PEARISBURG, VA. – Nearly 12 years ago, in the aftermath of the shootings at Columbine High School, officials quietly posted the Ten Commandments on the walls of Giles County public schools. It was a natural reaction, said residents of this rural county peppered with churches, to such an alarming moral breakdown.
There the commandments stayed, within nondescript frames that also featured the first page of the U.S. Constitution, stirring little controversy until December. That’s when an anonymous complaint prompted the superintendent to order the removal of the displays. The decision sparked such passionate community backlash that the county school board voted to post them again in January.
Giles County is down on the Virginia/West Virginia border, just for a location. It is in the heart of Virginia’s bible belt. In fact, it is so bible belt that they run a bible bus to Christian classes during the school day, according to the WaPo:
The district also runs a so-called “Bible Bus” so that students can get privately organized Christian instruction off site during the middle of the school day.
As the state becomes more secular, Giles County Schools spurred on by the community push back. Students have hung 8.5 x 11 copies of the 10 commandments on the outside of lockers at high school and it appears this case will go to court. Apparently some of the complaint over the 10 commandments displays originated right here in the Manassas area a few years ago:
The displays were the idea of a Giles County pastor, and they have generated objections on at least one other occasion. In 2004, Sarah McNair, Giles High School senior, sent letters to county politicians, calling the display of the commandments an infringement on her rights and a “serious issue that cannot be ignored.”
Both Virginia’s secretary of education and the superintendent of public instruction dismissed her concerns, said McNair, now 23, who moved from Manassas to Giles County.
I expect that the secretary of education and state superintendent of public instruction didn’t dismiss her concerns. They probably felt it wasn’t in their purview. This case is probably headed to the courts.
Scholars say that the 1980 case, Stone v. Graham, will probably preclude the school board from legally displaying the commandments on school grounds. “The school board is making a bet that the Supreme Court will overrule that decision,” said Douglas Laycock, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Virginia School of Law. “For a little school board down in the mountains, it’s an expensive endeavor.”
Should the 10 commandments be on display in schools? Didn’t Del. Bob Marshall attempt to get a bill through the General Assembly several years ago mandating that a copy be in each classroom in Virginia? Hasn’t this issue been resolved time and time again at the federal level? Why do we think the outcome will change? Why can’t observant students keep a copy in their notebook? Does a copy of the 10 commandments really change behavior if posted?
Jesus – save us from your followers…..
If a school posted, “Wash your hands” invariably some dirt bag would protest that such “dogma” infringed on their right to live in filth.
The Ten Commandments, are a collection of good ideas, that should be used by the schools to build good ethical foundations among students. That the commandments come from a Jewish source, does not diminish their value as a framework for the continuance of an ethical society.
Just because some concept originates in a religion, must not be used as a basis to ban these good ideas from use by schools or other government entities, as teaching tools.
Separation of Church and State was never intended to be a premise for the state to ban good ideas, based on their religious origins. The truth, is still the truth, regardless of where the truth came from. Teaching children that they should not steal or murder, are good truths, no matter what the source of the material.
On a broader scale, schools must be under local control and both the federal and state governments need to be barred from interfering in local school governance. We went down this path to federal control because of the damned school integration issue and now we have the Supreme Court deciding what books and other teaching materials that can be employed by what is supposed to be a locally governed public school system.
There is little wonder why White parents are pulling their children out of the public schools and forming private schools or home schooling.
We should teach the good ideas that come from the various religions, especially the Commandments. You don’t have to believe that the Commandments came from the word of God to recognize that, if heeded, we will have a far greater society, if the citizens govern themselves with the Commandments in mind.
While I agree that there is too much federal involvement in schools, I don’t think public schools should be posting things that are clearly religious passages. Why? Not everyone is religious. Kids are a captive audience. The school does not have the right to impose a particular body of religious work on anyone.
You can teach kids not to murder and steal without posting the 10 commandments. I would say that coveting their neighbor’s ass is something they probably don’t need to concern themselves with during the school day.
