God IS Allowed in Schools and Secularism is NOT Hatred

The mother of one of my former church friends—we’ll call the mother Sandra, because that is her name—sent me an invitation over Facebook to join the Facebook cause Allow God in School.

Obviously, Sandra isn’t a close friend of mine.  If she had even enough interest in my life to click through to my Facebook profile, let alone have a conversation with me in the past 4 years, she would know that I have no interest in supporting a cause to reinstate mandatory Christian prayers and Bible readings in public schools.

However, I saw an opportunity for lulz and I took it.  I accepted Sandra’s invitation and posted this on their wall:

John Reed Braden about 3 hours ago

Religion IS allowed in schools. Kids can pray whenever they want to in school. What isn’t allowed is evangelising to students. If you want to preach to my (future) children in their science class, I’m going to teach Evolution in your church. Public schools are for secular education. Churches are for religious education. Not all families want their kids exposed to your doctrines in school, and those of us who are not Christians appreciate Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s contributions to making secular education secular again.

God is allowed in American public schools, as the next few paragraphs will show.

Only in a few rare cases has a public school student ever been chastised for bringing a Bible to school and reading it.  The few times this has happened, the student was either evangelising in the lunch room or the class room (proselytising religious, political or personal views outside of a proper forum is against most schools’ policies), handing out Bibles in school (most schools forbid students from handing out any tracts, books or films to groups of their peers, no matter the content), or reading the Bible at an inappropriate time (it doesn’t matter what book it is, you can’t read it while you’re taking your algebra exam).  Of course, no matter what the student did to have the Bible taken from them, the media loves turning the non-story into a goddamn circus.  However, if a student wants to read his or her Bible after finishing an assignment, between classes or during lunch or during a study hall period (depending on the rules regarding study hall work and school relevance), that is perfectly fine and no one will punish the kid for reading the Bible.  I did it all the time, except I usually snickered loudly when I did it.

Many literature textbooks include entire books of the Old and New Testaments for their historical and literary significance.  My world literature textbook in high school included the King James Bible version of Psalms and Proverbs in their ancient literature sections and thoroughly discussed the translation processes of the Wycliffe, Tyndale and King James versions in the British literature section.  School kids are often instructed to read large portions of the Bible for an understanding of ancient literature and to better grasp many idioms and phrases in use in English literature from Chaucer to Grisham.

Before kids start their day of classes, they often sing patriotic songs such as The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which begins, “Mine eyes hath seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord,” and then goes on to lick Jesus’ bunghole for a full six verses without a single mention of the United States, but is seen as a patriotic song because of its use of the word Republic in the title.  Other songs I learned in elementary school that were piped over the intercom and we were forced to sing included the original four verses of My Country, ‘Tis of Thee whose fourth verse begins, “Our Father God, to Thee,/Author of liberty;” the entirety of our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, whose fourth verse proudly proclaims, “And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust;” America the Beautiful whose chorus presumptuously boasts, “America! America!/God shed his grace on thee,” as if God wanted anything to do with us ingrates; and God Bless America whose religious content I don’t think I need to explain.  Our principal was a stickler for every graduate of her (public) school knowing, in full, every classic American patriotic song by heart.  This was not contested by anyone on the school board or any parents, that I know of, of any of the students.  After she retired, the new principal continued the tradition, but only with the national anthem.

Even in schools where mindless patriotic songs aren’t mandatory to start the day, almost all schools begin the day with a moment (usually one to two minutes) of silence for silent prayer and meditation.  This is no different than the school prayer that O’Hair had removed from public schools except that it gives the students the option to pray to whatever god they choose or not pray at all, but it is clearly time set aside for students to pray.  Then the students begin the pledge to the flag, which includes the line, “One nation, Under God.”  This is mandatory in most schools and students (including myself) have been punished for not saying the pledge or noticeably omitting the religious line of the pledge.

Many outspoken Atheists—most notably, Professor Richard Dawkins—have shown an incredible amount support for teaching comparative religion in public schools as a method of getting schoolchildren to explore different ideologies and learn about other cultures as well as teaching about the Bible and other religious texts in literature and history classes.  No one—no one sane, at least—is calling for a whitewashing of history, literature and philosophy to remove all mention of religion.  Religion and the concept of gods are two ideas that have influenced the overwhelming majority of human affairs over the course of religious history.  The only thing those of us who refrain from practising the Christian religion are asking is that you teach religion, not preach religion, which are two entirely different things.  Teaching belongs in public schools, not preaching.

God (and by God, I mean the opportunity to practise and display one’s religious views) is already in the public schools and his place there is not threatened in any real way, for better or for worse.

My comment expressed politely that the public school system allows for people of all religious backgrounds to learn and experience the world, but it does not punish the free, undisruptive practise thereof.

