My son M, 8 years old, is growing up in Atlanta. This is a fine thing: Atlanta has wonderful food, glorious natural beauty, and some of the most genuinely friendly people you will ever meet.
It’s also the Bible Belt, and even though we live in a relatively progressive community here, the entire atmosphere is much, much more religious—especially Christian—than where I raised M’s sister A, now 21, who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Cambridge, you say you’re an atheist and everyone is like, “So what?” But here, belief in God—or at least, regular attendance to a religious service—is much more of an expected part of life. So when M’s classmate asked him what church he went to and he answered, “I don’t go to church,” the classmate cocked his head and said, “Oh, so you’re Jewish!” (When a Jewish friend asked M if he was Jewish and M said no, that boy said, “Oh, so you’re Christian!”)
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