Religion – Revisited
Thu., August 28, 11:40 AM
Just in case some people thought I was trashing Christianity in my recent comments about the Ten Commandments display in Alabama, I want to clarify some things. If you haven’t seen it, please visit A Question of Religion; if you’ve already read it, I don’t need to repeat it.
I finished public school before the courts said we couldn’t pray in school. I was mildly offended by some of the religion-connected activities – like singing carols about Jesus, whom we do not worship – but we were all aware at a very young age that we were a minority living in a Christian world. That was the way it was – deal with it.
I have been in the habit of referring to our minute of silence as part of the morning exercises in high school. One could pray, if one felt so inclined, but if you wanted to think of something else, that was okay. Of course, you did keep silent, out of respect for the others. To this day I see nothing wrong with that practice.
More recently I remembered early elementary school, where we recited the Lord’s Prayer with the teacher every day. I noticed that, when I got a new teacher, she said it differently; she left off the end. I noticed but didn’t question; she was the teacher. (It was years before I realized that one teacher must have been Catholic, the other, Protestant.) My point, however, is that I didn’t know it was a Christian prayer; I just thought it was a nice one. Maybe expecting every child to pronounce those words each day was wrong, but it gave me something that I still respect.
Do young girls still read Little Women? My daughters did, but that was about twenty-five years ago. Louisa May Alcott considered herself a very liberal and tolerant person; I go back now and think, “compared to what?” One comment was that she couldn’t believe one group of children was more deserving of heaven than other children because they went to a specific Sunday school. I agree – but I came to realize that in her view, “different” Sunday schools meant Episcopal, Congregationalist, or Presbyterian. I wondered about her references to the “poor German” or “poor Irish” servants, that WASP-y lady. But as with so many other questions, I just filed them away, knowing that I would probably understand when I got older…as I did.
And as I continue Leap of Faith by Queen Noor, I keep trying to equate her descriptions of Islam to the fundamentalists who insist on destroying the infidels and who execute women who become pregnant in any way outside of marriage. (A woman who is raped by a man who says he didn’t do it has no legal recourse.) Maybe we learn more as we get older, but the puzzles seem to increase.
