ACCEPTING THE NON-RELIGIOUS? THE CASE OF ATHEISTS IN THE UNITED STATES

One statistic seems to resist change: 46%. It is the proportion of citizens in the United States who declare today (and this number has been constant for the past 30 years) that they would not vote for an atheist. In comparison, more than 90% of Americans say they would be willing to vote for a candidate who is a woman, an African-American or a homosexual. This paper sheds light on the perception of atheists as an imaginary counterpoint to the good citizen in the United States. Drawing on a one-year ethnographic observation, we analyze the characterizations of the category “atheist” by parishioners of a Catholic church in Northern California. Atheists are described as “sociopaths” or as “socially deviant”. This points to the very powerful impact which religious belief has on political behavior and cultural membership. Belief in God – rather than membership in an organized religion – becomes a proxy to determine who belongs to the political community, to the “us”, and who is characterized as an enemy. The paper interrogates the violence of those characterizations and their social meaning in the American context