American distrust of atheists significantly exceeds that of comparable wealthy democracies.

Evidence

Interestingly, the United States is an outlier. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, 39 percent percent of Americans strongly agree or agree that politicians who do not believe in God are unfit for public office. This high number is lower than other highly religious but much poorer countries such as Pakistan (95 percent), but comparable to its very religious southern neighbor Mexico (39 percent). In America’s northern neighbor and close cultural cousin Canada, this distrust is much less pronounced (21 percent). But Canada’s atheist distrust is higher than comparably developed nations with high human development and strong rule of law, but much less religious, such as the UK (11 percent), Denmark (8 percent), and Sweden (4 percent), where distrust of atheists is virtually nonexistent. Why is it that the United States has levels of atheist distrust that are so out of step with other wealthy advanced democracies? This is a complex issue, but there is at least one answer to this puzzle that has to do with two oddities about the United States: for interesting reasons, America, despite being an economic powerhouse, has anomalously high religiosity levels, and we have seen that religiosity is the single most important determinant of atheist distrust. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 306

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s analytical project: the US shows high rule of law yet high atheist distrust, complicating the claim that secular institutions alone dampen distrust—relevant to whether the Big God mechanism requires religious belief even where secular enforcement exists.