Marlowe’s ghost among American atheists

A 2006 study in American Sociological Review shows that, while both divisions among American Christians and negative perceptions between people of different faiths are eroding, there is still one group that Americans don’t trust: those who choose to remain outside of communities of belief. Further research shows that atheists are perceived about as favorably as Muslims. Not believing in God constitutes a social mōs on par with one of the most maligned religious groups in the current American zeitgeist. (At least one op-ed has called for a political alliance between Muslims and atheists on the grounds that much of the current vitriol in American politics is aimed at these two groups.)

The most fascinating question here falls outside of quantitative analysis: what does an atheist look like? Atheists are not necessarily immediately identifiable as such. The perceptions, stereotypes, and identifications of many social demographics are characterized by performativity. But how does one perform atheism?

It is, perhaps, this lack of performativity that results in such distrust. Atheism’s perceived danger to the American socio-cultural fabric lies in the inability to point atheists out. In the American imagination, this makes them very good at functioning as spies.