Wow, I’m impressed: The J Train finds a small guttering flicker of reason on WingNutDaily. It’s an article by a conservative Christian opposing public prayer at football games—he’d been in Hawai’i, where he’d been shocked to discover that pre-game prayers were given by Buddhist monks, and he found himself an uncomfortable minority in a sea of people following some strange religion (hmmm…does anybody else know what that’s like?)
It’s actually funny to read. He’s plainly horrified that he’d have to be in the presence of someone reciting a pagan prayer! He doesn’t quite get the response right, though.
We were frozen in shock and incredulity! What to do? To continue to stand and observe this prayer would represent a betrayal of our own faith and imply the honoring of a pagan deity that was anathema to our beliefs. To sit would be an act of extreme rudeness and disrespect in the eyes of our Japanese hosts and neighbors, who value above all other things deference and respect in their social interactions. I am sorry to say that in the confusion of the moment we chose the easier path and elected to continue to stand in silence so as not to create a scene or ill will among those who were seated nearby.
As I thought through the incident over the next few days I supposed that the duty of offering the pre-game prayer rotated through the local clergy and we just happened to arrive on the night that the responsibility fell to the Buddhist priest. However, after inquiring I learned that due to the predominance of Buddhist and Shinto adherents in this town, it was the normal practice to have a member of one these faiths offer the pre-game prayer, and Christian clergy were never included. Needless to say that was our first and last football game. Although many of the students we worked with continued to invite us to the games, we were forced to decline. We knew that if we were to attend again we would be forced to abstain from the pre-game activity. And not wanting to offend our Asiatic neighbors and colleagues, we simply refrained from attending.
Well…so his solution was to simply and completely withdraw from the social activity? I wonder how he’d react if the entire culture was saturated with overt displays of such religiosity—where courtrooms would claim their justice was founded on their religion, where the government, top to bottom, was loaded with official who would regularly trumpet their religious affiliation, where store owners would declare themselves adherents of particular faiths, and promise that a percentage of their profits would go to promote their beliefs, where much of the business of the town was mediated via contacts at places of worship? Would he divorce himself from the culture entirely, throw out his radio and TV, bunker down in his house and pray?
At least he appreciates part of the experience.
I would say in love to my Christian brothers and sisters, before you yearn for the imposition of prayer and similar rituals in your public schools, you might consider attending a football game at Wahiawa High School. Because unless you’re ready to endure the unwilling exposure of yourself and your children to those beliefs and practices that your own faith forswears, you have no right to insist that others sit in silence and complicity while you do the same to them. I, for one, slept better at night knowing that because Judeo-Christian prayers were not being offered at my children’s schools, I didn’t have to worry about them being confronted with Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Satanic or any other prayer ritual I might find offensive.
Diversity of ideas is bad, I guess. I think I’ve got a new notion to keep the quality of my university’s students high, though: if the presence of this godless atheist on the faculty doesn’t scare the fanatics away, I just have to mention that our university events, such as the opening convocation of classes last week, often include a Native American blessing. Drums, chanting, the whole works.
I handle them the same way I do the Christian hymns we often get at the Christmas concert: sit quietly, enjoy the music if not the superstition, and take it as a positive aspect of the culture I live in.
I’ll take the Native American drums over Christian hymns any day. The Native Americans have a lot more respect for nature and the Earth than most Christians I’ve encountered. I doubt you’d see any tribes fighting over the same piece of land like the Big 3 religions do over the Mount.
A dose of their own medicine.
Weclome to our world, Mr. wingnut.
Maybe I can convince my local high school to hold a pregame Wickerman burning at the 50-yard line! That ought to send the evangelicals scrambling for the turnstiles.
Sadly, I think what we have here is an unusual example of a fundamentalist with a touch of empathy. The answer from the rest of them will be, “Well, we just have to make Wahiawa High School offer Christian prayers instead because the rest of the country is Christian.”
On another note, I wonder how crazy it would make some of these right-wingers to know that the schools in Beverly Hills, CA, get Islamic holidays off because of the large number of Muslim (mostly Iranian/Persian) students?
I’ll say it again: what the wingnut Christian would want regarding religious establishment would look pretty much like what the ACLU wants, were the Ten Commandments replaced by a Koran, were crosses or pictures of Jesus replaced by fat Buddhas, and were all prayers spoken by government officials offered to Allah or Ahura-Mazda. The wingnuts are fighting desparately to preserve their position of government preference, while blind to the fact that that is what they have. It is the hypocrisy of power.
He reaches a laudable conclusion(school-sponsored prayer imposes itself on non-believers), although his letter still betrays some … interesting language. He refers to his fellow Americans by their ethnicity and implies their alien-ness. I mean, “Asiatic”? Who says “Asiatic”? Also, he doesn’t want to offend his “Japanese” (not Japanese-American or Nissei or something) neighbors because they respect deference above all?
These were Americans interpretng a core American ritual according to their heritage, but he in the end had to withdraw because to stand in silent respect for someone else’s beliefs was anathema. And he was in the Air Force to boot … what would he do if he went to a foreign country and had to respect foreign beliefs as a representative of the US government?
If Christianity was integrated into public life in the USA then the situation would be little different from the way it is in the UK. And we can all see how well it’s working out for Christianity in the British Isles, can’t we.
The “myth” of the separation of church and state (as the wingnuts would have it) may just be the one thing that’s saved religious fundamentalism in America. Ironic really.
Plus, such live-and-let-live religions as Buddhism, Wicca, atheism etc. don’t have an agenda (as the kids on the Right call it) the way evangelicals (for whom public prayers are part of a vastly larger mission to convert everyone, prior to micromanaging our lives, including dictating such details as how we’re expected to feel about certain things) do.
Oh noes!!! PZ said Christmas and not holidays! Now the radical activist atheist judges will attack him!
As an avowed atheist, I have often surprised my friends during the holidays when they hear me playing Xmas music, asking why, if I’m an atheist, am I listening to it? The answer is rather simple: I like the way it sounds. I pay little attention to the words, instead enjoying the music and the memories they evoke. I also enjoy visiting the older churches whenever I’m in Europe, not because of some need to find some spiritual solace but because I enjoy history and architecture.
Too often people are bewildered by this behavior. For them if I enjoy something that happens to have a religious element to it, they feel I am either betraying my principles or am spiritually confused. They don’t seem to understand that I can separate the object from the dogma, but that is not my concern. The same holds true for public prayer: I can stand there and respect others’ beliefs without actually feeling I am catering to those beliefs. I long ago outgrew feeling any kind of intimidation by those that either wonder why I don’t bow my head during those moments or why I didn’t walk out.
