Can I take my Bible to school?

     Short answer:  No.

     If you look at Colleen’s learning plan for the Fall 2011 Semester (In my post “Apologia”) you’ll see that a significant portion of her time is devoted to reading the Bible.  Because she only needs to read it, a book at a time, without taking “reading notes,” it is the most convenient thing for her to pack around and read when she gets a few minutes here and there, which she explained to me when she asked if she could bring it to Chapman for her band class.

     I could say that the reason why she can’t take it to school is that she’s going to band, to play her flute, so she, therefore, does not need a book to read.  She needs to be paying attention to her instructor.

     That’s a plausible answer, I guess, but it is a total fabrication.  The real answer is that I don’t want her to offend anyone.

     I’m a big believer in the separation of Church and State.  I believe in a secular society and I understand the bloody and terrible reasons why our founders wrote that, first thing, into our Bill of Rights.  The Protestant Reformation, Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Inquisitions and English Civil War were horrible and very fresh in the collective consciousness of the sometimes Christian, sometimes Deist, sometimes completely Atheistic men who wrote our founding documents.

     I am not against prayer in school but I don’t think it’s something that ought to be written into the schedule, after attendance, just before the pledge, “under God” (Thank you, Senator McCarthy, that will really scare those Commies out!), or not.  Happily, we live in a pluralistic society.  Little Christian boys and girls are probably rubbing shoulders with little Muslim, Hindu, Confucian and Pagan boys and girls.  A silent “Please, God, let me pass this spelling test” is all well and good but how comfortable do you and I feel about busting out the smudge sticks, lingams and burnt offerings? 

     But why, in our conservative, working-class little Alaskan town would I be concerned about my daughter toting around a King James, Red Letter Edition Bible? 

She isn’t a Christian.  

She truly is motivated to finish her assigned work for the week but really, she’s looking to pick a fight.  She’s not so unlike her mother at that age, looking for adult approbation, looking to one-up her peers, looking to stand apart… and just slightly above.  I’ve explained to her that some people might not like it that I, a non-practicing Pagan, am teaching her the Bible as if it were “just” literature.  In my view it is very important literature, one of the four pillars on which our whole culture is built, but for us it is “just” literature.  I don’t want Colleen rubbing our secular humanism into her classmates’ faces.

When it comes to people's spritituality we abide by Rule #1 "If it isn't yours, don't touch it."  (Thank you, Backwoods Mom!)