There's no need to apologize in my opinion. I think you're seeing just how wide the religous and cultural gap is in the US.
The US vs Them polarization is exactly why I think religion needs to be kept out of the schools in anything other than academic study sense. School needs to be a place we're all us and when school provides religous indoctrination, in anyone's religion, it creates divides. I think the type of system you speak of would work in Canada because, nationally, you have a much stronger consensus about national identity. The US is really split by regional culture and by regional inequities in wealth. I've had people poo-poo my comments on the differences between the coasts and the interior of the country, but I've lived many regions of the US and have spent a lot of time in most of the other parts of the country. There are stark differences in cultural and economic opportunity in the regions. The term Fly Over Country really does describe the chasm. What I've noticed is that this religous mania has arisen in culturally isolated parts of the country(including the suburbs and exurbs of the coasts). While California does have some truly awful mega-churches in places Orange County, you tend not see Christians forcing students to pray like you do in places like Oklahoma. On both the East Coast and the West Coast, the mix of cultures and attitudes forces us to find ways to be civil and get along. Plus the economic opportunities seem to much better and makes people feel less threatened. When I lived in Michigan, the state seemed to be slowly dying except for Ann Arbor and a couple of other areas that had relatively diversified economies. Everywhere else, plants were in the final phases of shutting down and a lot of people were displaced. At the same time I saw more and more born again Christians and they became ever more militant and intolerant. I think in a lot of places, working class people feel like they're under attack and they embrace anything that seems traditional, or maybe, in some places, the only institutions that offer any help are dominionist churches. Add that to the cultural homegenity that you had in the first place, and these places have become very hostile to people who are different.
I don't know. All I know is that I'm actually afraid to live in much of the US because I am not Christian. It wasn't like this until the very late 1990s either. Something happened and I wish I knew what it was exactly.
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Date: 2006-08-18 01:53 am (UTC)The US vs Them polarization is exactly why I think religion needs to be kept out of the schools in anything other than academic study sense. School needs to be a place we're all us and when school provides religous indoctrination, in anyone's religion, it creates divides. I think the type of system you speak of would work in Canada because, nationally, you have a much stronger consensus about national identity. The US is really split by regional culture and by regional inequities in wealth. I've had people poo-poo my comments on the differences between the coasts and the interior of the country, but I've lived many regions of the US and have spent a lot of time in most of the other parts of the country. There are stark differences in cultural and economic opportunity in the regions. The term Fly Over Country really does describe the chasm. What I've noticed is that this religous mania has arisen in culturally isolated parts of the country(including the suburbs and exurbs of the coasts). While California does have some truly awful mega-churches in places Orange County, you tend not see Christians forcing students to pray like you do in places like Oklahoma. On both the East Coast and the West Coast, the mix of cultures and attitudes forces us to find ways to be civil and get along. Plus the economic opportunities seem to much better and makes people feel less threatened. When I lived in Michigan, the state seemed to be slowly dying except for Ann Arbor and a couple of other areas that had relatively diversified economies. Everywhere else, plants were in the final phases of shutting down and a lot of people were displaced. At the same time I saw more and more born again Christians and they became ever more militant and intolerant. I think in a lot of places, working class people feel like they're under attack and they embrace anything that seems traditional, or maybe, in some places, the only institutions that offer any help are dominionist churches. Add that to the cultural homegenity that you had in the first place, and these places have become very hostile to people who are different.
I don't know. All I know is that I'm actually afraid to live in much of the US because I am not Christian. It wasn't like this until the very late 1990s either. Something happened and I wish I knew what it was exactly.