Then, an hour later, I got a reply:

Yvonne about 2 hours ago

Mr. Braden why did you post a comment? You obviously have hatred in your persona for others with opposing views to yours. Allowing prayer back in school is not preaching religion – it’s allowing the opportunity to express faith in a higher power – or a moment of quiet reflection – rather you do or not. This cause is not to advocate "teaching religion in public schools" just the opportunity to express for a few very brief moments. You have such a hard determination no one here attacked you.

Oh dear… my persona has hatred in it, whatever that means!

She seems to misunderstand what the group stands for.  The people fighting the “Return God to the public schools” cause aren’t calling for a moment of silence.  We already have that, and no one sane fights to gain something that they already have.  These people are fighting to regain the “God in schools” that we had in the 1950s and before:  School prayer and Bible readings at the start of each day.  I know.  I used to be one of that crowd.  Evangelical “musicians” like Carman, “comedians” like Mark Lowry and pastors like Billy Graham provided me with all the vitriolic mis-education about Madalyn Murray O’Hair that I could ever need.  And these people—the provocateurs of the movement to reinstate school prayer—all believe that a moment of silence is not enough:  They want specific religious prayers to be recited in the classroom.

One of the most common pre-Madalyn prayers in school was:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and pray for Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

That seems short and innocuous enough, right?  There’s no mention of a specific religion, so it’s acceptable for everyone, right?

Well, here’s a short list of people whose children might be offended by this prayer:

• People who do not believe in gods (Atheists, Humanists, Agnostics)
• People who believe in no gods (Atheists, Humanists)
• People who have a religion but no gods (Buddhists, Pantheists, Mystics, Wiccans)
• People who have a god but don’t believe in intercessory prayer (Pantheists, Buddhists, Deists, Jains)
• People who have more than one god (Pagans, Hindus, many Buddhists)
• People who believe that their god or gods have no preference of one nation over another (Many people of all different faiths)

And the list goes on.  These are all of the students whose beliefs and lack of beliefs are marginalised by this seemingly innocent prayer.  Only people who believe that there is one God who listens to prayers and acknowledges requests for his blessing would be comfortable having to recite this prayer every morning.

And if school prayer was made mandatory, what about those denominations that believe only certain pre-scripted prayers can be heard by God without the presence of a priest or pastor?  Would we use one of their prayers?  And what about denominations who require paraphernalia to pray?  Will tasselled shawls be given to orthodox Jews?  Will there be prayer mats available for Muslim students?  Will Atheist students be given test tubes and DNA sequencing equipment for prayer time?

Students have different belief systems and to target a prayer at the majority of the students will marginalise a percentage of the rest of the school population.  If all students can’t be made comfortable at school, how can we expect them to learn?  How can we protect the students who, for whatever reason, refuse to recite the monotheistic prayer from being singled out and taunted during school, affecting their performance in class?

Will there be a prayer that encompasses all belief systems?

Dear God, gods, universe, something else, nothing at all, myself or any other possible worshipped entity,

If you don’t listen to prayers, I’m sorry for wasting your and my time, however, on the off chance that you do listen to prayers, please, if you would feel comfortable doing so, don’t hit the school with an asteroid today, assuming you have control over that and asking that favour of you isn’t too much to ask for.

Best of regards to you and yours, if you have anyone to call “yours”.  You’re really a nice guy, girl, creature, non-corporeal form, everything or nothing at all.

Toodles

Or, simpler:

To whatever, if anything, is out there:  If you can understand what we’re asking, please don’t kill us.  Sincerely, the humans.

I don’t think that bastardised amalgamation of religious ideas will go over well with anyone, but at least it’ll offend everyone equally.

What also struck me as odd was the accusation that I was being hateful.  I was stating my point of view that religion already has a place in public schools, and pushing it to any more prominence would be offensive to many students, parents and faculty.  I thought it would help start discussion about what the Facebook cause was really about and cause some people to really stop and think about why they were joining the cause in the first place.  Instead, I’m asked indignantly why I even bothered to voice my unpopular opinion and told to stop being hateful (whereas hateful equals “not like us”).

To ask that schools be kept a safe place for people of all beliefs and to illustrate the difference between church (preaching) and school (teaching) is not hate.  If anything, it’s the opposite of hate.  It’s not hateful to ask that public schools be inclusive of all peoples.

This absurd argument that anything that goes against mainstream Christian ideology is “hateful” is often thrown in my face and it never fails to leave me dumbfounded.

It’s not hateful to force an Atheist student pray, but it’s hateful for the Atheist to ask not to be forced to pray?

It’s not hateful to marginalise everyone who does not believe in your religion, but it’s hateful to ask for all individuals to be treated equally?

It’s not hateful to teach unscientific dogma in biology class, but it’s hateful for biologists to insist that nothing but biology be taught in biology class?

It’s not hateful to shout with 110% certainty that your God is real and everyone who disagrees with you will be tortured forever, but it’s hateful to doubt that claim and ask for evidence to back up that certainty?

Sometimes, I just don’t understand religious people.