Do you ever feel "in the closet" about your atheism/agnostic views?

[ellisonz]

93. I would say there is a definite urban/rural divide...

...but there also is a racial divide. And I would also hazard from what I know that Western New York is/and has been a hotbed of religious fundamentalism from the 1830's onward. A number of religious traditions originated in Western New York, which is also commonly known as "the burned-over district" from which Mormonism and Millerism sprang forth and other sects found home. So yeah, you live in one of the most fundamentalist Christian areas outside of certain areas of the South. At the same time, Western and Upstate New York were also places where abolitionism and the women's rights movement were strong: John Brown is buried on his homestead in North Elba and Senaca Falls Convention was of course held in Seneca Falls, New York.

John Calvin was controversial even in his own time, and part of the reason he is remembered as cruel, was because so many people even in his Christian polity of Geneva plotted against him. The Christianity of Calvin was contemporary with that of Martin Luther and the Anabaptists.

The the idea that there is an association between prosperity and spirituality is hardly uniquely Calvinist, it is pervasive throughout Protestant tradition, but is strongly associated with the Calvinists. (See: Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

In way though, you naturally of course have set yourself up in seeming opposition to their faction, and so they of course don't like you. At the same time, when you give them the pleasure of being afraid of them they are achieving their goal. They are in my opinion, and that of many others, fundamentally divorced from the message of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and should be ashamed of themselves for perverting his words so, do not give them the respect of purporting them to be anything other than somewhat heretical.

Remember this when you think of what the Christian faith truly consists of:

“Paul’s Letter to American Christians"
Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on 4 November 1956. MLKP.

Excerpt:

Let me rush on to say something about the church. Americans, I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ. You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor a Episcopalian. God is bigger than all of our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses for Christ, you must come to see that America.

But I must not stop with a criticism of Protestantism. I am disturbed about Roman Catholicism. This church stands before the world with its pomp and power, insisting that it possesses the only truth. It incorporates an arrogance that becomes a dangerous spiritual arrogance. It stands with its noble Pope who somehow rises to the miraculous heights of infallibility when he speaks ex cathedra. But I am disturbed about a person or an institution that claims infallibility in this world. I am disturbed about any church that refuses to cooperate with other churches under the pretense that it is the only true church. I must emphasize the fact that God is not a Roman Catholic, and that the boundless sweep of his revelation cannot be limited to the Vatican. Roman Catholicism must do a great deal to mend its ways.

There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning to sing "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name" and "Dear Lord and Father of all Mankind," you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is.

There is audio too at this website (highly recommend)

P.S. I am not a Christian.