It’s when those beliefs begin to physically, economically, and/or legally intrude on me and mine that I get my hackles up, and if it takes a few fundies attending a public event that doesn’t cater to their particular belief structure to realize what their thoughtless insistence has done to countless others, all the better.
Oh, that article is so cute! This grown man is facing a different cultural norm than his own for the first time! Reminds me of the first time I faced religion. But that was when I was five. I was invited to a sleepover, and everyone else was Christian. I started eating my pizza at dinner while everyone else was saying grace. Later, everyone else started singing “Jesus loves me, this I know, ’cause the Bible tells me so,” and I didn’t know the words.
Anyway, my mother is Buddhist, but she has the live-and-let-live attitude that Molly, NYC described. She is simply convinced that when I die, I will have to be reincarnated again and again until I reach enlightenment. No harm done.
My childhood Christian friends, however, were convinced I was going to hell when I told them, at the age of five, that I did not believe in God. I still remember the shock on their faces. Priceless, in retrospect.
When I get into discussions of this topic with evangelical acquaintences, which is not often enough from my perspective because I think they might be shunning me, I like to point out that I live in San Francisco.
When they say, “What?”
I say, “San Francisco is where the Temple of Set is headquartered, which is the largest congregation of openly avowed Satanists in the world [I know that’s not really true, but it’s close enough to true for my purposes].”
They usually look at me with mounting horror at this point.
Then I drive home the point. “I can’t wait until the government starts giving me vouchers to pay for sending my child to private parochial schools, because then your tax dollars will be going to teaching my kid the freaking Dark Arts. How does that sound, Mike?”
They never talk to me after that.
I found it slightly amusing that the letter writer’s name is Christenot. Is the stress on the last syllable?
He has an embarrassing flash of empathy, but he shamefully withdraws into arrogance lest any of his friends read it and think he’s grown a vagina or something. Glory be, Brother Wingnut.
Over the past several years, I’ve noticed a big boom in the number of college football players who have joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Just before kickoff, they all run to the endzone and take a kneel. Two years ago, there were maybe 10 guys here who did that. Now it’s almost the entire team. But we’re Jewish, so it’s more of a novelty than anything, as far as we’re concerned.
What I’d really like to see us lose is the playing of the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events. It’s a dumb tradition.
I, for one, slept better at night knowing that because Judeo-Christian prayers were not being offered at my children’s schools, I didn’t have to worry about them being confronted with Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Satanic or any other prayer ritual I might find offensive.
(This story has actually been bouncing around the internets for a while…)
The other amusing thing is that we all know how this man would respond if a non-Christian found his rituals ‘offensive’, and didn’t want their children to be ‘confronted’ by them.
When people of a particular religious sect are in the minority, all of a sudden, they get “religion” (no, I couldn’t help myself) about the seperation of church and state. In the early years of the U.S., when Anglicans were the dominant political power, Baptists were solidly behind keeping religion from secular power.
HeHeHe. I’ve proposed that we have opening football-game prayers here in our little West Texas town, but apportion them out according to the students’ (or jocks’? cheerleaders’?) claimed beliefs. That way, “Sancta Maria, Madre de Dios….” would be noticeably more common than “An’ we jus’ wanna thank yuh, Lawrd, fer lettin’ us be here this evenin’…..”
Baptists don’t much like the thought.
Make that “Santa Maria….”
I’m sure he gives thanks to God that he doesn’t live in a place like *that*.
Oh, and you forgot the part about how a significant fraction of civil, cultural and academic life is scheduled around the holy festivals of their particular religion. Which you are not allowed to call by anything other than their proper religious names, or people throw hissy fits at you and accuse you of trying to oppress them.
Insidious religion creeping into all our institutions. Ick. Even up here in our notoriously secular Canada our new neo-Con wanna-be-Dubya Prime Minister is uttering the g-word in public. Interestingly though, our (Canadian) religious right is allying itself with the growing Islamic population here. It might work in the short term but I wonder how everything will fair down the line when they start arguing about who the true prophet/messiah is.
junk, that’s the way I think all wingnut brains operate. They seize the empathy that naturally comes to human beings and drown it in gross arrogance until it becomes a dead, shriveled thing that only lets them feel wmpathy when they themselves are troubled by the same types of injustice other people experience on a daily basis. Now, as for me, give me a Buddhist prayer anyday over some “Jeezus, weejust” shit.
Its as if he completely lacks an idea of his OWN identity.
As if he is in perpetual terror that even exposure to a different mind set will overwhelm his own world view.
How utterly terrifying his world must be?
My favorite thing to do when talking to devout Christians is to quote a phrase from Matthew 6:5
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.”
I emailed a group once and asked them why they supported prayer at football games when Jesus said to go pray in private, and they never replied.
Haha! You know, I’m from Hawaii myself. (P.s.: The apostrophe in there is a post-1950 affectation. Before 1950, there was no apostrophe in “Hawaii” in either English or written Hawaiian.)
A lot of times, at public events, prayers are said in Hawaiian. Christian prayers, mind, but I have to wonder what a guy like this would think if he were dropped in without context. I have to think he’d be just as shocked and frightened, not realising all the time that the prayers are directed to the same God, just in a different language.
I doubt very much his gut reaction had anything at all to do with religion, but religion does make a pretty nice rationalisation for those feelings of disgust, doesn’t it?
My favorite part of the article is this:
“….I didn’t have to worry about them being confronted with Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Satanic or any other prayer ritual I might find offensive.”
he moves so quickly from the religion that is 4th most practiced behind Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism (well…5th if you count “Chinese folk religions” as one aggregate unit) to a religion that is significantly integrated with Japanese culture to something that has a tendancy to be more popular culture than actual religion (dont flame me, I said “tendancy”), to satanism.
he’ld get soooo slammed if he said Jewish or Muslim in the article. He probably doesn’t even think about the existence of Hindus (there are nearly a billion Hindus on the planet). So he has to associate Buddhism and Shintoism with witchcraft ( I know…some wiccans are for real in faith) and satan worship.
the ethnocentricism embraced by protestantism is astounding. The whole thing is a Weberian nightmare.
Sir Craig:
This comment just prompted me to put on JSB’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.
ericnh: I doubt you’d see any tribes fighting over the same piece of land like the Big 3 religions do over the Mount.
Yeah, because they never had to fight over pastures, water or arable land.
Molly, NYC:
Plus, such live-and-let-live religions as Buddhism, Wicca, atheism etc.
First, atheism is not a religion but a lack of one. Second, the live-and-let-live form of atheism was somehow absent fron the Soviet sphere of influence, where priests were shot and crosses taken from homes, piled up and burned.
It’s amazing what a little travel can do to parochialism and narrow-mindedness.
