Stephen Bullivant

Stephen Bullivant (b. 1984) is a British sociologist and theologian, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St Mary's University, Twickenham, and Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Trained at Oxford (DPhil in theology, 2009) under the supervision of Denys Turner and Joseph A. Di Noia, his doctoral work examined Vatican II's teaching on atheism and the salvation of unbelievers, later published as 'The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology' (2012).

Bullivant is a central figure in the emerging interdisciplinary field of secular studies, co-editing with Michael Ruse 'The Oxford Handbook of Atheism' (2013), which helped consolidate the academic study of non-belief as a distinct subfield. His subsequent work combines quantitative sociology of religion with theological reflection: 'Mass Exodus' (2019) analyses Catholic disaffiliation in Britain and the United States since Vatican II, while 'Nonverts' (2022) examines former Christians who became religious 'nones.'

Methodologically, he combines survey data, interviews, and historical analysis. Unlike polemicists on either side of the religion debate, Bullivant maintains that atheism and Catholicism deserve mutually respectful scholarly attention; he has been criticized by some secular scholars for foregrounding his Catholic commitments, and by some traditionalists for sympathetic engagement with unbelief. He co-founded the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society and edits the journal 'Secularism and Nonreligion.'