Question:
Should I reveal my atheism to my coworkers?
Answer:
Because of the amount of time you spend with people at your job, you may feel uncomfortable with keeping that fact that you are an atheist hidden from them - especially if your involvement with various humanist or freethought causes is important to you. On the other hand, you may have legitimate concerns that revealing your atheism could maker your work situation even more difficult.
So what do you do?
Religion and theism tend to be very important for a great many people. It is what they believe to be the source of their morals, their values, their meaning of life — even their purpose for living. They cannot imagine being without it and so naturally will have great difficulty imagining you being without it. Because of this, it may seem easier to simply "stay in the closet" and not tell anyone.
Sometimes, this might indeed be a reasonable course of action. For example, if you are new at your job and still on a probationary period, keeping quiet may indeed be wise - "rocking the boat" in any form is probably something worth avoiding. Aside from such situations, however, you should consider carefully before going too far down the path of remaining in the closet because it carries with it a lot of problems which you may not want to deal with later on.
For one thing, you may develop a great deal of resentment not only towards the dominant religion (if you aren't too resentful already, that is), but also towards your job because you feel like they are forcing you to "live a lie" by pretending to be religious. Such experiences can be psychologically and emotionally draining, especially when it occurs over a long period of time. Aside from that, there may also be other coworkers who also have doubts or who disbelieve — by speaking up, you will find that you share more in common with them.
An important thing to consider is how you might reveal your atheism. There are perhaps two broad means of revealing something like that: direct and indirect. A direct method entails making a deliberate, specific announcement — for example, revealing that you are an atheist as a way to tell someone that you simply aren't interested in hearing all of their stories about how many miracles God works for believers. This draws specific attention to yourself, to your atheism, and to your annoyance.
An indirect method entails letting your atheism become known in the context of something entirely different, perhaps without actually mentioning it specifically. For example, in the course of a conversation about sports you might mention that you go bowling with your atheist group every other Thursday; your being an atheist is thus communicated without you making a big deal out of it and without drawing much attention either to yourself or to your atheism.
Before going forward with telling anyone, one thing to ponder is why you would be telling people. What is your goal and what do you hope to accomplish? If your reason for revealing your atheism is that you simply don't want to have to hide it, then taking the indirect approach is probably best. Making some sort of announcement to any person or group of people would look very strange and raise questions about what your genuine motivations might be.
On the other hand, if you feel that you are under some pressure from religious coworkers who keep assuming that you, too, are religious and believe in a god, then doing more than dropping hints might be appropriate. Unfortunately, in such a situation where you feel that you need to say something, it may also be that things could get worse if people become aware of your atheism.
Only you can determine what risks and benefits would accompany such a revelation. It might be prudent, however, to begin updating your resume and taking a closer look at other job opportunities in your field, just in case. It wouldn't be legal for your company to fire you for being an atheist and it wouldn't be legal for your coworkers to harass you over being an atheist, but the general environment might become more than you are willing to put up with. Being prepared in advance would make any transition easier to accept.