I’m told that for career military, it’s difficult to get promoted past a certain point if one hasn’t had a few foreign postings. I wonder if it wouldn’t be good to have something similar in other areas of society.
For instance, with global trade, a company that does business with Japan might prefer to hire people who speak Japanese, all other things being equal.
The US is, basically, a continent-sized country, which means that it’s easy to live one’s whole life without ever being aware of a world outside the country. It’s much more difficult in Europe.
the ethnocentricism embraced by protestantism is astounding.
I would say that ethnocentricism — American ethnocentrism — has become an essential aspect of coservative Protestantism, as inextricable as any doctrines they have taken from the Bible. This is basically the sublime confidence that not only does god want everyone to be Protestant, he’d really, really prefer it if everyone was a white, American, Anglophone conservative Protestant.
This guy sounds pretty confused — there is no god in Buddhism, so you can’t really “pray” to a Buddhist god.
All of the Buddhist prayers I’ve ever heard are something like reminders to be aware of the world around us and to appreciate the good things in our lives.
This guy sounds pretty confused — there is no god in Buddhism, so you can’t really “pray” to a Buddhist god. All of the Buddhist prayers I’ve ever heard are something like reminders to be aware of the world around us and to appreciate the good things in our lives.
Not exactly true — there are several different schools of Buddhism, and some of them emphasize VERY different things, or take very different approaches. Given that this happened in Hawaii, it’s very likely that the man he saw followed Pure Land Buddhism (dominant among Japanese-Americans), where they *do* pray. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Land
Yes it was. Their actions had little to do with their supposed supernatural leanings.
Roman Werpachowski: …the live-and-let-live form of atheism was somehow absent fron the Soviet sphere of influence, where priests were shot and crosses taken from homes, piled up and burned
Atheism is at fault for the abuses of the religion of communist nationalism to the same extent that natural selection can be blamed for eugenics.
…unless you’re ready to endure the unwilling exposure of yourself and your children to those beliefs and practices that your own faith forswears, you have no right to insist that others sit in silence and complicity while you do the same to them.
A charming lesson, but I’m sure totally lost on WND readers. Why? Because everyone knows Christianity is supreme and better than all the rest and therefore has special dispensation to be forced on others. Only on oddball islands, far away from Jesusland, would this strategy ever backfire.
Atheism is at fault for the abuses of the religion of communist nationalism to the same extent that natural selection can be blamed for eugenics.
Ah, so now it is being called “communist nationalism”. In the name of which “nationalism” Russian Communists killed Russians and Polish killed Poles?
Stalinist nationalism? Dude, it wasn’t atheism that caused the purges of Stalin. IT WAS STALIN!!!!
That’s not an affectation; it’s an artifact of the relatively late standardization of Hawai’ian orthography. As late as the 1990s, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke’elikÅlani College of Hawai’ian Language at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo was integrating the different existing standards in order to support the Hawai’ian language reliably on the PC–much later than most native American languages. For an example of how wildly that pre-standardized orthography could vary, the history of “owyhee” and “owayhee” (“Hawai’i”) as place names in the Western states (Idaho, Oregon, Nevada) is informative.
Although the glottal stop between the diphthong and the vowel was always there in spoken language, before the 1950s, there was no consistent conscientious effort to represent it in the written language. Including the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop is actually more accurate and precise than the pre-1950s orthography.
Communist nationalism probably in the sense that you can’t be patriotic to your country unless you support communism.
IMHO the apostrophe is a rather stupid choice — why not use one of the many unused letters, like q or x? –, but dropping it is simply not an option. The glottal stop is a consonant like every other in that language — it simply isn’t Standard Average European, where labial (p), dental or alveolar (t), and velar (k) stops abound, but glottal ones are always ignored. No wriing i is exacly if English were wrien wihou, say, the leer T.
Uh…
Very good article. Shows that at least some Wingnut Daily contributors are actually human beings.
I think using “q” or “x” would be deprecated because, although they are unused in Hawai’ian, they have phonetic significance in the other languages that non-Hawai’ian speakers would bring to learning Hawai’ian. Having to unlearn “k” for “q” and “ks” for “x” adds more effort to learning the language than taking the apostrophe for the glottal stop.
Besides, apostrophe = glottal stop is a long-established tradition in orthography for other languages, including many not written in the Roman alphabet, where “q” and “x” also have a different significance. So having the same standard for Hawai’ian and those other languages is much better than having to remember which standards to switch between.
Although the glottal stop between the diphthong and the vowel was always there in spoken language, before the 1950s, there was no consistent conscientious effort to represent it in the written language. Including the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop is actually more accurate and precise than the pre-1950s orthography.
The last several years I’ve noticed that people from Hawaii — especially if they’re very proud of being from Hawaii — tend to actually *pronounce* that glottal stop in ‘Hawai’i’ while speaking English — even if they can’t speak Hawaiian at all. It seems to have become a sort of sociolinguistic marker of Hawaiianness.
Besides, apostrophe = glottal stop is a long-established tradition in orthography for other languages, including many not written in the Roman alphabet,
Which non-Roman alphabets do you have in mind here?
Hehe, you Americans and your silly ways, singing before a game (no pun intended)…
Khmer, Tibetan, Hebrew, and Arabic are the non-Roman ones I’m most familiar with, but from what I’ve seen in the historical literature, it seems that all of the SE Asian non-Roman alphabets (Lao, Thai), and many African ones are often transcribed that way as well. In addition, Navajo also uses the apostrophe as glottal stop, although that can hardly be called transcription, as the Navajo Roman alphabet is standardized.
Actually, George, I would have been more accurate if I had said “transcription”, rather than “orthography” (except for Navajo, where it really is orthography). My bad.
Atheism is at fault for the abuses of the religion of communist nationalism
And, for that matter, Leninist-Marxism was functionally a religion, complete with a priesthood, a Promised Land, received dogma and accreted doctrine.
But do the actual Hebrew, Khmer, Tibetan, Arabic, Lao or Thai native orthographies use apostrophe for glottal stop? I thought the use of the apostrophe as a phoneme was limited to languages using the Roman orthography.
I can’t think of any European language that uses the apostrophe this way, though it’s quite common in Native American languages when they acquire standard orthographies, such as Navajo, Ojibwe, and Guarani. Many languages simply fail to mark glottal stop in their orthographies, such as Finnish and Tagalog.
Maltese at least uses ‘q’ for glottal stop.
Actually, George, I would have been more accurate if I had said “transcription”, rather than “orthography” (except for Navajo, where it really is orthography). My bad.
Oh, whoops, didn’t see this — this may answer my question in my last query.
Yes, I was talking about official orthographies.
Stalinist nationalism? Dude, it wasn’t atheism that caused the purges of Stalin. IT WAS STALIN!!!!
