Abstract

Secular associationism in Italy, born in the 19th century and becoming a mass phenomenon, was wiped out by Fascist repression. It was necessary to wait until the 1980s for it to resume associative characteristics on the basis of legal initiatives relating to the request for ‘sbattezzo’. Since then, atheism has favoured the path of legal equivalence to the treatment of religious denominations – also stimulated by the choices of the European Union – defining itself by subtraction instead of highlighting its positive and propositional contents.