I'm from the UK. Something I remember from a road trip I took in the 90's across the US was, on multiple occasions, being told that I was "brave" or "courageous

I'm from the UK. Something I remember from a road trip I took in the 90's across the US was, on multiple occasions, being told that I was "brave" or "courageous" when it came up in conversation that I was an atheist (technical agnostic, working atheist if you want to be picky :-) This was from religious and non-religious folk. Nobody was mean about it to my face - but it felt like people expected bad things to happen because of it.