Persecution of religion in Soviet Russia began long before, and ended only long after Stalin.
G*d save us from THEOLOGY…..
There is only one thing that any human being can be sure of, and that is that noone on Earth knows anything for certain. There is no proof for any system of belief or non-belief. Maybe all those beliefs are true! Maybe they’re all false! Maybe, at the root, they’re all the same! The best theological comment I’ve ever heard is, “All I know about God is that I’m not him, her or it”.
I really love the styles of reverence and theater and music of many belief systems. It is astonishing to me that the ‘christian’ in question feels threatened by exposure to a different culture. Are Shintoism, Bhudism, Catholicism, Judaism, Atheism, etc. contageous? -or fatal? Geesh. We’ve got kids on this planet who are hungry. Get over whatever your bullshit is and feed them, damnit!
As wierd as this might sound, Christian’s, in my experience are very much like children. Which isn’t so strange considering that Christianity uses the father image when talking about their god. I think it explains a part of why Christian’s often act so surprised when their beliefs are questioned or when atheists and other non-christians question prayer in schools. My three year old son is half Japanese and we are currently living in Japan. He speaks mostly Japanese and understands English fairly well. He thinks that everyone understands Japanese and English because both his mother and father do. He is usually quite surprised when I put him on the phone with my mother and she tells him that she can’t understand what he is saying when he speaks Japanese. I think Christian’s are often the same way about their religion. “What, you don’t like prayers to the Lord at football games!?” Judaic religion rarely teaches tolerance for other beliefs because of the “stakes at hand”. It would be interesting if more people were forced to live in situations that stretched the boundaries of their comfort zones on a variety of issues. Unfortunately, most people, not just Christians, never stray outside of what their used to and how they were raised.
Not strange at all. The two biggest parts of becoming a mature and functional adult are the development of the critical faculties, and gaining the awareness of one’s own mortality.
Christians are in a position to do neither. Their mental development is permanently arrested as a result.
Exactly. It’s apalling to realize how much of the earth Mr. Christenot could never comfortably visit — there are huge parts of the world where people believe quite differently from him, and I can’t imagine how he could cope, because he’d constantly be deeply offended. Fundamentalism really does breed a kind of person who can only cope in a very restricted number of contexts, people who are only happy if they’re never exposed to people too different from themselves.
So, by reductio ad Some-Dudes-who-were-evil, atheism is evil. Rock on in the fallacious world, Roman.
Roman, as an atheist, I will not take even the minutest shred of responsibility for the anti-Christian hostility of Soviet Russia until you take full, personal, and complete responsibility for the Spanish Inquisition.
I think that’s more than fair.
Methinks that post was a joke.
The guy’s name is a dead giveaway for sure.
christen-not.
Sounds like an onion-styled gag.
But if it were true then he’s just like every other christian since, when it came down to it, he chose personal comfort in an uncomfortable situation rather than stand firm in his faith and refuse to pay homage to someone elses god. He could have just sat down and if someone said anything he could say that he meant no disrespect, he just didn’t mean any respect either. His faith forbids that castrating oneself or paying homage to any other gods in such a manner was forbidden. It’s not personal, it’s just not allowed.
Yet rather than stay true to his faith he swallowed hard and sat through it.
How christian of him to bend the rules for convenience’ sake?
Bet that doesn’t happen much now do ya think?
It’s one thing to be a christian. It’s another thing to be a cowardly one whose faith is so thin that he would forsake it just to spare himself a few minutes of discomfort.
MYOB’
.
I was rather impressed with the author. He was actually able to extrapolate from his own discomfort to the discomfort someone else might feel when confronted by an establishment of his religion.
Most fundamentalists I know would be incapable of such a mental leap. They would have ranted on about how, in this Christian country, we have Buddhist and Shinto prayers in public schools. Of course, the ACLU won’t object, except perhaps they’d prefer Satanism! And how could we betray the Christian soldiers who defeated the yellow peril by allowing the defeated enemies’ prayers in our schools!
Roman, as an atheist, I will not take even the minutest shred of responsibility for the anti-Christian hostility of Soviet Russia until you take full, personal, and complete responsibility for the Spanish Inquisition.
I am sure roman can defend himself but it seems to me that his point is not so much that “atheism is evil” as it was that we should be careful in the assertion that any widely followed philosophy or religion (buddhism, atheism, native american religions) can somehow negate a human tendency toward strife and conflict over silly shit. I make this point only because I agree with it. On the other hand it is not clear to me as it seems to Roman that anyone has really suggested otherwise.
Makes me think we need a bumper sticker along the lines of those “can you ____? thank a liberal!” ones:
This story makes an interesting comparison to the wingnuts condemning the Fox journalists for mouthing the words of a conversion to Islam to save their lives.
I was rather impressed with the author. He was actually able to extrapolate from his own discomfort to the discomfort someone else might feel when confronted by an establishment of his religion.
Correct, which puts him a cut above the average person who’d post at Worldnet. But he seems VERY uncomfortable with this trip outside his mental comfort zone, and quickly scuttles back into xenophobia, where he seems more at home. So the guy has potential, but seems to be afraid of this. Kind of sad.
Jude: Funny how hard it is to find Christians obeying what (according to the book) is one of the few unequivocal, clear commandments from Jesus, eh?
The apostrophe grapheme does not exist in non-Roman orthographies; they use other methods to mark glottal stops. And I can’t think of any Indo-European languages in which the glottal stop is phonemic, so there’s not much point in marking it at all. It’s only when the Roman alphabet is adapted to non-IE languages (such as Hawaiian, Navajo, Ojibwe, etc.) that it becomes necessary to mark it.
Incidentally, the only Hawaiian I’ve ever known didn’t pronounce the glottal in “Hawaii”, but did pronounce the one in her own name.
This point was illustrated in the last week in new subdivision near us where one new owner planted a statue of the Virgin Mary in his front yard, drawing a rebuke from the home owners’ association followed by an over-ruling by the developer who clearly thinks sales will suffer if Virgin Marys aren’t allowed. (From the weekly real estate listings it’s clear the development is attracting many new immigrants of all ethnicities.) The gist of my letter is what if the neighborhood fundies want to install large signs saying “Jesus Saves” or “Repent”; and the Buddhist neighbor wants a statue of Buddha, the Jew a saying from the Torah, the Muslim a sign bearing a quote from the Koran (in Arabic no less), a Hindu his statue of his favorite god, and on and on. I suspect the new Catholic homeowner would be offended by one or more if not all of the above, which would prove the same point our Hawaiian Christian has just made to his chagrin, that pushing religion into the public square is not a good idea.
And I can’t think of any Indo-European languages in which the glottal stop is phonemic,
Apparently it’s phonemic in some dialects of Bengali. But you’re right, that’s all I can find right now.
