Yep, I first heard them on NPR doing an acoustic set (which was fabulous, almost better than their regular work IMO) and immediately ran home and looked them up. I’ll bet the interview is online.

A goddamn liar.

I was raised orthodox jewish, and by the time I was 12, I knew ALL about jesus. I’d already had to explain to friends that I didn’t believe in him.

As to Amanda’s #29: our culture is our most powerful weapon, both internationally and domestically, in the struggle against fundies.

As for Jason: concern troll.

The deep irony about dominance is that the members of the dominant class lose this ability to feel self-esteem for themselves, because they have the nagging suspicion that their dominance defines them. It’s other people who have a culture/ethnicity/gender/race, and they are defined as the standard, but the standard is simply not having those things. So men are Not Women, white people are defined as what’s left over once you’ve taken out (in America) Asians, Latinos, African-Americans, etc. Your cousin is learning a negative definition of himself, as Not Muslim.

Your nephew can learn to construct a positive identity, which is the point of my post. The goal is to be yourself and be happy about it, and your need to hate others will diminish.

That’s why, after all, the fundies dread having their children have contact with pop culture. Americans have a lot wrong with us, but we do have a rowdy and interesting pop culture. In the specific case of white middle class people who are the target audience for mega-church fundamentalism, pop culture offers a grab bag of cultural experiences that are positive and fulfilling and give you less incentive to define other people down to make yourself feel better. Maybe it would help to start exposing him to a variety of experiences that give him something positive to care about, so that the hate-filled church experience diminishes in comparison?

Because all those other religious figures that he was actually so jazzed to learn about–they aren’t part of the dominant, ruling culture in this country. They aren’t the sort of subject that teachers can reasonably assume the kids they teach get exposed to 24/7. Whereas this Jesus fellow is someone any bored kid flipping channels on the satellite/cable, or talking randomly with her or his peers, can hear quite a lot about.

Maybe they don’t show Davy and Goliath, or Jot, in syndication on the cheap broadcast stations anymore, I dunno. I hardly miss them, and I certainly haven’t noticed them here on my parent’s dial here in Northern Nevada. But then again, I omitted the numerous Christian networks from my own favorites list. I know there’s a whole channel on the setup devoted just to the Catholic Church, and my mother listens to Catholic radio every morning.

Maybe that 12 or 20 volume set of Bible stories I had an edition of as a kid isn’t being hawked in every dentist’s office and haircut joint the way it was when I was a kid in Panama City, Florida.

But if this boy professes not to have “heard of” Jesus, I venture the suggestion that he has, but didn’t like what he heard, and has chosen to tune out this particular deluge of white noise. And if his parents don’t choose to twist his arm to at least pretend to believe in Jesus, the way a large majority of parents in this country generally do, that’s an excellent reason for teachers to presume they shouldn’t either.

Actually he must really hate school and anything taught there a lot, since just about every cultural referent we have has Christian churches in some form or other at least visible in the background.

He doesn’t ever watch movies, then, or TV sitcoms? He’s never seen episodes of Buffy, nor even any Japanese anime (which, in my very sporadic and haphazard sampling, seem to include Christian churches and/or clergy in every 10th or 20th episode)?

How about the Star Trek episode, “Balance of Terror,”the one where the Romulans first appear, which begins with Kirk performing a wedding for two crewmembers in the chapel on the Enterprise? (Not to mention quite a few other episodes with yet other Christian references.)

What you are doing here, Jason, is what so many people who talk about reverse racism or female oppression of men or the like do–you are, or profess to be, completely tone-deaf to the context of social power that we evaluate oppression, and other social practices for that matter, within.

We don’t teach about Jesus in public schools in the same way we might teach about Mohammed, or Buddha, probably as much because the various Christian ministers and other local bigwigs object to Jesus being portrayed as anything less than God and his followers as the only possessors of truth, as because some militant atheist might possibly sue. No teacher in a US public school is trying to convert their pupils to Islam, or Hinduism, or Jainism–and with the best will in the world, they probably have a hard time teaching these subjects without being at least a bit offensive to actual believers in these traditions–because these teachers are not, generally speaking, believers in any of these traditions. And if Muslims, or Jains, or Hindus, were as strongly established in US society as Christians are, I doubt they would allow unbelieving teachers to portray their beliefs as anything but true facts–any more than the US Christian establishment has allowed schools to teach Christianity as anything but The True Faith. We have seen it taught thus in US public schools (and objected to, by other Christians, such as Catholics, who felt that their denomination was being attacked and therefore established schools of their own. (I rather suspect that, given that there must be a fair number of neighborhoods in various places in this country today where Hindus, or Muslims, are local majorities, that these are the neighborhoods where kids are not offered classes about that very denomination, for the same reason public schools don’t generally teach classes about Christianity–because the local religious establishments reserve that privilege for themselves.)