The first four commandments are religious and should not be posted on government property. Commandment 5 through 10 are good ideas and should be read and understood by everyone. I would have no problem with their being posted (the fifth through the tenth) if they were not referenced back to any particular religion or religious cult. Now since I chucked out the first four of the religious commandments, let me replace them:
1.In all things, strive to cause no harm;
2. Always seek to be learning something new;
3. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice;
4. Form independent opinions on the basis of reason and experience and do not be blindly led by others.
I would imagine that idolatry and adultery are something students should not have to be concerned about during the school day.
How do the public schools in Giles Co. get away with bussing students to another site for bible classes “during the school day”? When do they do this? During lunch and recess periods? All schools are required to instruct students for a specific number of hours per school year, and the only periods NOT counted as “instructional time” in VA are lunch and recess. If the students in Giles Co. miss any other periods other than recess or lunch, they are not having their required number of instructional hours met by the school system.
I like this very much. I especially like 2: “Always seek to be learning something new”.
As someone of a “certain age” I do my best to keep up with the ever changing world. However, I sped way to much time surfing the net. I ought to be reading books instead, but if I weren’t reading the logs, I wouldn’t be “learning something new”.
Makes sense???
@J. Tyler
The Quran has 10 commandments as well http://www.submission.org/quran/ten.html
Would the folks in Giles county be willing to hang this “historical document” side by side with their 10 commandments? I think not. Do you think that the county of Giles would be supportive of a Quran bus, a Torah bus, a Hail Mary bus, a Buddhist bus, or a Stonehenge bus to take students to another site for instruction? Probably not.
The ten commandments ARE a good collection of ideas…but the ten commandments come in a pack of 3…muslim, jewish, and christian.
@J. Tyler Ballance
“damned school integration issue?”
“little wonder why White parents are pulling their children out of the public schools?”
What are you saying?
I had once suggested to a group a “win-win” on the Commandments would be to have pictures of the US Supreme Court building hanging in the school. Blown up so you can see each of the lawmakers on the various sides. The idea being, since Moses is there, the intent of this group would be met.
Didn’t win that arguement….so much for finding a way you could also instill Civics into schools which are supposed to be preparing citizens and also show the Commandments since Moses is recognized by the Jewish, Christian and Islamic Faiths.
I’ve had this discussion over on BVBL with some of the resident Christian Taliban and was excoriated for my blasphemy. Fundamental Christians believe they have as firm a mission to bring in lost souls and fight the infidels as the fundamentalist practitioners of Islam. They look at everything “non-Christian” as an offense and feel those students practicing anything other than their brand of Christian faith as having made the wrong choice. These students need to bring their beliefs in-line with our Christian nation. How do I know? I was one of those Christians.
Schools need to focus on the academics needed to function and compete in today’s world and quit this religious nonsense.
Yes they have a firm mission since Catholics are NOT Christians, Jews are NOT Christians, Muslims are “infidels”, Lutherans and Methodists are wavering on the cusp of Christianity and the (fundies) desire to “witness” to those of us ouside their Baptist, Titus2, evangelical, way, right wing way of life and they hope to bring us all into their fold. It is their mission to bring their evangelical/dominionist Christianity into the public schools, and they also hope to destroy public education in order to replace it with christian homeschooling/helpmeet training.
Wow, a very loaded subject. Might as well get into the trenches and start lobbing a few verbal grenades. Here goes. Be forewarned. This may seem a little scattershot. That’s intended.
1. First, I come from a Protestant fundamentalist/evangelical background. Church services twice on Sunday. Sunday School. Vacation Bible School. Religious instruction up the wazoo from kindergarten all the way to senior year in high school. We are dedicated conservative Protestant on one side of the family (me and my extended family) and dedicated conservative Catholic on the other side (Mrs. W, our joint brood, and much of her extended family). But this is not the 17th century in Central Europe. We are not going at each other hammer and tong over doctrinal differences. We are largely in a strong alliance based on social and moral issues.
