(July 10, 2022 at 3:45 pm)GUBU Wrote: That's one thing I (thankfully) don't get. Over here, I can be out as irreligious to pretty much anybody and the worst I'll get is a shoulder shrug and a meh. When I was out of work during the crash, I volunteered with an English language school for asylum seekers founded by a group of nuns, and even there I had no issues at all being an out and out non-believer. Literally nobody batted an eye at me, whether they were in holy orders or lay people.
One thing that I'll stress about the organisation that ran the school, they were strictly non-religious in all their dealings.
Well, considering the lack of irreligious politicians (at least publicly) here, that's a clue as to what it's like in general. There are some areas/states/regions where it is worse than others. Specific to the community I am in, it's pretty stark. People from elsewhere, especially internationally, think I'm joking that it is very often within the first 5 questions here when meeting someone for the first time that you get "where do you go to church?" Not if, but which one. People, including co-workers of mine, think nothing of making rather blatant religious statements or asking questions along those lines even in a work setting - it honestly does not even occur to them that someone they know and like *could* be irreligious.
