Another Easter in the Books

Boy those three days went by fast. Good Friday is the first holiday I get after the long Christmas break (yes I said Christmas and not Holiday). Unfortunately the three days flew by. Sigh, I really need a change of occupation, going back is getting harder and harder.

By the way, did somebody repeal Easter Sunday when I wasn’t looking? Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday I remember as days when just about everything was closed. This Easter everything seemed like business as usual. You couldn’t tell the difference from a regular Sunday, or Saturday or weekday for that matter. I’m not much for religion (how’s THAT for an understatement) but the “business as usual” trend on all holidays strikes me as a cultural loss.

Around the globe things aren’t getting any better in Iraq and a recent Newsweek poll says that 47% of Americans, including 34% of college graduates, reject the Theory of Evolution and believe the universe was created in 7 days, less than 10,000 years ago, as depicted in Genesis and calculated by Bishop Ussher.

Well, at least 53% do accept evolution. One has to wonder where the 34% of college graduates that believe Genesis is literally true got their degrees. Could it have been from the Podunk Bible College?

Time magazine raised some eyebrows by publishing an article, by its religion editor no less, supporting teaching about the Bible in public school. The idea isn’t to teach it as scripture but rather to focus on the Bible as a literary reference and the influence of the Bible throughout history.

I talked about this once before here Bible Textbook for Public Schools Planned and I don’t see anything that’s changed. Even the Time article stresses the danger of a Bible course becoming religious instruction, but that’s exactly what will happen in some areas of the country resulting in a widening of the cultural abyss that already exists between certain regions.

The other issue is that the presentation won’t be even handed. If you talk about the Hebrew exodus from slavery to freedom, you also need to address the Bible’s failure to condemn the institution of slavery in general. One needs to balance the feel good stories with the dark side represented by the “hard passages,” and the good achieved by people adhering to the Bible’s positive moral messages with the evil caused by people adhering to its negative moral messages.

Given that the only Bible study curriculums are those being developed by groups whose objectivity is, to say the least, highly suspect, I figure the chances of a balanced presentation are about zero.

That being the case, I’m opposed to isolating the Bible for special consideration. Why not combine it with other literary references? A literary reference course covering the most famous quotes from Shakespeare, the Bible, Mark Twain and Greek Mythology wouldn’t bother me one bit.