Godless Americans: How Non-Religious Persons Are Labeled as Deviant in a Religious Society
Being an Atheist in the USA
In America, Atheists, and other non-believers are treated as deviants and social outcasts. Atheists are seen as “corrupt” and “abominable,” somehow incapable of doing good deeds. Numerous forms of deviance exist in modern American society.
Everything from physical deformities, to illicit drug use, to homosexuality, are constructed as deviant in dominant American culture and ideology.
Where Christianity is also the dominant religious/spiritual paradigm, it should come as no surprise when Atheists and agnostics are similarly constructed as “deviant.” Whether Americans realize it or not, we live in a heavily religious society.
A vast majority of politicians affiliate themselves with some form of religion in order to gain favoritism among their constituents. With that having been said, let us explore what it means to be a deviant and how Atheists are classified as such.
So what is a deviant? Deviance is commonly defined as behavior that deviates from what is considered normal in a group or a society. Patricia and Peter Adler (2009) take this definition one step further by identifying three types of norms that deviants tend to break; folkways, mores, and laws.