THE PENDULUM

by Russell Varner, April 8, 2009

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The 1954 addition of these two words to the Pledge of Allegiance excluded an entire demographic of Americans: those who profess a belief in the nonexistence of a god.

Fifteen percent of Americans said they were unaffiliated with any religion in a 2008 American Religious Identification Survey conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., up from 8.2 percent in 1990 and 14.1 percent in 2001.

Fewer than 1 percent of ARIS respondents self-identified as non believers, 0.9 percent as atheist and 0.7 percent as agnostic, while 12 percent stated personal beliefs consistent with atheism or agnosticism according to the 2008 ARIS report. Still, the researchers highlight that the atheist population doubled since 2001 to nearly 1.6 million in 2008.

According to a 2006 study by University of Minnesota professors of sociology Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann, "From a list of groups that also includes Muslims, recent immigrants and homosexuals, Americans name atheists as those least likely to share their vision of American society. They are also more likely to disapprove of their children marrying atheists."

Nearly 40 percent of the more than 2,000 respondents named atheists as a group that "does not at all agree with my vision of American society" and 47.6 percent said they would disapprove if their child married an atheist. Muslims, the next closest group, received the same classifications from 26.3 percent and 33.5 percent of respondents, respectively.

"Americans are less accepting of atheists than of any of the other groups we asked about, and by a wide margin," the researchers reported.

In 1987, then-President George H. W. Bush said in an interview, "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

He failed to restate or change his position on this issue in any subsequent interviews.
"I think atheists, as well as agnostics or folks of other religious convictions other than Christianity for that matter, are disliked because so many 'Christians' in the South equate patriotism with belief in God," said Tripp York, an Elon religious studies professor.

According to a 2001 Public Agenda report, "If more Americans were religious, people believe that crime would go down, families would do a better job raising their children and people would be more likely to help each other. Indeed, most Americans fear that the country would decline if people lost their religious faith."

"Atheists are the least trusted minority in America," said William Johnson, an atheist and Elon sophomore, whose name has been changed. "Multiple polls, studies and happenings support the fact that most people would not trust an atheist in a relationship or position of power. Many church signs have anti-atheist bigotry on them and the religious are trying to take over schools and the public sphere."

In the Public Agenda study, 54 percent of respondents said they would be unlikely to vote for a political candidate who is "open about not believing in God."

"We just elected our first black president," said Elon sophomore and atheist Andy Harris. "But I still think we're at least a good 40-50 years from being able to elect our first atheist president."
York echoed this. "In the first 300 years of Christianity, people were killed for their specific beliefs in their particular God, yet in the U.S., one cannot be elected unless they believe in God," York said.

Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann report increasing religious pluralism coincides with increasing tolerance of religious differences but reduces tolerance of nonreligious beliefs.

According to Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann, "Those in the South and Midwest are also less accepting of atheists in both public and private life than those in the East or West."

"Here (in the South), people assume that you attend the church of your family, and if you don't, people find that unusual or surprising," said Lynn Huber, an Elon religious studies professor. "This, in my opinion, is less about belief in God and more about the fact that Southern culture values familial relationships and loyalties.

Johnson said until he was 7 or 8 he had almost no religious schooling at all.

Huber said breaking the mold of continuing in familial religious tradtions means becoming an "other," be it through changing religions or becoming atheist.

"Plus, because most believers in the South think that belief in God is just common sense, to reject belief is, for many, absurd, making that person difficult to trust," York said. "The problem with belief in our culture is that it takes far more conviction to be an atheist than to be a believer Believing in the existence of God is simply the air we breathe, therefore it requires far more attentiveness to reject such belief than to go along with it."

"I barely knew more than that Christmas was a time for getting presents and Easter had Peeps candy," said Johnson, who only started attending a Presbyterian church when his family moved to Greensboro.

Johnson said he discovered atheism on the Internet in his early teens, sympathized with the beliefs and eventually told his parents about his doubts during the middle of church one day.
He said he explored other religions, but none struck a chord.

"I haven't looked back at my decision since," Johnson said.

He said only his closest family and friends know he's an atheist.

Many have drawn a parallel between atheism and homosexuality, in that both take an active effort to assert a belief against the norm.

"The parallel with homosexuality is instructive," Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann wrote.
Harris recounted the experience of coming out as an atheist to his parents. "My Irish Catholic mother screamed at me for a while, (then) went into denial," he said.

Harris said he had to reconvince his mother that her was indeed an atheist, and not just going through a phase, and then had to convince her he had not dropped his morals along with his belief in God.

"For whatever reason, many Christians have come to associate morals with God, so by their logic those without God are without morals," Harris said. "After it finally set in that her precious son was an atheist, she asked me if I was still a good person, (if I was) happy, and (if I) 'still cared about people.' When I assured her that the only thing that had changed was my level of faith and not my code of morality, she let a relieved sigh and then said, 'Good, because I was worried that you worshipped Satan.'"

Many misconceptions circulate about atheists and their beliefs. One example is the mistaken belief that the nonreligious are inherently immoral.

"Some people view atheists as problematic because they associate them with illegality, such as drug use and prostitution," Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann wrote. "Others saw atheists as rampant materialists and cultural elitists that threaten common values from above – the ostensibly wealthy who make a lifestyle out of consumption or the cultural elites who think they know better than everyone else. Both of these themes rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individualists who are not concerned with the common good."

Johnson said, as an atheist, he finds it hard to form relationships.

"In the South, very many people are highly religious and expect others to be religious," he said.
Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann found, "Church attendees, conservative Protestants, and those reporting high religious saliency are less likely to approve of intermarriage with an atheist and more likely to say that atheists do not share their vision of American society."

In order to avoid offending others or risking personal rejection or judgement, Johnson said he "screens out" anyone who is highly religious before getting involved in close or romantic relationships.

"Since the topic of my sabbatical research ("Coming Out as an Atheist") became public, people have come to me out of the woodwork saying, 'I'm glad you're working on that because I've always felt uncomfortable here,'" said Tom Arcaro, a professor of sociology at Elon whose forthcoming research will be submitted to the American Sociological Association for publication.

"There is a stigma attached, and the stigma in the U.S. is different than the stigma in the U.K. and Europe," Arcaro said, citing data from over 8,200 survey responses.

Only 4 percent of the people in the U.K who responded to Arcaro's survey said they felt "very stigmatized" as atheists versus the average 55.2 percent in the United States.

The Bible Belt has the most stigmatization related to being an atheist followed by the Midwest, the West and the Northeast, said Arcaro, who noticed similar trends across his data.

"All over the U.S. people feel that being atheist is very stigmatized," Arcaro said. "But people in the Bible Belt feel more strongly, by 13 percentage points, that there is a strong stigma attached to being atheist. There's been a lot of research into the 'God gene' and into the origins of religion. I do think that in the general population, both for cultural and biological reasons that we don't understand yet, that there are people who are wired to be nonreligious."

Arcaro said to a certain extent being atheist is analogous to being left-handed or being gay: it's not something you choose, it just is.

"I think there are some of us who are just hard-wired differently," Arcaro said.

The least likely to reject atheists were the nonreligious who did not attend church, did not claim a religious identity and reported religion was not at all salient to them, according to Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann.

"A lot of my peers range from indifferent to agnostic to atheists," Harris said. He said he didn't feel personally persecuted or stigmatized as an atheist, "but every now and then I'll encounter somebody who grimaces when I tell them I'm an atheist."

Arcaro said increased awareness and understanding of atheism in the United States will decrease stigmatization.

"I'm going to predict that as the stigmatization decreases, more people are going to come out of the closet and admit to having no religion or to being atheist," Acaro said.