Cara Fry Interview 7/28/12

Cara Fry sat comfortably next to me in the public library. She had a pink skirt on with a matching cream top. Cara was very warm and personable as she shared her story. Here is the interview.

Sarah: Tell me a little about your background.  How did you become an atheist? What was your family like, and were they religious?

Cara: I was raised Methodist in a moderately religious family. We went to church every week, and I went to Sunday school. When I was a teenager, I was involved in the youth group and went on all the outings and everything. Then in my late teens, I decided to get a little more serious about it. I decided that if I was going to be a good Christian, I should really read the bible from cover to cover and know what it is I’m saying I believe in. I read it and it went the other way. The conflicting information became very apparent. A lot of things weren’t in line with what I had been taught about, you know, how god was loving and all of that. So I kind of started to look around at other religions. I looked into Buddhism and tried to learn what I could about that for a while. I learned about Baha’i.

Sarah: Baha’i, I don’t think I’ve ever heard about that one.

Cara: Baha’i, it’s almost like Buddhism. They’re both very peaceful, but you can’t drink or smoke or anything. I wasn’t quite up for that.

Sarah: That wasn’t your type of lifestyle.

Cara: So I stuck with Buddhism for a little while learning about that. I never really called myself a Buddhist, but I read quite a bit about it. In the end, I couldn’t believe that that was true. Then I called myself an agnostic for a couple of years, and then non religious for a couple of years. After a while, the more I read and the more I thought about it, the more I thought the only honest way to describe myself was atheist.

Sarah: So why would you call yourself agnostic and non religious verses atheist?

Cara: The word atheism certainly has a stigma attached to it. If you tell someone that you are agnostic, they think you’re questioning. They don’t attach all the negative baggage to you. Same thing with non religious, they don’t take as much offense to it as they do when you say atheist. People have this idea in their mind that atheists are these horrible, evil people. They attach a lot of negative ideas to you based on that even though they may not apply at all.

Sarah: So now you have no problem calling yourself an atheist?

Cara: Not a bit.

Sarah: All right. Are you open then about your atheism? For example, at work?

Cara: I am out at work. I am out with all of my friends. I’m out on Facebook and out with most of my family. Um, I haven’t directly told my mother.

Sarah: But she has a hint?

Cara: I’ve given hints. I don’t know if she’s picked up on them or not. But if she ever asks me directly, I would certainly tell her the truth. It’s an uncomfortable conversation to be sure.

Sarah: Did you ever have a hard time telling people or did they have a hard time actually accepting that?

Cara: Initially I did because you don’t know how people are going to react. In the end, I’ve found that for most people, especially with my friends; the group of people I hang around with is a fairly liberal group, so they were fairly accepting of it. I’ve had a few friends who had difficulty with it. I’ve lost a few friends. When I changed my Facebook religion to atheist, I think I lost 20 friends that day. But, you know, I was the exact same person I was 5 minutes before I changed that. I’m the same person. Just the fact that they learned something about me meant that they could no longer be friends with me. That tells me that that’s somebody who’s in the frame of mind that I really can’t relate to anyway.

Sarah: Right, right. So, you have a son, correct?

Cara: I do have a son.

Sarah: How do you go about religion with him? Is that a major topic or do you want to just ignore it?

Cara: No, we definitely don’t ignore it, because we live in a world where religion is very, very important to people. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to ignore it. We try very hard to educate him in a way that will allow him to make his own choices. We try to tell him about different beliefs, and obviously with a religious extended family, he sees some of those beliefs in action. We have a lot of books on creation stories. We have all of the Greeks myths, Norse myths, and we talk about ancient religions. We talk about how religion changes. We’ve offered to take him to church, but he’s not ready to go to church at this time.

Sarah: Oh, he doesn’t want to go?

Cara: My mom and my in-laws go to church, so we thought he might just want to go see what it’s all about. But he’s not up for it yet. We’ve recently been thinking about going to the Unitarian church to try to get him more of a community. He goes to a small school, and he doesn’t have a huge social circle. There’s not a lot out there for atheists, community wise. I find the difficult part is really making sure that I’m not indoctrinating him into my beliefs. I want him to know my beliefs, but I want him to know very clearly that whatever he decides to believe, it has to be whatever he feels is right for him. It’s not my decision what he believes. So I just try to give him as much information as I can.

Sarah: Good. Do you feel at school that kids kind of bug him about it?

Cara: No, not so much. He goes to a Montessori school, and so, the populace there is a little bit different then in a public school. There’s a wide range of beliefs in the school. He has friends there who are Muslim, he has friends who are Hindu, and he’s got Christian friends. He’ll come home and tell me about conversations that he’s had with his friends. One of his friends said something about god, and he said he didn’t believe in god. He said she just looked at him like he was crazy. But overall, it hasn’t been too difficult. What I think is more difficult is when we’re with our family having a meal and they all stop to pray before the meal. He’s like ‘mommy, what are they saying? What are they doing?’ Just trying to explain to him the action. No it hasn’t been too bad.

Sarah: O.k., well good. Going back to the community, um, so you feel like you’re open with everybody?

Cara: Uh huh.

Sarah: And then at work, do you get anything negative?

Cara: No, not really. I was really expecting a much more negative response. But overall, it was almost a non-response. I did have one day when I was wearing an atheist necklace, and I was told that it probably wasn’t a good idea to be wearing that. I said I would be happy to take it off as soon as all of the people wearing cross necklaces were told that it was not a good idea for them to be wearing those.

Sarah: That’s a good point.

