From Whence Comes Religion in Education?
You. This is a thing that grows from a vision that came to me in my classroom while starting out as a teacher at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, teaching philosophy of religion. I noticed very early that my students would be at odds throughout the discussion. I had seen it before because I've always taught Bible study in all my church appointments, and there was always this warfare going on, even in the best Bible study groups
It took me 38 years to make the association between my faith in the Bible, which is always presented as a story or an allegory to Adam and Eve and everything. It's presented in that way and justified in that way in the 20th and 21st century, and it neglects the previous 19th century and the religious works and writings and ideas and the authors and the natives that believed in God and what they did
There was this stated and unstated correlation with the fact that they're not going to educate us publicly in religion so that we can sit down and begin to understand how big God is and that he made the yellow man, he made the white man, made the black man, put us all here in equality, that male and female. You can't just take a whole half of the human race and make them your property so ungodly in doing that
And the thing is that just hearing, like, whatever it. Whatever it was that brought me to you, that you could talk to me in this format and hearing that story reframed the story of the fountain for me, is that it was just like that. Yeah, just. You're telling. Just reframed it. You know how it is. You just hear it a different way and you're like, oh, that's okay. Now
Rooster, here we are again and had to quickly respond to your previous dialogue. I also used this text. One year, one of my students was working for the, the governor of the state of Indiana. And they do an annual event bringing together all of the various entities of the state who resource the drug culture. And I was given the task of doing a workshop at the Indiana. And I would have to go back and look at all of my paperwork to call the name of it
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 5:00
They are from another sect of the religion or a part of the religion, or they study the faith differently, and we are not interested in changing our faith, or we're not open to exploring or hearing what they have to say. And so we're going to confidently open the door and say we're not interested. Thank you. Would you like a water to take with you as you continue to go about your journey? There was none of that
I've come to understand Christianity as one of the most schizophrenic faiths among faiths, because by the time Martin Luther produces Protestantism as the first great protester of the church, Protestantism split and split and split and split. Just real schizophrenic Christianity is. So you've got these people coming to your door, they, along with the Jehovah witness and the Mormons, it's a one sided God does not belong to you. God did not just create you
And that moment is him, God manifest, including all of his children, into the fold. And then Paul has to be stricken blind because he was on the same route persecuting Christians. But then the Lord intervened, and then Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8 · 4:24
If people have come to accept that, we don't have to look alike and we don't have to be the same person, then why doesn't that also stand true for our belief systems? Why does it matter? If someone does or doesn't believe in a specific deity, why does it matter? If they view the Bible or other religious texts a certain way, why does it matter?
It. So I'm posting this here. It's a link to an interview with Dick Gregory, and the Rev mentioned him in another swell. And I've heard his name before, and I'm sad to say that I was unfamiliar with his work and I am currently deep diving in it. But this interview right here, I am only 30 minutes in or 20. Yeah, minutes in
At least where I come from, people have gotten to a point where they could care less about there even being a God, let alone to talk about a value system, which we're having a real hard time in this nation right now, trying to even identify a value system. But for me, and this is just me, I've come to understand that if I can know people as a whole entity, and that's why that text again keeps coming up to me at the porches of Bessava
Jeremiah Myer
@Jeremiah73 · 4:53
Hello, Reverend. Barbara. What a thought provoking swell that you've put out here. And I can see by all the comments that a lot of other people feel the same way. So that's a really nice thing. Them. You know, when you talk about putting religion into the curriculum of elementary schools and into middle schools and into high schools, I really am not for that
What I need to be as clear as day about is the fact that we have never had a public religion course and it stops there. You can take it wherever you want to take it. That's the fact. That's the truth. By the way, I was hearing some conversation about the difference or about trust. And I'm a linguistic at heart
What you're saying is this world at the time that had this mishmash of different beliefs and religious systems, Paul dedicated his life to bringing everyone into the kingdom of heaven. And then Paul was the first in a long line of apolistic believers in Christ that didn't do the things that you're talking about. It was the people that he spent his life explaining the word, like trying to get people not to believe, but to function in a society where Christianity was the new kid on the block
Jeremiah Myer
@Jeremiah73 · 5:00
