An Ounce of Preventative Etiquette...

Only you can invite a long conversation about religion. (Image by MTPICHON, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

Miss Manners recently fielded a question from an atheist who evidently isn't very good at heading off conversations about religion with friends -- who will often attempt to proselytize. 

I can see this being a problem for fellow nonbelievers, especially in the South, where many people are religious and one is raised with a respect for etiquette. The latter would be good, except that the code of etiquette is unfortunately tainted with an altruist ethic. (So, one ends up being considerate -- but also has to learn to quit white lies, bending over backwards to avoid conflict, failing to admit a conflict has already started, and the like.)

There are thus ample "opportunities" for such conversations -- and one may well be poorly-equipped to end or fend them off altogether, especially if young or new to life as a secular person in a semi-religious society.

The answer there is fine for such a situation, especially regarding the admonition not to engage. My main issue is that the time not to engage is often far earlier than the establishment of a friendship, and one can save lots of time and emotional energy by learning to see when that point is.

I am from the South and live there now: It is often quite common down here for new acquaintances to toss a religious reference or so into a casual conversation. Here's a recent example: "Well, I think God never gives you more than you can handle." When that kind of thing isn't an "invitation" to start talking about religion, it's usually a clear sign that religion is important enough to a person that you will probably need to be clear about where you stand sooner rather than later. And since some people will react badly to the news, you want to figure that out as quickly as possible.

Now, it can be tempting, especially to the young, or to someone who has recently embraced a rational alternative to religion, to want to come out swinging -- to lay out all the things wrong with religion, or how it set oneself back, or how history is littered with the corpses of religious wars. That is usually a mistake. As the letter-writer observed, "They all think I secretly believe in their God!"

That is part bullying (Surely, you're too decent/polite to slam the door on someone whose values you plainly share, so let's keep this missionary work going.) and part defense mechanism. The version I got when I was young (and didn't have a ready answer) was You'll outgrow it. This is their way of continuing to pretend to themselves that they are thoughtful and good, in the face of evidence to the contrary: Someone they like on some level who, in fact, rejects their religion. In short, the vast majority of people who will do what the letter-writer is complaining about are not truly serious, and speaking with them about religion beyond an honest admission one is not religious, is a waste of time at best, and can unnecessarily alienate them at worst.

Opportunities for serious conversations about religion, if you want them, will come when serious people seek you out or you find serious people to have them with on your own. Or you have to have one with someone already important to you.

As someone who never really believed religion since his mid-teens and has been an atheist for over thirty years, my policy has been: (1) to be frank about the topic of religion when it comes up, but without indiscriminately volunteering my views, and (2) to be alert to things like casual references to God in conversations, especially with new acquaintances. Between these things, I haven't been told that I'm secretly religious in decades, or have had the disappointment of thinking I'm really connecting with someone, only to find out that the whole conversation was really just a conversion attempt.

In sum, usually, not engaging is enough. And when the question of what my religion might be does come up, generally, I'm not religious suffices.

-- CAV