Volunteer Work with Christians

[BitterLad]

Sometimes when I'm volunteering, someone will ask me, "What church do you go to?" I'll say something like, "I don't go to church." If they ask why, I say something like, "I'm not religious." or "I'm an atheist."

This has sometimes led to someone giving me at least a five minute long lecture about Christianity. Once, someone went on for about 20 minutes. Usually, it ends on a pretty calm note, but other times, people seem to get frustrated with me. After this happened several times, I decided to avoid conversation with anyone there and just try to help out silently.

Have any of you had a similar issue? Do you attend any Volunteer Work organizations that aren't church-based? Why do you think so many of these institutions are connected to churches?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sometimes when I'm volunteering, someone will ask me, "What church do you go to?" I'll say something like, "I don't go to church." If they ask why, I say something like, "I'm not religious." or "I'm an atheist."

This has sometimes led to someone giving me at least a five minute long lecture about Christianity. Once, someone went on for about 20 minutes. Usually, it ends on a pretty calm note, but other times, people seem to get frustrated with me. After this happened several times, I decided to avoid conversation with anyone there and just try to help out silently.

Have any of you had a similar issue? Do you attend any Volunteer Work organizations that aren't church-based? Why do you think so many of these institutions are connected to churches?

I´ve never had it come up.

Many charitable organizations are religious partly because many religions hold charity as one of their core tenets, because communities that arise around religion are already in a prime position to organize charitable works, and a combination of the two. It also depends a lot on where you are and what kind of charity you´re interested in, for example, environmental volunteering is probably less likely to be organized by a church than feeding the homeless.

[Trivial]

I didn't have any issues with folks when I volunteered for Katrina with the Red Cross, but oddly I got a lot of people selling Jesus when I worked for a Lifelock call center.