"Americans, in large numbers, still do not want atheists teaching their children, or performing marriages. They would, according to surveys, prefer a female, gay, Mormon, or Muslim President to having an atheist in the White House."
"Lack of belief in God is still too often taken to mean the absence of any other meaningful moral beliefs, and that has made atheists an easy minority to revile." "True religious liberty was rare in the colonies: dissenters were fined, flogged, jailed, and sometimes hanged. Yet surprisingly, no atheist was ever executed." "The Godless Constitution, as Moore and Krammick called it in a previous book, was mostly the product of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who fought to keep God out of the document." "Such is the slippery label of atheist in the American context: slapped on those who explicitly reject it, eschewed by unbelievers who wish to avoid the stigma." "Laws against blasphemy, though rarely enforced, still exist in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wyoming." "Indeed, the charge of atheism became a convenient means of discrediting nontheological beliefs, including anarchism, radicalism, socialism, and feminism."
"The reason that atheists were not allowed to testify in court was the certainty that witnesses who were unwilling to swear an oath to God had no reason to be truthful, since they did not fear divine judgment." [1]
Footnote:
[1] Casey Cap, "Without a Prayer," The New Yorker, October 29, 2018.
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