The Happy Feminist

LIBERALS FAVOR TEACHING THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOL

It seems that David van Biema of Time Magazine must read Feministe -- either that or Jill is tapped into the zeitgeist.  In any case, his article advocating teaching the Bible in public schools echoes (although does not match precisely) what Jill was saying in this post.

Contrary to right-wing propaganda which holds that liberals want to remove all references to the Bible from public life, most liberals probably favor the teaching of Biblical literacy in public schools -- as long as it is done without preaching or denigrating the Bible.  I disagree profoundly with much of what the Bible contains but the fact is that it is a foundational text for western culture.  I certainly felt it important enough, notwithstanding my agnosticism/atheism, to take a number of courses in the Bible at my private high school and my private college (including a course called "The Hebrew Bible" taught by a teacher who happened to be a rabbi, a one year survey on Christian theology,  a language class on New Testament Greek, and a seminar on New Testament Eschatology taught by a professor who happened to be an ordained Prebyterian minister).  After all, teaching the facts is a cornerstone of liberalism.  Love it or hate it, the Bible is a fact of life in western culture.  Even if we are not ourselves Christian, we should understand the religious beliefs that are motivating the majority of our fellow citizens.  If we are Christian, we should understand what our key religious text says.

According to Van Biema, polls show that 2/3 of Americans believe that the Bible contains  the answers to "all or most of life's basic questions" but 1/2 of Americans cannot even name one Gospel.  Only 44% of Evangelical teens could identify a particular quote as coming from the Sermon on the Mount.  Van Biema observes that such ignorance may hobble many Americans' understanding of their own religion, and also prevents those of us who are neither Jewish nor Christian from fully understanding our own secular literature, western art and music, and American political ideas such as John Winthrop's "shining city on a hill" not to mention the current political influence and ideas of the Religious Right. 

So can we teach the Bible without causing a whole cascade of problems?  The problem is that there will be abuses.  Undoubtedly, teaching the Bible in many places will include all sorts of constitutionally impermissible conduct such as praying or proselytizing.  There will be some places where non-Christian students are made to feel profoundly  uncomfortable in their own public schools.  There will be efforts to privilege Christianity above other religions.

But how I would love to see American students given the tools to not be so painfully ignorant without teachers seeming to endorse or put down Christianity.  Certainly, that ideal was met in the classes I took in liberal secular institutions.  It is possible for students of all religious beliefs to study the Bible and ask hard questions (as in my New Testamant Eschatology seminar) like, "What did Jesus say about the end of the world? What did he mean?  What do the parables tell us about Jesus' view of the Kingdom? Also, what did theologians and scholars conclude about Jesus's beliefs? Based on your reading of the Bible, do you agree with so-and-so's conclusions about what Jesus meant?  If so, what implications might that have for Christian belief? How does Christian eschatology differ from Jewish eschatology?" And on and on.  You don't need to be a believer to grapple with those questions. And in all the classes I took, often side by side with students studying for the ministry, I never once felt that anyone was trying to convert me or that our differing perspectives prevented us from discussing the Bible's meaning and influence together.  Am I too optimistic in my faith that this can happen in public schools across America, even in places like Texas or South Carolina?  Van Biema gives an example of just such a class taught by a conservative Protestant Christian. 

Of course, I also wish that public schools would teach other world religions, the understanding of which help to illuminate our own religious beliefs and which may help us to understand millions of non-Christian people around the world with whom we have political, business and other types of relations as the "global village"  gets smaller and smaller.  Am I too pessimistic when I assume that many conservative Christians would object to that?

HANDMAID'S TALE PREDICTIONS PREMATURE

A while ago, Philip Longman's article, "The Return of Patriarchy" made a big splash.  The full length article isn't available on-line, but you can get the gist here.  The idea is that liberals aren't having enough babies and, therefore, we can expect to be vastly outnumbered in future generations by the "quivers full" of arch-conservatives who believe in patriarchal mores.  Of course, this thesis hinges on the untested assumption that these broods of children will grow up to adopt the strict conservatism of their parents.

But according to a New York Times article by Laurie Goodstein* last week:

Despite their packed megachurches, their political clout and their increasing visibility on the national stage, evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.

Their alarm has been stoked by a highly suspect claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation.

Of course, it's important to note that "evangelical" doesn't necessarily correlate with "conservative."  It's also important to note that merely leaving their parents' evangelical churches doesn't necessarily mean that these kids are going to adopt a liberal worldview. It is also possible that evangelical leaders are crying wolf in order to encourage stepped-up efforts to draw in and retain young church-goers.

But still, this is an interesting sign that Longman's thesis perhaps takes a bit too much for granted.

