Dazed and confused
Erin (12) is in the middle of a nice comparative religion curriculum in her social sciences class. Looks to be much better than the usual slapdash.
The units are tied in with geography and culture. They’re currently on Southwest Asia, so at the moment it’s the three Abrahamic monotheisms. As usual, minority religions — Bahá’í, Gnosticism, Druze, Zoroastrianism, et al. — get the short straw, with no mention that I can see. I’d especially like to see Zoroastrianism covered, if only for all the yummy Christian parallels.) But three is ever so much better than one.
I know from Connor’s middle school years that they’ll get into the other two of the Big Five as they move east, and I told Erin as much.
“So what religion is in China?” she asked. She’s taking introductory Mandarin at the moment, so it’s a natural first place for her mind to go.
“All of them,” I said. It’s an annoying answer that happens to be true. I try to resist the tendency to paint countries with a single religion, a practice as misleading as Red and Blue states.
Most people equate China with Buddhism, but the country has a long history of pluralism of belief. Buddhism, Taoism, and various folk religions account for about half the population combined. Christians and Muslims are estimated at 2-4 percent each, with a metric smattering of Jews, Hindus, and others.
And the rest? I told Erin the largest single belief group in China is the nonreligious, clocking in at 40-50 percent — not a consequence of Mao, but a strong tradition going back 2200 years.
“A lot of those follow a philosophy you might hear about next year when you study China,” I told her. “It’s called Confucianism.”
She puzzled on the word a moment.
“Is that because they don’t really know what they believe?”
In school, out of the classroom
I’m about ready to be done with church-state issues in schools for a while. I’m in the mood to go well off-topic for a bit, to talk about child-eating mermaids and why trying to get the great works of Western civilization through the 19th century intact is like passing the Louvre’s collection of French Impressionism through a preschool on Fingerpaint Day. But since I blogged the Taylor situation last month, y’all keep sending me good on-topic questions. So as long as mine inbox groans under requests for counsel, the kid-noshing merperson will have to wait.
It seems some of you are running into the presence of outside youth evangelizing groups in your public schools, including Young Life and The Good News Club, and wondering you should be concerned. I can’t say “ask NCSE,” since they rightly confine their work to the science classroom. So I’ll weigh in, then give a plug for the folks who DO handle this end of things.
The Good News Club, a group with the stated purpose “to evangelize boys and girls with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,” has begun meeting in the public school attended by the daughter of one of my readers. Turns out this is another situation on which the courts have weighed in.
Good News Club was the plaintiff in a 2001 Supreme Court case (Good News Club vs. Milford Central School). Even though it allowed other clubs to meet, Milford School had prohibited the Good News Club from meeting in the building after school, thinking it would violate the establishment clause to allow it.
The court ruled 6-3 in favor of Good News Club, the majority stating that Milford Central School was not endorsing a particular religion or even religion in general by allowing them to meet.
Here’s the case doc, a legal commentary on it, and a good article by Wendy Kaminer. And the opinions are nicely summarized and worth reading on the Wikipedia page for the case.
Parenting Beyond Belief contributor and former American Atheists president Ed Buckner once noted in a discussion forum that “Bible clubs and clubs based on religion in other ways are permitted in public schools, though with real limits (not always adhered to): such clubs cannot be endorsed by, or even be given the appearance of endorsement by, the principal, school system, etc.”
The Good News Club meeting in the school after hours is legally kosher, and I for one think it should be, with reasonable restrictions. But the fact that GNC flyers were also coming home in the backpack of this parent’s child is perilously close to endorsement and oversteps the limits Ed referred to. And there’s the rub — that these groups can so often be relied upon to overstep whatever reasonable restrictions they are asked to observe.
I recommended having a chat with the principal, who probably doesn’t know the flyers are going home. And I pointed her to an outstanding source of information.
There are several such resources, and, if necessary, sources of direct assistance in cases like these. PBB contributor Stu Tanquist described receiving quick and effective help from The Freedom from Religion Foundation, run by the brilliant team of Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. There is of course the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that has earned the labels “un-American” and “traitors” for defending the constitutional rights of American citizens.
Please don’t get me going.
Then there’s an organization with which I’m constantly impressed: Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU). In addition to solid advice and long experience, AU provides a spectacular set of online resources. If you’re running into a church-state issue of any kind in public schools, you can’t do much better than starting on AU’s Public Schools page to get quick, intelligent answers.
