Georgia and The Bible
Shadows In Motion is not intended as a place for me to talk about what’s happening in the news. I’ve done that in the past and quite frankly it was not a very interesting way - for me - to keep a blog.
However, this is a situation that I can’t help but to comment on. I will do my best to keep my usual thoughtful approach to the topics that I submit to SIM, strange as they may be.
With that said I would like to take a moment to vent about the following news:
ATLANTA - Georgia is poised to introduce two literature classes on the Bible in public schools next year, a move some critics say would make the state the first to take an explicit stance endorsing — and funding — biblical teachings.
As you may imagine this struck me as a horrible idea, but this is not a blog where you’re going to read the author (moi) going off on a tangent. I could, mind you, but that’s not what I want SIM to be about.
The good news in this situation is that the bible course is not going to be required. In addition to that, the schools in the state of Georgia will be able to decide individually whether they want to include this bible-based class at all.
I’m also happy to see that the Yahoo reporter commented on the fact that the teachers could easily turn this into a proselytizing class, or that they could be pressured into doing so. There are rules against this of course, but when it comes to religion people seem to quickly forget standard morals. “Blinded by faith”, indeed. What’s breaking the law when you’re doing it for a ‘higher cause’, after all?
Anyway…
There are a great many people out there who consider themselves to be a member of a religion when they know very little about the actual religion itself. These individuals tend to blindly follow their religion and will typically accept what their family or their pastures tell them without any investigation of their own.
This is by no means limited to bible based religions. For example, I have seen this behavior from Wiccans as well, particularly from younger people. They read a book on the subject and, for whatever reason, will consider the contents of the book to be made of gold.
These people tend to become very angry very quickly when you question their unresearched beliefs. I’m sure that every religion has these types.
Which is why I think that these bible base classes could potentially do some good. This would require that the instructors not exploit the class as their own personal church, which I fear has a significant chance of occurring. Those lucky students who have a good teacher, however, could have their minds opened to the reality of a religion that they had always considered to be their own but never really knew.
This reality may not mesh at all with what they have been told, but they will have little choice but to face the differences and the contradictions that they discover. Sure they could drop the class and try to pretend that it never happened, but some part of their mind will always remember.
In other words, it may help people to actually learn about the religion that they consider themselves to be a part of. This can’t be anything but a good thing. Ideally, this newfound information would be compared to what science has discovered about the subject as a whole (such as the date of Jesus’ birth compared to the date and actual history of Christmas).
I wish that this approach would be used for other religions, and this is where I feel that Georgia’s program stops holding water. As far as I am concerned, in order to be constitutionally valid the schools in Georgia would need to offer identical classes in other religions, using the books from those religions.
“Equal air time”, so to speak.
This would be an extremely expensive undertaking and as we all know, funding is not something that the U.S. school system has much of. Despite its potential positives, I am of the opinion that the program should be blocked and that any such program should not, in any way shape or form, be a part of the public school system.
I didn’t say that I wouldn’t give my opinion in this post, only that I wouldn’t go off on a tangent. So I’ll leave it at that.
~Steph
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