* Unfortunately, the full article is only available if you subscribe to New York Times select.  But you can get the idea here.

LUTHERANS ARE FUN

I know this is kind of random, but L's account of attending a Lutheran funeral got me thinking about Lutherans.  My mother is a very lapsed Lutheran from a very Lutheran family -- so Lutheran in fact that her father and her grandfather and all her uncles and most of her male cousins are Lutheran ministers or missionaries or church administrators.  Having been raised virtually godless, I always felt a weird kind of culture shock to interact with relatives who refer to "the Lord" in casual conversation, or use the abbreviation PK (as in "We're PKs -- preacher's kids!")  or send out letters with letterhead proclaiming that "The Lord Has Risen!"

To a person though, my relatives seem to have a good sense of humor, including a good sense of humor about being Lutheran (at least those my mother's generation and younger).  I guess you have to have a good sense of humor if your religious denomination is named after a man who had regular visions of demons throwing feces at him (or scheiss in the original German). My mother tells me that they didn't teach her that part in Sunday school.

I have particularly enjoyed discovering this site Old Lutheran -- The Center for Lutheran Pride (but not too proud).  I bought the Martin Luther Sin Boldly T-shirt for my mother for Christmas one year, and I am currently eyeing the Martin Luther bobblehead for this year.

You also have to love the Luther is My Homeboy tumblers, the Wash Away Your Sins cleaning products, and the Here I Stand socks.  They appear to have discontinued the "Reform Your Breath" breathmints.   

IS IT THE YEAR OF "OUR" LORD?

I struck a very teeny blow for the separation of church and state during a week when I was acting D.A. for my small rural county (the week between the departure of the prior D.A. and the swearing-in of the new D.A.).  During that week, I quietly went into the computer system and changed the wording of our indictments. The indictments previously stated:  "On this the ____ day of _______, in the year of Our Lord ______, the Grand Jury etc. etc."  I deleted the words "of Our Lord."  The indictments issued since then read only that the Grand Jury gathered "in the year _____" rather  than "in the year of Our Lord _____."

I didn't make a public announcement of the change, mainly because I didn't see any reason to, and as far as I know, no one ever noticed.  But it made me feel better to know that non-Christian defendants indicted in our county did not have to look at that indictment and possibly feel a chill of worry that they might not have as fair a shake as defendants who agree that Jesus is "Our" Lord. I could also rest easier knowing that I was no longer, in my capacity as a government official presenting indictments to the Grand Jury, endorsing Christianity or any other religion.  It struck me as a no-brainer, and really no big deal. 

But, apparently, in Kentucky, this kind of thing is a big deal.  Kentuckians are adamantly opposed to abolishing the terms "B.C." ("Before Christ") and "A.D." ("Anno Domini"  or "In the Year of the Lord") in dates used in Kentucky's public school curriculum.  The alternative strikes me as utterly non-controversial -- "B.C." would be replaced by "B.C.E." ("Before the Common Era") and "A.D" would be replaced with "C.E." ("the Common Era").  "B.C.E." and "C.E." have been used by historians for ages.  Certainly, it is beyond controversy that we have one dating system for the era before Jesus was born, and another dating system for the era after Jesus was born.  No one is advocating the replacement of the dating system which we all in the western world are used to.  No one, Christian or otherwise, disagrees that it is indeed 2006 "in the common era."  It is, however, very much disputed whether Jesus was "Christ" or whether he is "the Lord."  The only thing accomplished by retaining these traditional formulations is governmental assertion of the superiority and truth of Christian doctrine  -- to the detriment of Jewish, and Muslim, and Wiccan, and Buddhist children who must necessarily understand that they are not included in references to "our" Lord. 

As Amanda notes, for some fundamentalists, "Every teeny tiny thing must uphold their superiority and turn everyone else into the Other."

   

GOD TRULY IS MADE IN OUR IMAGE

Check out this fascinating article about a Baylor University survey into Americans' perceptions of God. 91.8% of us believe in some kind of a God or higher power.  But the Gods we believe in are quite different, falling into four broad categories which also predict the political tendencies of believers:

Authoritarian God  This one has some issues with anger.  He is very judgmental and will definitely punish us for our sins.  He is also very engaged in our lives and in world affairs. 

31.4% of Americans believe in this kind of God (and 43.3% of southerners).

32.1% of these believers think that God is on America's side in world affairs.  These are the people who want an active, Christian-values based government.

The Benevolent God sets absolute standards for humanity but is primarily a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces his repentant prodigal son in the Bible.

23% of Americans believe in this kind of a God. 

Although there are Jews in this category, more than half of these believers want the government to advocate Christian values.  They are also most likely (68.1%) to say that caring for the sick and needy ranks highest on the list of what it means to be a good person.

