Also, I feel your pain, sistah. I too am an atheist working in a Christian org. However, I am there as a contractor, so while I am allowed and encouraged to participate in such activities as devotionals and chapel and mandatory prayer in meetings, I can quietly avoid active participation. I don’t make an issue of my atheism — I definitely like being employed — but I do my very best not to cave and participate either.

In my case no one directly asks me to pray, so I have not come up against this issue. Kudos to you for handling it graciously.

I don't know what I would have done, but it would probably be somewhere in between what you did and just bursting out laughing?

Prayer is a funny thing. On the one hand, those who pray believe in a power higher than themselves, to whom they can address their concerns and requests. On the other hand, they are being presumptuous, if not downright arrogant, by asking for what their omniscient target is believe to know that they need, and by reminding him of what he is recorded as having said aeons ago.

And yet, it is a widespread cultural phenomenon. There are times when I wonder what the original “ancestor religion” was, where we got the idea in the first place and how/why it got handed down through the generations.

In the meantime, it sounds very much as though you did the best you could under the circumstances. It’s hard to think creatively when put on the spot, especially in situations where one wants to be a quiet non-participant.