I actually learned a fair amount about other Christian denominations, and various non-Christian religions, when I went to Catholic school in the 1970s. Although I think it’s fair to say that Sister Katherine and our hierarchy-approved texts did a fair job describing these other religions fairly (based on what more I’ve learned about them as an adult free of Church supervision) I never felt for a moment that any of this was intended to give me or my peers the opportunity to abandon Catholicism and follow one of these other ways instead.

Not everyone here thinks it is good or necessary to attack religion just as such, but I certainly join in with the most anti-religious people here in lambasting the particular foibles (and all too often, felonies) of various established church people–precisely because they are established; they are powerful social institutions in this country and thus the world, and their actions have have consequences for all of us, whether we want them to or not.

And some of the very best and most cutting criticisms of the hypocrisies of established religion come, as they always have (at any rate in the Abrahamic religions) from other religious people. Have you every checked out Slacktivist, for instance? Lots of Pandagonians hang out there, and Fred is not just a Christian, but, perish the thought, an Evangelical Christian! And one of the most sweetly bitter critics of the follies of modern big-time showbiz evangelism I’ve ever read. Check out Left Behind Fridays at Slactivist some time if you think that criticism of religious nuttery is something only intolerant atheists do.

Here, this can get you started:
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2008/03/lb-martyr-envy.html

Here’s a problem from my mid 40s point of view. I believe that tolerance of other culturals is in general a good thing. Here in the US as we try to become more tolerant of others beliefs we begin to be less so of others. Since evangelicals seem to be the dart board here, how tolerant of their beliefs are we.

As an example, my 12 yr old nephew comes home from school a couple of months ago and says he learned something cool in school; since he hates school I was curious and asked what it was. He begins telling me about Muhamad and Allah. He goes on to tell me about how Hindus believe in reincarnation, and something about Budda and his enlightenment. As I listened I waited to here about Christ, when he mentioned nothing of him I asked what his teacher had told them about Jesus, he responded by asking me who Jesus was. Since he’s not my child I told him to ask his mother, didn’t want to over step my bounds.

How tolerant have we become when it’s fine for a teacher to explain Allah and Budda, but if that teacher mentions Jesus someone is going to get sued. You can’t talk about tolerance then in the same sentence denigrate a certain segment of society for their beliefs.

Just my point of view,

Jason

I am, despite a lot of bitter cynicism, something of a real optimist. Like our looming economic collapse—yes, it’s going to suck. But you know what would really suck on top of the sucking? If we sit around with our fingers up our asses instead of realizing this is our opportunity.

Everyone is worried what’s going to happen to the Democrat who wins with a raging war and an economy in the tanker. Well, I hope to god that whoever it is is smart enough to realize that big problems soften people up for the big solutions. FDR knew it.

My suggestion: The Apollo Initiative. Progressives have been beating this drum for years, slowing getting labor unions on. It’s the perfect way to bring together a coalition of environmentalists (i.e. the white professional branch of the party) and labor (everyone else) by selling this idea of a huge government investment in rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure to make this a green nation that’s energy independent, creating jobs and real wealth for the country all at once, instead of the fake wealth that is a service-based economy. We all know that it’s the perfect solution, but it’s a solution that’s been looking for a problem, in a sense. Or at least the nation’s realizing on a fundamental level we have a problem.

Well, a war we’re up to our ears in because of oil dependence has completely changed the body politic on the issue of green energy. Carter got nailed at the ballot in part because he said we need to suck it up and get green, and Americans wanted band-aid solutions that got them cheaper oil. Now we have a fucking oil baron asshole to the right of Reagan in office—and he’s talking about breaking oil dependence. That’s a real change in political will. The moment is now. Throw economic depression in and what we have is a population that’s ready to start talking about big solutions.

And we have a big solution ready to plug in, because we were willing to sit around coming up with ideas with no foreseeable hope in the near future of being implemented. Let’s hope the Democrat who wins (and let’s hope they do) is willing to play ball.