The Critical God:  The Critical God has his judgmental eye on the world, but he's not going to intervene, either to punish or to comfort.

16% of believers believe in this guy.

"This group is more paradoxical," Bader says. "They have very traditional beliefs, picturing God as the classic bearded old man on high. Yet they're less inclined to go to church or affiliate seriously with religious groups. They are less inclined to see God as active in the world. Their politics are definitely not liberal, but they're not quite conservative, either."

Those who picture a critical God are significantly less likely to draw absolute moral lines on hot-button issues such as abortion, gay marriage or embryonic stem cell research.

The Distant God:  This God created the world but does not especially care about it or intervene in its affairs.

24.4% of believers believe in this God. 

This group tends towards so-called moral relativism.

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I have always thought that if I were to believe in a personal creator God that he or she would definitely have certain characteristics that probably reflect my own predilections and personality.  My God would either be benevolent or possibly a distant spectator, watching us with curiosity but detachment, kind of like the way I watched my sea monkeys when I was a kid.

What I can't wrap my mind around is the authoritarian Jack Chick kind of God.  After all, if I have no desire to have my enemies be tortured eternally in a lake of fire, surely GOD isn't so petty or pathological that he would consign people to hell for telling a lie in 5th grade or for having honest doubts about his existence? 

Also, it never fails to amaze me that people (at least in this day and age) never posit an evil or malevolent God. With all the suffering in the world, why do we assume that God is a good guy rather than a sadist?  I wouldn't go that route, because I tend to think that anyone who created corgis and daffodils must be a good sort.  But still.

Another possibility no one ever seems to think about is that maybe God is powerful but fallible.  Maybe he has had to figure things out by trial-and-error (natural selection anyone?) and maybe he wants the best for us but doesn't have full control over all the forces he unleashed in the world from death to natural disasters to our tendency to kill each other.  In short, maybe he is doing his best.

I am actually exhausted, which is why this post is a bit fanciful.  If you think I am going off the deep end, just go read the article about the Baylor study. It has lots of other great statistics about religious belief in the U.S.  (Note that it has been criticized for possibly posing questions in terms that make more sense to Jews and Christians than to other types of believers.)

WORLD RELIGIONS

A very cool discussion forum has been brought to my attention -- World Religions, a very large interfaith forum for discussing, debating and comparing religious beliefs.  I just signed up and can't wait to start exploring it.  You can find the link on the sidebar under "Neat Stuff." (I am, however, going to be reorganizing my sidebar and blogroll soon.  I keep putting it off.)

Go check it out and join in the fun!

AN UNUSUAL JESUS FISH

Lots of things to blog, but it's just a matter of finding a chunk of free time!  I spent my weekend reading depositions and panicking about not having enough time to read them all.  It is a case I inherited from another attorney who left the firm and it is on for trial next month with tons of witnesses. I know the gist of what the witnesses have to say, but I really want to have more sense of familiarity and comfort with their deposition transcripts since I did not actually take the depositions.  So I was reading / summarizing / panicking and feeling discouraged / reading / summarizing / panicking and feeling discouraged all weekend.  It just takes so long.

Anyhoo, the question for the day is this.  I spent my commute following a car that had a Jesus fish with a Star of David inside of it.   Does anyone have any idea what this means?  Is it a reference to our so-called "Judeo-Christian" tradition? Is it a reference to Christianity swallowing up or somehow being superior to Judaism?  Is it a Jews for Jesus symbol?  Or is the idea that Christianity and the fate of Israel are linked? This was driving me nuts the whole drive. Another clue: the car aslo had a bumper sticker that said "Boycott France."

Whatever the meaning of the mysterious Jesus Fish, it sure as heck beats those dreadful stickers of Calvin urinating on things, at least aesthetically. 

THE SECOND UU BLOG CARNIVAL!

The Second Unitarian-Universalist Blog Carnival is up at The Chalice Blog !!!!

Get over there and get to know a community of thoughtful, intelligent, and freethinking bloggers!

ON BEING CREATED IN GOD'S IMAGE

So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

-- Genesis 1:27***

This Bible verse has always had a great deal of resonance for me. You may find that surprising if you are a regular reader of this blog, because I am a Unitarian-Universalist notably lacking in any theistic bent. 

But to me, this Bible verse is just a more powerful way of stating one of the key principles of Unitarian-Universalism - that every person has inherent worth and dignity.  Somehow the metaphor of all human beings containing and reflecting the qualities of a personal creator-God makes this idea seem less abstract and more compelling to me.  That particular wording of being created "in his image" has been something of a mantra for me in dealing with some very difficult personal issues.  To me this notion of the inherent worth of all human beings is crucial in terms both of ethics and of inner peace with oneself; and it is made less abstract and more seemingly real by the creation imagery.  I am not alone in this; this idea of seeing God in other human beings is found in Judaism, Christianity, and other religions.

