A few years ago, I had a colleague who was extremely religious and he was genuinely convinced that "atheists" were essentially anti-theists, i.e. people trying to take his religion away.
And yeah, that does make sense that he would think so from an outside perspective. It's only really the anti-theists that will publicly speak about their interests.
Similarly, what even average atheists might consider moderate demands, like not teaching religion in schools and separating state vs. church, likely looks like yet another anti-theistic attack from the other side.
Like these atheists are trying to take theists' government representation away and that the atheists are saying that the Bible is not actually a factual book, when it's clearly the most factual etc..