I’m not a religious person. I’m not quite an atheist, but I’m an agnostic who leans heavily in the direction of there being an upper level of awareness that we all connect to, and that that awareness is what we think of as “God.” I don’t believe in god as an entity or being.
Whenever I go to my in-laws’ houses for a meal, everyone is always instructed to hold hands, bow their heads, and join in the prayer. Now, before anyone gets upset with me or accuses me of overreacting and telling me to “just get over it” let me point out that I DO go along with it* and I don’t say or do anything or make any kind of big deal about it. However, it annoys me and in my head I’m thinking “oh come on, get it over with.”
I think it’s kind of rude to expect your guests to join in a religious ritual just because you have those beliefs. To put it in perspective, let’s say I was still Wiccan (I went through a few years in my late teens, early 20s when I felt that way) and I had those in-laws over to my house. If I had expected them to join me in invoking the goddess before we ate, they’d be horribly offended and wouldn’t do it. And most people would consider me to be a bad hostess for even considering asking them to join in such a thing. In fact, I would probably be considered rude for doing it on my own before eating, if it was something done in everyone’s presence.
So if it isn’t ok for me to expect Christians to participate in my religion’s rituals, why is it ok for Christians to expect me to participate in theirs? It makes me very uncomfortable.
What do you think?
*though I generally don’t close my eyes.
Is it possible to opt out of the handholding bit by letting your neighbors join hands in front of you, or would that cause a scene?
I understand your annoyance. My Catholic inlaws required a spoken prayer before each meal at their house (but didn’t pray in a restaurant for some reason, even silently). At some holidays they picked grandkids to lead the prayer, and had an absolute shitfit when their grandson (who is half-Jewish and was attending Hebrew School) gave a prayer in Hebrew and English. My father-in-law accused his mom of putting him up to it to spite them, the whole nine yards, when he was just pleased with their shared religious heritage and a prayer to God that any Christian should feel good about.
That doesn’t really answer the questions in the OP, does it?
Though it may be their rules, do you consider those rules to be reasonable? I say no. Even more than strangers on the street, the personal beliefs of guests should be respected and accommodated to the best of your ability. You wouldn’t force a vegetarian guest to eat the meatloaf just because your own family is expected to eat what is set before them, would you?
Would it likewise be reasonable to make Christian guests participate in your pagan dinner rituals? No, for the same reasons stated previously.
The hand-holding is the tricky part: if there’s no hand-holding, it’s just a matter of sitting there silently, and I think it’s reasonable to ask anyone to sit there silently while someone else prays.
As far as hand-holding goes, it depends on what you mean by “expect”: if you normally stand and hold hands for prayer, I see automatically extending your hands to include your guests as inviting, not insisting: to not include people in the family circle would be weird, whomever you were about to pray to. On the other hand, if people decline that invitation, it’d be unspeakably rude to comment on it.
For an extremely opposite viewpoint, enter in my Aunt Rita. She had inlaws over for Thanksgiving years ago. The inlaws insisted on praying before the meal and Rita said “absolutely not”. When they ignored her request, Rita reached behind her and loaded the shot gun. The family went outside, prayed before the meal, and came back in. You don’t mess with Rita.
I’m an atheist and I’ve been at meals where everyone bows their heads to pray and meals where my guests want to pray at my house. I’ve got a live and let live attitude. If someone insists that I join in the prayer, I will excuse myself. If that’s not acceptable, and how rude of a host to do that to a guest, I will choose to either not eat or leave.
I generally leave the room or at least stand off to one side silently when this sort of thing comes up. And yes, it is rude to expect me to do something I have antireligious objections to.
Meh. Don’t accept their dinner invitations if you don’t want to go through their pre-meal rituals. Unless someone is actively sick, I don’t have a problem holding their hand for a few seconds while a prayer is said. And, yes, if a Satanist wanted to recite from his Book of the Damned that’d be peachy with me as long as he didn’t overcook the damn steak.
Back when I was a kid and we recited the Lord’s prayer at Church, you were expected to chime in with your hands folded in prayer. Then someone came up with the idea to all hold hands, and now a good portion of the congregation holds hands, even with strangers. So now there’s always a bit of awkwardness as the prayer begins as we try to ascertain whether the person next to us is a hand-holder or not. You don’t want to force an intimacy with them, nor do you want to reject them if they want to hold hands.
Me? I’d much prefer if we just did it the old-fashioned way to avoid all the awkwarness. But at the end of the day, it’s not a big deal. Just go with the flow.
My wife’s family does the whole hand-holding thing, and I don’t mind a bit. I don’t join in the prayer itself, though I do use the moment for quiet reflection and have actually come to enjoy the ritual of joining together with loved ones in this way. Others assign a religious significance to it; I don’t, but it has become a meaningful act to me nonetheless.
My brother’s wife is religious and prays before meals at their house, I bow my head and try to be respectfully quiet while the host and others pray.
But we hosted Thanksgiving this year and everyone was standing around waiting for me to say grace. I said, “we’re atheists, so we don’t pray, but if anyone else would like to say grace, please go ahead,” and this upset my SIL enough that she went downstairs to have a good cry.
If I can respect her beliefs in her house, why can’t she respect my lack of belief in my house?
She threatened them with death for wanting to pray? Why the hell did they come back inside with such a dangerous psychopath. I’d be in the car and driving as fast as I could.
You load your shotgun to force me to accede to your point of view then you’re threatening me with death. I ain’t ever going near you again.
We pray and do the hand hold thing. My Jewish and atheist friends know that we do this, and quietly join in. I will sometimes state a generic “please assume an attitude of respect per your personal beliefs” if we have newcomers at the house.
I don’t expect you to join in, I just expect you to put up at minimum a facade of respect for my beliefs. Then wash your hands if you were next to my little one - trust me.