2. I agree with one of the apparent premises of the religious faithful down in Giles County. In my personal opinion, this country has indeed wandered in many ways from a respect for traditional morality into a deep and dense swamp. We as a people were never, ever pure as the driven snow. But that swamp, once largely under the table where it existed, is now in all our faces almost 24-7. Now, don’t get those knickers in a twist over that statement. One man’s immorality may be another man’s idea of fun. Well, perhaps; but I will tell you that the socio-religious divide over this is now deep and sharp and growing ever deeper and sharper among those who adhere to a strong religious faith. You had better believe it is. And don’t tell me that this is just the mindset of the Primitive Baptists in some distant mountain hollow. You can find it among many religious believers regardless of denomination. J. Tyler Balance hit it right on the nose. Those people are fleeing with their kids to parochial schools and homeschooling because they believe that what is out there right now on the American scene is having a deleterious effect on their children. These people are sacrificing financially and personally time-wise just to separate from what they see as that swamp. You don’t like that? Tough. But you had better make up your mind to deal with it because it is very real. And every time you make some cutting remark about them or their religious beliefs, you are making that divide just a little bit wider.
3. Now comes some scattershot. The people in Giles County are wrong, in my opinion, to post the Ten Commandments officially in their public schools. This country does not work that way anymore. We are far too diverse. This is no longer the place where my immigrant great-grandfather, a devout Christian and the director of a township public school district, so respected that the county named the road on which he lived after him, can give prospective public school teachers an examination of their knowledge of the Christian Bible before agreeing to hire them. Nope. It just doesn’t work that way anymore. Old great-granddad would soon be in court these days. The people in Giles County had better accept that this is a fact of life. Otherwise, DB could well prove to be correct. Eventually those same school officials might be obliged to post quotes from the Koran which say that you are just a bunch of infidel non-believers. Better to leave this one alone. In my view, your Christian orders are to serve as a personal witness and to try gentle and kind persuasion. You try to use government as a tool to force feed your views and you are not going to be met with tolerance. That is also a fact of life. Debate in a free political system is fine by me. But trying to sneak it in in this particular way is not cricket, even in the book of me, one of your co-believers. To use that old cliche, this ain’t my great-granddad’s country anymore.
4. Now let me turn the cannon in the other direction. You who are part of the effort to remove all symbols of Christianity from the public schools are a prime creator of that widening divide. I would agree, per supra 3, that public schools must not become advertising signboards for any particular religion or religion at all. But when you turn the celebration of Christmas into a bland, non-religious event, when you exclude completely, as some have done, the sacred symbols of such an important religious event even for such a short period, you are not going to make friends out there. You are going to create flight from your institutions. And when you turn around and go to great lengths to accommodate the religious demands of the Muslims for instance — special prayer rooms in the schools, changes in cafeteria menus,and the like — you will be seen by many others as throwing mud in their eyes. It is beyond me why you cannot see this. Surely we can all find some level of tolerance which permits an open celebration of the most sacred symbols of our particular religious faiths at least during brief holiday periods. And surely we can find some way to use this as a means to teach each other about differences and respect for differences. The Loudoun County BOS came up with a way to do this with regard to holiday displays on the courthouse lawn. There was some grumbling at the outset, but the holidays passed without sectarian clashes. The BOS will not, of course, allow that lawn to become a religious symbol for a particular faith or see it become a permanent venue for rival religious advertising; but they did find a way to calm tempers and keep the peace during the holidays.
5. Same cannon. Same direction. The picture on this thread is of copies of the Ten Commandments posted on locker doors by individual students. Whether or not this may influence others is, in my view immaterial. My question is, rather, whether a prohibition on official postings of the same document (which I support) might be extended to those personal postings by the kids. I think that then you will have crossed a line from the true intentions of the First Amendment into a violation of the right of personal expression. It has happened. In some places, kids have been forbidden to bring a Christian Bible to the classroom and lay it on their desks in plain view. Yet we allow Muslim girls to come to school with their religiously-dictated headscarves, and we allow Muslim kids the time to meet their prayer obligations during the school day — to actually leave the classroom and go to a specially designated prayer room. Personally, I do not oppose either expression of religious faith. What I oppose is a prohibition on one hand and an approbation on the other. As for the Ten Commandments posted on the school lockers, so what? No one is going to grab you by the head and twist your neck so that you have to read them. You can ignore them as well as I would ignore a Marxist manifesto posted on the same locker. If you cannot handle that, then I would opine that the problem is with you. You either cannot handle the idea of free will or you have let your feelings devolve toward hate. Get over it, please.
