(Page 3 of 27) - Drawing the Line: Views of Atheists and Moral Boundaries in America authored by Edgell, Penny., Gerteis, Joseph. and Hartmann, Douglas.

In short, religion in America is normative – it not only provides a sense of identity, it
provides a measure of character.

Combined with processes of social assimilation, this commonality-around-the-basics was
understood, by the 1960s, to have eroded many of the long-standing divisions between
Protestants, Catholics and Jews, such that each tradition was simply one way of being (or
becoming) American (Glock and Stark 1965, Herberg 1960, Alwin 1986). Declines in
anti-Semitism and anti-Catholic sentiment mirrored the scholarly claim that piety and
plurality went hand in hand in American life. Yet other religious divides became highly
salient at the same time. In the 1980s and 1990s sociologists began analyzing religious
restructuring and the emergence of a new religious boundary – the liberal and
conservative religious divide (Wuthnow 1988). Most scholars agree there is an organized
Christian Right political presence, and some argue that this political presence influences
the voting behavior of secularists and religious liberals (Bolce and de Maio 1999a, 199b)
and the religious affiliation pattern of moderates (Hout and Fischer 2002), and that
liberal-conservative differences underlie political party affiliation and attitudes toward
gender roles and sexuality (Davis and Robinson 1996a, 1996b; DiMaggio, Evans &
Bryson 1996). Still, most sociologists argue that America as a whole is not well-
characterized by the image of a monolithic Christian conservative camp or an ongoing
“war” between liberals and conservatives (Zald and McCarthy 1987, Hopson and Smith
1999, Davis and Robinson 1996, Williams 1997, Woodberry and Smith 1998).

In the latter view, religious differences continue to generate social boundaries of varying
clarity and strength in American society, whether these boundaries separate Protestants
from Catholics or religious liberals and conservatives. But unlike other boundaries (for
example, racial divisions) religious distinctions are not understood as a serious source of
social inequality or intolerance. Religious boundaries are rather understood to be
consonant with a common American identity and compatible with democratic political
institutions and processes. So, for example, Christian Smith (1998, 2003) has argued that
evangelical Christians are a kind of bell-weather or ideal-typical American group, largely
because of their strong religious subculture. Thus, despite disagreement on some
political and social issues based on religious differences, several influential reviews of
religious diversity today conclude that the widely shared core beliefs mean that we
remain “one nation, after all” (Wolfe 1999).

Hout and Fischer (2001), in a comprehensive review of religious diversity over the 20

century, argue that in the last 50 years the United States has become more religiously
diverse than ever before, but that this diversity poses no threat of serious social conflict,
inequality, or intolerance for three reasons, the first of which is the emerging
convergence around a common creed discussed above. Second is that our religious
institutions, being already internally differentiated and voluntaristic, are well-equipped to
absorb diversity without being torn apart by it (c.f. Warner 1993). And third is a “rapidly
rising tolerance for (and maybe even preference for) religious difference” that “facilitates
religious coalitions on some issues and respect for [the] fellow religious on all issues”
(Hout and Fischer 2001:4). In perhaps the most comprehensive study to date, Diana Eck
(2001) argues that the expansion of religious pluralism associated with post-1965