Here in the UK we don’t generally have a huge problem with Christian groups exerting influence over school life. I definitely have it really good compared with schools I’ve heard about in other countries, where Christian student groups roam the halls loudly Jesus-lovin’ every lunchtime, or hold a lot of weight in school committees.
But my school does have a God club, which makes for equal parts of frustration and amusement. The amusement came, most memorably, on Valentine’s Day, when the club was handing out sweets along with a little slip of paper with a Bible verse on it. Obviously, God wasn’t watching over their actions too closely that day, because a typo meant that the little slip announced to the student population: “For God gave his only son, John”.
The frustration came when they invited a creationist “scientist” to give a talk about how the universe is too “irreducibly complex” to evolve, as well as the tired old refrain that “Darwin didn’t believe his own theory”. The only saving grace was that some of our Biology teachers also attended the talk, and made their distain abundantly clear. Another memorable frustrating experience was the time I attended their weekly open discussion when the topic was “What does God think about homosexuality?” Sure, let’s not think about what Tom, Janet or Pauline think about it (because they get their opinion from Jesus anyway, and couldn’t possibly generate one of their own), or – heaven forbid! - what science says about it. Instead, let’s call on invisible sky man. Urgh. An hour of homophobia and bigotry later, I came to a stunning realisation: I couldn't care less what God might think.
Does anyone else have tales of hilarity or frustration concerning the God clubs in their school?
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As I said before, I'm going away on holiday for the weekend, so next post won't be up until Monday.
Luckily in NZ, Christianity, especially in youth circles, has had all flavour and serious content boiled out and supplemented with self-help psychology. The deep of christianity for young people seems not much more than happiness and a relationship with an imaginary friend.
ReplyDeleteI was a Christian in high school as were all my friends. Our circle was also the accomplished group who became all the prefects and such. Individual believers may have been a bit iffy about things like homosexuality and evolution but as a group we were very much of the progressive type.
There is a fellowship of christian athletes club at my school, I don't go to that, it's just a bunch of kids who were raised religious. The majority of students aren't too uptight about religion. I'm in Florida.
ReplyDeleteEvery Wednesday morning before the first classes start, a group of Christians pray in a nook in the main hallway. They are generally unobtrusive, however my brilliant atheist best friend and my equally intelligent self silently bow our heads and pray to be touched, preferably in a non-molestation manner, by His Noodly Appendage, Ramen everytime we pass them.
ReplyDeleteIn high school, there wasn't too much to do with religion. There were two Christian clubs, but they never tried to proselytize.
ReplyDeleteNow that I'm in college, however, it's a bit different. I seem to have made friends with devout Christians. They don't talk about it much though, but sometimes, they don't shut up about it.
@Nihil, I love the idea of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Does the divine intervention they must surely receive manifest its self in the quality of their games?
ReplyDeleteYou guys have no idea how good you have it. My school is in the U.S. in the little state of Arkansas. We are taken over by ignorance even thought there is laws. For example, the Gideon church (look them up) passes out bibles. One year my older brother and his friends piled them back up in the hallway and they still didn't stop passing them out!
ReplyDelete@Nihil We have the same thing
ReplyDelete@Ida. Yes, there are definitely a lot of places that have it worse than we do in the UK. Although we are actually a "Christian country" we have relatively effective laws in place to prevent religion impacting our daily lives. We too have the fabled Gideon Bibles. I think I have another free New Testament and Psalms somewhere too. But you know what they say: the best way to make atheists is to give them a Bible!
ReplyDeleteI have to come to the conclusion that I went to the most secular school possible. the most religion we ever had was a moment of silence at graduation. I wen to a very liberal high school in the suburbs of Chicago. We had a Gay/Straight Alliance but even there it was discouraged to talk of ones faith for being the reason why gay people are looked down on.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ms. Laura, if you have not read the Bible or your local popular religious text you should. It's a real mind opener. Some of it is just wacky....
I went to two different schools during High School. In Brazil, HS has 3 years, not 4, so I've studied the first one and a half in a "catholic school", but the catholic part of it was mostly during Middle school, because during my High School we didn't have any religious mention. After that I was an exchange student, and when I got back I studied my last year at a school owned by a Jew couple, but we still had no religious influence there, it was all about results. And we didn't even had religious clubs or anything. Religion had nothing to do with school, except when we had debates about it during philosophy classes. Now at Uni we have people handing over bibles sometimes, but that's because it's a federal University, so it's public territory and everyone can get in, so people can come and hand out their bibles if they want to, it's not agaisn't the law, after all.
ReplyDelete