Cara: I don’t go around and shout from the roof tops or anything, but when it’s come up in conversation, I just say ‘oh, I don’t go to church, I’m an atheist.’ Initially, I got a couple of looks, but I haven’t had any negative conversations about it. I think it’s kind of accepted.

Sarah: Good. Could you describe your personality? What do you like to do? Do you have any hobbies?

Cara: I like to make stuff. I like to make a lot of stuff.

Sarah: Like what kind of stuff?

Cara: I do a little bit of everything. I do sewing, drawing, crochet, beading, macramé, and a lot of fibers.

Sarah: What is macramé?

Cara: You know, like the hemp jewelry and stuff.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Cara: So mostly fiber arts. I just need to make stuff all the time. I do scrapbooks and stamping. Before our interview, I went to hobby lobby and bought an origami kit.

Sarah: Nice.

Cara: I don’t know why.

Sarah: Is that going to be your afternoon then? Making origami?

Cara: Yeah, maybe. Something to do while my kid’s on our computer I guess.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Cara: But I love making stuff. I love the outdoors. I love to camp. I like learning as much as I can about science and the natural world. I spend a lot of time reading books about science, philosophy, and the scientific method. I like to read quite a bit. I like movies, but I don’t have a whole lot of time for watching movies. And we don’t have television, so I have to find other fun things to kill my time with.

Sarah: And you’re married, correct?

Cara: I am married.

Sarah: How long have you been married?

Cara: I have been married 13 years now.

Sarah: Wow, that’s awesome.

Cara: Yeah.

Sarah: So how’s that going? Is he atheist?

Cara: He is also an atheist. I think it’s really helpful to have somebody who shares a common belief like that, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it’s certainly possible for people with different religious backgrounds to get along in marriage as long as they’re committed to supporting the other person in what they want to do. When we got married, it came up as an issue, because our parents were helping to pay for the wedding. They really wanted us to get married by a preacher. He and I both felt that if it was a religious wedding, it would mean less to us. We ended up compromising. His mom had worked for a pastor, a Lutheran pastor, and he became a friend of the family. He had moved up to Wisconsin, and he came down here and married us as a friend of the family. We had conversations with him. We didn’t tell him directly that we were atheist, but I think he knew when we were talking about what we wanted included in the ceremony. He was very respectful of really minimizing the religious aspect which, again, I was really surprised that he was willing to do that. But I was also very grateful that he was willing to do that.

Sarah: Is there anything important that you’d like to tell other atheists out there?

Cara: Just to come out. That it’s probably safer then you think it is. I know that when I initially started telling people that I was an atheist, I was really expecting this huge backlash, and it never really came. Certainly, I’ve had a few people who were opposed to the belief, like I said, the people on Facebook. But it’s been better than I thought it would be. Everybody’s situation is different. You know what your family is like. You can start with the people that you think are safer and take it from there. Just be honest with who you are. Because the more people realize that atheists are their coworkers, their neighbors, the people at the grocery store, their babysitters, I think we’ll get more widespread acceptance.

Sarah: And to the religious people; people that might not accept your viewpoint. Anything you want to say?

Cara: Along the same lines. We are just like you. I think every religious person, if they think about it, could relate to atheism. If they think about it, you know, they don’t believe in Zeus or any other god that you can come up with throughout history.

Sarah: The rain god or the sun god.

Cara: They only believe in this one fairly recent god. And if they can understand how they feel about one of these other gods or all of these other gods, then they understand what it is for an atheist to feel towards their belief. There’s a saying I’m sure you’ve seen around the internet. “We’re all atheists, I just believe in one less god then you do.”

Sarah: Yes.

Cara: That’s basically it. We’re all human. We all have thoughts and feelings, and we all have our background and our baggage. We’re all just trying to get through. Everybody is just trying to get through their day.

Sarah: Yeah, great. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Cara: Thank you.

After the interview, Cara came up with one other story she would like to share.

Cara: I did have a friend who flipped out on me a bit, and it started with something completely unrelated to atheism. He got very upset about just some innocuous comment that I made. There were some e-mails that went back and forth, and I was trying to figure out why he could possibly be so upset with me. In the end, it came out that what he was really upset about was that I was an atheist.

Sarah: Oh.

Cara: And not just that I was an atheist. He said ‘I know you’re an atheist, and I don’t care. But do you have to go around advertising it?’ Because I’ll post things occasionally on Facebook. He said ‘you know, when I see all your posts about how you’re good without god, just makes me enraged.’ Whoa. I found that very interesting. We ended up having a long conversation, and in the end, things were left kind of… half way mended. We’ll call it half way mended. I’ve seen him since then and we did speak, and it was civil. But I found it very interesting that he had this issue with my belief and my expression of my belief, and had to find all these other ways before just coming on and saying I’m upset about your post. Which again, it’s an unfair treatment of atheists, because religious people are posting things all the time on Facebook.  And that’s fine. I have plenty of religious friends and relatives, and they post things on Facebook. Hey, great. On my wall, I post what I want. If you don’t like what I post, you do have options of blocking me or hiding the post or unfriending me. But he chose instead to attack me for expressing my belief. But all in all, like I said, the push back hasn’t been too bad. It’s been much easier than I thought it would be to come out.

Sarah: At least, you’re still civil with him.

Cara: We are still civil. There’s some rebuilding to do in the relationship, but you know, that’s what relationships are. Sometimes they need a little bit of extra work.

Sarah: That’s true.

You can read Cara’s blog at liberalatheisthippie.blogspot.com

Cara also makes jewelry that can be viewed and bought at earthknots.etsy.com