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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (90061)	11/29/2004 9:01:52 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Hi Grainne- When you say Now there are just so many different faiths it is literally true, yet misleading. Here are statistics on religious memebership in the USA (which I just looked up): Christian 76.5% Non-Religious/secular 13.2% Judaism 1.3% There is a long list of others, none above 0.5% As is stands it is perfectly appropriate to say that U.S. is a Christian nation. This is not to be taken as literally true (i.e, 100%, which just one non-Christian citizen would invalidate) but as a descriptive characterization of our society. This is nothing new, but is rather our heritage. Thus, I believe that there is nothing wrong with schools honoring our heritage by recognizing some of the Christian traditions, as with Christmas. Speaking as a father, I do not believe that children make any issue out of this one way or the other, regardless of their faith or secularism. It is the parents who make the issue. And it is the parents who have made the religious choice for their children. If it were left up to the children, I do believe they would enjoy the carols, the decorations, the pledge, etc., without it ever occurring to them that for some reason they should find these rituals offensive. I would also point out that if you or I were to emigrate to some place like Saudi Arabia, and enroll our children in Saudi schools, it would never occur to us to complain about the religious or national rituals that their schools traditionally put on. We would simply explain to our children why we don't subscribe to these beliefs, and moreover instruct our children to be respectful of them. Don't you think? Thank you for the friendly tone of your post. You are probably PO'd by my post about the double standard, but it wasn't personal. Thread monitor is a no-win job. :-)