Being harassed and bullied? Boy, that sure is mighty Christian of them. :rolleyes:
Document the abuse carefully. Leave. File a discrimination lawsuit.
Religion is a protected class, so you’ll win, and maybe you can make it better for those who come after you.
Begone from there… Have wonderful life and never think of them again.
Success IS the point. You don’t have to prove it to them. O N Jones has a good tack on that.
It seems as though torie is in a school, not a job. Transferring sounds like a good idea - your school really is stupid.
Can you transfer to a Canadian school? Religion is considered private here by and large. 
Transferring sounds like a decent idea, but . . .
Will transferring solve the problem? How do you prevent people from finding out you are an atheist and generally acting like idiots? Are you in fact being treated badly by the faculty and administration or just fellow students? How can you be sure the next place will be better managed/more tolerant?
Put some serious thought into how you can handle your situation differently the next time before you transfer and find yourself in the same situation someplace else.
I’m not telling you that you ought to lie and I don’t know that you’ve done anything horribly wrong so far, but, running away may not solve your problems, so your mother may have more of a point than it looks like at first bluch.
So, widening your eyes and saying “Gosh, Daddy taught me not to talk about religion or politics with classmates/coworkers” wouldn’t put them off? I’ve never lived anywhere sane people would badger you about religion, so I’m a bit lost too.
No one should be forced to sacrifice their lives for a larger cause against their will, to be a trailblazer if it’s not in their personality, or a ‘good example’ or face for whatever group they’re part of. That’s why good gay kids tend to leave small towns as soon as possible. They could hang around and prove people wrong, but bigoted people don’t like to be proved wrong – maybe they’ll be a friendly, volunteering superhuman, but that could just make them the exception to the homos-are-evil rule – and what kind of life is that?
I’d stay and troll. No way would I surrender. The more they tried to harass me, the more I’d rub my balls in their faces.
If it was something like religion or sexual orientation, I’d leave. As it is, I’m kind of in that situation at the moment, as I’m a liberal in a workplace full of conservatives, mostly Catholics and fundamentalist Christians. Even though it’s a government office, about half the cubicles have pictures of Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and occasionally I see a portrait of Buddha in the Asian people’s cubicles (not sure if there’s a separation of church and state issue here, so I don’t say anything). There’s one Buddhist lady who keeps trying to get me to study her holy books, but I keep putting her off as politely as possible, because she’s so sweet and friendly. Then there’s one of my former supervisors, who used to pray the rosary just loud enough for others to hear while sitting in her cubicle on Friday afternoons. I don’t know if I should have complained about this, because I had other, unrelated problems with this person, and to complain might have made them worse. I eventually requested to be transferred to a different supervisor. I’m staying at my current job for now, but it’s because I need the health insurance. I don’t feel the need to prove a point. (I do troll a bit, though - where others might put religious images in their cubicles, I have pictures of Hello Kitty. Kitty is my shepherd, I shall not want. She leadeth me through pastures of cuteness…) 
I do plan to go to grad school and get the hell out of there when I can find another job with health insurance, and hopefully the same pay or better.
I chose to leave simply because I would want to be happy. If there were any chance of happiness in staying and staring them down, I just as soon do that. There needs to be that choice as an option.
You and Q. N. Jones’ tactic is what I’m trying next. I’ve handled the question up until now with a simple “I’m not a member of any particular church.”
But I stupidly told a story about something my mom did once to a student I thought I could trust, and it involved the fact that my parents are/were atheist. (Will not make that mistake again.} Then the badgering started. Oh yes, I live literally 2 miles from Bob Jones University. Religious fundamentalism is a way of life here. Everyone makes everyone else and their soul their business.
As to what I’m doing differently at the next place, well, the next place should have some sort of leadership in place. At least, those are the questions I plan to ask. If this was a fantastic school in other respects, I would stay. But it’s not. I’ve had issues with personality conflicts and mild bullying from the beginning. Like I said upthread, the instructors are not above this garbage. A friend of mine is an instructor at another school, and he’s appalled. I’m also going to be much more protective of what I reveal in the future. My personal life does not exist, as far as any future school and work people are concerned. Must learn to keep. big. mouth. shut.
