Letters to the Editor
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There will never really be a "right" time
I too went to a religious college, and at that time, I fully believed as they did, and my politics, like theirs, were conservative (in fact, the president of the college was the father of John Ashcroft), but I still rejected their automatic association of Republican politics with religious belief. I protested the boorish comments of a chapel speaker ridiculing peace protesters and was very nearly dismissed from the school. I was your age, and it felt strange to be doing this all alone.
Ideally, you would go to your dean, the college chaplain, your parents, your friends, etc., and say something like the following:
I have thought a long time about my beliefs and have realized that I do not believe as you do. Frankly, I am at a point in my thinking where I seriously doubt the existence of God. I know this puts me in a position that you seriously oppose, and for the sake of my position as a student here, my friendships, and family relationships, I regret that, but I have to be honest with myself and you. If the college finds it necessary to request my withdrawal as a result of this, I am ready to accept the consequences. If not, I have no agenda to antagonize those who believe in God. I hope you can at least respect my sincerity, as I respect yours.
If you do that, I think it likely that you will be asked to leave your college, that your parents, friends, and others will be in varying stages of shock, disbelief, horror, outrage, sorrow--or, worse yet, that smarmy individuals will contact you with creepy smiles to tell you of the "burden" that "the Lord has laid on their hearts" for you, with impertinent and intrusive pleas for your conversion to follow.
Practically speaking, I can't blame any 20-year-old who decides to avoid that.
On the other hand, you need to consider that if you don't take such a stand now, you must ask yourself when you will be willing to do so. There will never really be a "good" time. After you've graduated? Well, when you begin your career, depending on what part of the country you live in, you may well encounter people who take it for granted that church is as much a part of your life as it is of theirs, and their conversation will reflect that. When you meet the person you want to marry? At some point, you must introduce your presumably unbelieving fiancée to your parents. Do you want that to be the way they find out you no longer share their beliefs?
When you have children? If you have not already made your position clear, what will you say when they come home from a visit to your parents' house singing Christian songs? I don't mean that if they eventually choose religious belief on their own that you should antagonize or suppress that, but you will at least need to know where you stand and be able to deal with your kids clearly and responsibly on that issue.
Will you do it after you are solidly established in your career? After you get your first promotion? When you decide to work for the campaign of a political candidate who--and one hopes that this will eventually be the case--candidly announces to the public that he doesn't attend church and really doesn't care to, thank you very much?
No, there is no judge standing there with a stopwatch calibrating an exact time when you must come out or else. But there's your own growing uneasiness over the injustice you are doing to yourself and others by living a lie. The sooner you put a stop to that, with due consideration for the feelings of others but with a firm willingness to stand for what you believe, the easier it will be for you to take other stands, later. The longer you put it off, the harder it will be.
By the way, 20 or 30 years down the road, you may also run into one of the people who gave you the hardest time when you finally took a public stand, prayed the loudest for your conversion, and denounced you in the strongest terms. When you meet him, he will also have become an unbeliever and will confess that he secretly envied you your courage at the time, even though he hollered along with everyone else for your expulsion.