Connecticut legislation aims to expand Islam education in public schools

It’s more complicated than many seem to realize.

If you’re going to have the 10 commandments, why not also the 5 pillars (Islam)? And where does it stop? The four noble truths? The threefold path? The five constant virtues? (I think Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism respectively.)

Do you base it on the local community?

If you base it solely on history, then it’s the 10 commandments and no more, I suppose. But that was 250 years ago.

And herein lies the problem of Christian Nationalism, or the continuing drive since the 1950's to embed Christian religious elements into our national systems. At some point, the tide will shift. We are going to have the same problems with what Trump has done in expanding the executive branch. When a socialist democrat enters office and takes advantage of the same power that Trump has expanded into, everyone will throw up their arms on where the checks and balances are, and will slowly realize that they were the ones that removed them. Yes, our public school systems are not Sunday morning Children's church. If you want your religous symbols highlighted, than prepared when everyone else wants theirs.

I fear you’re probably right about most of that. The law of unintended consequences.

I’m not sure what the solution to the school situation is. The idealist in me that refuses to die wonders why a ‘secular’ school system couldn’t also be ‘pro-religion’ in general without being pro-Religion in particular.

There’s ‘aggressively secular’ and there’s pro-religion but neutral. Not the same thing, though there is overlap. You wouldn’t be able to allow ‘proselytizing’ in that environment, but you could certainly live the Faith and let it be known that you’re happy to answer questions. There’s a lot of gospel conversation space there on the compliant side of not proselytizing.

Just musing out loud. It seems like the spirit of what the founders intended. Everybody free to come to their own conclusions about the ultimate questions—but the state not hostile to ‘faith systems.’ Isn’t that the obvious intent of the First Amendment? I’ve never understood why there’s so much confusion and controversy on that.

Remember back in the 1700's, 1800's and early 1900's schools were one room, teachers were paid by the community in which they taught, and most communities had the same shared values and beliefs. So a teacher called by a Quaker community would get a Quaker teacher, and one called by a Baptist community got a Baptist. And even those that didn't all share the same faith, they were close enough that they all believed in God, prayer and the Bible in general. We are trying to hold onto a bit of that model today, by trying to legislate that into the schools. But it is a loosing battle. The problem with the idea of "faith systems" is that there is a growing percentage of the population that views any religious faith as hostile.

dgszweda wrote: The problem with the idea of “faith systems” is that there is a growing percentage of the population that views any religious faith as hostile.

I don’t disagree that we can’t legislate that schools be friendly to religion, but based on the 1st amendment, we should be able to make sure they are not hostile to faith or its expressions by teachers and students either.

Honestly, though, the way that most of us handled this was to exit the public schools completely, so we could have teachers and the whole educational experience closer to what we believe. I didn’t regret this back in the 90’s when my kids started school. Seeing the regression in the schools since then has only strengthened my views on it.

The school problem sort of echoes the issues that came up regarding marriage and what government should support or not. Back before the definition of marriage was expanded, I was personally in favor of taking marriage completely out of the government equation and leaving it to the churches to handle. I was in favor of government allowing and enforcing contracts only, where a contract could specify partnership, shared ownership, medical visitation rights and rights of inheritance upon death. Any other meanings specific to marriage would be between us, God, and the church. Government wouldn’t officially recognize marriage at all. I got some pushback from other Christians when I argued for this, but I think it would have been much better than pushing for only the Christian definition, and then having government specifically recognize other forms of “marriage,” which I thought was inevitable in the same way that having government specifically recognize religion leading to it having to recognize all forms of religion “egually.”

All that to say, in my opinion, the less we let government handle, generally the better off we are. If you want your child to be educated in the “lowest common denominator” of beliefs, that’s what you’ll get.