Remarkable, considering how common the glottal stop is as a phoneme in non-IE languages.
Any working-class dialect of English between London and Glasgow, and also in Dublin.
There, the rain goes pi’er pa’er on the window panes.
I don’t think I used my tongue to pronounce the letter ‘t’ until I was in my teens. Moreover, I was completely unaware until I was in college that my glottal pronounciation was in any way different from other people’s lingual stop.
Any working-class dialect of English between London and Glasgow, and also in Dublin.
There, the rain goes pi’er pa’er on the window panes.
Lots of IE languages have glottal stops phonetically (including many North American English dialects) — the difficult part is whether any IE language has glottal stop as an unquestionably contrastive phoneme. And I’m not sure whether for languages like Cockney one would definitely say glottal stop is truly phonemic, or merely an allophone of /t/.
George, is the difference between “blackbird” and “black bird” a glottal stop, or something else?
Well, I guess the question is whether a bo’le is the same as a bottle. Obviously, having been unaware of any difference, I’ve already voted with my glottis!
I think some Cockneys might maintain, though, that while a bo’le is a container for beer, a bottle is likely to contain single-malt scotch!
George, is the difference between “blackbird” and “black bird” a glottal stop, or something else?
It’s the intonation. ‘Blackbird’, being a single word, has primary stress on the first syllable and no stress on the second. “Black bird”, being a phrase, has either equal stress on both syllables, or perhaps for some people, slightly greater stress on the second.
When I used to teach this stuff I would tell students to try and whistle words to tell where the accents are.
Obviously, having been unaware of any difference, I’ve already voted with my glottis!
Listen to your own pronunciation of ‘button’. If you speak an ordinary dialect of North American English, you probably have a glottal stop right before the /n/.
Wow. That’s all I’ve got to say. Wow.
Most cockneys would, however, accept “aristotle” as a perfectly good substitute for either
JackGoff: So, by reductio ad Some-Dudes-who-were-evil, atheism is evil. Rock on in the fallacious world, Roman.
Mithrandir: Roman, as an atheist, I will not take even the minutest shred of responsibility for the anti-Christian hostility of Soviet Russia until you take full, personal, and complete responsibility for the Spanish Inquisition.
Oh, guys, take it easy. Did I say “atheism is evil”? There, your knees can stop the jerking movement now.
brent: I am sure roman can defend himself but it seems to me that his point is not so much that “atheism is evil” as it was that we should be careful in the assertion that any widely followed philosophy or religion (buddhism, atheism, native american religions) can somehow negate a human tendency toward strife and conflict over silly shit.
Well said!
I make this point only because I agree with it. On the other hand it is not clear to me as it seems to Roman that anyone has really suggested otherwise.
It began with someone calling atheism, Buddhism and Native American beliefs “live-and-let-live” religions. Well, at least one of them weren’t always such.
Well, I think the point is that regardless of what a group of people believe, they can be total asshats. Much of what happened in the CCCP was rather disgusting in it’s treatment of non-“atheists”. But as mentioned time and time before, such is the case with other beliefs, fundamentalist muslims think that we should all be converted or die. But again the same can be said of fundies from just about every religion, if not all. Inherently, if one takes a look at the very core of most religions, we can all agree on good stuff there…it’s mostly the dogma piled on top of it that blurs such and creates the followers there-of to not only hate others, but to be hated themselves. It’s just a matter of people shunning and hating others, because their preacher tells them to, or because they had been ostracized themselves.
I also grew up in Hawaii and I fondly remember the multiculturalism. My parents and I emigrated from Italy and that was the specific reason for why they chose Hawaii from all the other possible destinations in the world. I also remember very vividly how, upon going to college and later being in the Navy “on the mainland”, life seemed so dammned one-dimensional.
I can’t help but parrot the oft mentioned observation that the Xians, who allegedly have “such a good thing going” in their religion, have all these proscriptions against exposure to other religions… just in case they might stumble.
If you ask me, if your religion is so piss poor that it just takes half a moment (and half a brain) to lose the faith, you really owe it to yourself to find a better one anyway.
It wasn’t non-atheists they were hostile to, it was non-Leninists. (Or non-Stalinists, depending on time period.) PZ would have been in the gulag right alongside the priests, if he had expressed his views there and then the same way he does here and now. Atheist bashers tend to overlook that point because it demolishes their argument.
The larger argument that religion is merely exploiting tribalism reflexes and not creating them, and that basically every society will feel a need to define and demonize an Other, and that atheism is not the cure for this, may be true, but I don’t think we have enough evidence to say for sure. The sample size of non-religiously-dominated societies (even if you include non-supernatural dogmas like Leninism) is way too small to say anything definitive about them as a class.
Of course PZ would have gone to the gulag; he’s not a Lysenkoist! But, as far as the Communists persecuting priests, it is well to remember that the Russian revolution, like the earlier one of France, was in part an anticlerical revolution. The old power structure included religion, because in the days before leaders were chosen by the people, they were ostensibly chosen by God. Suppressing religion didn’t work as well as the Communists hoped, but it was logical for them to try, since religion was a natural ally of the monarchy.
I have a pet theory that political ideologies reflect scientific mainstream understanding at the time of their advent. Monarchism is the product of a preindustrial worldview, where angels and devils were deemed every bit as real as plows and mules. The imprimatur of an Invisible Cloud Being on the government’s legitimacy REALLY MATTERED. Advanced science meant alchemy and levers.
Modern democracy reflects the values of the Enlightenment. The will of the people is real, the king is only a man, majority rule can be determined by voting. This was the world after Newton and Descartes.
Marxism reflects a more recent scientific/philosophical paradigm, coming on the heels of Darwin, the Industrial revolution, James Clerk Maxwell, and so on. That’s why Marxists always seemed obsessed with tractor production and inevitable evolution in history.
Fascism came a little later and is the attempt to reimpose monarchy, but with corporations in the mix.
It can be seen that we don’t really have a major political idea in practice that reflects new knowledge of information theory. Consider the flaws of Marxism, being mainly 1: the power arrangements tend to centralize power where it can be seized by the cleverest thug (i.e., Stalin); and 2: a central committee making all major economic decisions creates an information bottleneck, while capitalism distributes economic decisions to every consumer and store counter (if everyone wants Widget, more Widgets get made). Our democracy shows its own theoretical flaws: elections can be stolen, voters depend on info from corrupted private media, money buys power, and so the system can become Fascist while the politicians continue to call it Democracy.
