Seperation of Church and Everything Part 1: Education

Following in my line of 'Get your Christianity out of my face' posts, I'd like to start a series of posts. Some of my other posts probably belong in this series, but I'm too lazy to go back and re title/incorporate them.

I currently work for a large, private university (can you guess which one?) and as an employee here, I get to take classes for free, either at a physical campus or online. So, I recently started a new online class here that, as far as I can tell, is a secular subject: Programming. Unless I'm trying to create an army of atheistic robots, I fail to see how religion relates to algorithms and do-loops.

So the first assignment in each class is to post a short autobiography. It's basically an online version of standing up in front of a class and introducing yourself. But with the freedom of typing out pretty much as much about yourself as you want to, I feel that sometimes people go too far and tell me more than I really give a crap about.

The professors start this whole process off by posting a blurb about themselves. I started reading my professor's post on Tuesday with growing interest. The man is the same type of learner I am, spreading out his Master's degree over 10 years (my two bachelor's degrees took me 8, and I'm 'working on' a third for as long as I'm employed) and he seems like a really interesting dude.

Then it all falls down. Here starts a new paragraph to begin talking about hobbies, and mentions that "My faith is everything to me." With a large sigh and a shake of my head, I read through the rest of the biography. My thoughts at this point in time were clear: The last thing I need to know about my professor is their religious affiliation.

It's not that his faith is going to cause me to not like the man any more or less than I would have already. Like everyone, I have friends of multiple religious bents. However, there's something about announcing his religious affiliation in a classroom setting that rubs me the wrong way.

I'm not sure exactly which one of my sensibilities is offended in this case. In general, I don't think that religion has a place in a classroom. Of course, the exception to the rule would be a class dealing with a religion as a subject (Hell, even I've taken a course called 'Religion and the State'). In another way though, I could be upset because it seems like he's acting the way most Americans do and is assuming that everyone in the class is a christian. His whole statement was this:
"My faith is everything to me, and I am very active in a wonderful church family here in Tulsa and with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. My wife and I also volunteer for a wonderful ministry to young women in crisis called Crisis Pregnancy Outreach of Oklahoma."

So supposedly, to him, faith is synonymous with christianity. At least, that's the way it seems to me.

From a third aspect, I think I'm offended because if I were to mention being an atheist, and my atheistic ministering (I don't think I really have any of this, unless this blog counts) and my love of Darwin, I'd be willing to put good money down on someone calling me out on it as inappropriate. If there were equality, and I was protected in the same ways as my christian professor, I don't think this issue would bother me. It's the double standard that's associated with religion and the lack there off that gets under my skin the most. Announcing your Christian faith is viewed as a virtue, letting the rest of us know that you're a moral, upstanding citizen. My announcement of my Atheism means that I'm outing myself as one of the most distrusted people in America.