WDCPIX.COM/Lauren Victoria Burke

President Obama “regularly puts nonbelievers on the same footing as religious Americans,” the Wall Street Journal notes today, recalling especially his inaugural-address shout-out: “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.” The article, like others before it, cites a 2006 University of Minnesota study of American attitudes toward atheists as outcasts to show how far out Obama’s doubter-outreach is.

“The reaction to atheists has long been used as an index of political and social tolerance,” wrote U. of M. sociology professors Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann in a paper titled “Atheists As ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society” (pdf):

We show not only that atheists are less accepted than other marginalized groups but also that attitudes toward them have not exhibited the marked increase in acceptance that has characterized views of other racial and religious minorities over the past forty years. …

Our focus is … on attitudes that mark them as outsiders in public and private life, that may even designate them as unworthy of full civic inclusion.

As religious as he is now — exceeding even his predecessor in some respects, says the WSJ — Obama has personal experience within the nonbelieving minority. A National Journal cover story this month called “Rise of the Godless” (subscription only, pdf by permission) quotes from Obama’s book ”The Audacity of Hope”:

“I was not raised in a religious household. … Without the help of religious texts or outside authorities, [my mother] worked mightily to instill in me the values that many Americans learn in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work.” … Obama has also said, as he did on February 5 at the National Prayer Breakfast, that his Muslim-born father “became an atheist.”

But Obama’s appeal to nonbelievers also has new electoral math in its favor. From “Rise of the Godless”:

… [T]he religiously unaffiliated bloc grew from about 5 percent of the electorate in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008. The share of Americans who report no religious preference hovered around the 5-to-6 percent level from the early 1970s through the 1980s, jumped to 9 percent in 1993, rose to 14 percent in 1998, and is now about 16 percent, according to Roger Finke, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who is director of the Association of Religion Data Archives. By that count, the no-preference bloc is nearly equal to the share of mainline Protestant churches, from which it is probably poaching members.

Terminology makes a difference. However similar the “no preference” bloc might be to the “unaffiliated” or “nonbelievers,” it is not the same as the relatively tiny “atheist” or “agnostic” blocs, the WSJ points out:

A 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., found that 15% of Americans are unaffiliated with any religion, up from 8.2% in 1990. In 2008, only 0.7% identified themselves as atheists and 0.9% said they are agnostic.

In his address on Tuesday, Barack Obama said, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.”

That last word has garnered praise from many corners.

PZ Myers, perhaps Minnesota’s most prominent “nonbeliever”: “It’s a small thing, but appreciated. Everyone seems to be a bit unsatisfied with his specific choice of word, and I agree a bit. The better choice, the word that would have been more inclusive and positive, is ‘freethinkers.’ Someone let his speechwriters know.”

American Atheists’ Ed Buckner: “In his Inaugural Address today, President Barack Obama finally did what many before him should have done, rightly citing the great diversity of Americans as part of the nation’s great strength and including ‘non-believers’ in that mix. His mother would have been proud, and so are we. ”

Ronald A. Lindsay, president of the Center for Inquiry, “a global federation committed to science, reason, free inquiry, secularism, and planetary ethics.”: “For much of American history, agnostics and atheists were denied important civil rights, and in some states, until the early 1960′s, were explicitly forbidden from holding public office. Even after these legal constraints had been removed, nonbelievers were stigmatized or ignored by most politicians. We are encouraged that President Obama has unambiguously indicated he will be the president of all Americans.”

Judge Reggie Walton denied the injunction and said religious references at an inauguration are no different than legislative prayers in Congress, something the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional. Walton also said, “I think it’s highly questionable that I have such authority” to stop the references at the inauguration.

The group bringing the injunction said that overtly sectarian prayers at the inauguration violate freedom from religion and the inclusion of prayer during government rituals creates the perception of government endorsement of that religion.

The lawsuit read, “One cannot freely live as an adherent to a religious ideology when the government uses its ‘power, prestige and financial support’ to impose a contrary religious doctrine while such individuals are observing its ceremonies.”

While the injunction was dismissed, Walton said that the lawsuit will continue forward.