Not Enough Religion...How morality affects Religion

I've been thinking about this editorial for many days. I tend to agree that we need a better understanding of reliigion in this country. I knew nothing about the Muslim faith until I took a comparative religious class as an adult. Understanding the similarities and differences will help all of us relate to others more. I also agree that no knowledge about various religious teachings leaves a gap that is often filled with fundamentalism.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/21/EDGA6ADTDP1.DTL
This article is by Robert Warren Cromey


We liberals have denigrated religion so much that Christian conservatives wreaked vengeance in the recent election. I have been a proud member of the ACLU since my university days in the 1950s. I went along with the idea that we should keep prayer out of the public schools and prevent the teaching of the Bible and religion in public high schools and universities under the guise of separation of church and state.

We now have more than two generations of religiously illiterate university graduates. The possibility of teaching high-school and college students critical thinking of the Bible, theology, ethics and religion in general has been lost to millions of students. William F. Buckley Jr. ridiculed Yale for de-emphasizing religion in that Ivy League bastion in his 1951 book, "God and Man at Yale." Yale was founded to train young men for the ministry in the Christian Church. If that school abandoned its religious roots, then secular and state-run schools could safely counter any attempts to teach any form of religion on the university level.

The Christian conservatives filled the gap with literalistic opinions about what Scripture says, swallowed whole by intelligent but untutored believers. Thoughtful teaching about religion was replaced by teaching that followed a religiously conservative party line -- anti-abortion, anti- homosexual and pro-creationism. The universities blithely went along, making fun of the fundamentalists, but not teaching the students any alternative because they were not interested in the Bible and religion as subjects worthy of their scientific and technological prejudices.

We waged war on teaching and practicing religion in the public schools on the flimsy grounds of separation of church and state and the First Amendment. But there can be no real separation of religion and society. The president, his Cabinet, the Congress and the courts are full of men and women who are members of churches and other religious institutions. Their decisions are influenced in some measure by their religious traditions. The president has made it abundantly clear he feels inspired by his higher power when he makes decisions. Like it or not, a huge number of U.S. citizens say they are members of some religion.

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i don't think that teaching only secular information is bad, but i think a good comparative religions course would be the way...don't teach them fundamentalist christianity, teach them buddhism and sikhism and islam and hindu and christianity, its incredible how much your opinion can change with different religious information (i took a japanese art history course this semester and you'd be amazed at how much buddhism is taught in such a class...and how much it makes you think about the world)

religion is a major part of the cultures of other lands, it would behoove us to learn more about them in an attempt to understand the other cultures

or teaching of Biblical principles is not permitted in public schools.....it happened because the parents who rant and rave that the ommission of such things is an atrocity didn't give their children religious instruction at home. There is a big difference between living ones religious values and imposing them on others. This writer doesn't seem to be able to distinguish the two.

not because of separation of church and state, but comparative religion classes in high school or lower classes would never make it out the door in most areas of the country. When people talk about putting religion back in the classroom, it is only about their specific flavor of it, to the exclusion of everything else. And Gods forbid that it would every be critical in analysis and such.