Stick around and poison their coffee.
Not for some of them. This is S.C., where “what church do you attend?” is usually either the first or second question that’s asked, and if you express a noncommittal answer, the next step is fervent (and oftentimes intrusive) ongoing invitations to worship with them at their church next Sunday.
It’s S.C., and they are not exactly sane about their religion.
Knowing how things can reasonably be expected to go, I think you need to come up with a game plan for the future. Q.N. Jones has a good outline for that. My issue like this is being childfree-by-choice - sooner or later the question of whether or not I have kids comes up (I never volunteer the information), and I have my set responses for that (well, there’s what I’d LIKE to say versus what I actually DO say ).
Huh? Why the fuck would you even be talking about that at work? Never in my life has someone asked me what religion I am, at work or anywhere else for that matter unless I was dating the person. It just isn’t something you need to bring into workplace discussion at all. It’s pretty dickish to go around professing your non-belief in something that’s totally irrelevant to your job and then act upset because people don’t like you now.
I’m not running around professing non-belief. I was pretty quiet about it actually. SC is a strange place for religion, as others have said upthread. Your soul is everyone elses’ business, because what kind of Christians would they be if they sat by blithely and let me damn myself to hell? Maybe it’s because we’re in such close proximity to a major fundamentalist organization, I don’t know. But I do know that it’s been a major issue I’ve needed to deal with in my life.
I sat quietly while my fellow students had lengthy conversations about the face of the lord at one church as opposed to another. I’ve sat and listened to one student confide loudly in another that she needs to stop having sex with her boyfriend because it’s not pleasing in the eyes of god. I was quiet when they had a lengthy discussion on how one student’s grandmother was seeing angels and Jesus in the hospital and it meant she was going to dance with the lord soon. The lines of professionalism were crossed over and over again with these people. First, it’s an immature group with very difficult personalities. Second, it’s a small group. A fishbowl. We’re all thrown in one room together, for 30 hours a week, for the entirety of our 18 month long program. The noncommittal but friendly answers were probably only going to work for so long.
Anyway, I think that people were already whispering behind my back, but then I told a story to a student who I thought I could trust. My story involved my mother’s atheism. I don’t know how this student let it slip to others, but to hear her tell it, she feels terrible about it. Anyway, the lesson learned is that I need to be much more proactive about shutting the questions down in the future, and much more protective about what I tell people. It’s my mistake, but my mistake does not absolve these people of the responsibility not to be rude and bigoted (I’m not entirely sure bigoted is the right word, but it’s the best one I can think of.) and the instructor to handle the social issues rather than ignore and, in some cases, contribute to them. Again, if this were the only problem I had, or if this was an outstanding school, I’d consider sticking around. But neither of those things are true. I posted this thread because I needed help articulating to my mother why I was making the decision I was. Talking things out like this always helps. One of the many things I like about this place.
Damn, I thought I lived in a fucked up place. I’m glad I don’t live where you live. Sorry for being so blunt torie (I can be like that). You should not only leave that school, but get out of the whole state.
No problem. It can be hard to understand the very strange cultural climate of the Deep South. The thing is, despite these hurdles, I quite like it here. I like being so close to my sons’ extended family and giving them that closeness. (My husband’s family is wonderful. Loving, supportive people.) I’m just struggling with how to teach them to handle this kind of behavior in the future.
torie, as an agnostic democrat in Tennessee, I understand the social climate in which you live. I’ve found that that refusing to discuss either politics or religion at work, as others have suggested, generaly is effective.
Sometimes, laying on the sugar (as in Bless your heart, honey! I was brought up not to discuss things like that outside of church / voting booth / whatever.) works best. It totally makes them out to be uncouth asses raised by wolves if they persist.