How to deal with church on LinkedIn and resume
Hi,
I deconstructed just a little over a year ago and am so much happier now, but one of the things that fell apart along with my church membership was my career. I had been a fulltime church employee for almost 4 years when my shelf broke, working in translation. My work was a big part of why my shelf broke, both because of the type of employer the church was and because of the materials I was translating (gospel topic essays, SEC-scandal reaction, day handbooks with dumb fucking rules, you name it). Of course, when I came out with my faith status and didn’t renew my temple recommend, I got fired (but only after getting a nice severance payout). In the past year I’ve worked hard to get back in the saddle, followed some education, did an internship, and now I have a new job that I’m very happy with.
However, I feel ashamed when I think about my new colleagues checking out my LinkedIn and seeing the church among my previous employers. I don’t want them to think I’m still a religious nut and I also usually don’t feel like talking about my deconstruction, especially in a professional setting. I can’t take the whole thing off though, because it was my first real job out of university and I don’t want a gap of multiple years on my resume. I also don’t want to take off my translation experience because it tends to be favorable for getting jobs that involve a lot of writing. How do other former church employees deal with this? Is there any other company name or entity you put as your employer? Do you leave it on there with some kind of disclaimer? I need suggestions!
Edit: I’m not in Utah so a lot of people I meet professionally don’t know a lot about the church