<p>We clearly need a southern Christian civil rights movement. Clearly some people haven’t ever really experienced the south or evangelical Christianity. They haven’t experienced anything since the movie Deliverance, apparently. To you southernors on here. My apologies to you. People are truly ignorant. Gay men can be sodomized in Brooklyn, but that’s OK because well, the North is so enlightened. Some evangelical Christian says a prayer at a football game, and now THAT must be STOPPED! All I can say is that I am glad my father was a Project Engineer and I lived all over the country. I can tell you all with absolute certainty. Northern states do not have less hate than the South. The South is no less intellectual than the Northeast. OP…your son would be absolutely fine in the south. As I said before, if your regional culture is important to you, he might not find people who share that same culture easily, or find someone to DATE as easily…but he would have friends and nobody would think twice about his gay mothers. Well, they might think twice, because it is different, but they won’t be holding exorcisms over him or anything. He WOULD come away with less bigotry toward southernors and Christians than many people in the North seem to hold.</p>
<p>Like “northern liberal elite” isn’t delivered in a contemptuous, sneering tone. </p>
<p>Anyway, you aren’t following along. No one is trying to stop Joe the Football Player from saying a prayer at his football game. What is hick and unsophisticated, however, is when the <em>public school</em> official / representative leads the crowd in prayer. And that goes on in public schools in certain parts of the country. What parts of the country might the masses consider that acceptable, and in what parts of the country might Christians think, “Well, I’m a Christian, but that certainly isn’t acceptable, keep it to yourself”? </p>
<p>My goodness, a poster, missypie, who lives in Texas just described how her city council meeting opened with a prayer and it was just “accepted” down there. Could we please stop pretending that there is no difference?</p>
<p>[The</a> Office of the Chaplain, United States House of Representatives](<a href=“http://chaplain.house.gov/]The”>http://chaplain.house.gov/)
Uh, many governmental bodies open with prayer.
Hick and unsophisticated. HA!
And if I went to a high school in Saudi Arabia and they started the morning with a prayer to Allah, I would cover my head and show respect. THAT is behaving with tolerance. I would not demand that they be sensitive to my differences. Of course, a southernor would have KNOWN that.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia? If the Saudis do it, it’s all right for us? Your standard for right behavior is SAUDI ARABIA?</p>
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<p>Unlike Saudi Arabia, the USA is not a theocracy. We do not have a state religion. So a public school in Saudi Arabia starting the day with a prayer is a different matter than a public school in the US starting the day with a prayer. Private religious schools can do whatever they see fit, of course, and someone who chose to attend one would be wrong–and foolish–to object.</p>
<p>But really, this claim to superior “tolerance” from the person who has a) declared that she gets to decide who is and is not a “Christian” and proudly recounted how she warned her offspring against those “pretending” to be Christian who–according to her–aren’t, and moreover apparently have some nefarious plot to woo right-thinking Christian kids away from the parental lockstep, (Apparently proselytizing by Christians is not bad, though, because she knows that they are RIGHT. Oh.) b) sneered at other denominations as “Amway,” and c) referred to religious groups as “despicable” if they say that Christians are welcome there.</p>
<p>Apparently it has also escaped her notice that there is a long history of people not agreeing with the idea that sessions of congress should open with corporate prayer. I believe it goes back to John Adams, at least.</p>
<p>^^In the words of the savant Yoda:</p>
<p>Common ground found, will not.</p>
<p>Aren’t we yet convinced that sweeping stereotypes are not good? There have been some wonderful, thoughtful comments on here. </p>
<p>I like this quote from FLVADAD:</p>
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<p>I live a suburb of one of the larger North Carolina cities. I am speaking for this part of the south. It is not what you folks who have never been here are imagining. There are definite cultural differences and much of that is centered around religion, because that has been an integral part of the culture of the south. If someone asks me where I go to church, I tell them I don’t. No one has ever told me they’ll pray for me because of it. I have had people pray for me for difficult times. I’m not offended. I worked with a women who was a bit over the top with religion for me. I spoke to her about what I was comfortable with, she respected my feelings and we got along fine. I think because religion has been a part of the culture for so long, many here are adjusting as the culture changes and the south becomes more global. In my experience, having lived both in the north and south, southerners are more vocal about their religion (again it has always been a focal point in the culture) but, please believe me, they are not all fundamental Christians.</p>
<p>I also want to let you all know that here in the south I know gay people, people of color, Jews, Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Agnostics, and Atheists (and I’m sure others I haven’t mentioned).</p>
<p>My kids go to a private school that I also work at. I don’t have a lot of experience with the public school. Public schools should not be saying a prayer at any school function. If they feel prayer is necessary it should be a moment of silence to allow people to pray (or not) however they feel comfortable.</p>
