Pitchstone Publishing
Pitchstone Publishing is a Durham, North Carolina-based book publisher focused particularly on secular humanism, religion, new atheism, applied psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.
Last updated August 31, 2026
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Overview
Pitchstone Publishing is an independent book-publishing company based in Durham, North Carolina. Kurt Volkan founded the company in 2003. Its catalog is particularly associated with works examining religion, secular humanism, atheism, psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, identity, and social or political conflict. Rather than being identified with a single commercial genre, Pitchstone has published books by academics, clinicians, public intellectuals, and other authors whose work brings scholarly or critical perspectives to questions about belief, religious institutions, human behavior, and collective violence. The publisher's list includes both analytical and accessible works. Titles dealing with religion and nonbelief include J. Anderson Thomson Jr.'s Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith, Peter Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists, Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola's Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Religion Behind, Karen Stollznow's God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States, and Richard Carrier's The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus. These books address the psychological and cultural origins of religious belief, the experiences of people leaving religious professions or traditions, and historical or skeptical approaches to religious claims. Pitchstone's catalog also covers religion's relationship with politics and identity. Sean Faircloth's Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It examines the political influence of the religious right, while Sikivu Hutchinson's Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical presents a humanist perspective shaped by race, gender, and social experience. The catalog therefore includes arguments about public life and pluralism alongside works focused on individual belief. Another strand of the list concerns psychiatry, psychoanalysis, identity, and conflict. Armando Favazza's PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book applies a behavioral and psychological lens to religious scripture. Vamık Volkan's Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts and Blind Trust: Leaders and Their Followers in Times of Crisis and Terror address the psychological dynamics of identity-based conflict, leadership, followers, crisis, and terrorism. These titles illustrate the publisher's interest in applying psychological and social-scientific analysis to religion and political violence. The available reference material does not establish Pitchstone Publishing's current ownership, corporate structure, financial results, executive roster, distribution arrangements, or operating scale. It also does not provide enough information to determine whether the company is currently active. Accordingly, those fields remain unspecified. The published bibliography, however, documents a distinctive catalog centered on critical inquiry into religion and belief, together with related work in psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, identity, and conflict.
History
Pitchstone Publishing was founded in 2003 by Kurt Volkan and is based in Durham, North Carolina. The company developed a publishing list focused on books that investigate religion, nonbelief, human behavior, and social conflict through academic, clinical, historical, and public-intellectual perspectives. An early example of the publisher's interests is Armando Favazza's PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book, published in 2003. The title connects religious texts and practices with behavioral and psychological analysis, reflecting the intersection of religion and psychiatry that appears in the broader list. During the 2010s, Pitchstone published a substantial group of works on secular humanism, atheism, religious belief, and the political role of religion. J. Anderson Thomson Jr.'s Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith appeared in 2011, followed by Sean Faircloth's Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It in 2012. Karen Stollznow's God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States and Peter Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists were published in 2013. These books approached religion from scientific, political, skeptical, and humanist viewpoints rather than from a devotional publishing perspective. The catalog also included works centered on religious exit and the experiences of nonbelievers. Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Religion Behind, by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola, was published in 2017. The book concerns clergy and religious professionals who have moved away from conventional religious belief. In 2018, Vamık Volkan's Blind Trust: Leaders and Their Followers in Times of Crisis and Terror extended the publisher's psychological and political interests into leadership, group behavior, crisis, and terrorism. Other publications addressed identity and the psychological roots of violence. Volkan's Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts examines bloody conflicts through the lens of identity and collective psychology. Sikivu Hutchinson's Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical, published in 2020, brought race, feminism, humanism, and religious criticism into the list. The available references also identify Richard Carrier's The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus as a 2025 publication, showing the continuation of the publisher's interest in historical and skeptical approaches to Christianity. Across the documented catalog, Pitchstone Publishing has operated as a focused publisher rather than as a broad trade house covering every category. Its books commonly examine how belief is formed, maintained, challenged, or connected to identity and public power. The available sources do not document later ownership, management changes, distribution agreements, revenue, or current operating status.