Which brings me roundabout back to religion. I have another pet theory: the Soviet Union collapsed after seventy years because that is a full human lifetime, and Marxism makes only secular promises. (The PRI in Mexico lost out after the same length of rule!) If the babies of the Revolution were dying of old age, unfulfilled by the Marxist promise of a Worker’s Paradise, then perhaps their grandchildren couldn’t expect it to deliver either. A religious tyranny doesn’t need to keep a single promise in this world, and theoretically could last ten thousand years.
After all, its citizens would be Offended by any talk of alternatives.
Chris:
Sorry, I’m calling you on a false dichotomy here. Certainly religions didn’t “create” tribalism, but, by simple observation, they’re not just “exploiting” it either — they’re actively encouraging it, and customizing it for their own purposes. Not to mention when any attempt to seek peace with outsiders is automatically declared “treasonous”! And I don’t consider Stalinism, Maoism, et al to be “non-religious”. Those are personality cults, similar to those known right back into prehistory. The only real difference, is that the modern versions added in the “virulence factors” of aggressive monotheism, and the physical powers of large nations.
Well, I say a big part with current religions to this affect is one keyword “monotheism”. It’s mostly the belief in one and only one (with the exception of the whole, father, son, divine ghost bullspit) “god” that tends to breed the most intolerance of outside views. Normally the polytheistic faiths are somewhat more laid back, in part because if they piss off one god they can seek the portection of another, and if a pantheon already exists, saying there are more gods doesn’t seem as much the stretch. Now of course this idea has it’s proplems, mostly considering that the prime example of this is ancient rome, and well…they still managed to have prejudice towards other faiths.
Could be that in the long run, bigotry and xenophobia are leftovers from our more primative days and hasn’t managed to work itself out of our systems for the most part. I believe someone else mentioned the notion of child-like, and that most people out there are at such a point, refusal to accept responsibility and mortality has managed in many ways to stagnate or species. Seems the more people throw around the word human the more people end up acting like large hairless apes flinging their own dung.
Amazing! This person showed *insight*. This is a ability that the human race has over other animals, yet is curiously often absent in people with right-wing affiliations.
Even mopre incredibly, this must be the first recorded case of thinking relatively in a fundy. Are we seeing evolution in action?
=my2c
There is no Wahiawa High School. Wahiawa is the name of the town and Leilehua is the name of the high school. Sheeesh. That fundamentalist cant be get that right.
David: That wasn’t my argument, I was attempting to clarify the arguments upthread that can be more briefly summed up as “atheism isn’t a cure for stupidity”.
Personally, I do agree that religion is *most likely* an amplifier of stupidity, and that atheism, by eliminating that amplifier, would probably have the effect of reducing overall stupidity levels. But there really isn’t much actual evidence for that at a societal level because non-dogmatic, rational atheism (to distinguish it from the de jure atheism, de facto cult of The Leader version) at a societal level has never really been tried.
Still, we can’t expect tribalistic behavior to just go away. I hope that we can find more-or-less safe outlets for it through sports and other forms of fandom, etc., at a level where people aren’t going to try to kill the “other side”, but frankly, nobody has ever succeeded at that (and even sports fandoms do occasionally turn violent).
This guy’s a prize.Its interesting he refers to Buddhism as a “Pagan” religion in an obvious derogatory way considering Christianity is riddled with Pagan icons and references.
Its also instructive,in that given that Right usually only seems to see things in black and white,witnessing the pre game ceremony opened his mind up to a more “nuanced”perspective on the issue of the state and religion.You literally need to hit these people over the head with these things to illustrate a point.This is what comes of only seeing the world in black and white.
i gotta agree with the notion that smacking their stupidity out of them is probably the only way that could show any real results (and at that, probably the most fun, Whack a Fundie!) but unfortunately, unlikely you’d get away with it for too long, seeing as society seems to have a problem with smacking the ignorant upside the head :p.
Evangelical Christians dont’t understand that they are more or less bullies who can dish it out but can’t take it.
Che:
Well, sort of… The most primitive polytheisms can be completely identified with the tribe, which is not very helpful in that regard. For example, the Vikings were happy enough to pray for their enemies’ souls to both their own gods and the enemies’ gods — but then they’d go on and do their best to deliver said souls to said gods. When you look at Egypt, which god the Pharoah was identified with was a major political issue, linked to both dynastic successions and the subjugation of conquered states. In general, gods at this point were associated with particular territories and tribes — when you went someplace else, you might still do some of your own tribal rituals, but you also worshipped the local gods, because the local humans might well take offense to any disrespect!
Greece and Rome introduced a new model, founded on the efforts of the great “poets” such as Homer and Hesiod. These wove together a whole bunch of local cults and temples into a pan-Hellenic pantheon, which was part of how Greece developed from a rabble of city-states into an empire. Rome then inherited both the pantheon, and the habit of syncretism. Thus, they had no problem, say, looking at the Germanic Woden and identifying him with their own Mercury.
But the Jews brought in a new pattern — they flatly refused to worship anybody else’s gods. The problem was, Rome levied taxes on behalf of their own god-kings, which were used to build and furnish their temples. The Jews weren’t too happy about that, and the Romans in turn weren’t happy that the Jews didn’t want to pay taxes!
Then of course, Christianity solved the tax issue with that “render unto Caesar” line, but then they gained power…. They went on to declare that not only wouldn’t they worship any god but their own, but they didn’t want anybody else worshipping any other god(s), either. So much for tolerance!
I can top that football experience, Dan. Back in 2005 there was a Monday night game where, after prayers, a military-uniformed choral group formed an American flag on the field, while helicopters flew overhead to the music of “Flight of the Valkyrie” and the staff sargent announcer shouting “Are you ready for some FOOTBAAAAALLLLL?!?!?!”
The staggering ‘Apocalypse Now’ irony being completely lost amid the gushing patriotism, some still find the context to pray a moment before indulging in the fake war of football.
One wonders what other cultures must think of us when we don’t even apply our own cultural identifiers with any kind of consciousness or sensitivity. When following up with pregame celebration music after prayers, are we really more in touch with our christian culture by playing a Wagnerian favorite of the Nazis than Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll”?
As for the christian who wrote the story, I at least take solace in that he realized the inherent ironies of sponsored religions in a secular society, and had the guts to go on record with it. Hey, it is a start. Not that his 30-percenter colleagues will ever show such spine.
I’d trace a lot of religious intolerance back to a primal
fear that if even a single individual in a community fails
to worship properly, the Deity might withdraw His favour
from the entire community. This fear underlay the universal
taxation of the Romans for their temples; it also drove
much of Puritanism (where missing a few church services
could be punished by exile or even death), and still appears
today when Pat Robertson and his ilk call the worldly
wrath of God down upon the unbelievers – asserting, for
instance, that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico are caused
by the presence of notorious sinners in New Orleans and
Florida.
