Stained glass windows in the Mausoleum of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, California; originally created in the 1920s for Saint Vibiana Cathedral, Los Angeles Jesus and the children, detail: Child (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My biggest bugbear at the moment is compulsory worship. With politicians such as Eric Pickles likely to succeed in pushing through the Council Prayers Bill and the increasing emphasis on religious belief and prayer in schools I am concerned about the motivations of people who seem to want to undo progress that has been made on the equal rights front.
In my day-to-day life I don’t really encounter very much religious extremism or fundamentalism. I have begun very recently talking with friends about my concerns over the daily compulsory worship laws in schools and how I worry about how to approach this when I send my son to school as we are non-believers. Just sounding people out really and trying to gauge if anyone else, particulary the ones I know don’t go to Church, feel the same kind of frustrations as myself.
To be honest none of them do.
A teacher friend of mine summed it up for me, “Yeah we pray every day but it doesn’t do the kids any harm.”
Again and again people keep on telling me that it’s “harmless” and “nothing to worry about” and yet I can’t stop feeling that it does matter – it is important.
When does something harmless become something harmful?
- Rape is wrong I think we can all agree (if not then I may need to work on attracting new readers) and it can leave an individual with physical and mental trauma that can affect them for the rest of their lives. So that is one end of the spectrum.
Then you get these pesky feminist types who say that all sexism is wrong. Wolfwhistling is not a compliment – it’s degrading and it objectifies women. Women should have equal pay, equal rights not to be tied to the kitchen sink after having children and no sexist language used at all.
In the middle you will get many people (I have met enough of them) who argue that the feminists should lighten up and learn to enjoy a bit of banter. If a guy pinches your arse then well done, you’ve clearly dressed well today. Some will say that it’s just the way men are and as woman you learn how to handle it and still get ahead.
But are the two types of behaviour related?
I would argue that if you look at India – a country facing huge problems trying to tackle the systematic rape of young women – it is clear to see how the bigger picture of how women are viewed in society related directly to the recent comments of a rapist blaming the woman for being out on her own for his own behaviour.
The recent crackdown in the UK on sexual assault has gone hand-in-hand with decades of women standing up for their rights at a much lower level in the workplace and in the home.
To put it more clearly – If a man put his hand up my skirt tomorrow on public transport I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep that night. I wouldn’t be traumatised for the rest of my life or feel that I couldn’t carry on. But would that make it OK for him to do it? Hell no. And for me to allow someone to treat me like that unchallenged just plays into his idea that it is OK to treat a woman as a piece of meat. I don’t think his behaviour is anywhere near as bad as a rapist’s but why not just take yourself out of that category altogether?
- Slavery is wrong on any level. Again, I would like to think that all half-decent people would agree with that statement.
Whether it is human trafficking, sex slavery, modern slavery or the tradional white/black type it may look very different these days but it still exists in many different forms.
So a couple buying a 10-year-old-girl trafficked in from abroad to keep in their basement as a slave to work in their home and service the man’s sexual needs is reported as horrific in modern Britain.
But what if they had treated her well? If they had paid her for cleaning and cooking (and clearly stopped raping her) and argued that she would have been sleeping on the streets if they had no brought her to the UK would it somehow be better? Well, yes, in some ways. But still not right. It’s still not acceptable in my eyes to justify one human being claiming ownership of another one.
Which is why even if I heard a story of somebody treating their slaves extremely well, perhaps buying them nice houses or nice cars, if they are not free to leave it is still fundamentally wrong and I think that slave has a right to complain about their treatment. Translate this to massive corporations who set up in countries like China and recruit people from local villages to work 18 hour days in huge factorys and take their papers from them so although they are being paid (a pittance in most cases) they are technically not free to leave.
Is it OK that the same people who read the first story with horror and disgust might just turn a blind eye to the second one (whilst obviously agreeing that in theory it is wrong) because, well, we need our reasonably priced gadgets and technology and that’s just the way the world works. You can compartmentalise the two stories and feel that one is worse than the other but the truth is we need to condemn all people exploiting others through slavery and hold to account the governments, corporations and individuals who engage in this type of behaviour.
- Religious freedom is important, but so is the right to be free from religion.
