WHO NEEDS TO BE RELIGIOUS TO TEACH RELIGION?

About two weeks ago, it rained like the dickens here. It rained so hard, the water flooded the street in front of our house up to the top of the curbs. The storm drains were so full, the water was shooting out of the top of the manhole covers like fountains. Still, all of this was no match for the font of material I can get from just the New York and LA Times.

Today, I went to the LA Times, and sure enough, there it was – just staring at me in the face. I didn’t even look into the New York Times, there might even be something better there, but why go any further when this was handed to me on a silver platter?

Today I learned to never send your children to Skidmore college, it seems Skidmore has hit the skids. (Boo hiss, we all saw that obvious little joke coming, didn’t we?) Anyway, I say this because Mary Zeiss Stange, Professor of religion and women's studies at Skidmore penned a nice little editorial for the LA Times about the Ten Commandments called

“Monument to an Inglorious Past”

With a title like that I knew this was going to be good, in a bad way. Sure enough, Stange finds the Ten Commandments to be a symbol of badness. She uses a monument of the ten commandments in Miles City, MT as an example of the short shrift the American Indians got from the US Government in the 1880’s.

“The museum occupies the site of the fort Gen. Nelson A. Miles built in 1876 when he arrived to direct the Indian war in the region after Custer's demise. Miles was a major strategist in the move to strip Native Americans of their land and culture, a key element of which was the abolition of the Plains Indians' religion.

In 1883, in flagrant violation of the 1st Amendment, the United States officially outlawed the Sun Dance. The Lakota, Cheyenne and Crow would not be allowed to practice their religion again until the mid-20th century, by which time (under President Eisenhower) the official U.S. policy toward Indian culture was chillingly dubbed "termination," and most Native Americans experienced near- total alienation from their religious past. This was all accomplished in the name of the Christian God.”

This brings up all kinds of observations:

1. The Ten Commandments is hardly a symbol of evil, like the swastika or the burning cross. Judea-Christianity has done much, much more good than bad. Only an idiot or anti-religious nut would think the Ten Commandments were evil. Good thing she teaches religion.
2. She’s all in a tizzy about the Sun Dance being outlawed. Um, isn’t that exactly where we are headed here with Christianity, with all encouragement from Stange? Bit by bit, all religious expressions are being are being suppressed.
3. On a very un-PC note, the Indians precious religion was stamped out in under one hundred years? Christianity and Judaism survived longer than that in hiding. They must not have been really hung up on this religion.

I bet the liberals aren't breathing again yet.

Look, my big problem with this woman is she doesn’t seem very religious to be teaching religion. You don’t need to feel the Ten Commandments should be on every door to teach religion, but it might be nice to believe that they aren’t a symbol of badness. I guess you could be afraid of water and still teach people how to swim, but I doubt it would be a very good education. But, then again, this is modern American higher education.