As for me, I’d rather that our secular religion go back
to worshipping the Framers of the Constitution.
Particularly the first ten Amendments. In larger type.
“Thus, they had no problem, say, looking at the Germanic Woden and identifying him with their own Mercury.”
Hence, of course, why Wednesday (Woden’s day) is Mercredi and Miercoles in French and Spanish. Similar god-matching works for the rest of the week – English (and German) has the Germanic/Nordic god, while the Romance languages have the Roman.
What happens when the god-botherers discover that the days of the week are named after these dreadful pagan entities???
Make that “Santa Maria….”
See, this is so unfair. The Nina and Pinta get left out every time!
Conservatives are so pathetically amusing in their bestiality [yeah,yeah. Look up the _other_ definition]. Ignorant people who have a total void of wisdom — which I believe begins with a learned empathy. Absolute lack of understanding beyond where their own ego has turned their eyes. What a “sorry” little man who is sorry he chose to respect social interaction and not create ill will among those around him. Will he get the point that it is better to keep religion out of the public sector? Do pigs have wings?
Kona is right. I went to Leilehua HS for my freshman through junior years. There is no other high school in Wahiawa.
Back in May I posted a reference to Christenot’s letter in a blog entry about some fuckstick wingnut high school kids who turned their graduation into a Godfest after a judge blocked prayer at the ceremony in response to a suit by the ACLU on behalf of a Muslim student.
I agree with Gary Christenot. Every Christian in America should be required to attend at least one government-sponsored event in which a non-Christian religious ritual is performed as part of the official ceremony. Or perhaps have the Eleven Satanic Principles posted in their child’s school, or have their taxpayer dollars spent erecting a monument displaying them at their county courthouse. Sadly, I think that’s exactly what it would take to get these thick-headed, self-righteous sons of bitches to understand that the only way to guarantee equality for ALL is for the government to stick to the absolute neutrality in matters of religion that the First Amendment requires.
Can’t say my opinion’s changed since then…
The godbot being discussed has what I call ‘Henry Ford Theology’:
“You can have any religion you want, as long as it’s ours.”
The religious do not have the honesty or decency to admit to what they’re really after – the imposition of their religion on others – *unless* they’re getting it without a fight. When it’s done to them, whoo boy…. 9_9
The christian sounds like a crying child threatening to take his ball and go home. How apt that allegory is in this instance.
The wingnuts are fighting desparately to preserve their position of government preference, while blind to the fact that that is what they have. It is the hypocrisy of power. – Russell
I think Jesus may have had a thing or two to say about these sorts of wingnuts. Of course, he also had some rather important things to say about the need for empathy. And an interesting view, as has been pointed out, about public prayer (in some translations, the quote is “if you must pray …” — emphasis added — rather than “if you do pray …”: which seems to imply, which is kinda the implication that seems to be intended, that Jesus wasn’t really too keen on any sort of prayer, but thought it was a necessity for some people, so he’d allow it with restrictions …).
“Make that “Santa Maria….”
See, this is so unfair. The Nina and Pinta get left out every time!
Oh, it’s worse than you think. Columbus actually had four ships, but the Santa Hermoine got written out of the history books after it sailed off the edge…
interesting comparison w/b the playing of both country’s national anthems at certain sports events – hockey games between US and Canadian teams for instance. It seems no one (even conservatives) wonder “OMG, do I remain standing for theirs? Hand over heart, hat off?” Another example of sports helping bring cultures together maybe (wishfully).
Greetings to all posters and commenters on this thread. I am Gary Christenot – the much referred to wingnut. Not that it really matters, but have you ever noticed that the “normal” rotation of a nut, wing or otherwise, is to the right? (Just kidding!!!).
I know it’s some weeks since this thread was initiated and there may not be anyone here or interested enough to care anymore, but just thought I would drop in and make a couple of comments in the interest of discussion.
First – yes, my last name is Christenot, with emphasis on the first syllable but with a short “i” (like the the name Christopher). The family name and lineage originated in a village in Switzerland and was first brought to the U.S. by our ancestor Louis Christinat in the early 1800’s. The geneology shows the spelling being changed to Christenot by his children at some point after arriving in the U.S. For example the records show his daughter used the current spelling when she was married in Pennsylvania in 1819.
As far as the substance of the discussion, let me add some context that may either illuminate or provide additional fodder for conversation. The event in question occurred some time in 1986 or 1987 – 20 years ago. This context is not communicated in my original editorial because it wasn’t germane at the time. But there has been much discussion in the blogosphere since the American’s United blog posted excerpts in early September of this year (and also republishing in their October newsletter, Church and State) concerning my apparent lack of sensitivity and enlightenment.
So I would begin by pointing out that I was a significantly younger man at that time and like most mature and thoughtful people (which I hope I am), my life represents a journey of self discovery and introspection during which views (hopefully) change and mature over time.
It should also be considered that at that time, the strident conflict between the “reds” and “blues”, the “seculars” and the “sacreds”, however you want to frame the current cultural divide, simply had not ripened within society to the point it has today. I was a fairly young husband and father who had been reared in the traditions and practices of an era that while beginning to wane, was still very much a part of my social and cultural outlook, as it would have been for a great many people of my age at that time. Bottom line – these issues simply were not being debated with the level of visibility and ferocity then as they are today.
If I were betting, I’d lay money on the probability that most if not all of the commentators on this thread began public school (if they attended public school) well after the practice of the teacher leading prayers at the opening of the day was banned by the Supreme Court. Not to say that it wasn’t still being done is some places, but as a cultural norm, I imagine most of the commentators never experienced that. Please correct me if I’m wrong. But I’m old enough to remember that from the 1st grade and for several years thereafter, this was a normal part of the school day.
Given the era of my upbringing and the mood of the times in which this all occurred, I’d say my “epiphany” was actually some what revolutionary.
The other thing to put into context was the circumstances under which I actually penned this article. I awoke early on a Saturday morning and read the article about the New Jersey football coach who was being disciplined for leading his team in prayers. Yes I read it on WorldnetDaily – right after I read the Washington Post. And because my views had had a chance to mature for 20 years, my first reaction was like probably most of yours – “What an idiot!” So before having my first drop of caffeine, and while still in my bath robe, I sat down and wrote that thing as a visceral reaction to what I believed were the improper actions of that coach. The fact that I may have been somewhat “inartful” in my selection of words should not be interpreted to mean I harbor a deep seated disdain for other cultures and traditions. My choice of the word “Asiatic” was not intended to segregate or alienate the people to whom I was referring, but simply to establish the context that there was another set of cultural mores in operation that I was trying to figure out how to operate under – namely the need for me not to offend or embarrass. During our entire time in Wahiawa, we were deeply entwined with a large ethnic community of Japanese-American, Chinese-American, Fillipino-American, Samoan-American, Polynesian-American, and other peoples of the Pacific Rim who were our dear friends and neighbors and whom I never thought of as any less American than myself. The rapidity with which I wrote and transmitted that commentary simply did not allow me to spend time in thoughtful editing. BTW, in republishing my article in their October newsletter, American’s United addressed this oversight and corrected the terminology to “Japanese-American”, and I am grateful that they did.
