‘Teach Bible’… only churches should ‘teach bible’ and nobody should be forced to go to church.
Is it even christian to force a sermon onto people?
Is it even christian to force a sermon onto people
Well historically Christian denominations have been quite pushy to say the least.
Reason number * I’m glad I don’t live I’m america
School teachers, complying with letter of the law: “Bible says there was flood. Science shows there wasn’t. Bible says diseases appeared as result of sin. Science shows diseases existed long before humans.”
How can you teach Bible? Which historical happening in Israel influenced what part, which pagan deity Beelzebub was, etc?
No way this isn’t struck down. It’s got to just be a political signaling play.
They want it to go to SCOTUS so SCOTUS can (and probably will) make it legal.
If more people actually read the Bible there would probably be fewer xtians.
Teachers can make this backfire by teaching kids about how Jesus said, among other things:
- Rich people don’t go to heaven
- Jesus’s answer to religious people not wanting to see things was for the people complaining to pluck out their eyes.
- How Jesus told his followers to sell their shit and give it to the poor.
All things republicans hate because it goes against their ideals. Also they can talk about how in Acts it says Christians lived communally or just read James 5:1-6 verbatim.
But I guarantee the schools will force their teachers only to read parts of the bible that the state demand, because it’s not about Christianity, it’s about using religion to control people.
Teach them the story of Lot and his daughters, let them go home and ask their parents about it.
America was founded on the principle of no official state religion and has fought against it ever since.
You’ve not fought against it very well, have you?
- You have school “voucher” schemes for religious schools, which do shit like teach kids that Evolution is wrong because of the bible.
- You added “In God we Trust” do your money and added “Under God” to the pledge of allegiance in the 1950s (The pledge, with or without it, is in itself a form of state worship).
- You have had presidents (Reagan, Bush II) openly promote the idea that America is a Christian state through historical falsehoods.
- One of the most powerful factions in your government are American Evangelicals who have used their power to promote religious based laws, especially against women and minorities.
- Every President in recent times has had to show themselves to be openly Christian, with “not being christian (enough)” being a common attack strategy.
And that’s just Christianity, if I was going to go into how you worship the state…
- You have Four Faces of Presidents carved on a literal sacred mountain.
- You make your kids pledge allegiance to the state every morning (I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands).
- You have two (2) congress funded art pieces that depict George Washington as a God (Washington Enthroned and The Apotheosis of Washington), the latter of which is in the oculus of the Rotunda at Congress for everyone to see.
- The Lincoln Memorial is straight up designed like a Greco-Roman Temple.
- You have, as a social norm, displaying your flag outside your house.
How is that not going to be interpreted as “religious”?
Now, I know someone is going to be all “lol aren’t you from the uk where you worship the royal family” well guess fucking what:
- Barely anyone in the UK worships the royals, especially where I’m from (Scotland) and the people who do even in England are considered weird. Our relationship with the Royals as a country is usually one of aggressive irreverence. My family’s nicknames for the king includes “The Jug Eared Dwarf”, “Chuckie III” and “Tearlach an Chluas”.
- Despite having two (2) established churches (Church of England and Church of Scotland), non religious people make up the majority and the UK is aggressively secular.
- Despite the established religion and having the (in practice) head of state also be the (in practice) head of the Church, none of our politicians try and use religion to justify their bullshit and those who do are considered wankers.
America, in the eyes of most of the world, is aggressively religious, not just in terms of christianity but also in worship of the state.
Death by a thousand cuts kills us all.
Also, who says it’s the christian bible 😁 ?
And this is the same cunt that was blaming “the radical left” for “politicizing” the death of a child under his care. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/us/oklahoma-nonbinary-student-superintendent.html
What they failed to realise is teachers can have a unique ability to make kids hate a subject.
If you force them to do it, they can do it really badly without it being obvious.
I can imagine reading the Bible word for for in monotone from day 1 won’t be a good experience.
Just read only the parts about incest and rape and waiting for all the parents to complain
I’m so fucking tired of the US. Shit just always seems to get worse, and for every little victory, we take another huge leap towards a fascist theocracy.
I like to tell myself that these are the death throes of a dying ideology.
Oh yes, one way or the other. Things are certainly crashing, and the question is what will happen in the aftermath.
I really hope you’re right…
Time for malicious compliance: "Kids, today we’re talking about two girls got their dad drunk and raped him to get pregnant.
They’ll have to be more creative, because the demand is for teachers to tell kids about the Bible’s place in U.S. history.
So I think teaching them about this might be more appropriate: https://www.npr.org/2018/12/09/674995075/slave-bible-from-the-1800s-omitted-key-passages-that-could-incite-rebellion
They might also teach about this man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
Or how about how the bible was used as an excuse to try to keep Americans dumb and ignorant. An excellent example of exactly where the Bible fits into American history.
