On 12/31/02 6:07 PM, "Gary Bowman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As I checked my mail today, I found my normal Minneapolis Community Education > classes catalog for Winter 2003. As I thought some about this, I came up with > a few questions. Perhaps one of our School Board Members on the list can > address my questions. > > 2) I found it intriguing that Minneapolis Community Education is offering > classes such as: Somali Culture and Islam; Yoga: Eastern Exercise & Teachings; > and Shamata Meditation- Mini Retreat (retreat being held at the Mpls Buddhist > Monastery). What is intriguing is that a government institution is teaching > classes that are ostensibly religious in nature. Where are the separation > clause activists on this? Although I disagree that the separation clause means > we necessarily must completely secularize the public square, one would think > that if complete secularization in order to observe the separation clause is > your argument, you'd be complaining about these classes. [MS] I think there is some confusion between teaching religious theory and supporting a particular religion. The separation clause forbids state support of a religion. It does not forbid teaching religious theory. Otherwise, how would a school like the University of Minnesota be able to teach courses or offer degrees on religion or theology? Or should that be banned as well? > Whether these classes have meritorious content is not the issue. The issue is > that I can imagine if similar classes like "Kingdom of Tonga Culture and > Christianity" (Tonga has a government that is heavily Christian and expressly > keeps the Sabbath Day holy in its constitution) instead of "Somali Culture and > Islam", or "Meditating on the Gospel of Luke" instead of "Shamata Meditation" > were offered, people would be all up in arms that were trying state sponsored > Christianity. Why the double standard? [MS] There is no double standard, just a misunderstanding of what the separation clause is about, which is stated above. If nothing else, the fact that these courses are listed under the heading of "Academic Enrichment" ought to make it fairly obvious that they're teaching and not preaching. > If the argument is we're only teaching "about" a religion and not "preaching" > it (which I'd like to see when were meditating at a Buddhist monastery), then > it is fully acceptable for Christian organizations to expect a class similar > to "Meditation on the Gospel..." to be offered- on the argument they're only > teaching "about" Christianity and not "preaching" it. [MS] I'm going to presume that MPS is offering classes that they believe there is a demand for. If there is a demand for Christian religious theory classes to be offered by MPS, I would agree that they ought to be offered. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that MPS would offer the sorts of classes Gary Bowman named and I encourage them to continue as long as the demand is there. While I don't favor any of those religions over Christianity (I'm Catholic), I think it would bode well for Minneapolis if more of our residents had a better understanding of just what those religions are about. I would hope at least that it would help prevent more of the kind of anti-Muslim backlash that we saw a year ago. I'm sad to see that there would still be an attempt to make an issue of something like this in this day and age. What's next, will people complain that a belly dancing class promotes sexual promiscuity or that a scrying class promotes witchcraft? C'mon, let's try opening the minds up just a tad, OK? Mark Snyder Windom Park _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
