Comment of the Week: Distributing Bibles in Schools
I believe that any religion that is willing to take the time to distribute their information to the children of any school should be allowed to do so. Maybe not during school hours and disrupting class, but before and after? Why not. I believe that as a Christian parent it is my responsibility to explain other religions and why WE believe what we do and why. If another religion where to give my child information, then that is just giving me an opportunity to teach my child more about our own religion.
And there are some children that would not EVER hear anything about any religion without this interaction. And as long as a child BELIEVES in something they are more likely to stay on a path that will enrich their lives and they will be guided by what THEY believe to a good life. I would rather my children believe in something, even if they didn't agree with me, than to believe in nothing at all...
[original post]
Christians can already reach out to adherents of others if they really want — for example, by visiting other houses of worship to distribute literature: mosques, synagogues, etc. Do they? If not, then what is the real reason they want to start going to schools to distribute religious literature to other people's children? Why do they need to use the school instead of taking the time and effort to stand outside on public sidewalks?
Students are required to attend schools in order to learn, not in order to provide a captive audience for Christian proselytization. They certainly don't go to school in order to voluntarily be preached to by various religious evangelists. Religious groups and believers should of course be free to preach to anyone who seeks them out, but they also shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of a captive audience of minor children just to make their evangelization easier.
Comments
James seems to fail to consider why some children might not hear about religion except for Christian proselytization. His focus on what he believes would be good for his kids assumes that he knows what would be good for other parents’ children.
His assumption that kids would have no idea of religion but for adult religious adherents proselytizing is also false. Kids talk to each other. In second grade my son had conversations with creationists regarding the beginning of the universe.
The evangelists also often care nothing for the law. There are series of Gideon Bible cases, one after the other, where Bibles are distributed in schools and a trial results in the practice being banned. The Gideons simply move to another school and start again. They know full well it’s illegal, they just have this compulsion to continue doing it. Some people even regard this perpetual law-breaking as a “tradition” at this point and hence say it should be made legal.
I hate liars, bullies, and crooks of any stripe. Their religious opinions are trivial in comparison.
Passion drives people,
The Gideons go from one place to another handing out Bible’s because it is something they believe in, and many others embrace their beliefs. Still others reject them, but if they truely believe handing out bibles has the power to save “lost” souls, why would they stop? Understandably Athesists and others will be upset, but the creationsists are just as upset that public schools teach evolution, and don’t leave any room for Intellegent design, not even as a theory to be considered. So each side is going to keep bickering, as long as they are passionate about this issue.
Not all Christians feel like James. I know many whose heads would explode if their kid came home with a book of Koranic verses or a story from the Bhagavad Gita. So, this is not just an atheist concern, it concerns many believers as well.
Meanwhile, I was “taught” about other religions at my church, and that makes me very much wish I’d have learned about them in an age-appropriate religious survey course in school. If I had been given true information about Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, (even Catholicism), I might have been able to correct a great many misconceptions and false assumptions that most of my then-church held to. I was taught so much bogus information regarding what other religions “believe” that it was obscene. Nothing I was taught was even close to an accurate representation of these other doctrines. It was all strawmen.
So, just to add that atheism is not the only idea that is maligned from the pulpit. Depending on one’s religion, EVERY other idea might be maligned from the pulpit.
Well, of course religion needs unfettered access to our public schools. It’s not like they can buy property or have buildings constructed specifically for religious purposes, or place notices or advertisements in local papers or telephone directories, or have one of their younger members construct a website with META tags for search engine indexing, or run public service announcements free-of-charge on radio or television, or receive donations that are tax-exempt for promoting their particular mission, or conduct demonstrations, or publish position papers and editorials promoting their exclusive right to salvation, or…
Hi Joe. Please use the words “theory” and “hypothesis” properly in the evolution debate. A hypothesis is an unproven idea. A theory is an explanation which is backed up by millions of related facts, is accepted by the scientific community, and is used every day by scientists in their work.
If any of this was going on in my school, I’d raise such a stink they’d never see (or hear) the end of it. Fortunately, I live in the least religious part of North America, so even most Christians here seem to understand that secularism protects them as well as everybody else.
While we’re at it, I think we should change that whole “No shoes, no shirt, no service” rule too. I feel discriminated against when my right to go shirtless in a gas station is taken away!
I would not have a problem with another adult approaching ME and telling me about their religion and why I should teach it to my children. I do have a problem with someone going behind my back and trying to indoctrinate my children. How would a Christian parent react if I told their childen that there was no god? What right do they have to assume that my children are not “on the right path” because they are not being brought up in a particular religion?
