rate was recorded only in Japan (31 percent) and China (47 percent). Moreover, if we count the percentages of respondents who indicate “a convinced atheist” and “not a religious person” identity, the Czech Republic would move to first place worldwide (78 percent), followed by China (77 percent), France (63 percent) and Japan (62 percent) (see Table 1) 1 The article entitled “The 8 best countries to be an atheist,” published in 2012 at Salon.com, ranked the Czech Republic first (http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/eight_of_the_best_countries_to_be_an_atheist/ , retrieved June 5, 2015).