On the Receiving End: Discrimination toward the Non-Religious in the United States

Abstract

The present study examines perceived discrimination faced by religious ‘nones’. After distinguishing between atheists, agnostics, and ‘nones’ who are deists or theists, we use nationally representative data from the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) to study the contexts in which these various types of religious ‘nones’ have reported experiencing discrimination. The strongest predictor of such discrimination was not theological atheism or agnosticism but self-identifying as an atheist or agnostic when asked what one's religion is. Context-specific predictors of discrimination are age, region of the country, rural versus urban location, parents’ religious identifications, educational attainment, ethnicity and race. Results are consistent with the view that people who hold more pronounced views are more likely to report discrimination.

Notes

1. We use the terms ‘non-religious’ and ‘religious none’ interchangeably in this article.

2. While it is an empirical question which group experiences more discrimination—LGBs or atheists/agnostics—we believe that LGBs are subject to greater discrimination. We do not want to suggest here that the non-religious experience as much discrimination as LGBs do.

3. There are weights available in ARIS 2008 that transform the silos into their respective populations (e.g. the non-religious range from a sample of 1,106 to a population of 35 million). As the goal of the weights is to inflate the sample to national representativeness, we use the unweighted data. This results in some minor differences in the results (which are available upon request).

4. Income is re-coded into above and below US$50,000, due to a data collection issue. Participants in ARIS 2008 were initially offered more standard income categories (e.g. ‘US$30,000 but less than US$40,000’), but were given an additional option if they refused the more specific categories—‘less than US$50,000’ or ‘more than US$50,000’. In order to maximize the number of people we could include in our analyses, we used the less specific income categories, despite the fact that doing so reduces specificity and variation.

5. New England = Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island; Middle Atlantic = New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania; East North Central = Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio; West North Central = Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas; South Atlantic = Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, District of Columbia; East South Central = Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi; West South Central = Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas; Mountain = Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico; Pacific = Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii.

6. There was one person who responded ‘humanist’. That person is grouped with the atheists and agnostics in the logistic regressions.

7. The theological classifications in quotes are the options that were presented to participants. The labels are how we refer to these groups in this study.

8. Simple proportions tests indicate significant differences (not shown).