How (and Why) Americans were Programmed to Hate Atheists.
The True Story behind America’s Demonization of Atheism.
If you ask Americans to list the most negative labels to give someone, the label “atheist” would probably be on that list. For the majority of Americans being labeled an atheist is akin to being labeled amoral and un-American. That’s certainly the message I got growing up in the 60's. Sunday School made it very clear that atheists were bad, Godless people.
What most Americans don’t know is that if you grew up in the 50’s or 60’s you didn’t need to attend Sunday School to be taught to fear and hate atheists. Because in the early-50’s the US government initiated a massive, multi-pronged, multi-year campaign to demonize atheism — and it worked really well.
The GODification of America.
The 1950’s was the height of The Cold War when the omnipresent threat to America was Communism. As the fear of Communism and the Soviet Union grew stronger President Eisenhower felt the need to do something big to help unify and bolster the country. At the strong encouragement of multiple ministers, religious politicians, business leaders, and his influential Evangelist pal Billy Graham, Eisenhower agreed on a bold strategy: Demonize Communism by demonizing a main tenet of Communism: Atheism. The idea was to make the ‘US vs Soviet Union’ a Holy War and draft God as America’s #1 Commie Fighter.
To facilitate that Eisenhower took aggressive executive action. First, he got Congress to add “One nation ‘under GOD’” to The Pledge of Allegiance — a pledge recited daily in every classroom in America. Then he got Congress to replace “E Pluribus Unum” (the US motto since 1782 meaning “Out of many, one”) with IN GOD WE TRUST.
After that he got Congress to approve posting IN GOD WE TRUST in court rooms, government buildings, public schools, on postage stamps, and on all US currency. Even some comic books of the day talked about “Godless Communism”. And New York State created a school prayer specifically designed to “counter the spread of Communism.” As if all that wasn’t enough the Administration teamed up with The Advertising Council, the major religious institutions, and corporate America to create something called the Religion in American Life campaign. With an annual budget of 200K (over $2M in today’s dollars) the campaign goal was to encourage Americans to attend church. It was a well-coordinated, unified effort that in 1956 alone included 5,412 highway billboards, 9,857 bus, train, and railroad station posters, and 59,590 ad cards inside buses, trains, subways, and streetcars. In addition, movie theaters ran PSA’s imploring the public to “Attend the church of your choice next Sunday.” It’s fair to say that during the 50’s nothing in America was marketed better than God, and nothing was demonized more than Communism and atheism.
Evidently, the end of the Cold War and passing of 60-years has not softened America’s attitude toward atheists. According to a 2016 University of Minnesota study, Americans have actually sharpened their negative views. It showed that atheists are still perceived as cultural outsiders who “have rejected cultural values and practices understood as essential to morality, civic virtue, and national identity.” They were chosen “the most disliked religious minority.” Eisenhower and company successfully embedded a deep bias that remains strong today.
Yet, in one religion-related sense Americans are becoming more tolerant. When the same survey asked if it’s a bad thing that increasing numbers of Americans claim no religious identity, 60% of the respondents said it’s either “a good thing” or “neither good nor bad.” And, while most Americans still have a problem with atheists more Americans are actually becoming atheists. A 2014 Pew Research Study reports that the number of Americans who identify as atheist doubled in the 7-year period from 2007 to 2014. And now, for the first time ever, “Nones” (no chosen religion) have become the largest “religious group” in America. Even clergy members are increasingly coming out as atheists as reported by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola who published their initial findings in 2010. The award-winning documentary “Leaving God” (2017) which explores these shifting attitudes can be viewed online for free.
Unfortunately, most biases, be they racial, gender-based, sexuality-related, or religious, tend to die hard. Which is why it’s so important to continue having open forums to help educate and enlighten the public.
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About the Author: John Follis spent a 30-year career on Madison Avenue creating award-winning ads. Now he’s creating award-winning films. His latest documentary “LEAVING GOD: Why I left God and why so many others are too” won a “Best First-Time Filmmaker” award from the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Film Festival.
