Are 26 percent of Americans atheist?
Josh KANSAS CITY, MO. — Stewart differs from most atheists. He’ll tell you there is no God.
But when he gets together with other faithless folks in the Kansas City Atheist Coalition, they color code their name tags. One hue for those who are proudly public about their beliefs, another for whom photographers are asked to avoid.
“It is an issue,” said the 31-year-old Westport resident and coffee shop worker. “They’re worried how their boss or their family or somebody else might react. It’s not always good.”
Even in anonymous surveys, atheists tend to keep their views secret.
“There’s a lot of atheists in the closet,” University of Kentucky psychologist Will Gervais, whose research suggests their numbers are undercounted, told Vox. “If they knew there are lots of people just like them out there, that could potentially promote more tolerance.”
Yes, America is becoming steadily less religious.
Fewer parents raise their children in the church. Those kids grow up less likely to worship. It’s not just that more people self-style their faith outside sect or denomination — although that’s happening, too. More people reject faith in the supernatural entirely.
Yet even as their numbers grow, researchers continue to find atheists a particularly unpopular lot.
Americans, pollster Gallup reports, would vote for a Catholic, a woman, an African-American, a Jew, a Mormon, a gay or lesbian person, an evangelical Christian or a Muslim — in that order — before they’d consider an atheist president. Only socialists ranked in less regard.
Sociologists and opinion researchers define an atheist as someone who doesn’t believe in God. Yet even in anonymous telephone interviews, people are a third as likely to accept the label as to concede the belief (or lack thereof ). Said one researcher: “They’re hiding it.”
A research group surveyed Americans in 2004 and again in 2014. The numbers remained virtually unchanged and declared a clear preference for the faithful over the irreligious.
A quarter of those surveyed thought atheists didn’t share their values. More than a third said atheists held a different vision for the country. A third said they lacked a moral center. Nearly half don’t want their children to marry an atheist.
A recently published study based on 2,000 interviews suggested that a quarter of Americans or more are atheist — multiples of what other surveys have found.
Gervais and fellow University of Kentucky psychologist Maxine Najle posed a list of innocuous statements — “I own a dog,” “I enjoy modern art” — and asked how many of the declarations applied to a respondent. Then they put the same statements to another group but added the statement, “I believe in God.”
By comparing the results, they concluded that 26 percent of the U.S. population doesn’t believe in God. Previous surveys in 2015 by Pew and Gallup asked directly about the belief in God and found the number of atheists at between 3 and 11 percent.
“Obtaining accurate atheist prevalence estimates may help promote trust and tolerance of atheists — potentially 80 million people in the USA and well over a billion worldwide,” the study said.
For now, though, atheists remain largely out of view and broadly disliked.
“Anti-atheist sentiment is still really high,” said Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. “That doesn’t decrease with exposure, doesn’t change as the number of atheists grow. That stigma is why there could be quite a few people out there who don’t identify as atheist. They’re not comfortable.”
“People implicitly trust members of other religions more than they trust an atheist,” said Jordan LaBouff, a University of Maine psychology professor who has studied religion and prejudice. “We sort of assume that people who don’t believe in a big scary God that might punish you for bad behavior are going to be less moral.” (A 2014 study found that religious and non-religious people were equally likely to perform moral or immoral acts.)
Those factors, researchers say, help explain why so many atheists keep their non-beliefs quiet.
Still, atheists may become increasingly unavoidable. Young adults of the millennial generation attend church less than their parents did at the same age, pray less on their own and are less likely to believe in God.
“They’re the least religious generation we’ve ever seen by virtually every measure,” said Daniel Cox, the research director for the Public Religion Research Institute. “There’s no indication that there will be a rush back to the church.”
That’s partly, he said, because their baby boomer parents were less likely to raise them in religious teaching. Often, people return to church when they marry or begin to raise children. But Cox said fewer people hold church weddings or fall into the other religious patterns of earlier generations.
Stewart, the Westport atheist, was raised by devout Christians and now takes an approach to telling people about atheism much like a preacher. He’ll sometimes stand on a street corner with signs such as “I’m an atheist. Ask me anything” or “No God, no problem.”
The resulting conversations can get rough. Stewart insists he’s not trying to talk somebody out of their faith. Rather, he aims to get people beyond their antiatheist prejudices.
“It’s real common to get a kind of hostile reaction,” he said. “But ultimately I don’t want to have a fight. I want to have a conversation.”
I realize that asking a chronic worrier to stop worrying is counterproductive. I should know. I come from a long line of neurotic worriers who just don’t seem themselves unless they are wringing their hands and minds for one reason or another. This season, it’s about politics.
When you are used to worrying all the time, you can actually feel a little uncomfortable if something (or someone) comes along and distracts you from your habit. If you have had that realization, then you can end the cycle of chronic worry in a few easy steps.
First let’s remember that you can’t eat the whole pizza at once but need to do it a slice at a time. Don’t think that you’re a failure because you can’t seem to go a day without your worries. Once you begin healing this condition, you are taking your power back. This positive outlook will give you the foundation you need to rethink (therapists say “reframe”) your state of mind.
Next, by understanding that change is a process and not an event, you take the pressure off even further. Yes, it will take some time. How much time depends on you, how hard you work at it, and what you can do to ease any tension that surrounds you. Again, we are still thinking here and haven’t taken any action. Until now.
Instead of thinking that you need to stop worrying forever, try taking one day off from your worries. That’s all, just one day off. I promise, your worries will still be there the next day — in case you were worried about that!
The purpose of this exercise is simple. If you can do it for one day, you can do it for longer. And you will want to, because you will have experienced that you have been needlessly suffering. You made a choice not to worry and it worked — and you were worried it wouldn’t! Now you know that you have more control than you thought, which also makes you a stronger person.
It’s like washing your hair. Don’t worry, rinse and repeat. Try it again in a day or two and then for a few days, and see how you do. This isn’t a contest or a race, take as much time as you need, but don’t lose your focus, and keep your eye on the prize.
Life in a worry-free zone is terrific. There will always be things that you need to be concerned about, but they are not the end of the world, unless you ask my family. Sometimes worry becomes a bad habit without your even noticing. If everyone around you is in a frenzy, then I would imagine you would think it is normal behavior. This only makes sense. But there’s no need to dwell in the past or to reevaluate your family members, because you’re stuck with them anyway.
The trick is to deal with your stuff in your way. You can get all the help you want, but don’t take on the troubles of those around you. Clean your own house: let go of the worry, so you have the strength to take on something more exciting. Like politics.