Read the label
A study released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has Keith Olbermann scratching his head, some religious bloggers moving the goalposts, and most atheists…unsurprised.
The U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey asked 32 questions to assess religious literacy. Protestants on average answered 16 correctly, which was also the average for Americans overall. Fifty percent. Catholics brought up the rear with a dismal 14.7 — below the U.S. average.
Top honors went to atheists and agnostics, with an average of 20.9 correct. Not surprising, really. It’s not so much that non-believers learn a lot about religion, though that is also true. It’s mostly the other way around: knowledge of religion, especially comparative religion, leads to disbelief in any version. Another argument for religious literacy, parents.
When it comes to questions about Christianity, Mormons do best (7.9 out of 12) — interesting, since many other Christians do not consider Mormons to be Christians — while Jews and atheists/agnostics stand out for their knowledge of other world religions. Out of 11 such questions on the survey, Jews answered 7.9 correctly and atheists/agnostics answered 7.5 correctly. Atheists/agnostics and Jews also did especially well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including a question about what the U.S. Constitution says about religion — a thing worth knowing, in my humble.
By every measurable standard, the U.S. is the most religiously faithful and religiously ignorant country in the developed world. Europeans, by contrast, tend to be tremendously knowledgeable about religion (thanks in part to religious education in schools) AND very secular. Bright light doesn’t flatter the creature. That’s why all the candles.
According to the survey, forty-five percent of U.S. Catholics do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. Over half of Protestants (53%) could not correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions birthed their half of Christendom.
Fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, and only 27 percent correctly identified Islam as the primary religion of Indonesia — the largest Muslim population on Earth.
There is something to the argument that religion is not just the sum of its facts, or even of its beliefs. It is also a question of community and identity, and yes, experience. But to pretend as some commentators are now doing that the details don’t matter is simply false. If you sit in the pew of, raise your children in, give your offerings to, and proudly wear the label of a given denomination, you lend credence to the beliefs and practices of that denomination. Some of those beliefs and practices just might be harmful or fatal if swallowed. So read the label.
Speaking of Pew studies, are you even in the right pew? Take the Belief-o-Matic Quiz!
Get your own religious literacy on
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Last chance to register for Virginia PBB seminar this Saturday!
- September 27, 2010
- By Dale McGowan
- In Parenting, PBB
- 0
The Parenting Beyond Belief Seminar in Vienna VA is this very Saturday. Only a few days remain for secular parents in VA, MD, and DC to register.
Sponsored by the Northern Virginia Ethical Society, the seminar will be held on October 2 from 1-5 pm at the Green Hedges School in Vienna VA. We’ll cover all the major issues for secular families in a religious world, including extended family, religious literacy, talking about death, and encouraging a sense of wonder.
For more info and a link to register, here.
Haad yor gobs! The Lambton Worm
Enough with the seriousness. Time for another bedtime story monster.
Years ago, in northeast England, in the valley of the River Wear (rhymes with “tear”), lived a young man named John Lambton. John wasn’t much for church and one Sunday skipped it altogether to go fishing in the Wear. But instead of a fish, John caught only a strange worm, a little beastie with nine holes on each side of its head. It was too ugly to eat, so he discarded the thing down a nearby well, forgot about it, grew up, and joined the Crusades.
(Now there’s some deep time for you. American folktales are notoriously short of heroes who join the Crusades.)
Lest ye doubt this actually happened, I offer proof in the form of an actual folk song:
One Sunday mornin’ Lambton went a-fishing in the Wear;
An’ catched a fish upon he’s hook
He thot look’t very queer.
But whatt’n a kind ov fish it was young Lambton cuddent tell
He did nae wish tae carry hem,
So he hoyed it doon a well
Everyboody, noo!
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, an’ aa’ll tell ye aall an aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, an’ aa’ll tel ye ’boot the worm.Noo Lambton felt inclined te gae
An’ fight i’ foreign wars.
He joined a troop ov Knights that cared
For neither woonds nor scars,
An’ off he went te Palestine
Where queer things him befel,
An very soon forgat aboot
The queer worm i’ the well.
The worm “growed and growed an aaful suze.” Soon the villagers began noticing that their cows had all been milked—this was getting serious—then that the odd cow had gone entirely missing. The Worm (which we shall now capitalize out of respect) had emerged from the well and between bouts of dairy mayhem lay coiled around a local hill—ten times around the hill.