<p>Things change with every generation, hopefully to a level of more diversity and acceptance of differences in others. At our school we try to build character along with education. We’ve had gay students come out to their peers at our high school community meeting. They are comfortable enough to do it and the other students are accepting. I’m not saying things are perfect or an easy street for all, but I do think tolerance is being taught and the kids I know are fine with whatever is out there.</p>
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<p>PG, don’t try to “church” it up now. This is precisely part of what you are quibbling with. I’m not missing the point, I get the whole argument against religious activities being sanctioned by public institutions, and I fully support the principle of seperation. However, you need to be intellectually honest about your position. The content and tenor of your posts tells us that you are intolerant and contemptuous of ANY public display of Christian faith whether endorsed by a public institution or not. Let’s not pretend your posts are only about some violation of the personal freedoms of non Chiristians. Your hypersensitivity and offence at any Chitrian-like activity as documented by your posts in this thread, and others I have seen, undermine the idea that this is merely about public/private issues for you. Thus, even a Christian just going about his/her faith, if at all visible to you, is defined in your book as evangelism, worthy of an indictment of “showy let-me-show-you-all-in-public-how-pious-I-am”, and a charge of being “tacky.” You can try to couch it however you like, say that you don’t care about how people practice their faith as long as it does not violate public/private laws, etc., but the extreme nature of your own intolerence, not to mention, lack of understanding, is evident by what you’ve already written. Again, I don’t care what position you take on the public/private issue, I think much of that is valid. But the sniping, and unwarranted insults solely directed towards mocking another person’s faith is just as out of bounds as someone trying to impose their faith.</p>
<p>I lived my 1st 4 decades in the NE and the past decade in the South. As I read this thread (and boy is it a different thread than when it started!) I have to say that I don’t think it’s a North/South split. I really think it’s a socioeconomic split. The hate filled emails that I get (you know; the Obama is a Muslim stuff) are from relatives in NJ and Ohio who barely graduated HS and are now either unemployed or underemployed because they chose not to continue their education and are now pushing 50 and have no marketable skills because manufacturing jobs went away. And they’re very strongly rooted in their ethnicity. </p>
<p>The communities I am familiar with in the NE are blue collar; I am a 1st generation American. The Southern community I live in currently is upper middle class, with a very strong school district & a majority of college educated parents. One comedian jokingly refers to my area as “Big City South.” I don’t hear people make the off the cuff disparaging comments here like I did in NJ (of course, that could also be because I don’t know them as well.) People in the South don’t seem to identify with their original ethnic identity like people in the North do (i.e. I’m Italian, or Polish or German, etc.) So what a lot of you are calling a “Southern” attitude, I really think is more of a rural or socioeconomic attitude. I know more rednecks from NJ than I do in TN.</p>
<p>My D is a freshman at U of Alabama. She still seems more Northern to me than my younger D who seems more Southern. She has not had any complaints about any of these types of suspected Southern school attitudes than some posters think are rampant. Interestingly, I was talking with a mom at a UA event last year & she was concerned about her D going to UA…she was from rural AL and she was worried about the liberal/ worldly lean of the campus. </p>
<p>When we moved here, I was invited multiple times to different bible studies. I politely declined & no one ever pushed it. Those same people invited me in the same manner to Ladies Bunko night, and couple’s Euchre games. Those I went to ;)</p>
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<p>And neither am I. But there’s a big difference between I’ll pray for you [that your baby recovers from her serious illness], and I’ll pray for you [to abandon your WRONG WRONG WRONG beliefs and accept mine]. </p>
<p>In the first case, the right response is Thank you for your kind thoughts. The well-wishing person is praying for you to get what you hope for. Both you and your praying friend are in agreement about what is desired.</p>
<p>The second case, on the other hand, what I think of as praying at a person, is both smug and hostile. From my point of view, the praying person wants something bad to happen to me. I have my beliefs and don’t want to change them. </p>
<p>I get that evangelical Christians and Hare Krishnas have a religious belief that they must convert others. In our pluralistic society, in many cases they have the right to get in someone’s face about religion. That doesn’t make it less obnoxious.</p>
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<p>But it could be done in certain situations. Hugging in Church is not forbidden, and I have been to churches where Catholics are in fact hugging each other at different points during the Mass. I don’t know if I can accept your implication that there is some overarching cultural norm for Catholics. Surely the behavior of those attending Masses in the EF are different from those attending Masses in the OF, yet all are Catholics. Finally, the issue of reverence is omnipresent – kneeling has implications of reverence that hugging does not.</p>
