Atheist in Christian America

Atheists are worse than terrorists in USA…

I was finishing the morning dishes when I saw the strobe of police lights out my kitchen window as several cop cars pulled up to a house across the street from ours. I picked up my 19-month-old son out of the highchair, held him against my ballooning belly, and hauled my 7-month pregnant self out the front door to check out the happening.

A warm, sunny morning, I went down to the end of the cul-de-sac and met up with a few of my neighbors gathered there to witness the commotion. We had chosen our home in an East Bay suburb of San Francisco because it promised good public schools, and gave the impression of a safe, friendly neighborhood in which to raise our kids. We’d moved in a month earlier and no residents had come over to welcome us. I joined the group of three, introduced myself and my son, and then asked what was going on as I watched cops move in and out and around the house across the street like black ants.

“Robbery,” a small, plump woman with a bad blond dye job in her mid-40s said. “Shelly said they got their laptops, the Xbox, some jewelry, and all the guns, but that was it.”

“Bet they were going after the guns,” another woman, taller, but also with a bad blond dye job added. “Bill loved showing off his gun collection.” She pursed her lips and looked back at four kids all under 10 in front of the house at the end of the block, presumably one or more being hers.

There was a moment of awkward silence, then the remaining woman, with what looked like naturally auburn hair, asked me to repeat my last name.

When I told her again, she said, “Oh, you’re the Jewish couple then? I heard there was a Jewish family that moved in recently.” She smiled cordially and practically giggled as she stared at me in wonderment.

Now all the women were staring at me. They each wore a tight-lipped grin. It was clear that they were tickled by the idea of living near Jews. Unlike L.A. or New York, the Bay area’s Jewish population is comparatively small. Though our last name was often mistaken for Jewish, its derivation is German and isn’t always a Jewish moniker. The woman’s assumption was ignorant, but typical, especially in areas where Jews are a novelty.

“Actually, we’re Atheists. We don’t practice any religion.” I tried to sound casual in my reveal, as so often my lack of religious orientation is met with disdain.

Blank stares. Total silence. It was like I had just said that we were registered child molesters. My words hung like lead in the dead air until the auburn-haired woman broke the silence.

“You know,” she tried to sound casual. “I read this article in Cosmo the other day about Atheists. They’re actually supposed to be non-violent people. The writer pointed out that we never hear about Atheists killing or kidnapping innocents, bombing buildings, or hijacking planes.”

The vacuum that followed her comment made it clear that the new neighbors would have preferred we were practicing Jews, or Mormons, or Buddhists, or even Muslims at that point.

“You mean you don’t participate in the holidays?” the small blond woman asked, mortified. “Not even Christmas?” she said in a babyish voice to my son in my arms who stared at her like she was an off-world alien, then reached out and tried to grab hold of her straw-like hair.

“No. Not even Christmas.” I assured her and grabbed hold of my son’s tiny hand and kissed it.

“Well, Christmas isn’t a religious holiday,” she said with certainty. As absurd as her comment was, I hear it all the time. I refrained from reminding her that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, the very foundation of Christianity.

“We have five nights of winter presents which compensates quite nicely,” I explained. “And we celebrate birthdays, special occasions, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and so forth.”

She bobbed her head up and down, but I could tell I’d already lost her. She looked towards the kids with pursed lips of concern. And I got that she was afraid of me. I was the anti-Christ, the infidel, the soulless. Though her fear was unwarranted, there isn’t a religious, or even self-proclaimed “spiritual” person I can recall that I don’t get the same bounce from when I reveal I’m an Atheist. No God? No values. It’s common [religious] wisdom (rhetoric), right?

I didn’t set out to set myself apart. My brief stint in Sunday school was forced upon me at 6 yrs old until I was 13, when my parents had to acquiesce to my unshakable conviction that there is no God. My mother spent the rest of her life convinced that I would come back to religion when I ‘grew up,’ got married and had kids. But the certainty of a godless universe, one ruled by entropy, not empathy, has resonated with me as far back as I can remember, and has not altered since I declared my independence from religion at 5 when I assured my grandmother she was insisting I say nightly prayers to no one.

My husband and I have chosen to raise our kids without religion. Instead of the indoctrination we had to endure, we have given our children the opportunity to discover their own spirituality.

The cop cars left, one right after the other, my son now fidgeting in my arms, pulling at my hair and trying to grab the thin, 1” long gold bar dangling from the small gold loop through my pierced ear. I managed to evade his tiny hand, but the weight of him on my swollen belly was exaggerating the pressure of my daughter kicking me from inside.

“Well, I guess the show’s over,” the taller, athletic blond woman said, decked in dark gray leggings and a tight bright pink sleeveless T.

