A friend told me he struggles with his faith and doesn’t believe in God anymore. He’s an atheist. But he said this to me privately and said he’d never say this publicly. Why? Because he’s involved in politics and may want to run for office one day. And the biggest death sentence for a politician in America today is saying “I don’t believe in God” (his words, not mine).
I listened to a recent episode of the Ezra Klein podcast, where journalist Jane Coaston interviewed Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. Most of the podcast was about the politicization of the Evangelical church, and especially how Trump-y some churches have become, which is driving many pastors to quit.
It was a very disheartening but interesting listen, but what stuck with me was an anecdote about a friend who didn’t believe in God and didn’t like the Baptist church particularly. But he asked Moore what local church he could go to that wasn’t “too Baptist.” When Moore asked why he wanted to go to a Baptist church given his previous statements, his friend said something along the lines of “I’m trying to run for office, and this is the South.”
America is still a majority Christian country
It’s a calculating statement, but it’s not wrong either. A look at the religious identification of Congress is even more striking. As of early 2021, 88% of Congress identifies as Christian. 6% identify as Jewish. Only 3.4% of Congress said they didn’t know their religion, or just refused to answer the Pew Research Center poll.
I’m Christian, but I respect people’s beliefs. We are not a theocracy, although a lot of people would push back against that statement for good reason due to recent Supreme Court decisions. But it would be incredibly foolish to not acknowledge that being an atheist would be a disadvantage running for office in virtually every part of America. People have a right to believe what they want to believe — but in a lot of places in America, being an atheist is an instant death sentence to your political ambitions.
This is a majority Christian country, even if those identifying as Christian are declining. In 2020, 65% of Americans identify as Christian, and interestingly enough, White Christians are seeing the biggest decline in America’s religiosity. In 1996, almost two-thirds of Americans identified as White and Christian. In 2004, that number is 44%. Young people are significantly less likely to identify as Christian these days— instead, 36% of 18–29-year-olds identify as unaffiliated.
By contrast, the number of Christians of color has been pretty steady. In 2020, 26% of Americans identified as Christians of color (Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic Catholics, Black Catholics, multiracial Christians, Asian Christians, etc.). This was only a 1% shift from 2006.
It doesn’t matter how pious a figure is or whether they really live what they preach or claim to believe. Donald Trump identified as Christian even if he didn’t act like it.
A lot of people don’t want an atheist president
It matters whether they identify as one — so what does it say about us as a country if hundreds of millions of people don’t care if someone acts decent and acts like a Christian, but just says they are? The message that sends is to just pretend you’re a Christian, say you’re a Christian, or at worst, refuse to answer the question about your religion if you want to run for office in most parts of America.
Of course, it’s a bit more difficult for a Jewish or Muslim person to run for office, but it’s still possible. An atheist also has a much better chance of winning office in the most liberal part of New York City than in the rural South — but that’s obvious.
The one thing you cannot identify as if you want to run for office is atheist. Phil Zuckerman at Pitzer College notes that there has only been one member of Congress who identified as atheist — Peter Stark in California.
In private, who knows how many others privately held the belief that they didn’t believe in God? They just wouldn’t say it publicly, of course.
Even if you’re not religious, most people in America are, and there’s a lot of social pressure to adhere to that religiosity. And it’s not just conservative White people. I live in Baltimore, a majority Black city, and 67% of people in the metropolitan Baltimore area are also Christian. Of course, there are fundamental cultural differences between your average Black church and your average White Baptist Southern church, but not believing in God makes you just as much of a pariah in a lot of minority circles as it does White circles.
I had many students in the 99% Black, inner-city schools I taught in that were reluctant to go to church and were much more openly ambivalent about their faith in me and their peers than they ever would be to their grandparents. A few outright told me they thought their pastors pocketed all the tithes their congregation gave them.
I’m not saying they weren’t deeply spiritual or religious, but for many of these students, even if they doubt their faith and have internal skepticism, they would never express this to some deeply religious relatives. Social pressure played just as strong of a role in my students’ religiosity as it does in the rural, conservative South.
I would like to think America does not discriminate against non-religious. But can an atheist become president? Today, the answer is no. A hundred years from now, the answer is still probably no.
A 2019 Gallup poll found that 96% of Americans are willing to vote for a Black president, 95% are willing to vote for a Hispanic president, 76% of Americans are willing to vote for a gay president, and 66% of Americans are willing to vote for a Muslim president. These numbers are a bit disheartening, but they show Americans are generally more accepting than they were in 2015 when Gallup last did the poll.
But only 60% of Americans were willing to vote for an atheist president. In the poll, the only worse identifier than atheist was socialist — only 47% of Americans said they were willing to vote for a socialist president. People were even more willing to vote for people who never held office before or had extramarital affairs.
Takeaways
I think a lot of people have stereotypes about atheists or at least stereotypes about atheist regimes. In a lot of faith-oriented circles, atheists are seen as overly militant and dismissive of other people’s views. Of course, religious people can be militant and dismissive of other people’s views too.
In faith circles, there are also a lot of negative perceptions of atheist regimes. A lot of people will say that organized religion has its issues, for sure, and Zuckerman notes Stalin and Pol Pot ran explicitly atheistic regimes. So did Mao Zedong, but this isn’t a problem with people’s choice of not believing in God as much as it’s a branding problem for atheism since atheism is so commonly associated with brutal dictatorships once the absence of organized religion takes hold as atheism.
Zuckerman also says a lot of Americans link atheism with immorality. I would like to say it’s not true that people think this way, but that would be a lie. But Evangelical Christianity also has a deep branding problem now that it’s become so associated with Trump for so many.
Atheism most certainly has a branding problem, but the core of the issue is a lot of us on the left and those who occupy cosmopolitan and urban spaces often deny America is still a religious country, especially when you compare it to more secular societies in Europe. I’m not saying this as an explicitly good or bad thing, as a religious person who tries to be accepting of other people’s views.
Practically, for atheists who run for office, perhaps it’s wiser to keep their religious beliefs to themselves. The odds are stacked against them.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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