In much of the navel-gazing on this blog, I have referred to my very unhappy home life when I was growing up.  One of the things that affected me deeply was my father's habit of expressing total contempt for individuals we knew who had failed or were flawed in one way or another.  People who maybe weren't very bright, people who spoke English inarticulately, people who were tacky, people who were unpunctual, people with poor etiquette, people who were lazy, people who failed to live up to some responsibility or another, people who weren't good at giving directions, people who had problems.  The failings of all these people in our lives were dissected in detail and, as people, they were found to be utterly lacking in worth.  The message I took away was that a person is inherently undeserving unless she meets an impossibly high standard of intelligence, well-spokenness, taste and refinement, punctuality and manners, hard work and reliability, and lack of any serious personal problems like divorce, addiction, or psychological problems.

Of course, the person this message ultimately harmed was me.  There was always this intense anxiety of falling into that category of the unelect, the screw-ups deserving of the direst scorn.  To be less than perfect was to be utterly lacking in worth.  And I also missed out when I was young on appreciating and learning from all the strengths and positive qualities of the badly-dressed man down the street, that messed up family whose children all had psychiatric problems, and all those people whose sequential reasoning maybe isn't the best but who have other kinds of intelligence. 

One result was that  when I was quite young -- in late childhood and early adolescence -- I was painfully shy.  The shyness was born of a deep fear of being burden to whomever I encountered in a social situation.  The thinking was: "Here I am taking up all this time from a person would probably rather be speaking with someone smarter, more interesting, wittier, or better looking."  Many things helped me get over my shyness, to the point that I am probably less shy than most people I meet these days.  But a key realization was that I have just as much of a right as the next person to have a good time at a social event.  If I am not the most exciting companion in the world, who cares? I have a right to exist just as much as the person I am so afraid of burdening with my presence.  Why?  Because I have inherent worth.  That worth does not need to be justified or earned.  I have worth just because I exist and because I am human.  Because I am made in God's image.

And of course it is impossible to grant oneself that degree of grace without granting it to others.  Otherwise you have cognitive dissonance.  I have inherent worth, but that guy wearing too many gold chains doesn't?  That doesn't make sense.  So I concentrated very hard during my teen years and early twenties in lessening my instinct towards contempt (learned at home from the cradle) and seeing the worth of even the most unprepossessing people around me.  The nerdy girl or boy in class is made in God's image.  The moronic official or bureaucrat on the other end of the phone is made in God's image.  The person who failed to get his assignment to me on time may deserve my anger but he is also made in God's image.  I can't claim that I remember or apply this principle perfectly on all occasions, but my efforts have enhanced my relationships with others, my moral life, and my personal sense of well-being. 

Many people have used the notion of being created "in God's image" in the realm of social justice, to bring home the principle that even the poorest and weakest and arguably most flawed around us have basic rights -- from the impoverished and unemployed to those with mental and physical disabilities to the murderer in prison.  But also that principle should be applied in daily life to the people one encounters who seem stupid or ignorant or unattractive or irresponsible.

Of course, I don't intend to imply that people should be absolved of moral responsibility. It is not inconsistent with what I have said to get mad when other people let us down, or to point out stupidity or lack of ethics with extreme bluntness.  But I believe that it's still important for our own sake to keep sight of the fact that even our worst opponents have the right to basic dignity.  I don't believe in the creation literally at all, but I am in love with the notion that we are meant to be like God, each of us, to have the opportunity to enjoy and revel in life and the glories of the world, that God created the world for us, and that each and everyone of us is like God in our right to enjoyment of the world. 

***NOTE ON GENDERED LANGUAGE/IMAGERY:  Obviously my metaphorical conception of God is gender-neutral because, well, because I am a feminist.  I use the "in his image" in this post only because it is the traditional language and because I hope that people understand that the use of the male pronoun is not to be taken literally, especially since I am talking about myself, a woman, being made in God's image.  In fact, one reason I like Genesis 1:27 in particular is the equality recognized in the line "male and female he created them." I have used the forumulation "in her image" in my mind more often than not, and I find it gives the ideas discussed above even more ooomph and emotional resonance.   

MORE UNITARIAN HUMOR: STEPHEN COLBERT EDITION

I know everyone likes a good Unitarian joke, so check out this bit from Stephen Colbert.  Also includes a startlingly fluid recitation by Colbert of the Nicene Creed.  (Turns out he is in fact a devout and practicing Catholic.)