If you didn’t know it already, I am an
atheist. Non-belief is more common in England
where I am from, and the culture is generally a more skeptical one. So it was definitely a culture shock coming
to the US where Christianity is still going strong and being religious is to some
degree very much part the norm.
Background
This post was partly prompted by a survey
recently done by Gallup in the US (June 7-10 2012), where they asked people if they would be
prepared to vote for a politician who was Catholic, or Jewish etc. and as you
can see from the figures below, atheists ended up down at the bottom of the pile below Muslims, with just under half of Americans saying that they’d not be prepared to vote for someone
who was an atheist.
The poll asked Americans if they would vote
for an otherwise well-qualified candidate who was black (96% would), a
woman (95% would), a Catholic (94%), Hispanic (92%), Jewish (91%), Mormon (80%), gay/lesbian (68%), Muslim (58%), or atheist (54%).
Several of my American friends actually expressed
surprise that 50% of Americans trusted atheists – they thought that the
number would be much lower!
Back in the UK,
religion has been in steady decline for 200 years, but the process accelerated
somewhat in the latter half of the twentieth century and by the time it got to
the post-1960s generations most people stopped going to church altogether. Here, where I am in Gainesville, North Florida, such are the
numbers of church goers that there is actually a rush hour when church ends on a
Sunday morning and the congregations turn out.
American
atheists
The core of atheism in the US, as
you would expect, is probably in academia and the scientific community. I think the American scientist, Carl Sagan,
has often summed up best for me why I put my faith in science and reason and believe that
God and religion are man-made phenomena.
There are also quite a few atheists on the
political left in the US, although nowhere near as many as you’d find in the UK, or Northern Europe generally. Rightwing American atheists tend to be rarer
in my experience.
Probably one of the most famous atheists in
American popular culture is Bill Maher, although there have been plenty of
non-believing US comics in the past – W C Fields being maybe the most notable one. My favorite US satire of American Christians is
probably the Ned Flanders character in The Simpsons.
Religion
and politics
Although the post-revolutionary founders of
the US wanted to keep religion separate from politics and the state, fearing a single
religion becoming established like in England, where the Church of England was
and is still the official religion (at least nominally), they were only
partially successful, in my opinion.
Issues of how much religion should feature in political life and what
its role should be are very much a hot topic of debate in the US.
Whatever the debate over the relationship
of religion and the American state, the involvement of religion in everyday
party politics is without doubt huge compared to the UK. American politicians on the left and right
will often claim divine inspiration, but it is probably fair to say that it is
those on the conservative right who mix religion and politics the most.
In the UK,
religion is generally seen as a private matter of personal conscience for
politicians, as well as the general public, but Americans wear their faith on
their sleeve and will often define themselves by it. It never occurred to me not to vote for Tony
Blair because he was a Catholic, but Americans take religious belief (or the
absence of) into account much more. I
think it’s also fair to say that for many Americans, being a Christian is
associated with being a respectable, upstanding, ethical person – whereas the
image of Christians in the UK is far
more mixed.
The
Practicalities of being an atheist
Just as the politics of the US is
skewed very much to the rightwing from a British perspective, the secular/religious
attitudes are very much skewed towards religion (especially so where I am in
the South). Although I’d say that
without doubt most Americans are tolerant, there is also a devout minority of
Americans who see Christianity as being completely tied up with US values and
culture and by extension, all non-belief and non-Christian religions are
therefore “otherly” and a threat.
Just being an atheist can be perceived by
some as being quite extreme here where I am (rather than being fairly mundane,
like in the UK) – atheists are not uncommonly portrayed as being unreasonable absolutists,
with agnosticism seen as a more moderate and acceptable form of non-belief.
(I should add that although I would
describe myself as an “atheist”, my assessment is that God [or gods] *very probably*
don’t exist, but it can never be fully ruled out. I therefore see religious people who claim
that their belief system is definitely the one true faith and their holy book
is *the only* one that is divinely inspired as being far more absolutist than
myself).
Liberating
On a personal note, one thing that is strangely
liberating about being an atheist in the US for a
mischief maker like myself is that I feel able to be critical and satirical without
experiencing much guilt about it. Back
in the UK, religious belief can seem so beleaguered at times that poking fun at
it can seem like kicking a person in a wheelchair. In the US
(certainly down here in North Florida) you definitely have the sense that you are the one who is part of an
underdog minority as an atheist.
Related
blog posts by Brits in the USA