As to my ability to interact with other cultures, both as the son of a Navy man and as a career Air Force officer, I have actually spent a great many years of my life living in foreign lands and experiencing many of the worlds cultures, religions, foods, etc. I count them all valuable experiences and never took offense at any of them. As a classical vocal musician, I have also had many opportunities to sing in religious settings where some of the practices and teachings ran contrary to my own. In my early military career I was a specialist in Middle Eastern matters and spent considerable time studying and experiencing Middle Eastern culture – both Islamic and Israeli. As a staff officer of the Air Force headquarters in Hawaii, I was often called upon to escort and accompany high ranking foreign dignitaries from throughout the Pacific region, with emphasis on displaying sensitivity and deference to the cultural norms they brought with them during their visits.
There is a significant difference between those situations and the one of which I wrote. As a volunteer service member, I signed up for a career that I knew would involve significant contact with foreign culture and practices. And indeed, experiencing those practices was essential to my ability to support my superiors with advice and counsel on the geopolitical and military events of the regions in which I served. And when I decide to spend my own time and money to go to a cultural festival and witness and experience the cultural and religious practices of other peoples, it is done at my own initiative and with the knowledge of where I am going and what I’ll be seeing and doing. For instance, at the request of musical colleague, I spent 4 hours singing in a Greek Orthodox church on this past Good Friday. Needless to say that as far as elements of the Christian religion go, Southern Baptist and Greek Orthodox are about as far apart as you can get. And yes, there are many elements of the Greek Orthodox religion that Southern Baptists would have serious problems with on theological grounds. But I went and participated out of friendship for my friend who needed choir members and as an opportunity to see and experience something new. When the priest said, “Stand”, I stood. When the musical lyrics implored the Blessed Virgin to intercede on our behalf (something no self-respecting Southern Baptist would ever do!), I sang to the best of my ability. Because it was my choice to be there and to participate.
So, I will not take a back seat on cultural tolerance to anyone who might want to classify me as some type of xenophobic wall flower who faints with fear and offense at the first appearance of something that runs contrary to my cultural, social, or religious viewpoint.
In the case of school sanctioned prayers, the environment and context is completely different. Public prayer, by its very nature, is both communal and coercive. The petitioner standing at the microphone assumes the role of an intercessor with the specified intent of praying to his god on behalf of all of those in attendance. It’s not simply a matter of standing and observing in silent respect. When I do that, it gives the impression to all who observe that I am a willing participant and in communal agreement with the prayer being offered. I’m sorry if some find it intolerant, but my faith does not allow me to make that concession. It is also obligatory in that there is an obvious element of social coercion. To not stand and observe is a symbolic act of rejection and criticism, and places you in social opposition to those who chose to participate. This element of coercion stands to be magnified many times over if the petitioner or organizer is in a position of authority over the members of the audience – such as a teacher in a classroom, or coach of a team.
To illustrate the distinction a little more, our local high school football team, the Choctawhatchee High School Indians (please, no commentary on Native American school mascots!), has a pep squad in Indian dress that takes the field at the beginning of each game and performs what is supposed to be the “Great Spirit Circle” ritual. They form a circle on the field and go through a number of arm and hand movements while the press box announcer goes on about this being a secret ritual that invites the “Great Spirit” to watch over the festivities…blah blah blah.
Now, the purist view would say, “Not allowed! This is a religious ritual that doesn’t belong here.” But in 11 years of going to my kids’ football games there, I never once considered protesting or writing letters to the editor. For starters, I don’t ascribe to the “offended viewer” concept that everything of potential offense that my eye sees or ear hears needs to be opposed. But more importantly, this “ritual” takes place in a totally different context than the prayers of which I wrote. There is no communal invitation for everyone to participate, there is no expected action on the part of those in the stands, the vast majority of the people in the stadium are still milling about talking, buying snacks, finding seats, and generally ignoring what’s going on. The band is warming up somewhere just off the field creating more distractions. All that to say it’s just noise and it really doesn’t affect me.
As far as other expressions of faith in the public square, I’ve been trying to develop over the years what I call my “unified theory” in attempt to determine if some things should be forbidden or not. One of the tenants that I’ve settled on is that if the power of Christ is what Christians claim it to be, then we don’t need the power and backing of the state to make our case. He is perfectly capable of defending himself and seeing His word spread and glorified without the aid and assistance of a school or city council. That being said, though, all I ask for is a level playing field.
For instance, I believe that a valedictorian should be allowed to allude to their religious faith and to challenge their audience on those grounds during a graduation speech. First, a valedictory speech is inherently an expressive platform. The whole point is that one student is chosen and charged with telling everyone else, “This is how I did it and this is what was important to me while I was here.” Second, the attending graduates are not children anymore. The whole point of a graduation ceremony is to usher a young person from childhood into adulthood and just like I was in Wahiawa, they are sure to encounter beliefs that run contrary to their own. And lastly, the valedictory speech does not have the same coercive element that a communal prayer does. Being asked to sit and simply listen to someone speak is a whole lot different than being asked to communally join and participate, or suffer being ostracized if you don’t. And just because the speech occurs under the watch of the government does not make that speech an expression of the government. Is there really any thinking person that cannot distinguish between this obviously personal expression of an individual and that of a coercive government?
The twist is, I don’t particularly care if the valedictorian’s religious sentiments are Christian, Wiccan, Buddhist, Shinto, Satanic, etc. If the government is going to give the microphone over to a student and invite her to make an expressive statement, then short of incitement to riot, that student should be free to express themselves according to their conscience.
That’s what I mean by a level playing field. I will gladly allow the body of Christ to speak for itself, provided it is not continually handicapped by allowing contrary voices to be freely expressed while the Christian voice is repeatedly oppressed. Is there anyone who would deny that if a California school district instituted a curriculum requiring students to adopt Christian garb and symbols (perhaps a collar and crucifix?), read from the Common Book of Prayer, and to participate in Christian rituals, that there wouldn’t be a fire storm of protest? Here’s a headline to consider: “9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of baptisms and communion as legitimate methods to study religion and culture.”
Well, my “few comments” have turned into an essay. This is obviously a topic of some personal importance to me and I could continue on a length. I’ll just leave it here for now and hope to engage in some additional fruitful discussion.