{"id":44948,"date":"2012-03-27T12:40:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T17:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=44948"},"modified":"2013-11-08T04:41:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T09:41:49","slug":"atheist-intolerance-and-the-new-salience-of-religiosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/27\/atheist-intolerance-and-the-new-salience-of-religiosity\/","title":{"rendered":"Distrust for Atheists & the New Relevance of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Global Policy TV<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Recent research has unearthed the interesting finding that most Americans dislike atheists.\u00a0 In fact, they strongly<\/em> dislike atheists. Surveys suggest that they\u2019d rather share a beer with almost anyone, even members of historically-hated groups: homosexuals, African-Americans, or Muslims (yes, even after 9\/11). \u00a0This phenomenon is new in American society, as I\u2019ll discuss below, and reflects a significant change in our social alliances.<\/p>\n

But first, consider this data published by Penny Edgell and her colleagues in the American Sociological Review <\/em>(full text<\/a>).\u00a0 It reveals that Americans believe that atheists, more than many other groups, are not likely to agree with their \u201cvision of American society.\u201d\u00a0 Atheists topped the list, beating out the second contender, Muslims, by 13 percentage points.\u00a0 Likewise, among the types of people Americans would not want their children to marry, atheists come first, beating out Muslims (again) by 14 points and African Americans by a full 20.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This dislike for atheists, by the way, isn\u2019t on the wane.\u00a0 While dislike of gays and lesbians has been easing, racism has become increasingly unacceptable, and religious diversity has become less contentious, intolerance for non-believers has held steady.<\/p>\n

An even more recent article revealed that the reason people dislike atheists so much has to do with trust (cite<\/a>).\u00a0 Many people are skeptical that someone who doesn\u2019t believe in God would do the right thing, given that they don\u2019t imagine that a higher power is watching them and keeping score.\u00a0 Atheists were more distrusted than Muslims, Jews, gay men, and feminists.\u00a0 The only group that was as strongly suspected of bad behavior as atheists?\u00a0 Rapists.<\/p>\n

What is interesting in all this \u2013 above and beyond a clear prejudice against atheists \u2013 is the change in how Americans think about religion.\u00a0 Until recently, members of different religious saw each other as enemies, not friends.\u00a0 American history is characterized by \u201clong-standing divisions among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews\u201d (Edgell et al.). Many of us can remember how significant it was to elect the first Catholic president (something we take for granted as unremarkable now) and we are on the precipice of nominating a Mormon to run on the Republican ticket.<\/p>\n

Indeed, historical data shows that Americans have been increasingly willing to vote for a Catholic or Jewish Presidential Candidate (as well as an African American and homosexual candidate), but their willingness to vote for an atheist is lagging behind:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The take home point has to do with shifting social alliances.\u00a0 Now that most Americans have abandoned a strong dislike for members of other religions, it\u2019s possible for The Religious to emerge as a socially-meaningful identity group.\u00a0 In other words, once members of different religions begin to see each other as the same instead of different, they can begin to align together. \u00a0Suddenly atheists become an obvious foe. \u00a0Instead of one of many types of people who had lost their way (along with people of different faiths), atheists could emerge as\u00a0uniquely\u00a0<\/em>problematic. \u00a0It is the building of cross-religious alliances, then, that\u00a0undergirds the strong dislike for atheists specifically.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Global Policy TV. Recent research has unearthed the interesting finding that most Americans dislike atheists.\u00a0 In fact, they strongly dislike atheists. Surveys suggest that they\u2019d rather share a beer with almost anyone, even members of historically-hated groups: homosexuals, African-Americans, or Muslims (yes, even after 9\/11). \u00a0This phenomenon is new in American society, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[329,2125,85,285,1759,1760,1754,42,54],"class_list":["post-44948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-emotion","tag-immigrationcitizenship","tag-politics","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-religion","tag-sexual-orientation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44948"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58428,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44948\/revisions\/58428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}