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Surrounded by Christians and Scared for the First Time in Years

Hi, all... So I've been pretty much fully out about my atheism for a number of years now. Moreover, I've been relatively "loud and proud" about it at times. I haven't felt like I've had anything to fear from revealing my identity to friends, coworkers, and acquaintances for quite some time, because I've had rather good experiences with acceptance from others.

Well, I just recently moved back to the area where I graduated from high school, and am now working as a paraprofessional in the Special Education department of one of the local high schools. This area is a lot more saturated with Fundamentalist Christians and ultra-conservative types. I'm surrounded by Christians and biblical literalists of all stripes as both colleagues and students. In such a situation back where I was living, I would have taken the opportunity to improve the education of both my colleagues and students, not by actively promoting atheism, but by at the very least revealing myself as an atheist and exposing them to a cultural element that isn't what they've been spoon-fed since birth (there really is not much diversity to speak of in the area, either... it's a pretty small school district).

Thing of it is, for the first time in a very long time, I'm feeling genuine fear about revealing my atheism,, especially with my colleagues. It seems to me on a basic level that by this point they should know me well enough and have gotten enough of a feel for me as a person that they would be able to still accept me as the same person they've come to know and respect regardless of my religious views... but I am also deeply familiar with the way some people in this area can act and have acted in reaction to me in years past, and that was just when I was simply questioning... not outright stating my atheist views.

So I guess I'm looking for advice. I know that the district isn't going to fire me for being an atheist... it's a public school, so they can't. I'm just more worried about the social repercussions of such a revelation than I have been since I first started coming out to my friends about 8 years ago...

Tags: Advice, Christians, coming, out

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Permalink Reply by x Secular X Combatant x on October 16, 2010 at 10:48pm

YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! Now that's patriotism.
Fuggem if they'd rather live Taliban/Hitler vatican style...
This is still Constitutional America! Secular as she goes!

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Permalink Reply by x Secular X Combatant x on October 16, 2010 at 10:46pm

I ate up your post and now here goes; bare w/the jargin:

Intimidation is just early senility in regards to 'god told me to..' types. They need you more than you need them.
There's always the ACLU, or American Atheists. If you're pushed out due to belief apart from work...
the case may be won on your behalf. Am I going too far too soon here?

Mr. Davis. Quick story from my last jump into hyper-employment (watch that term be used on TV or TIME mag in the next month)

basically, I was working for a mega-printer making good cash; believers abound; thugs, gay folks; closeted ones too; they started getting antsy because I made things happen being an Apple/Graphics guru and mentioned no god or they knew already since I left the private school a year early due to church nausea and sure enough I end up working at a facility w/some of these corner cutting types.

After all kinds of drama at my last job I come to find out that magically a bunch of clients were ponzi schemes from the "Jewish warrior" Scott Rothstein (who's in an undisclosed fed. prison due to billion dollar insanity scheme) turned out to be all fake and so was the money? 4 or 5 months after I was shoved out by incompetent types, supposed employees and supposed 'bosses' just connections in a Republican, racist, s.american connection bs chain surely all the way up to the vatican; I wonder if it's a xtian/islam/judaism, all three Inc. sneeky deal that's screwing populations nowdays!?!?. I digress.

So... life goes on and so do the battles. Enough blackmail, pills (talk about nasty! kept offering to me and all!), bad music and just plain creepy coworkers with no unity or union for that million dollar matter; total vomit; well, that's how it was. Perhaps you could say politics are dirty but so are religion and lame old expensive high-maintenance traditions; in the land of the free that is.

So yeah, fight the good fight... how's the song go:
"I'd rather be a free man in my grave
that living as a puppet or a slave.."