Religious Education

Great Debates
1

OK, all you nonreligious dopers, how much religious knowledge ought a well-educated person in the modern era have?

Any literate American ought to know who ‘Paul Revere’ was. Everyone should understand who “Leonardo Da Vinci” was. We all have a passing familiarity with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These are our shared cultural references. They bind us together and let us share crossword puzzles.

So, if you were to raise a child in the modern age, how much ‘Religious Stuff’ ought he to know? John the Baptist? Ramadan? Saint John the Devine? How would you instill such knowledge?

2

Check out this article: The Case for Teaching the Bible

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1601845,00.html

3

The bullet points. The basic timeline and split of the Abrahamic religions. The interplay of those religions is necessary to understand Western history.

I don’t see why a child has to know who John the Baptist is unless he’s a member of that religion. I think fictional figures like Moses should be identified as such, and mythological powers should be explained as such. “Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead”. “Muslims believe that an angel dictated the Koran to Mohammed”, and so on.

4

Hmm? About as much as geography.

5

I think any child should be aquainted with all the major religions and be generally familiar by adulthood with their texts, major figures and historical context.

Teaching it can be as simple as having copies of the texts at hand, watching documentaries and discussing.

I happen to BE raising kids in the modern era in just this way. I am not religious (but do hold my own spiritual views) and being aware of the religions of others is just a part of life. My mother and my sister-in-law and a few of their cousins are Jehovah’s Witnesses…naturally, the topic of what they believe comes up now and then.

We have Ethiopian, Muslim neighbors. Ditto.

Other neighbors are Catholic.

etc…

As I said, I am not religious and have never pushed any such beliefs on my kids.

In fact, I really pissed my mother in law off by refusing to allow her to take my then 4 yr old daughter to her Southern Baptist church…uh, HELL NO! My policy is that I will protect them from such exposures, esp. when I am not present, until they are older, say 9 or 10 at least. At older ages, they are free to go or not.

But to turn them over to someone who has the intent to convert them at such an age? (as she did) No way.

A well rounded knowledge of the world’s religions is as vital as a well rounded knowledge of political systems, history and science (and it is virtually impossible to fully understand any of those subjects without referencing religion, at least).

So like Frank Zappa, I don’t teach them anything except as history or myth and let them grow up and make their own decisions. I can only hope they will be well informed ones.:slight_smile:

6

I’m an atheist. If I had children, I’d teach them the basics of all of the major religions and the different sects within the Big 3. But I’d teach them about those religions, not that those religions are true or correct. I believe you need to know about them to have a basic understanding of Western civilization.

7

Quoth Lobohan:

Moses, fictional? Legendary, I’ll buy. And his exploits were almost certainly exaggerated. But it still seems pretty likely to me that there was a real man named Moses who led the Hebrew people around the time of the exodus from Egypt.

8

Actually I’m pretty sure the exodus didn’t happen. There was just a thread about this.

9

None. Use the brain for something useful.

10

To be historically and culturally literate in Western society, you need to know a good deal about religion.

I think it’s also true that if you regard a decision about belief or unbelief as personally important, then to make such a decision in an informed way you need to know a good deal about religion.

I appreciate the distinction between “learning relgion” and “learning about religion”. Still, we don’t generally absorb culture by learning about it, but rather by experiencing it. And, if we are talking about early childhood education, the distinction between learning something and learning about it is probably pretty blurry.

This isn’t an easy one. I can’t advocate parents raising their children in beliefs which they themselves do not share, and may explicitly reject, and I can understand why they wouldn’t want their children even to be exposed to those beliefs, at least until they have reached an age where their critical faculties are somewhat developed. Yet if you take too strict a line on this, you cut your children off from a signficant strand of their cultural inheritance. If you take the view that religion is harmful, corrupting, etc then you’ll probably be fine with that; it’s a strand of the culture that you would wish to see die in any event. However if you wish to raise your children in a genuinely open fashion, I think you have a dilemma.

11

I’d want my kids to be able to recognise that these stories aren’t true, and to know how to avoid getting in fights with anyone that thinks otherwise. Apart from that, it’s no more important than any other pop culture.

12

Enough to know that some people have decided not to accept the scientific world view and there are alternatives available that work, and it is a personal decision and choice.

13

It’s been sounding about half way in between lately. The exodus from Egypt seems unlikely, but maybe it was from somewhere else, or a common theme from different groups. Deuteronomy focuses on Moses at the end of wandering period, and just before the establishment of a kingdom, so he might of been a real leader of a nomadic people. IANA a biblical scholar or historian, but it all sounds a little hard to call one way or the other based on what we know right now.

14

Enough so that one understands the context and meaning of this sculpture.

15

Can you name a popular 19th century opera singer who was quite popular in the United States? Probably not because it’s just a bit of pop culture and doesn’t really matter. Things like the four noble truths, the five pillars, and immaculate conception have shaped the way people think. If you want to understand someone like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, or or Emperor Maximilian then it’s a good idea to have an idea of their religious beliefs.

16

Why are we just limiting it to the Abrahamic religions? Why not other religions like Wicca (Do what ye will an it harm none) or whatever?

17

Well, the OP offers specific questions relating to Abrahamic religions to illustrate what he wants. I agree, that doesn’t confine us, but it does tend to indicate what he has in mind.

Besides, he explicitly addresses nonreligious persons. If you are not interested in the religious value of the claims, assertions and beliefs of religious people, why would you be interested in religion at all? Well, at leasts in part, because of its cultural and historical signficance. Which means that your enquiries will focus disproportionately on the religious traditions which have shaped your own history and culture. In the West, Wicca will be a comparatively minor theme compared to Christianity or Judaism.

18

I would absolutely want a child to understand the various religious allusions that have been ubiquitous in Western intellectual thought for the last 3000 years: at a bare minimum, this includes the major Greek and Roman myths, the major events of the old and new testaments, the basics of Judaism and Islam, and the core divisions between major Christian denominations today. How could you read philosophy and history if you didn’t know these things? And how could I raise a child without talking about philosophy and history?

19

I plan on raising my daughter to be familiar with all the bigger religions and some of the more popular ancient religions. John the Baptist, Ramadan, etc would be fair game.

I would probably instill the knowledge through books, maybe through a service or two, and through Museums (I’m thinking specifically of Islamic Art).

20

I’d have no problems with a comparative religions class, as long as they are all looked at as myths and treated equally. Give students just the facts about religion and how they evolved and changed over time.