Debating Christianity in class will likely create more non-believers

It’s also likely to backfire on the religious right. They better hope that the kids skip the assigned reading, much less actual discussion and debate about it in class. As many an ex-evangelical can tell you, direct exposure to what the Bible actually says is often the first step to walking away from Christian fundamentalism altogether.

There’s a reason conservative Christians prefer quoting solitary Bible verses out of context: Not only does this allow them to twist the meaning for their own personal or political ends, but it also makes it much easier to avoid the critical thinking that engaging with longer passages can provoke. On my YouTube show “Standing Room Only,” the scholar and former evangelical Brad Onishi pointed to 2 Chronicles 7:20, a passage Christian nationalists often deploy to argue that America is meant to be a Christian nation by relying on the verse’s violent implications of God promising to “pluck” the unbelievers “up by the roots out of my land.” The larger context reveals that this story is about the ancient king Solomon, and it has nothing to do with the modern nation-state, much less one on a continent unknown to the writers of the Bible.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    5 days ago

    YMMV. There’s layers to this cake. One of the most notable is in how it’s deliberately excluding other religious beliefs. If you are a practicing Muslim, for instance, you get singled out and tormented by state officials if you demonstrate any kind of piety that isn’t state-approved. Similarly, outspoken atheists (or squishy liberal Methodists or Unitarians) become lightening rods for school admins looking to prove they’re zealous enough in their Christianization to drop the hammer on non-believers.

    All lot of the second order effects of this won’t be just annoying students with Christianity until they dislike it as much as they dislike Math. It’s going to be opening up naked harassment and bullying of non-Christians, while turning the school bureaucracy against anyone who is outwardly non-conforming.

    I vividly remember this happening in my own Middle/High School life, way back in the 90s, when Evolution and Gay were the whipping kids of the religious right. The end result was lots of good people being purged from the system for petty and arbitrary reasons, while a lot of utter assholes got cushy positions in the school board and upper wings of the administrative offices to rubber stamp the abuse.