Christianity, Greeks, and the Public Schools

From Geoff:

Heres an interesting question:

Why is Greek mythology permitted to be taught in schools and yet modern religions, especially Christianity are not. This isnt a "me too" arguement, I'm just curious. I can see Egyptian religion being discussed from a historical standpoint to give better insight to the culture thereof, as has been my experience. Greek mythology has been offered as its own course in many public high schools. Again I'm not looking to say "they can do it, we should be allowed to also", just curious.

Excellent question.

Christianity can be taught in schools in exactly the same way as Greek mythology can be taught, as part of a non-denominational program of social studies or comparative religion. That doesn't violate the First Amendment since the government body, the school, isn't advocating, establishing or endorsing a particular religion. The problem only comes when public funds are used for teaching religion as a true set of facts, i.e. proselytizing. That’s why there is such an uproar over creationism and intelligent design. The transparent goal there is to teach religion out of content as a set of truths.

Often you see a similar version of this argument about the 10 commandments or town nativity scenes, i.e. they are okay as part of a larger context but unconstitutional on their own.

BTW, I had an excellent social studies teacher in high school who made us study Islam and read the Koran in 11th grade. He seemed to think it would be important for us to be familiar with it in the future. We also studied the shit out of India including Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucism. It was done exactly this way and was extraordinarily help.

As a general rule, many Christians are insulted when you put their beliefs in the same context as Greek mythology and so schools just generally avoid the whole subject, much to the detriment of the students education. Christianity has a lot going for it as a religion and does pretty well when compared to others. The problem is that many Christians don’t know that, think comparative religions are a kind of meta-physical beauty contest and are a little afraid they’d lose. If I were religious and a Christian, I’d be a strong proponent of these kinds of classes, done in a fair and objective way.

What sparked this:Work boredom, a thread on somethingawful about what people have done at work, the word mythology, and me remembering a conversation with you where you referred to the Bible as "a book of myths"

The bible is a set of allegories, stories which are probably not true in detail but make a philosophical or moral point. Generally when I've had enough "even steven"-ing from a religious advocate (non-beleif is a kind of belief, science is a religion etc.) I'll point out out that the Bible is a book of myths and stories.

Don't be fooled though, myths are very powerful. Nothing can strengthen or weaken a people as quickly or as throughly as myth and I would argue it's at least as important as philosophy in understanding the history our the human race.

But, calling the Bible a "book of myths" is technially correct.

The best *kind* of correct!