6. And now the last shot, aimed toward Giles County. To me the Ten Commandments thing ought to be overshadowed by the other revelation. You actually allow public school kids to leave the premises during the school day to go elsewhere for religious instruction? And you use public school buses to transport them? What can you be thinking? As noted above, I also come out of a strong religious lifestyle and I went to public school all the days of my youth. Not in a million years would we even have considered asking the taxpayer to let us out of school for religious purposes and then to transport us in vehicles paid for by those same taxpayers. Our instruction came on Sunday, Saturday, and very much after school was out for the day. And we used our own means of transport — private cars, feet, bicycles. People, this kind of thing is asking for a dispute. In my opinion, it badly damages your arguments. Even I, a strong supporter of your religious faith, have been taken aback by that one.
#5. Jehovah parents are quite vocal in the public schools about not having Thanksgiving, birthday parties, the tooth fairy, Christmas/santa/jingle bells, Easter, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patricks Day, Father’s Day mentioned in the classroom. When I worked as a teacher for Head Start I was expressly forbidden to mention the holidays/cultural icons listed above. The reason was that it went against the pentacostal and jehovah beliefs of a small minority of the students. Non-pentacostal/jehovah students were forbidden to celebrate their birthdays in the classroom because the minority might resist on religious ground. We teachers were even required to return xmas gifts given to us because it might violate others’ religions. Funny thing is those kinds of accomodations didn’t last in K. Don’t agree with birthdays? Your child can leave the room. Valentine cards are a sign of Satan? Your child can leave the room. Don’t like hearing about the pilgrims? Your child can leave the room.
A kid can post the 10 Commandments or a Bible verse in his locker for his personal inspiration. The Government cannot, in the United States of America, post Qu’uran verses, Torah readings, or the Sermon on the Mount in a public school. Wolverine gets the gist of the issue in his/her comment. Keep the Government out of religion. They’ll only do it harm. Religion is far too important to be administered by civil servants.
As for #6, I think the article states the busses are privatley owned…as for the instructional time who knows who owns that.
But were you wolverine ever a Proverbs 31 woman?, women are to be keepers at home, women are to be subordinate to their husband and fathers, women are to be seen and not heard, women with careers and education and children are an antithesis of a Godly woman? Do you preface your blog entries with “Wolverine, a keeper AT home married to Josh, God’s perfect will for my life.”
“Muslims are “infidels””
Actually WE are the Infidels. (Proudly so.)
Muslims are HEATHENS.
Please update your dictionary. 🙂
Good discussion gang, I have enjoyed reading your comments. Everyone had something I could agree with.
I am continually amazed that we keep fighting this same old fight over and over.
DB — I am a male of the species. I am married to Mrs. Wolverine, who happens to be an active breadwinner now because she has the abundant skills for it — in fact, always has been a breadwinner to some degree, setting her own private pace and schedule. It is now I who wait for her to come home in the evening. She is also a she-wolverine with sharp teeth who guards her flock no matter their age or where they are in life. I don’t even breathe Proverbs 31 to her. When I worked the mean streets late at night in foreign countries, she was sometimes right behind me, covering my back, the sharpest eyes you ever saw and a mean customer behind the wheel of a vehicle. She could make me look like Elmer Fudd. I used to consider her as my own private Mrs. Peel — if you are old enough to remember that. Even at the present time, when I am out late on Neighborhood Watch patrol, she is always right there with me, watching my back. I’ve slowed down. She hasn’t. It has been a long partnership. This is one guy who knows when he has a good thing and how to hold his tongue. Something to do with taxidermy. Ask Moon about it.
@Wolverine
BWAAAhahahahahaha Yup. Taxidermy. Pelt right there on the wall.
