Atheists Are America’s Most Distrusted Minority, Says Study
Americans’ increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in God at all, says a national study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota.
The study, which appears in the April issue of American Sociological Review, consisted of a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households. University researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups when it comes to “sharing their vision of American society.”
Even though atheists are few in number and not formally organized, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a majority of the public, concludes the study.
“Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Dr. Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the same role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past — offering a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society.
“It seems most Americans believe diversity is fine, as long as everyone shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy, and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell.
