Male Stranger: Ma’am, I’m Muslim.
Female Stranger: That’s okay, we’re all god’s children.

She then continued with many “god bless you”s and eventually managed to convince this man (through sheer force of pressing it upon him) to try out as a Tenor for her church choir.

I’m going to make a few assumptions here: that she and her church both are of the Christian persuasion. Now I’m going to assume that I know what her assumptions were and see if I describe why they make me bristle.

Her response of “that’s okay” seems to assume that his religion might not be okay. And while I’m sure for some people that is the case, I’d hate to think that I live in a place where being Muslim is cause for apology or worse, forgiveness.

Her comment that “we’re all god’s children” also assumes a theistic (and specifically, a monotheistic) world-view; it also assumes that it is a shared world-view. And that’s probably the case, with a Muslim. But I wonder what she would have felt if I had told her that we’re all children of the Goddess. Or that we’re all brothers & sisters in non-theistic humanity.

Why is it acceptable to assume strangers are (a) religious and (b) Christian? And why is it okay to be offended when that turns out not to be the case? This reminds me of the man who approached me in a check out line & asked if I’d “found Jesus yet”. My husband, the wittier one, told me I should have responded that I didn’t realize he was missing, but instead I plead atheism-following-Catholicism. I would like to see someone else (if for no other reason than to prove that it’s not just Christians who can have annoying assumptions about strangers and because I’m not certain I could be so publicly derisive of another’s faith) approach a person at random & ask them if they’ve yet broken free of the restrictive bonds of religion. Or if they’ve accepted that their own actions are the only savior that they need from the guilt of past actions.

Eventually, she left the man alone, telling the man she was with that they’d “found their tenor!” (personally, I think this man was much more of a bass…). As soon as she was out of sight, he hastily retreated in the opposite direction, dropping her pamphlets in the nearest trash. Maybe I should become a militant atheist…