Who is Mrs. Peel?
I hope you and Mrs. Wolverine will come to the Moonhowlings birthday bash next Sunday at Mama Mia’s in Gainsville, 1-4 pm.
It is sad this is constantly rehashed. But the christian fundamentalists see any relaxation of their socially constricted environment as sin. I don’t have a problem with them holding that world view. I have a HUGE problem when they impose it on everyone. The school system’s posting of the ten commandments is an imposition of their faith on a body of people compelled to be there by the state (unless you are wealthy and can sent the kids to private schools or homeschool). That stuff flies in Giles because it is a homogeneous community and there may be a hand full of non-Christians in the 17,000+ total population.
I can’t help but think of the little Muslim kids that went through elementary school with my now 21 year old daughter. What the hell were they supposed to think when they got to school and were confronted with this stuff? It is a form discrimination and another example of the christian fundamentalists saying they are better because God loves them more.
“And every time you make some cutting remark about them or their religious beliefs, you are making that divide just a little bit wider.”
……………………
“Now let me turn the cannon in the other direction. You who are part of the effort to remove all symbols of Christianity from the public schools are a prime creator of that widening divide. I would agree, per supra 3, that public schools must not become advertising signboards for any particular religion or religion at all. But when you turn the celebration of Christmas into a bland, non-religious event, when you exclude completely, as some have done, the sacred symbols of such an important religious event even for such a short period, you are not going to make friends out there. You are going to create flight from your institutions. ”
……………………………
Wow. So Christians never make wisecracks and innuendos on other religions? Christians never make commentary or negative statements on people who do not have a religion – or refuse to believe in one? You know you talk about “all else beware” if they say anything that could be constituted as anti-christian, but Christians are free from any sort of backlash. As a person of no religion I have endured MANY verbal assaults from those supposed to be winning “hearts and minds” for Christ.
There may be plenty of pockets of devout christian communities like this one in VA and accross the nation. But don’t kid yourself that more and more people are turning to this lifestyle and way of thinking. I read too and have read many accounts on how younger people and adults are turning AWAY from religion. They see people like the ones you described and want NO PART of it. One other way of looking at how/why voiciferous these religious groups have become is because more and more people are rejecting the rigidity and INTOLERANCE of religion and church. I for one won’t step foot in a church, for they represent to me not a house of worship, but a political organization that strategically justifies its agenda with the manipulation of scripture and so-called approval of God. I know I am not alone in this thought or sentiment. We do not see God in Church, least of all in the people who attend.
Oh and the Christmas BS. It’s funny you know? Christmas is not the only religious holiday in December. There is Hannukah, Ramadan and Kwanza as well. You do not hear Jews screeching like the “poor persecuted christians” when Yom Kippur is not heralded by the public sphere in September with religious displays. Do you hear Muslims cry out there is no month-long celebration of Ramadan from public venues? No. But you hear PLENTY of whining and bitching from Christians that their holiday is not publicly recognized ENOUGH or PROPERLY…. During that time I see creches in yards, angels lit up on rooftops, I hear religious music on the radio – on stations that would not normally play it….I see A LOT of celebration of CHRISTMAS in the public sphere. Funny though, despite all that Christians seem to get uppity when city hall won’t place a religious display in front….or the local school won’t perform a CHRISTMAS pageant (a-la Charlie Brown)…. And because of this there is a supposed “war on Christmas”
You know religious people want to have tehir cake and eat it too.
They want the state to promote their faith.
They want the state to FUND their activities of mission, message and activism.
They want PREMIUM recognition from the state on their holidays via decoration and time off.
YET…………….
They Want the state to stay the hell outta their faith on what they can/cannot do to celebrate it.
They want the state to leave their funds/funding ALONE from taxation allthewhile using their houses of worship as political platforms
They do not want the state to reconize OTHER faiths’ holidays via time off, despite the fact that Christmas is a day off for a specific religion’s celebration.
They want it both ways.