Jes’ the leedies, noo:
But the worm got fat an’ growed an’ growed,
An’ growed an aaful suze;
He’d greet big teeth, a greet big gob,
An greet big goggle eyes.
An’ when at neets he craaled aboot
Te pick up bits o’ news,
If he felt dry upon the road,
He milked a dozen coos.
Everyboody, noo!
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, an’ aa’ll tell ye aall an aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, an’ aa’ll tel ye ’boot the worm.
Jus’ the lads, noo, nace and lood—don’t be lettin’ the ladies shame ye none!
This feorful worm would often feed
On caalves an’ lambs an’ sheep,
an’ swally little bairns alive
When they laid doon te sleep.
An’ when he’d eaten aall he cud
An’ he had had he’s fill,
He craaled away an’ lapped he’s tail
Ten times roond Pensher Hill.
“Little bairns” are children, by the way, swallowed whole by the beastie as they slept.
Many brave knights tried to kill it, only to be vanquished by the Worm (imagine that on your tombstone) which uprooted trees and brandished them like clubs. In case you were having trouble picturing giant worm battle methodology.
Blah blah blah, John returned from the Crusades and killed it:
The news ov this myest aaful worm
An’ his queer gannins on
Seun crossed the seas, gat te the ears
Ov brave an’ bowld Sor John.
So home he cam an’ catched the beast
An’ cut ’im in twe haalves,
An’ that soon stooped he’s eatin’ bairns
An’ sheep an’ lambs an’ caalves.So noo ye knaa hoo aall the foaks
On byeth sides ov the Wear
Lost lots o’ sheep an’ lots o’ sleep
An leeved i’ mortal feor.
So let’s hev one te brave Sor John
That kept the bairns frae harm,
Saved coos an’ calves by makin’ haalves
O’ the famis Lambton Worm.
Everyboody noo!
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, an’ aa’ll tell ye aall an aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, an’ aa’ll tel ye ’boot the worm.
Doubt ye still? The story is established as historical fact by the existence in Weardale of a hill named Worm Hill, the circumference of which is precisely one-tenth the length of a giant worm. Explain that!
Elsewhere in the North, you’ll hear tales and songs of the Sockburn Worm, the Linton Worm, and the Laidley Worm. The huge black local slugs might have had something to do with this obsession, but it’s also a prominent thread in Anglo-Saxon legend, this fear of ending up in the diet of worms. I could make the obvious mortality point—we all end up eaten by worms—but I’ll spare us both.
(But we do, you know.)
Conversely, I figure things must get ever less ominous as you dip into Southern Europe. In Italy they probably tell cautionary tales in which magical goats lead children to invest unwisely. Must look into that.
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An etymological note: “wyrm” means “serpent” in Anglo-Saxon, whence “worm”–a little snake. Again with the damn serpents.
Post script: What should Taylor’s colleagues do?
A reader question on the “final” post in the Mr. Taylor series:
I’m curious about what you would say to a teacher with concerns about a colleague’s coverage of evolution. We have a science teacher who is evangelical, doesn’t believe in evolution or global warming, and “teaches the controversy” from what we hear. The problem is, I’m not in a position to have proof about what he teaches or how he does it. Any suggestion? — teacherlady
Boy that’s a good one. Teachers have an obligation to be responsive to parents. They have no such obligation to colleagues, and pointed questions from a faculty peer can (and probably would) be seen as galling presumption.
I forwarded the question to NCSE, and once again Glenn Branch provided what seems like a solid, reasonable answer:
It’s a little delicate, obviously, since this is a problem with a colleague, and there may be complicated workplace politics involved. But she should take the problem upstairs, to her department chair (if there is one) or her principal, whose job it is to worry about whether the teachers are doing their jobs right.
She should keep in mind that by doing so she’s going to be serving two interests: not only do the kids in the school need a decent science education, but also the district needs to be able to protect itself from possible lawsuit, as case law is clear. It’s difficult, we know, but she needs to do what is right, both for the kids and the district.
Any discomfort a teacher might feel in raising the question pales when weighed against those two interests.
In a later comment, teacherlady notes that the principal is also Christian and so might be disinclined to act. I wouldn’t assume that. In addition to the possibility that the principal is a sane, moderate Christian, the professional recognition of legal liability will generally trump personal leanings in all but the densest administrator.