Help, we’re being oppressed!!!!!
Christian parents who objected to their children being taught about other religions in a mandatory new Quebec school course have suffered a serious setback with a ruling this week that the teachings do not infringe their religious freedoms.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois dismissed a bid by parents in Drummondville, Que., who said the course on ethics and religious culture introduced across the province last year was undermining their efforts to instill Christian faith in their children.
“In light of all the evidence presented, the court does not see how the … course limits the plaintiff’s freedom of conscience and of religion for the children when it provides an overall presentation of various religions without obliging the children to adhere to them,” Judge Dubois wrote.
Step #1: Schools and the governments that back them all over North America throw their lot in with secularization and toss religion out of schools. The backing belief is that our society needs freedom of religion — and such freedom demands a secular state that supports all religions equally and promotes none of them.
Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You have taken God out of the classroom and our children are becoming secular humanists.”
Step #2: Those same school systems and governments realize that religion is a critical part of society and the ability to understand those religions usually means less killing of the members of such. As such, they introduce a fair and balanced program that promotes none of those religions but simply teaches the facts about them.
Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You are indoctrinating our children with other religions…” (Then they sue the school board…)
Step #2: Judge comes back with a well reasoned response saying that learning about world religions is not the same thing as promoting them — and tells them to go away and shut up.
Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You are infringing on our rights to form our children’s faith development and we’re gonna sue you some more…”
Humm, so, let me get this straight: The only way a free society which values general human rights can avoid treading on your specific rights is to teach every student in every school only about your religion… Thus, your snowflake’s little minds can remain properly ignorant I mean pure, undefiled and Godly.
Sounds to me like the veil just got ripped back on a plan for a totalitarian theocracy — not the freedom Jesus died to bring.
It may actually be rather pivotal though… We finally get the chance to see Fundamentalist Evangelicalism and Catholicism admitting their hatred of that freedom and acknowledging what they really wanted all along:
Control.
Pivotal, because at least truth provides a foundation for change…
September 4th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Oh and isn’t the wanting of absolute control coming from a place of fear?
September 4th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Ooops looks like the spam filter nuked my first comment.
I see certain similarities between the above news story & this poem about Christmas that was emailed to us last year with the heading “a message with lots of truth”, which I blogged about here:http://www.bignoise-enterprises.com/blog/?p=31
A month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
Why the PC Police
had taken away,
The reason for Christmas -
no one could say.
The children were told
by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men
and Angels and things.
It might hurt people’s feelings,
the teachers would say
December 25th
is just a ‘Holiday’.
Yet the shoppers were ready
with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down
to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna,
an X BOX, an I-pod
Something was changing,
something quite odd!
Retailers promoted
Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by
Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging
their trees upside down
At Lowe’s the word Christmas -
was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples
and Penny’s and Sears
You won’t hear the word Christmas;
it won’t touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive,
Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used
to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden,
Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather,
on Kerry, on Clinton!
At the top of the Senate,
there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus,
in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word,
as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak
of salvation and grace.
The true Gift of Christmas
was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season,
stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate ‘Winter Break’
under your ‘Dream Tree’
Sipping your Starbucks,
listen to me.
Choose your words carefully,
choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS,
not Happy Holiday!”
September 5th, 2009 at 2:14 am
Hi Kathy,
When the post does not show up, I still get a notification of it — it just gets filtered because it has a link in it and I have to approve it before it becomes visible. I’ve deleted the extra one…
And as to your comments — so true. We have met the enemy — and the enemy is us.
The more I look at the spreading fundamentalism (Hanegraaff, Bobgans, Fallwell, Roberts etc.) that is taking over so much of the Church and politics on the right, the more I realize that not only has the Church deeply failed to, “Love God with all of their minds,” they have given their ears to those who have failed to even use their minds at all…
Meanwhile, our society has become one of the most explosively literate and continually educated societies thanks to the internet — general society, in other words, is racing in the opposite direction the Church is wandering.
The danger of it then is that the truth of Christ is so obscured under the stupidity of Evangelical and Catholic Fundamentalism that the educated are going to reject it out of hand — and the cause of Christ with it.
When this deranged pair launched their lawsuit, their phones should have been ringing off the hook from their pastor/priest, the local ministerial, national church leaders and a host of local believers demanding that they withdraw their suit.
What do we get? A strange and insipid statement from the local bishop (that sounds like he’s so open minded that his brain fell out) — and generalized silence…
It’s a brave new world.
Cal
September 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Hi Cal, okay I won’t do a repost then. Sorry to add to your workload
We are so on the same wavelength re
“The danger of it then is that the truth of Christ is so obscured under the stupidity of Evangelical and Catholic Fundamentalism that the educated are going to reject it out of hand — and the cause of Christ with it.”
See one of my first blog entries about a Bible study out of Willow Creek: http://www.bignoise-enterprises.com/blog/?p=28
Oh I was choked.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Hi Kathy,
And, it’s not even accurate… Lots of scientists are believers — just not fundamentalist ones…
Case in point:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html
Cal