1. What best predicts the life stance of an adult?
Most people are born into and reared in a given set of values and beliefs.
Had you been born in another part of the world, do you suppose you would have
ever arrived at your present outlook?
2. When a child in your class volunteers that her family never attends any
religious services, what meaning can you attach to that family's degree of
religious commitment? You cannot presume to know the degree of
religious commitment from this information. Your inferences about a family's
beliefs and practices are based on your own assumptions. Teachers who
cannot willfully avoid making such inferences at least need to hold them so
tentatively as to avoid judgment and be open to correcting what may well be
serious misperceptions.
3. Media in the United States often discuss religious diversity and tabulate
demographics regarding religions. You might see a chart with the term
"Faith" in the left column followed by "Buddhist" and
"Christian" and "Muslim" and "Hindu" and
"Jewish" along with a count in right column? What's wrong with that?
In Christianity, the notion of "faith" has a particular meaning. This
Christian interpretation (e.g., one "has/holds/possesses faith") is a dominant
perspective in the U.S. It is thus the usual media perception, but that
usage distorts reader/viewer understanding of other "faiths" (e.g., Hindu,
indigenous). Even as concerns another monotheistic faith, Islam, it seems
particularly misapplied. The life stance in the religion of Islam is one where religion
cannot be so readily separable from the overall mode of daily living as
Christianity permits.
4. Our media often set the "religious and spiritual" idea apart from the
"secular" in describing people living their lives. Where does
this strategy come from? It pretty much grows out of protestant
Christianity, and is a northern European and North American notion widely
infused into law, but not readily applicable to those life stances in which
religion is more fully pervasive--a "way" of life and not a separable
"piece" of it.
5. In some countries (e.g.,
in Australia) it is considered bad manners to ask another
person their religion. What are your thoughts on the propriety of such
questioning? There may be good reasons for a person to be private
about such matters, particularly if holding to a minority or marginalized
worldview. Teachers need to be empathetic and sensitive. Each society is
different, as is each individual. A forthright openness concerning one's
worldview would have differing consequences for a person, depending much on the
status that worldview holds in the social group.
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