Well, sorry folks, it doesn’t work that way. So if Christmas isn’t celebrated up to a church’s standard’s in the public sphere, TFB. Despite what many Christians think, they are not the only faith in this nation, nor the planet. And this nation was NOT founded as a Christian nation. If it were, we would have the National Church of Christ of the USA, established 1776. But thank GOD in all GOD’s wisdom we never went down that road of insanity. Count your blessings when you recognize them…..
A school can easily place rules and guidelines of respectful conduct in its halls without bringing the strongarm of religion into it. Enforcing those rules should come as a given.
Keep/Toss
Disgusted and NMB both have made some good points. I don’t care what other people do unless it impacts me (or others who don’t want to be impacted.) Especially since I have been blogging, I have had some fairly vile remarks made about me because I am not an evangelical Christian. I grew up in what I would describe and a mainstream Christian church. Hell, I have had people tell me I am not even Christian.
So who gets to decide if I am Christian or not? I thought that was the Lord’s job, not the cyber neighbors job? Additionally, I have just seen a general meaness out of some people, all while trumpeting their Christianity. Christians aren’t supposed to be mean and nasty.
I agree to a point that institutions have gotten paranoid about not mentioning Christian holidays. That isn’t right. However, I don’t give a rat’s rear end if someone says Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or nothing to me in a store. That’s just paranoid. I don’t think that decorated fir trees are necessarily religious in nature, nor are wreaths, yule logs, frosties, partridges or holly. Cardinals are totally secular, even with a background of snow.
The behavior of some Christians over having to get their 2 cents in often makes me momentarily ashamed to be a Christian (even though some would tell me I am not becausee I am not evangelical.) I just get sick of the paranoia I hear about not being allowed to pray and things like that. Anyone can pray. Unless it is all a hoax, God can hear silent prayers just as easily as He can those shouted for everyone to witness. We have to ask ourselves why we are doing it or are we really just showing off.
Mrs. Peel….oh yes, the original TV show “The Avengers”….with Diana Rigg in her trademark leather catsuit.
On the show from 1965 to 1968…and every teenage male’s dream 🙂 Her and Lee Meriwther as Catwoman in the old Batman TV show..
@Raymond Beverage
Ok. Cold shower time. I remember them. Mrs. Peel was the best.
Lee Meriwether also was on Barnaby Jones, wasn’t she?
And you, NMB. appear to be among the reasons why that divide is growing. I am afraid that you are prone to taking only one vocal segment of a religious community and tarring the entire community with the things you do not like. I have news for you. There are millions and millions of devout Christians out there of all denominations who do not do the things you seem to detest so vehemently. But they do feel the angry criticism you use to target their faith. It’s too bad. Kind of sad really — to see such a fracturing of society.
I’ve discussed a couple of your posts with Mrs. W who is striven all her life to help those in need, both here and in Africa, and who has never to my recollection ever upbraided anyone for not following her particular pathway of faith — not even the stubborn Protestant to whom she has been married for more than 40 years. When she sees what you have written, her only reaction is to sigh and ask why there seems to be so much hate in this country.
@Wolverine, I try to never make fun of anyone else’s religion, including those religions I think are just plain silly. However, I have been upbraided time and time again by people calling themselves good Christians. Additionally, you don’t have to travel real far to see various politicials vilified over because they supported someone who was pro choice or read just nasty print about Bull Run Unitarians. To each his own.
Right now I am watching the PBS documentary entitled The Mormons. You know, I don’t want to be a Mormon. I lived next door to a batch of them for years. I tried to learn about their faith. I talked to their kids about it. I have read. It is facinating. It is a truly American homegrown religion. Those folks were literally tortured and run out of town, killed, and mocked. Have things really changed all that much.
I often feel like NMB does. Truthfully, I feel that the war of Christians, if there is such a thing, often comes from other Christians. All I want is to live in a secular world. When I do religion, I don’t want it shoved down my throat. I don’t need to pray in the public square. The Lord has good hearing, even if I don’t speak loudly.