- 2025
Publication of The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus
[1]Richard Carrier's The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus was identified as a Pitchstone publication.
- 2020
Publication of Humanists in the Hood
[1]Sikivu Hutchinson's Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical expanded the catalog's humanist discussion to race, feminism, and social identity.
- 2018
Publication of Blind Trust
[1]Vamık Volkan's Blind Trust: Leaders and Their Followers in Times of Crisis and Terror addressed leadership, followers, crisis, and terrorism through a psychological perspective.
- 2017
Publication of Caught in the Pulpit
[1]Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola's Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Religion Behind examined religious professionals who no longer held conventional religious beliefs.
- 2013
Publication of A Manual for Creating Atheists
[1]Peter Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists joined Pitchstone's secular-humanist and atheist catalog.
- 2011
Publication of Why We Believe in God(s)
[1]The publisher released J. Anderson Thomson Jr.'s concise science-oriented examination of religious belief.
- 2003
Pitchstone Publishing is founded
[1]Kurt Volkan founded Pitchstone Publishing in Durham, North Carolina.
- 2003
Publication of PsychoBible
[1]Armando Favazza's PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book was published, representing the company's interest in psychology, psychiatry, and religion.
Products and positioning
A specialist publisher of intellectually oriented books on secular humanism, atheism, religion, psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, identity, and conflict, with a catalog spanning academic scholarship and accessible public-facing critique.
Psychology and religion · 2003
PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book
Armando Favazza's book applies a behavioral and psychological perspective to religion and scripture. Its inclusion in the 2003 catalog illustrates Pitchstone's interest in examining religious ideas and practices through psychiatry, psychology, and related clinical disciplines.
Secular humanism and psychology of religion · 2011
Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith
J. Anderson Thomson Jr.'s book presents a concise, science-oriented account of why people form and maintain religious beliefs. It represents the publisher's accessible treatment of the psychological and evolutionary questions surrounding faith and nonbelief.
Religion and politics · 2012
Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It
Sean Faircloth's book examines the political influence of the religious right and argues from a secular perspective about its effects on public life. The title reflects Pitchstone's publication of explicitly political critiques of religious power.
Religion and culture · 2013
God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States
Karen Stollznow's book surveys unusual religious beliefs and practices in the United States. It combines cultural observation with a critical examination of the variety and strangeness of American religious life.
Atheism and secular activism · 2013
A Manual for Creating Atheists
Peter Boghossian's book is a practical and argumentative work about challenging religious belief and encouraging atheistic perspectives. It became one of the clearest examples of Pitchstone's association with contemporary atheist and secular-humanist publishing.
Psychology of conflict · 2014
Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts
Vamık Volkan's study analyzes violent conflict through the psychological significance of group identity. It connects collective emotion, identity formation, and political violence, extending Pitchstone's focus beyond religion into the broader psychology of conflict.
Religious exit and secularism · 2017
Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Religion Behind
Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola's book examines religious professionals who have moved away from the beliefs associated with their clerical roles. It addresses the personal and institutional dimensions of leaving religion behind.
Leadership and political psychology · 2018
Blind Trust: Leaders and Their Followers in Times of Crisis and Terror
Vamık Volkan's book studies the relationship between leaders and followers during crisis and terrorism. Its subject matter reflects the publisher's interest in psychological explanations of political behavior and collective response.
Humanism and social identity · 2020
Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical
Sikivu Hutchinson's work presents humanism through intertwined perspectives on race, feminism, identity, and religious criticism. It broadens the publisher's secular-humanist list beyond general arguments about atheism.
Historical criticism of religion · 2025
The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus
Richard Carrier's book takes a skeptical and historical approach to the question of Jesus's historicity. The listed 2025 publication date places it among Pitchstone's later works on critical approaches to Christianity and religious history.
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