This is something I believe in as strongly as I belive that rape and slavery are unacceptable. I’m not going to have a huge rant about the pros and cons of religious belief as the issue is so complex but I think fighting for people to have the right to hold whatever personal belief they like is importnat to tackle on any level (where the belief doesn’t impact on anybody else and the belief itself dos not discriminate against others).
Most people I know would have no problem condemning terrorists in Nigeria storming through villages killing people who refuse to convert to their form of Islam. Most would feel that recent anti-semitic attacks and attacks on mosques in the UK are deplorable.
Most people I know would condemn a doctor who prescribed an exorcism to a patient with mental health issues or a family who rejected their teenage child for their homosexuality based on their faith. Most would support gay marriage and the rights of women to demand equality in their marriages or relationships whatever the Bible may say.
Most of my friends would, I hope, feel that it was grossly inapproriate for a Headteacher to force children to lie face down on the floor whilst she pretended to phone God to report thier naughty behaviour. Will those children be traumatised for life by the incident? Highly unlikely. But that doesn’t make it right.
And yet all of my friends think I should send my son to school and let him join in with whatever prayer or worship is going on that day despite the fact that this is discriminating against our family as non-believers and humanists. He can be taken out of assembly at prayer time or just learn to let it go over his head and, yes, I accept either option is not going to leave him sobbing himself to sleep at night because of his inner religious conflict or leave him unable to lead a happy adult life.
However, I can’t shake the feeling that by not challenging the low-level discrimination I am somehow a part of the problem when it comes to the really bad shit. If everybody got together in their respective religions and clarified the laws and beliefs (e.g. if people want to believe they’ll go to heaven after they die that’s their choice and it’s ok BUT persecution and forcing our beliefs onto others = always bad) the world would be a far better and more tolerant place in my mind.
To all my friends who want to distance themselves from the “crazies” and the people who take the whole religion thing “too far” I ask you to rethink whether you are really ok with giving anybody free reign to educate your child in morality, religion and spirituality guided principly by their own personal ideas. There are many different beliefs within the Christian community so which one is on the curriculum? What are the views of the person responsible for the spiritual guidance of your little one’s mind?
Does that person believe in gay marriage and equality laws for homosexuals or do they belive all gay people will go to hell? Are they a creationist who interprets Genesis literally and rejects the Big Bang Theory? Do they believe in evolution? Did you know that some Christians think that Dinosaurs are part of a conspiracy? Do they believe that the only way a child can be good is if they pray to Jesus every day? Did they support women fighting to become bishops and ministers or did their interpretation of the Bible prevent them from doing so?
You pay your taxes which pays for the schools, the teachers and the politicians. Your child has a right to a good education regardless of your political or religious beliefs and it does matter when that doesn’t happen. It does matter that your child has the right to think for themselves, learn all the facts and decide what to believe for themselves rather than being preached at.
You might be lucky and find your children have a pretty positive experience at a faith school. Maybe you quite enjoyed it yourself. Maybe when it comes to the whole religion thing you pick the good bits you like and everything else you just take with a pinch of salt because it doesn’t do any harm. I imagine the majority of teachers out there interpret the collective worship law in a pretty friendly, low-key way and deliver it in a positive manner. It’s all pretty harmless but it doesn’t make it right.
When I hear regularly about the many children leaving school in this day and age with extremely poor reading and writing abilities it feels plain wrong that any more time is wasted trying to drill into them their daily prayers.
If you don’t live your life as a devout Christian but you don’t have a problem with your child worshipping the Lord on a daily basis in school I ask you to look at the bigger picture. Why are politicians trying to push this? Does anybody or any organisation stand to gain financially or politically if they have millions of young “believers” reinforcing their ideals every day through law? What would happen if your child did question it all or didn’t want to take part? Why does it have to be every day?
And if you do happen to get one of the “crazies” teaching your kid, would you still be as relaxed about the whole thing? What if your child’s teacher had an invisible telephone to the big man himself and took all playground disputed straight to the top? Yeah your kid will live to tell the tale but don’t they deserve a better education than that? What if it was more extreme than that? Let’s just take it out of schools and teach kids the facts they need to know.
If you don’t actually believe in it all then please consider that maybe it does matter what religious category you allow your child to be put into.
humanistmum 