We exchanged departure pleasantries, and I took my son home. The next day I was gardening in the front yard and two kids, a boy and girl, maybe 7 and 9, came riding by on their bikes. My son ran to the curb, waving wildly to greet them. They pulled up close to where he stood, and then the boy kicked my son in the belly and screamed “Satan lover!” My son fell on his butt and sat on the sidewalk crying hysterically.

I was horrified. “Oh my god, are you crazy,” I yelled as I went to attend to my son. I saw them ride down the block towards the cul-de-sac and disappear into a garage next to the house that had been robbed.

I spoke to my husband about the event later that evening. At dinner, he suggested I go talk to the parents of the two kids on bikes since he didn’t see the interaction, and someone had to stay home with our son. I suggested he go since I was afraid I’d say something offensive in my outrage at their children’s behavior. Before either of us could leave, there was a knock on our front door.

The small straw-haired blond woman and her short, pudgy husband stood on our porch with pursed lips. “I hear you had an interaction with my kids today,” she said to me, her anger so visceral it felt like her eyes were shooting bullets into mine. “You cussed at them and called them ‘crazy,’” she said, now practically spitting as she spoke.

I was floored, literally drop-jawed unable to respond.

My husband invited them in to talk and calmly closed the door behind them, all of us now gathered in our small entryway. He invited them into the kitchen, led them in, and offered them something to drink but both of them refused. I followed, focusing on breathing and slowing my rapid heart rate.

“It is my understanding that your son kicked our son when he was riding by on his bike this afternoon, which is what likely provoked my wife’s response,” my husband said.

“My son would never do that,” the little woman insisted. “We are good Christians, and my kids are good kids, raised with sense yours sorely lacks when he goes running after them on their bikes.”

“Our son is a year and a half old,” I practically screamed at her over our dinner table that we were all standing around. “He’s not running after anyone. He was waving at your kids to say hello! And I never cussed at your kids. Your children’s behavior was disgusting, and you shouldn’t be here defending them. You should be at home disciplining them and teaching them wrong from right!”

“Don’t you dare tell me how to raise moral children,” the woman practically spat, “Like you would know,” she said and narrowed her eyes at me then stomped out of our kitchen, down the hallway, yanked open our front door, and left.

Her husband, silent until right then said, “I’m sorry,” to both my husband and I and followed his wife out.

A couple of years into living at our suburban home, we discovered most every household in our neighborhood attended the same church, as did the families at our kids’ elementary school. Both children and adult basketball, tennis, and baseball teams, and most neighborhood gatherings, from potlucks to local politics, were sponsored by this church. Over the years we’ve found their priests often influence the election of city officials by throwing their support behind their preferred candidate. They’ve ‘guided’ the decisions made by our mayor and city council members regarding the welfare of all 85,000 residents, Christian, and not. Proposed housing developments, to strip malls to the stores allowed in them are all monitored by this church, rejecting cannabis dispensaries but welcoming tobacco smoking lounges, sporting goods selling guns, and bars. Public school policies, from the books our kids get to read, to the subjects they study are influenced by this conservative church and its members. While these same churchgoers will loudly defend their 2nd Amendment right to ‘bear arms,’ none of them support or even acknowledge our 1st Amendment right to keep the church out of state and local affairs.

Every December several neighbors adorn their front lawns with scenes of Mother Mary birthing Baby Jesus. Christmas lights and displays go up in late November and stay up well into the new year on most homes. Santa on his sled pulled by five reindeer is attached to the roof of the small blond mom’s home. A speaker blaring, “Ho ho ho” fills the cul-de-sac from sunset until after 9:00 every night.

Since that first encounter over a decade ago, most of our neighbors have ignored me when dropping our kids off or picking them up from school. The moms and dads are curt with me when they see me volunteering at school events. They do not acknowledge me or my husband at the store or in local restaurants. They do not include our family in their neighborhood parties. Their children ignore our kids in passing and have excluded and bullied our kids in and out of school.

When we moved here, I didn’t stop to consider the religious leanings of the community. As an atheist, in a monotheistic society, wherever I live I’m on the fringe. I am deeply saddened that my children are being ostracized because of our lack of religious identity. In allowing them to define their own spirituality, I fear I have inadvertently set them up for rejection, and condemned them to the fringes, which is a very lonely place to live. But I do not foresee bringing religion into our home. My husband and I will not teach our children what we do not believe, and both find fundamentally corrupt, corrosive, and detrimental to humanity’s survival.

This upcoming holiday season, in a brief lapse of reason, I thought of throwing a Hanukkah party and inviting the neighborhood. If they needed us to be something, we could pretend to be Jewish. But the thing is, I am proud of who we are, and how we live — the moral compass that guides us. And I’m equally proud that we are raising our children with the freedom to practice any religion they choose, or none at all.