by thurnandtaxis » Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:45 pm
<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.ur.umn.edu/FMPro?-db=releases&-lay=web&-format=umnnewsreleases/releasesdetail.html&ID=2816&-Find">www.ur.umn.edu/FMPro?-db=...2816&-Find</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, according<br>to new U of M study<br><br>What: U of M study reveals America's distrust of atheism<br>Who: Penny Edgell, associate professor of sociology<br>Contact: Nina Shepherd, sociology media relations, (612) 599-1148<br>Mark Cassutt University News Service, (612) 624-8038<br><br>MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (3/28/2006) -- American's increasing<br>acceptance of religious diversity doesn't extend to those who don't<br>believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the<br>University of Minnesota's department of sociology.<br><br>>From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university<br>researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent<br>immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing<br>their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority<br>group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to<br>marry.<br><br>Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and<br>relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the<br>American way of life by a large portion of the American public.<br>"Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population,<br>offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance<br>over the last 30 years," says Penny Edgell, associate sociology<br>professor and the study's lead researcher.<br><br>Edgell also argues that today's atheists play the role that<br>Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past-they offer a<br>symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. "It seems<br>most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one<br>shares a common 'core' of values that make them trustworthy-and<br>in America, that 'core' has historically been religious," says<br>Edgell. Many of the study's respondents associated atheism with an<br>array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant<br>materialism and cultural elitism.<br><br>Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder<br>is behind the findings. "Americans believe they share more than rules<br>and procedures with their fellow citizens-they share an understanding<br>of right and wrong," she said. "Our findings seem to rest on a view<br>of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with<br>the common good."<br><br>The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is<br>related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one's exposure<br>to diversity, education and political orientation-with more educated,<br>East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their<br>Midwestern counterparts.<br><br>The study is co-authored by assistant professor Joseph Gerteis and<br>associate professor Doug Hartmann. It's the first in a series of<br>national studies conducted the American Mosaic Project, a three-year<br>project funded by the Minneapolis-based David Edelstein Family<br>Foundation that looks at race, religion and cultural diversity in the<br>contemporary United States. The study will appear in the April issue of<br>the American Sociological Review.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.ur.umn.edu/unsreleases/find.php?ID=2816&from=umnnews">www.ur.umn.edu/unsrelease...om=umnnews</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