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<p>He is forcing them to listen to his prayer, yes. Sort of how when I attend a concert voluntarily, I am perhaps forced to listen to some opening act that I do not like. I could not, however, claim that I was in any way unaware of the possibilities/certainties involved in the event.</p>
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<p>ROFL. As it turns out, I’m actually going to Saudi Arabia in a month (and yes, I don’t have an option. I HAVE to wear a burka and cover my hair. It’s not about “respect,” it’s about not being thrown into jail). </p>
<p>If I were to bring a cross / bible / menorah / other religious artifact into Saudi Arabia in my luggage next month, what do you think would happen to me? Let me spot you a clue. I’d be thrown in jail. What Saudi Arabia does is not what we in the US should try to emulate, at all. This is as lame of an argument as the “they shouldn’t build the mosque in Manhattan near Ground Zero because churches / synagogues can’t be built in Saudi Arabia.” That may be, but we pride ourselves on being BETTER and more sophisticated and more enlightened than civilizations / cultures where there is a theocracy.</p>
<p>To a post on p.11 of this thread, by debrockman:</p>
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<p>Just to keep the facts straight… California is home to Baptist, 7th Day Adventist, and a few other fundamentalist Christian communities, immigrated from the former Soviet republics (one large fundamentalist population that I know of is in the Sacramento area). I’ve been told that these communities played a significant role in defeating prop 8.</p>
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<p>How interestingly offensive. I am interested to see your empirical, or even rational, explanation of this statement.</p>
<p>Theocratic civilizations are inherently less enlightened/sophisticated? Strange; I didn’t think that those traits depended at all on what type of government is in power. But I’m sure you would think Hobbes was a nimrod as well.</p>
<p>Baelor, do you disagree that the US prides itself in being better than a theocracy like Saudi Arabia?</p>
<p>Don’t be so quick to speak for ALL of NC, BUandBC. I grew up in NC in a different part of the state. There was daily prayer in the public school, broadcast over the intercom, up until at least 1975. Every football game began with prayer. Every football game STILL begins with prayer.</p>
<p>Growing up, I was routinely told that I was “going to Hell” because I had not been immersed - yeah, I grew up Presbyterian, not Baptist, and my earnest friends were genuinely (and vocally) concerned for my salvation. I cannot repeat some of the things I heard about Catholicism from the pulpit of my supposedly “liberal” church. </p>
<p>There are many things I miss about the South, but the religiosity is not among them. Oh, I’m still Presbyterian, very active in my church, and very happy that public prayer is not so common where I now live.</p>
<p>Baelor, why don’t you give a rational or empirical explanation as to how any religion is founded on divine power, and therefore has an appropriate place in government?</p>
<p>I said:
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<p>scout59 - I never said I was speaking for all of NC, but I should have said "I am speaking for my experience in this part of the south. I’m sorry. I thought that was clear by the fact I was writing it. I have only lived here for 15 years, so I don’t know what it was like long ago. I know I have seen changes over the last 15 years and I was trying to let people know that hey didn’t need to fear the south I know. I was hoping to pacify this thread, but I guess that is not going to happen.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t speak for the nation; if you have a study that demonstrates this, then the question answers itself. I am obviously not qualified to answer on behalf of 300+ million citizens. Are you asking whether the government believes that? Well, we constitutionally do not allow an established religion, but I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the government believes that system is “better” in the absolute sense without deep consideration.</p>
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<p>1) Why, exactly, would I feel compelled on any level to do this?
2) I fail to see any connection between the hypothesis and conclusion that you mention. Please inform us how foundation on divine power makes for religion an appropriate place in government, and presumably is alone in doing so.
3) Consider checking out a few books on theology and philosophy. As far as I am aware, no religion stakes a claim to empirical proof (although it may point to instances it feels supports its theology). Rational justifications are abundant; there is no need to outline them here.</p>
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<p>What does that prove? There is not one Southern state close to having legal gay marriage. It was in a Southern state that my son came home from a sleepover crying that we were all going to Hell. A big painting of Jesus greeted me when I walked into a public school in the South and my son’s Southern public school graduation had no less than three prayers encouraging all to thank Jesus.</p>
<p>It’s not Rhode Island that wrote Thomas Jeffferson out of the social study guidelines because he coined “separation of church and state” and it’s not New Jersey that mandates abstinence-only sex-Ed. It’s Texas.</p>
<p>I have lived in the south the majority of my adult life and there are many things I’ve come to love about it but change comes more slowly here and being a white, Christian is still considered the norm with everything else seen as a deviation. Unless a person lives in one of the few liberal cities or areas with a large population that is not from the south. It is different and, in my opinion, not in a good way.</p>