It appears that in Burlington Township in New Jersey, the School District conducted a mock hostage taking. Taking precautions over school violence is certainly important. However, this particular school district decided that in their mock hostage taking, the group that engaged in the activity was right-wing religious fundamentalists. In fact, allegedly the group came in and took students hostage because one of the members of the organization's daughter was suspended for praying before the school day.
No other group in America would tolerate this kind of hostility. The School District's mock hostage taking program targeting Christians as the perpetrators is outrageous.
Discuss....
The key word here in "fundamentalists". It's a very important distinction to make. Most Christians are not fundamentalists. Most fundamentalists are not Christian either. In this example, we are talking about Christian
fundamentalists, and as I'm sure you will agree, a fundamentalist interpretation of any religion can differ vastly from what most people of that same religion believes (or advocates as acceptable behaviour). Just look at the people of the Westboro Baptist Church (see my review of a documentary about them
here...) for example.
Two key points here are these: 1) If it upsets you that religious fundamentalists get a bad name, then don't tar yourself with the same brush. Fundamentalists, even Christian fundamentalists, are likely to hold many of
your beliefs (even as a Christian) with equal distain as they would someone of another persuasion. This is precisely why fundamentalism (not religion itself) is wrong. Moderate (normal), personal religious conviction is far from fundamentalism, and it is a good idea to distance yourself from this epiteth. 2) This is only one of any number of possible scenarios involving fundamentalists. The fact that they are Christian fundamentalists (although you actually said "right-wing religious") is totally irrelevant, in my opinion anyway.
In this regard, I thing a more fitting thread title would be 'Hostility towards fundamentalism'... to me, religion (or the word of the Bible) is (relatively) constant - unchanging. Fundamentalism is a way of describing an attitude (or a set of attitudes) towards a religion - quite a different thing. Most people are not hostile towards religion, but most moderate people (religious or otherwise) are decidely uneasy (if not outright hostile) to fundamentalists of any description.
I love being a Christian and have no problem with people questioning my faith. However, when you portray us as looney nuts who will kidnap and take people hostage just "because" like what is currently going on with the muslim terrorists. Well that's just wrong.
Although I can understand why this sort of thing might upset you, I think it's important that you step back for a second and consider what I've written above - 'right-wing religious fundamentalist' does not equate to 'Christian'. Fundamentalists, almost by definition, are prepared to go to extremes of behaviour and actions that most other people - moderate, tolerant folks - would consider beyond the pale. This said, it really doesn't matter either way if in this scenario we're talking about Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists, or whatever. The distinction is between moderate and extreme types of behaviour. If a merely hypothetical scenario is enough to upset a moderate Christian, maybe we should count our lucky stars that it is extremely unlikely to actually happen.
Swift
Why do Christians just take this? I tell you what, I'm NOT going to just take this
It is simply not the case that Christians are sitting back and taking abuse while every other religion gets treated with kid-gloves. People of all religions need to accept that their chosen religion/belief system is not shared by the rest of the population on Earth, and as such, absolutely nothing is going to be 100% acceptable to everyone all of the time.... for as long as their is religion, there will be things that offend the faithful...
There is a paradox between being tolerant and sticking up for your religion. Where do you draw the line? One simple way of finding out is to ask yourself what you personally achieve by getting angry at something that you needn't get angry about - like the Chocolate Jesus, for example. What did that small group of antagonistic Islamic fundamentalists achieve by stirring up the whole Prophet Mohammed cartoon debacle in Denmark, other than to upset the very people they claim to want to 'protect' from insult? In my book, they achieved absolutely nothing other than to make their brand of religious fundamentalism look petty, intolerant and utterly ridiculous. Ironically, their despicable behaviour (which resulted in the deaths of several innocent people) brought more shame to the good name of moderate Muslims the world over than any drawing of a Prophet ever could. (Bear in mind that the really offensive cartoons never appeared in the Danish press at all, and were in fact 'added' to the portfolio of 'offensive' images by the Islamists who were seeking to stir up a controversy themselves).
Art has for centuries played a significant role in portraying religion to the masses, long before the mass media came on the scene. As such, I always balk when I see a knee-jerk reaction to a piece of religiously relevant art being attacked by religious campaigners. I ask, what is so offensive about a chocolate Jesus? Is it because it represents Jesus? In that case, you need to take down a whole lot of other pieces of art across the world too. Is it because it shows his genitalia? Ok, maybe that is a question of good taste, but it's hardly blasphemy to be anatomically correct. Is it because making a statue out of chocolate is disrespectful? I reckon that is closer to the mark, but again, I don't really see why. It
is a work of art - a sculpture, and a rather good one at that... I don't see what getting upset about it is going to achieve.
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Hard to say... Apology from the school if any party has claimed offense.
