America, One Nation Under No God?

In recent years, non-religious
Americans have won a modicum of public acknowledgment. Not long ago,
politicians insulted them with impunity or at best simply overlooked
them. But the heightened public religious fervour of the Bush years led the country's infidels to organise as never before, turning atheist authors like Sam Harris into celebrities and opening lobbying offices in Washington, DC, just like religious interest groups do.

Politicians have responded. In his inaugural address,
Barack Obama - doubtlessly realising that secularists constitute a big
part of his base - described America as a "nation of Christians and
Muslims, Jews and Hindus ... and non-believers." Even Mitt Romney came to express second thoughts about leaving atheists and agnostics out of his high-profile campaign speech on faith. The United States
is not Europe - it will likely be a long time before we have a publicly
agnostic president - but it is becoming more tolerant of the godless.

It has to be: no religious group in the United States is growing as fast as those who profess no religion at all. The latest American Religious Identification Survey, which Trinity College
published last week, shows that the number of non-religious Americans
has nearly doubled since 1990, while the number of people who
specifically self-identity as atheists or agnostics has more than
tripled. An astonishing 30% of married Americans weren't wed in
religious ceremonies, and 27% don't expect to have religious funerals.
This suggests whole swaths of the culture are becoming secular, since
one can assume that non-believers in religious families often acquiesce
to traditional marriage rites and expect to be prayed over when they're
dead.

The irony, though, is that even as the country becomes
more secular, American politics are likely to remain shot through with
aggressive piety. What we're seeing is not a northern European-style
mellowing, but an increasing polarisation. In his recent book Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment,
the sociologist Phil Zuckerman described the secularised countries of
Scandinavia as places where religion is regarded with "benign
indifference". There's consensus instead of culture war. That's not
what's happening in the United States. Instead, the centre is falling
out.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey,
Christianity is losing ground in the United States, but evangelical
Christianity is not. Just over a third of Americans are still
born-again. Meanwhile, the mainline churches, beacons of progressive,
rationalistic faith - the kind that could potentially act as a bridge
between religious and non-religious Americans - are shrinking. "These
trends ... suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and
particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians," write
the report's authors.

In some ways, there's a symbiotic relationship between evangelicals and secularists. The religious right
emerged in response to a widespread sense of cultural grievance
stemming from the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Today's
newly organised atheists and agnostics were mobilised by the theocratic
bombast of Bush-era Republicans. More than ever, one's religion is tied
up with one's political choices rather than family history.

That
means faith won't fade into the background. If European secularism is
defined by disinterest in organised religion, American secularism is
largely defined by opposition to it. Thus non-believers in the United
States are increasingly becoming an organised interest group, demanding
their share of civic respect. The more they want to escape organised
religion, the less they can ignore it.