Beyond Belief: Looking at the Less Religious

By John Benson

After spending more than a decade trying to convince fellow secular humanists in academe and the media that religiousness was an important factor in looking at American society and politics, I lived to see the simple inclusion of "moral values" on the voting issues list of the National Election Pool presidential exit poll suddenly succeed where I had been failing. While the role of white evangelical Christians in President George W. Bush's reelection has been getting most of the attention, many analysts are beginning to see that the role of religion in the 2004 election and in American society as a whole extends beyond one particular form of religious observance; that being religious in America has consequences. My job here is finished.

So what's a contrarian to do, but to turn his attention to the other end of the religious spectrum? What about those who are less religious?

If you ask Americans whether or not they believe in God, almost all of them, about 90 percent, say they do. But Americans' religious beliefs are a little more complicated than that. Allowed a third choice, about one in seven (13-15 percent) professes belief in a universal spirit, higher power, or life force, bringing the total that believes in God per se down to about three-quarters. Asked by the NORC General Social Survey (GSS) in 2000 to choose which of six possible descriptions of God came closest to their own view, about one in five (19 percent) admitted to occasional doubts about the existence of God. Still, 63 percent said they knew without doubt God existed, and only a small proportion of Americans said explicitly they did not believe in God, or called themselves atheists or agnostics.

According to a 2002 Pew Research Center survey, a majority of Americans (58 percent) felt it was necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values, while 40 percent thought a person could be moral without believing in God. In 2001 the Pew Research Center and Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found about one-third (34 percent) of Americans believing that the number of people in the United States who were atheists or didn't believe in God was increasing, and about one-fourth (23 percent) bothered by the growing number.

A majority (52 percent) of Americans in the 2003 Pew Research Center/Pew Forum survey had an unfavorable view of atheists when explicitly defined as people who did not believe in God, while only 33 percent had a favorable view. The proportion that had a favorable view of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews was at least twice as high. More Americans viewed Muslims (47 percent) and, interestingly, "people who are not religious" (50 percent) than atheists favorably. Asked how close they felt to fifteen different groups in society, Americans rated atheists last, along with Muslims.

A Gallup poll trend shows that toleration for atheists has increased over time, just as it has for other minority groups. In 1958 only 18 percent said they would vote for a generally well-qualified candidate for president if he happened to be an atheist. By 1978 that number had more than doubled to 40 percent. In the 2003 Pew Research Center/Pew Forum survey, nearly half (46 percent) said they would vote for an atheist for president, but this rated well behind a Catholic, Jew, or evangelical Christian, and ten percentage points behind a Muslim. Attitudes were even more negative if the candidate was explicitly described as not believing in God. In a 1993 Time/CNN/Yankelovich Partners poll, only 23 percent said they would vote for such a person.

In short, Americans generally expressed tolerant views about various religious groups, but did not extend their acceptance to people who do not believe in God. But just who are those people? And how do we define others who are non- or less-religious?