I was thinking about growing up in a 1950s Happy Days culture, in a nominally religious home. We weren't effusively devout. Religious holidays had to coincide with national ones in order to be observed and merit a turkey on the table. It was a huge, heavy, oval-shaped 3-leaf affair that could seat a company of Marines when pressed into holiday service. (I only recently put it out on the curb with mixed emotions for "bulk trash day".) Back in those days, I recall that religious affiliation was largely private and no one would've thought of "witnessing" to a guest or neighbor. It would've been considered bad manners...just plain rude. It just wasn't done. My mother came the closest to anything remotely evangelical when she would, in times of stress or anger, call on enough saints to fill up a mini-van. (Gads! What an image...there's a 30-second commercial somewhere in that image.)

Having said that, it's no surprise then that as an adult I've felt no coercive familial restraints blocking my conversion...or rather deconversion to non-belief. I also don't worry about what other people think...and I really mean exactly that. If my atheism arises as a topic, I will often engage people if they are genuinely inquisitive. But beyond that, it simply doesn't arise today as an issue anymore than my former religious status did back then. Then again, as a matter of daily routine I don't associate much with friends or colleagues who are ignorant busy-bodies, so it probably doesn't come up in conversation as much as it might if I lived in the more hermetically sealed culture of the Bible Belt.

Of all things exceptional about America, the separation clause implied in the 1st. Amendment is as much a part of the essential stuff of my being as my blood...and it was for my father and his father before him.