Unfortunately, these people don’t believe in evolution either.
You say “was” like it’s not ongoing.
That’s just how religions works. Our flavour just happens to be “Christian”
They might also teach about this man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
Wow, that was an interesting read there! It seems like he may have been an influence on the character “Brother Justin” in the Carnivàle show on HBO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Carnivàle#Brother_Justin_Crowe
He absolutely was.
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You should hit the erotic poetry section of the Bible, just to be sure you get all the good parts in.
Then you have to explain how her bum was like a mountain goat, and ain’t nobody want to do that.
The goal is, here, to have an accurate view of American history
By teaching bronze age fairy tales set in the Middle East.
Surely this could backfire in so many hilarious ways?
- Teach the parts that conservatives don’t do, and teach your class to call out injustice everywhere.
- Teach the bible in Aramaic or Ancient Hebrew, and give the kids 30 mins of study time to learn whatever they want from it.
- Use it as an exercise to teach that many parts were written thousands of years ago, and doesn’t have current medical or societal advancements, so that many parts might be up to interpretation.
- Compare it to Islam, Judaism, and other sects of Christianity - and teach that they’re basically the same thing and that everyone should get along.
- Reference that the pope said years ago that even nonbelievers that led a good life would be offered a seat in heaven, so be nice and it’ll all be fine.
Oh I don’t know that I would make the claim that major world religions are all about people getting along. I’d say we can find some parts that are much less friendly than that.
Why don’t we go back to Genesis. Lot is an exciting character, and tells us a lot about God’s character. And then it gets creepy too.
Also you should explain to your child students what is a prostitute
Tell them about all the fun stuff going on in sodom and gomorrah
You forgot “this is what hard-core Christians believe, this is where it contradicts itself, here are the 10 commandments including love thy neighbor and don’t worship false idols”.
You’ll get de-licensed for teaching that, too
Any of you remember Kitzmiller v. Dover? It was a case that essentially ruled that teaching ID/creationism was a theological doctrine and thus couldn’t be included in the biology curriculum of schools across the country. While the issues here at not the same (teaching creationsim vs mandatory bible studies), they have the same ideological underpinnings. Unless we’re talking about Sunday school*, schools must remain secular institutions where discussions of religions are from a neutral perspective in regards to the humanities. As to regards to a hypothetical Supreme Court case: considering how ultra-conservative the Supreme Court has become in recent years, I fear that they might side the theocrats.
*Are those still a thing?
Sunday school is not a public institution, which is why it gets a pass. Similarly private schools are free to do this all week long.
I think even this supreme Court would rule the correct way. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were even unanimous, but at worst I’d expect the 6/3 split with Thomas, Goraych, and Alito. There’s only so far they can go when the Constitution was very blatantly clear on this matter.
And we should let it get a pass. Sunday School is the place to teach kids about the Bible. That’s what it’s for. That’s not what public school should be for. If parents want to indoctrinate their kids into religion, there’s no really effective way to stop it. But at least we can tamper it by keeping it out of our schools.
Agreed, and further to point out they even have private schools if they feel so compelled to indoctrinate every day of the week, we let them do that too and even allow them to claim equal credentials to a publicly regulated institution.
Every time Democrats have an opportunity to increase the number of seats on the SCOTUS, they punt.
I wonder if the thinking is that once the proverbial seal on that lid is broken, the next administration would just Uno-reverse it by adding more of its preferred justices?
And, it’s not like (aside from the first two damn years when it should have been done) they had a trifecta; although you could be assured Manchin or Senema(?) would have fucked them over.
I think the reason the Democrats haven’t tried to add members is the same reason that they didn’t mean to coin to handle the debt ceiling and they didn’t bother to either use or destroy the filibuster.
Many entrenched Democrats in Washington are happy to be the second worst party. That’s their identity. And it makes sense if you consider their funding source. Big money comes from big companies, and they give it to people who will represent their interests.
Setting aside the fact that this would require a Senate majority, that’s not even the worst outcome.
A broader spectrum of conservative judges means they need to triangulate across their generational and niche personal views. There is legit some amount of political space between Gorduch, Roberts, ACB, Judge Likes Beer, Uncle Thomas, and Discount Scalia.
Adding three more of them to match three more liberal judges means even more dissonance.
And who knows? Maybe we even start getting judges who didn’t fall directly out of the Harvard pipeline.
Short of congress impeaching Supreme Court members (which they can do), it seems the only real answer is to just expand it so that it has so many seats, it is effectively as useless as congress.
Or begin federally indicting Justices, but I find that even less likely
they’d face the same consequences as one who refuses to teach about the Civil War
Now I’m really afraid to find out what this includes
Which is a hilarious Freudian slip on their part. Who is it that they think don’t want to teach about the Civil War? Could it be the ones who instead refer to it as the “war of northern aggression” and try to erase the context of slavery by saying it was about “states rights”?