Thursday, April 20, 2006

religious meaderings: part II

I owe a post on "why I don't hate christianty: Part II", don't I? Those thoughts and feelings are ebbing and flowing. Actually, I'm ebbing and flowing on the topic of religion, and how far we as a society should go in accomodating religion. I'm a UU and as such, I support the right of everyone to live their own brand of spirituality and I support the right of folks to live their lives based on the tenets of their chosen religions so long as that religion affirms the basic principles that we support, which are things like the inherent worth and dignity of every person and justice for all and care of the earth, etc., etc.

Beautiful. But how do you make this work in practice? In our church, for example, our services include readings from a variety of religious sources and ceremonies from a variety of religions (we've had quaker silent services and paegan maypole celebrations, for example). But say there are a couple of people that are highly uncomfortable with including ceremonies from a specific religion? Well, I imagine we'd gently let them know that this is something they'll just have to accept. But what if that couple of people turned out to be something more - like about half the congregation? Is it then in the general service of the congregation to accomodate those discomforts? In the design of a community, you certainly want it to look like something desired by the majority of its members. But especially in a community that prides itself on fairness, where is the line where you stop serving the community and start serving a select minority group? What if the discomfort is with the christian religion, in a liberal setting such as UU, where it is popular to buck the mainstream? And this is where our congregation is.

Christianity is something that most of us have come from and have left behind, for one reason or another. But there are certainly those at UU who still identify themselves as christian, and who also identify strongly with the UU principles and structure. How much are we missing out on by not opening ourselves up a little bit more? And should we have to? As a "church", I think we have a lot more freedom to explore these issues. In the general public, it's a whole different kind of issue.

In a community setting, how far should we go in accomodating religion? My moms' list recently had a conversation about public schools scheduling holidays on the Jewish Passover and whether that was fair/rude/discrimination/etc. I'd have thought my UUish, liberal, love-all-thy-religious-neighbors self would have had the first instinct that it is the responsibility of the school to actively work to avoid conflicts such as this. But I surprised myself. My first reaction was that there is no reason that a school should have to accomodate any religion. It may make practical sense to schedule around majority holidays so as to minimize absences and such, but other than that, I think the the public schools should be absolved of the responsibility of cow-towing to religious needs. For one thing, once you begin to recognize any religion, you must open yourself up to recognizing all religions, and then you've found yourself in a mess. And beside, doesn't it, at some point, become our own personal responsibility to integrate our religious lives into the world rather than expecting the world to integrate itself into our religious lives?

The fact is there, that we are a diverse community (well, not so diverse as we'd like to think really, especially here near the bible belt). But you know what I mean. There are more than a couple of religions out there in the big bad world. Rather than letting our kids feel "punished" or discriminated against (or worse, teaching them to feel discriminated against) when they have to do something different because of religion, can't we teach them that this is the beauty of living in a diverse world? No, it's not easy and yes it may be hard, but that is life when you're living in a diverse society.

Well then. Off my soapbox.

I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Ebb and flow you know.

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