I certainly was raised in a christian household. My mother was a Jehovah's Witness, and so I was required to do a lot of studying to prepare myself to go from door to door and all of that sort of thing. And unlike some people I see online that are just bitter about such experiences, I am not. I took from that a deep reverence for the holy. I just somehow came to my mind to explore, and I arrived where I am, where I am today
Jeremiah Myer
@Jeremiah73 · 3:07
Hello, Rooster, my friend. Thanks for the clarifications. And I totally get it. Like I said, I'm not here as the pagan in the room that's trying to chip over the apple cart. I just preach a more conservative view about the role of religion in our public institutions, that's all. I think there is a place for religion, the history. The history of religion. I think it needs to be told truthfully, unvarnished, the good, the bad for all religions
Here I'm looking at the fact that the themes of Bible, for example, justice. Justice is a word found in Bible in practically every book of the Bible. And the word for justice, diacasune, has been translated in our english translations in more ways that we could even begin to understand. For example, the word justice as it appears in Greek has been translated in the king James version and the various other versions also, because the revised standard version has also split that word up
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8 · 2:03
You. Thank you for the share. I'll have to check that out. Just to address the comment though, around I don't necessarily know if I would say I have questions around Christianity more. So I think for me I'm more interested in connecting and understanding how I can understand people's perspective as human beings to then also be able to learn from the different perspectives around how human beings can be better people
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8 · 2:21
But I'm baffled. Generally. I see this on social media, I see this on other platforms that I'm a part of, where people are perturbed by the idea that they cannot somehow convince other people of their beliefs. Whether they believe that belief is grounded in what they practice as a religion, or whether that is something politically oriented, whatever the source is, I sadly have to disagree, because it just, to me, doesn't make any sense
But when you do, original thought emerges. Like yesterday, responding to Jeremiah and Rooster, from my center came the idolatry of man in wow. Now to articulate that from my nerve center, I don't have a need to debate lease wise to consider it healthy
Blair Redmond
@blairbearing · 1:01
Hello. Rooster Collins invited me to this conversation, and I just want to say thank you. Thank you, thank you. I listened to some of the replies, but my favorite was probably the last reply, because that is exactly how I feel. Like I'm not debating anything with anyone. I'm open and available to have any and all discussions, but ever going to be a debate, like, I have my belief system. You have your belief system
I've been cussed out on Facebook. I have. Because folks just don't want to hear, in many cases, what I have to say. I've even had some folks on Facebook tell me I need Jesus. But anyway, dialogue. People have to learn to be in dialogue. And dialogue is reciprocity. You give, I take. I give. You take. That's Howard Thurman's search for common ground. God bless you. Thank you for joining us
I question how many universes and how many planets have life on them? Really? Why would God just put life on earth? We already know how many planets have been identified in our solar system. We even have some powerful scholars of the planet who have identified some other universes. The first call, the first responsibility of most all religions. Forget about yourself, self deny, self denial. But I think I'm going to have to start back up again with Albert. Answer
And so the class was constantly bombarding me with their need to have me demythologize grandmother. And in the process of coming to understand what it is that they were asking of me, I realized that they were dealing with some truths from the black community of America, and that is that in many cases, the grandmother became the keeper of the faith for the family. And so I knew in that classroom that they had the right one, because I am the one who has never even met my biological father
Paul never knew the Jesus of history, the proof of that. Take a look all the way through the New Testament and see if you find Paul's name anywhere. I wait
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8 · 1:26
Because once again, you are going to live and I'm going to live, and everyone on this earth is going to live not knowing everything. So to ever get to a point where one doesn't see the need to hear other perspectives and have conversation and quote unquote call it debate, seems like there's something missing there
Every single day. And to even think that somebody knows everything is anathema. The first prayer that I learned as a child that I remember was sitting at the table. God is great and God is good. And those two attributes gives me purpose in my daily walk to know more about the greatness of God, to know more about the goodness of God. I can't get enough in my quest for truth and my quest for knowledge
To edit this post. Paul's name is definitely in the acts and the epistles that he has written. So what I was trying to say that you can go through the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the stories of the Jesus of history, and you will not see Paul's name anywhere in the gospels. He just was not there. He did not know the Jesus of history. When acts opens and becomes the institutionalization of church. By the way, Jesus was never a Christian