I noticed that in North Carolina, freshmen during this past summer attending UNC were reading a book ABOUT the Koran (Qu’ran) as required summer reading.  This was quite interesting because the Christian religious fundamentalists complained that this was TEACHING religion.  I guess they would have preferred TEACHING Jesus to all those attending including non-Christians.

Teaching ABOUT religion is a good thing.  It is a necessary part of history courses at all levels, elementary, secondary and higher education.  You cannot understand the history of the world unless you learn about the teachings of the great and less successful religions.  It is not commonly understood that the religion of your neighbor is as truthful a religion as your own.  Put in other terms, your neighbor’s religion that is different from yours is not authentic. It is false and cannot be compared to yours nor accepted as equal.  This is the way of the world whether it is practiced in the Episcopal religious institutions of higher learning or in the halls of learning in seminaries, churches, mosques or store fronts.  Otherwise, why must religion be taught?  It must be carefully taught or the youth will be prone to asking questions and then question the authority of the religious authorities.  This necessarily leads to questioning the authority of the civil authorities. Perhaps questioning should be stressed.

Some higher power always exists. Yet, the question must be asked: why can’t all the different religious camps reduce their beliefs to basics and let them be learned by everyone – AS A MATTER OF HISTORY? When this is done as I have taught it in the history courses I taught in elementary, secondary and higher education, I have had questions asked why this or that was so. The answers were not as a matter of truth, but ABOUT religious beliefs.  In this context it may be understood by almost all and only a few students have ever challenge me and were forthright enough and secure enough to tell me that all other teachings about God, except their own, were wrong.

It was good to feel that the students who denied any other variation of their beliefs were free to protest the teaching ABOUT other religious practices.  At the same time it was a revelation that such fundamentalism is alive and well and right next door. And, also at the same time, it is frightening to know that there are teachings that forbid thinking. I think questioning should be stressed.

THINKING ALLOWED is dedicated to the idea that thinking is a free and necessary part of living.  When closed systems try to impose their ideas on others by insisting that theirs is the ONLY truth a problem exists for the continuation and development of civilization. Exalting only one way of thinking has been the bane of civilization.  Religious wars gave birth to democracy, rationalism and science. Knowing about others who do not think quite as you do is prudent and important.