I would like to share a story with everyone. When my middle daughter was 7 years old (she’s now 32), we were living in an apartment complex in Mesa. Arizona. One Sunday, she was in the playground with some other local children. One of the children came to my apartment door and told me that some man was trying to get my daughter and others to go with him, promising ice cream, candy and other treats. It turned out that the man was driving a church bus and was trying to get the kids to Sunday school. Needless to say, I told this guy off in language that I canot repeat here. The next day, I went to the church and asked to speak to whoever was in charge of the Sunday school. I informed the lady that came into the room that if my daughter was going on a school trip, I had to sign a permission slip, so why was their driver trying to take kids without the parents’ knowledge or consent. The woman’s reply was that it was ONLY for Sunday school and felt that no harm was done. Now, I asked her, how would she feel if her child came up missing and she did not know what had happened. The woman had a mental block made out of cement because it was not sinking in that her organization needed to get parents’ permission to take other people’s children anywhere. Somehow, they were above this because they were a church. I did get through when I threatgened legal action should anyone from her church approach any of my children ever again without asking me first. Some church people seem to feel that they have the right to indoctrinate and even kidnap other people’s children for religions purposes.
You should have sent a bus to pick up that lady’s child to take them to a Synagogue or Mosque. Or worse yet, a natural history museum. i bet that would have cracked the cement.
I have been teaching science in the public schools for the past 5 years, and I can safely say that there are no children anywhere who are not aware of the massive presence of religion in the air they breathe and the sports drinks they drink. Religions have no need to accost children at school - they have so much of this country so well indoctrinated already. My suspicion is that they make so much noise about atheists and homosexuals because they are competing with each other for converts to their specific denominations, more so than trying to win over sinners to Jesus. There’s a lot money to be made in the church business, but it doesn’t go to your church in if people convert to a different sect.
As a student and an atheist, I’d feel a bit offended if someone tried to convert me on my way home; I get enough prostelyzation from christian peers as is. As if a kid wouldn’t hear aboot religion otherwise…. on the contrary, they’re bound to hear something from other students or other people, believe me.
‘The right path’, oh, yes, because he’s a christian, he thinks he knows he’s on the right path. If there is no god, which evidence supports, than apparently, ‘broad is the way to sin’ in a christian nation, and I’m on the right path. Him feeling comforted by his religion is fine, but should a person really want to hear aboot different beliefs, they have the right to visit any system of religious organization for themself. By the way, Joe, we live in a christian society, a society that would otherwise prefer to refrain from teaching evolution, so there’s bound to be someone who can easily convert someone regardless.
Joe said,
‘Passion drives people,
The Gideons go from one place to another handing out Bible’s because it is something they believe in, and many others embrace their beliefs. Still others reject them, but if they truely believe handing out bibles has the power to save “lost” souls, why would they stop? ‘
The trouble is having passion for something doesn’t justify it. Many genocidal maniacs may have ‘truly believed’ they were making the world a better place by slaughtering people, but that doesn’t make it ok. Evangelists who go around trying to shove their religion into children’s faces make no effort to properly justify their actions (saying it ‘god’s will’ isn’t proper justification).
‘Understandably Athesists and others will be upset, but the creationsists are just as upset that public schools teach evolution, and don’t leave any room for Intellegent design, not even as a theory to be considered. ‘
That’s because I.D. has no scientific backing whatsoever. Its completely unjustified, as it were. If I were to create an idea that the Earth was created by a giant space louse do I have a right to be upset that it isn’t taught in schools? If you want people to teach something, you’ve got to substantiate it, whether you truly believe it or not.
‘So each side is going to keep bickering, as long as they are passionate about this issue. ‘
Of course however one side is right, and the other is wrong.
I like what K. Anonymous said about passion not justifying what you do. It seems to have become an American value that you must stand up for what you believe in - I could not even estimate how often I have heard this since I was little. The problem is, not all beliefs are worth standing up for. But whatever happened to examining beliefs before you start to cling to them passionately? How about continuing to examine a belief, no matter how long you have considered it your own? Of course, genocidal maniacs will kill for their beliefs, that is pretty obvious. Many of those genocidal maniacs were religious, though the religious prefer to deny this fact. But go a step further. Clearly not all the religious become genocidal maniacs willing to kill in the name of their gods. In most cases it is clear that broader problems in a society trigger some people to interpret their religion in genocidal terms. Hitler, for instance, would not have gone far with his religious persecutions of Jews if the Great Depression had not left so many people in Germany without a livelihood. Likewise many Muslim terrorists today feel compelled to do what they do because of the inequities thrust upon them by puppet governments in their nations propped up by western governments, regardless of how Western people dress what tribal totems they worship. But ask yourself this - if people were not indoctrinated to believe that there is one right way for all people everywhere (a basic assumption of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition), then when bad times encourage some people to go looking for scapegoats, would they find so many others willing to support their atrocities? The Bible says very clearly “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, yet so very many Christians have killed so very many people in the name of their religion. Why? Because the Bible says so many things, it is possible to justify almost anything at all, depending on which words you choose to read and how you want to twist them around to your purposes. As long as people feel that there is a single authority for all things that is good for all people, then bad people will find a way to use that authority to move others to do the horrible things they want to do. Religions have served important purposes uniting societies and keeping people from harming one another, but there is a logic to most religions that inevitably leads genocide and murder, no matter how loving the gods or their representatives on Earth claim to be. The human race needs to grow up and get past this sort of thing, or they will be doomed to continue the cycles of violence so obvious in their history.