That is exactly what I do with my family. They pray at family gatherings and I just casually stand there until they are done blessing the food and then I dig in.

I mean, you can look up and not participate in the prayer without being disruptive and disrespectful. It's not like you are cracking jokes in the middle of the prayer. Do you actually participate in prayer? So you say a prayer yourself?

@Jjones you have no idea the kind of toxic rural nonsense I've seen. Some old lady in the room peeks around and raises the 'so why weren't you praying with us' loud enough for a few people to hear because people have nothing better to do than start drama for entertainment, and if you try to point out she wasn't really either (because she was spitfefully looking for someone to do this to) everyone in the room defends her and the entire function is disrupted AND everyone is 20% more spiky and awkward towards you for the duration. I might not close my eyes but I'll at least bow my head. Personal point < not disturbing someone else's social function. It's much easier to be an observer and guest if people aren't looking for extra reasons to take exception to your presence.

@Jjones I have had a group of people attempt to gang up on me physically because I was wearing a pentacle and was in the same room as them. They only left me alone because one of my two friends was a) a woman and b) bigger and redder of neck than any of them and they weren't interested in fighting someone they couldn't socially acceptably hit back, especially someone who had 6 inches and 50 pounds on them. Toxic environments teach funny things.

@geist171 wow, now that is just ridiculous right there. I love the hypocrisy within the religion. They are flat out judging you for not praying. I definitely understand where you are coming from. I really hope you are not put in that situation often. It must be very uncomfortable. May I ask, are these like church gatherings or just the occasional prayer for an event? I don't mean this negatively but I think that as a whole we should not stay ideally and let the people who pray run the show. We do not believe in their religion so why would we partake in their practices. Any time I am put in this situation I am going to stand quietly to the side and let them do them. The more we show we are here, the more it would be come the norm. That is the hope anyways.

@Jjones there's not really a specific set of contexts for this kind of nonsense. It's an endemic and pervasive element of daily life in the rural south. I have very catholic, racist, Baptist-hating, family in the Louisiana farmlands, and I grew up in a place in the NC mountains where being 'super religious' means you go to church 3 times a week instead of just twice and there's 1 church for every 14 people in the population. We're talking churches across the street from other churches that are the exact same sub-denomination. There's a messianic zionist cult, a holiness church, a kingdom hall...and the bizarre schisms are tangible: it's an incredibly common practice for parents of teenagers to forbid their children from dating people who don't go to the exact same church. A girl I knew in high school got pregnant and her father made her stand up in front of their church congregation AND APOLOGIZE TO THEM. The Jewish kid in ROTC frequently got his yarmulke taken by his ROTC classmates because they thought it was fun to play keep away with it. There is no discernable Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, or other non-Christian presence (there might be twenty or thirty black people in the whole county, most of the non-white population is immigrant Christmas tree farm labor, and the folk history of the area includes running all the black people out of the area except for one guy and his family because he was the best greenskeeper in the state at the time) unless you want to drive an hour in any direction to an actual city. Our biggest towns only have two stoplights, but like fifteen churches.

@Stevil You can prick your finger...

But if the situation we're to arise, what would you do? Or what would you think you would do?

@Jjones I would not partake in the ritual