Moon, the argument I am trying to make is sort of like the one you and Elena often make about the immigrant population. You both caution against a blanket antipathy toward these immigrants because some among them do bad and sometimes even terrible things. As I stated previously, I and Mrs, W both come from religious milieux which differ obviously from yours and many others on this blog. I agree to some extent. There are some who are clearly overzealous in their thinking and actions and who might even consider me to be an apostate because I left my own childhood church over a dispute on religious protocol (too complicated to explain further). It really doesn’t bother me. I found that a calm conversation usually winds up arriving at the realization that, down very deep, we all carry the same basic beliefs.
I’ve also seen these same people ready to give the down-and-out the shirts off their backs and sustenance from their own pockets and not utter one word about the different faith of the recipient. For every person whom you may consider to be a religious turn-off, there are indeed millions out there who would not think of being impolite or caustic toward other faiths or even those of no faith. They believe not in religious brow-beating but simply in conducting themselves in such a way as to serve as the best example of their faith to others, which is why they hold so closely to the moral strictures that faith places upon them. In my view, for every religious turn-off there are a million Father Steves laboring mightily in a little school in South Dakota. It bothers me not a bit that Father Steve is a Catholic. Nor does it bother Mrs. W when we scrape up whatever we can from a limited budget to donate to Protestant missions of mercy.
I have a mixed religious marriage. Both of us were the first in our old-school families to do this sort of thing. Once the families adjusted to the idea, none of them ever voiced a criticism. Both sides of our equation have gotten nothing but absolute love and support. My Catholic children and grandchildren are loved by their fundamentalist Protestant (raised evangelical Baptist) grandmother no less than they are by their Catholic grandmother. Shortly before he died at a very advanced age, my very Catholic father-in-law told me that, when the engagement between myself and his daughter was first announced to them, he told his wife that the marriage would not last. 40 years later, he told me he had been a very mistaken man, and then he broke down in tears as if trying to atone for even thinking such a thing. Why would anyone be ready to lump such a man in a general criticism of the Christian faith? People like him, when they hear the criticism and harsh invective directed at their faith, generally do not respond in kind. But they hurt. And then comes the natural reaction of the divide.
@Wolverine
I came from a mixed marriage and I was in a mixed marriage. He left his childhood church over issues with the Church. I have no problem with Catholics or anyone else as long as they don’t attempt to shove their religion down my throat. I don’t want anyone’s doctrine to become public policy.
Most people believe that religion is a private matter. Most people believe that Americans can worship any way they chose and are respectful of others. It is the few who aren’t who I speak of–the militant, nasty SOBs who poke fun or riducule people who don’t believe as they do. It is those people at whom I direct my ire.
Not so radical change of subject….I like how our Indian school sends you a statement for tax purposes. I felt all good to see how much I had sent them even. (not great wealth but enough to maybe make a difference.)
Wolverine, did you see the heating bill for that place? Holy cow! Or in their case, Holy Buffalo!
Moon, I saw that message from Steve. Got a similar one from Montana. I believe!!! I believe!!! Just have to look at the news videos of the Upper Midwest getting smacked again and, apparently, another one headed our way tonght. It is friggin’ cold long-term up on them thar High Plains. Costs a bundle to heat dorms and classrooms. On top of that, the aging water pumping system at the Montana school has apparently started to collapse.
Incidentally, Mrs. W and I went through the budget and managed to scrape up a bigger than usual gift for both those schools so the kids would have a happy Christmas. Not only got the usual thank you and bless you letter in return, but Father Steve’s outfit actually called us on the telephone to say thank you. They didn’t really have to. We are thoroughly hooked. Those Sioux, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne kids in SD and Montana belong to us, in a manner of speaking. And our own Catholic grandkids are sleeping under beaded blankets, with dream catchers hanging over their beds. How’s that for ecumenism?
@Wolverine, I have hogged all the dream catchers for myself! I don’t give to Montana regularly but I do give to ND once a month. Not a lot but some. I have never gotten a phone call but Fr. Steve always answers email right away. Did I read something like $300k heating bill? Holy Buffalo!
I am thoroughly hooked also. I am so glad they take paypal. I wish more nonprofits did. Safe way to send money without using a credit card.