Comments on: Knowing about Religion

By: PQuincy

PQuincy — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 20:31:42 +0000

A few years ago, as a freshly minted professor, I was asked to teach a freshmen course on Martin Luther (It was on the books already, and I was qualified by my training). The course was quite good—15 frosh and sophomores, good discussion etc. At the last class, I asked the students for their thoughts more broadly. One hemmed and hawed a little, then said: “Well, Professor, when I signed up I thought this was a course about Martin Luther King, but when you showed us the book cover the first class [with a portrait of Luther], I realized it couldn’t be. But it seemed interesting so I stayed.” I was a bit flabbergasted…but noticed a titter going around the room. And I had to ask: everyone who thought this was about Martin Luther, raise your hand. The count? About 9 out of the 15…. But they learned!

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 16:33:41 +0000

Re; the daily collective act of worship in UK schools. My recollection was that this only became a statutory requirment in 1988. The intention of the Government at the time was not to immunise children against religion. Interestingly, New Labour have actually strengthened the requirment for an act of collective worship. It is now possible for a body of school governors to be condemned as ‘failing’ if the schools inspection regime finds that an daily act of collective worship is not being carried out.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:33:19 +0000

As far as avoiding religious content in US public school classrooms goes, I’d think that there’s at least as much fear of angering conservative Christians as there is of sparking a first amendment lawsuit. Honestly, how’s a parent who teaches his or her child that the Bible is the unadulterated word of God going to respond to a class that teaches it as literature? As a contribution to the I’m-amazed-at-what-my-students-don’t-know-about-their-own-religion stories, I’ll offer one of a woman in my Intro to Literature class who wrote an analysis of the 23rd Psalm, as rendered in the Norton anthology. Since it’s a lit book, the text was of course the King James. She’d grown up with the New International, or some such translation, and was horrified at how our book had gotten the verse “wrong,” and thus perverted its content. I had to write her a long note explaining that the Bible wasn’t actually originally written in English…

By: teep

teep — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 23:01:21 +0000

Harry: Yes. Brain misfired, I suspect. One pumps up clue and pimps out sites. My bad.

By: harry

harry — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:30:50 +0000

teep, you did mean ‘pumping up’ didn’t you? My experience teaching college exactly mirrors yours; with a very few exceptions neither the religious students, nor the militant atheists know much abut the history of Christianity, or about scripture. Those who do are good news in class, with only one exception I can think of.

By: john bragg

john bragg — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:20:27 +0000

I teach social studies in an overwhelmingly black public high school. Most of my students find out that they are Protestants in World History class.

By: teep

teep — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 21:14:42 +0000

I’ll weigh in here and back up Kieran. While I actually got pretty decent grounding in the history of the Lutheran church in confirmation classes, most people I had college classes with (English literature, Penn State, early 1990’s) showed up there without any background on where protestants came from or why, as a class, they existed. Additionally, most people I had college classes with, even the “religious” ones, had no clue regarding anything from the old testament that wasn’t Noah or Moses. I do not know what the deal is with that… do they just teach the new testament in church these days? (Not a churchgoer, myself. Atheist.) If anyone is interested in pimping up his or her Bible clue, here are adorable Lego-ized bible stories with actual biblical texts. It’s very cool stuff: http://www.thereverend.com/brick_testament/

By: AAB

AAB — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:27:53 +0000

I think I would support for a curriculum that teaches history and principles of religions (i.e. faith and truth claims etc). I would also include atheism, agnostism etc in there. But no mass worship of anything. (Heck may be that would stop the religion advocates from pushing their stuff to science classes!!)

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:08:40 +0000

Actually RE is one of the few things that is not part of the National Curriculum. The Standards site linked to is a non-compulsary guide: “you can use as much or as little as you wish.” Where I live the syllabus is decided on at the LEA level and I suspect the same is true elsewhere. As Harry says the daily act has entirely fallen by the wayside. At my Secondary school we had assembly twice a term and it never involved a collective act of worship.

By: harry

harry — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 16:58:07 +0000

tim says: bq. I think the law requiring ‘A daily act of collective worship of a broadly Christian character’ is more honoured in the breach than the observance. Yes, certainly. Especially in secondary schools, where I’d be surprised if more than 10% of non-religious schools do it. I don’t know when Tim went to school, but the decline in the daily act started in the early seventies (partly for practical reasons—the UK baby boom was starting to kick in, and schools had more kids than they could fit in the assembly hall, so assembly became twice or even once a week, in year group-defined groups rather than whole-school), and then continued precipitously in the 80’s.

By: Stentor

Stentor — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 16:37:26 +0000

In my church growing up, we heard more about the Reformation than most—my mom says she wonders whether our pastor worships Martin Luther instead of Jesus. Even then, that still wasn’t a lot. But when I went to college, we learned about church history—both the Reformation and the early church—all the time. I think that’s because it was an extremely ecumenical congregation, and historical details were something that the Baptists and Congregationalists could all agree on.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 16:32:28 +0000

I think the law requiring ‘A daily act of collective worship of a broadly Christian character’ is more honoured in the breach than the observance. At my school, we used to have a bible reading every day (except Monday, oddly, when we had a piece of secular literature instead), but that was pretty unusual. RE lessons in state schools are generally comparative religion and ethics classes. Their content, as for most lessons in British schools, is laid down by the national curriculum.

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:58:20 +0000

I am not nearly cool enough to know any kuro5hin phrases. But, in any event, Ukogbanian would be better.

By: BP

BP — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:29:48 +0000

“That we’re the notorious godbotherers and Ukanians aren’t. ” Oh yay, another irrepressible kuro5hin phrase …

By: Cryptic Ned

Cryptic Ned — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:25:23 +0000

So the remark about how unnecessary a European history course is for Murkan students wasn’t parody then? Who said that? Are you referring to me? I said that learning about the history of the church isn’t necessary for churchgoers. It’s not always essential to learn things. Sometimes it distracts from the main point of an experience. At church, they want you to internalize the doctrine and have faith in its veracity. There’s no real need to do that by comparing it to other doctrines, or by describing the history of the leaders of the church. That sort of makes the church prosaic instead of divinely inspired. If you doubt that, well, churches don’t generally teach about the history of their denominations, and I think they would if they thought it would help people.