The Ravens Nest

The Ministry Moment Questioning Louisiana’s Newest Move

Universal Life Church Monastery posted this article breaking a bit of news about my home state’s move to include The Ten Commandments in every classroom.

I’m here to state my opinion on the matter and I’m not here to convince anyone of anything they’re not willing to let go of but just to present some facts for consideration.

We should be ready, willing and able to now take a step back. Whether you agree with this move or not. Stop for just a second and take a step back and a breath. Breathe in deeply a few times. Nice and slowly and release it nice and slowly.

The next step is to consider something.

What Do You Want?

Before you answer that, I want to point out a few things. First, I am not directly standing against any religion here. Your religion shall be yours without my interference. I’m not here to convert you and, in all likelihood, any attempt at converting me will result in your time being wasted. So long as we understand that, we have a foundation for a mutual respect and it’s here that I begin building, hopefully, with your help in the matter.

Let’s get back to the question. I know some of you will immediately jump on how great of an idea this is and how taking this out of public buildings was a mistake and that our current trends support that claim, however, before you settle on that, may I just show you something?

I’m going to agree but only to a point. If you’re thinking back to the 1990s or before, then I could agree that we didn’t have all the school shootings and the unhinged behavior being exhibited in public schools by both faculty and students or at least as much of it as we do today.

We also had stronger homes and stronger families back in those days. I don’t think that throwing handcuffs on the teachers in terms of ideology shared in those days made things better. I also don’t think it was that alone that made things worse.

Getting right to the point, what we’ve done is, in our desperate attempt to constantly prove how politically correct we are, we’ve crept and crawled toward a replacement ideology that is, in fact, a religion. When you’re not allowed to criticize the ideas and you’re told that you’re only to follow and do as you’re told, that’s not only religious but extremely and dangerously cultish.

It doesn’t send the right message or achieve the goal. It’s just a religion of revenge. Overcorrection, which is what I think that this is, is never the answer. This has nothing at all to do with my own spiritual and religious beliefs and practices. I would also object to The Havamal being required curriculum as well.

The choice in the matter is what we need to put under the lens; Do we want ideology in schools or not? If we do, then, in accordance with The Constitution and the law then that means every religion and ideology must be given equal standing in the classroom. Every ideology. I want you to think about that and ask yourself why is it only alright when it’s yours? Why is it only okay when it’s mine? The answer is, it’s not. We are all going to completely disagree on that. Let me ask you this. What if Louisiana decided to put The Wiccan Rede’s final line of “And It Harm None, Do As Thou Wilt.” in every classroom? Would you support that? Whether you would or not, why?

You can already start to see the problems arise, I hope.

If you see the problems that are coming up, then there’s the other choice, no ideologies whatsoever. No special consideration. This is where I land and here’s why. Keeping it simple and keeping schools as what they should be means we get much better. We won’t have The Ten Commandments, The Havamal or The Wiccan Rede in our classrooms, yes, that much is true. We also don’t have the identity politics that have become more dogmatic over time. If you’re reading this and thinking that that means that this targets people of color, different religions, different sexual identities, then you’re wrong. It doesn’t. What it does do is limit the public institution to instructing students on the subjects of critical thinking, history, reading, writing, STEM, physical education (health), Civics, home economics and trades and the limit upon public schools to only these subjects as they practically apply to life should very well be there. Children should be well-prepared to come out of public school and start a business, critically think, be able to invent and innovate and use what they’ve learned to position themselves well in society. They should be able to take that knowledge and be able to become writers, artists, tradespeople. They should be able to understand and apply the values of The Constitution and the national value of individual liberty balanced with responsibility. The school should take a young mind and prepare them to step out of it’s doors and be able to become attorneys, judges and civil servants. The school is there to provide the education, not indoctrination of each child in order to give them an equal playing field with the understanding that, where you go from there is up to you. That’s all that there is.

The Role of Spiritual Teachings:

This is what should be taking place outside of school. While under the roof of the parents at home, this is the parents’ responsibility with the parents serving as examples. It’s also the reason that Churches, Temples, etc. exist so that there’s instruction in those institutions as well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this at all. In fact, it was the way I and my friends were brought up. When you looked at each household, there was a variance in levels of spirituality but some commonality as well. A couple of brothers down the street didn’t have a TV in their home due to their religion. Video games, comic books, computerized devices were allowed though I never got the reason why. Other households had restrictions on what my friends could watch. Some of that could be chalked up to the Panic in those days with at least one household I knew of having an outright ban on the cartoon series Dungeons & Dragons and He-Man And The Masters of The Universe while mine didn’t but, oddly enough, Friday Afternoons were days where we could watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Legend of Zelda there as part of The Super Mario Bros Super Show. I always found the choices a little odd and not always consistent but I also knew to keep my mouth shut when I was there because, sometimes, you took the wins where you could get them.

This brings me to the point here, and it’s this. Faith is a tricky subject. Kids are going to have questions, especially as they develop and some answers you have prepared may not be satisfactory but I advocate for honesty with your children. If you don’t know the answer, then trying to obfuscate, they’ll see past that eventually. They’ll feel like you lied to them and the train of logic goes down the road of questioning wondering why they’ve trusted you in the first place. That alone can be destructive.

Remember what I said about rights balanced with responsibilities? That holds true even here. We all have a right to follow our respective religions, yes, however, we cannot impose those beliefs upon each other. Furthermore, it’s not the school’s responsibility to provide religious and spiritual instruction, that’s yours and those of the Spiritual Center that you visit. All religions can agree that that responsibility starts in the home first.

Private schools are a different matter. Having a choice in those matters can be the very thing that satisfies the desire to have religious instruction taught as part of the curriculum. I realize that this doesn’t satisfy all areas however, that doesn’t bar anyone from starting private schools that provide instructions from various religions within certain limitations. The rest can be taught at home.

Honestly, I think any school would benefit from posting one simple message in every classroom as a beginning of a critical thinking process and it’s this. Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.

It’s simple, direct, honest language that the teachers could then provide clarity of to students who may not know exactly what that means within reason and with a little careful guidance.

When it comes right down to it, The Separation of Church and State wasn’t something Constitutional. It was proposed by Roger Williams in 1644 as a “wall or hedge between the wilderness of the world and the garden of the church.” Thomas Jefferson coined the term “separation of church and state” in support of Williams’ proposal and John Locke also supported the measure. What it was meant to do, though, was keep the political from the spiritual and keep a Church of America from forming as it had in England and still holds to this day.

Now, we do not have separation of church and state at all and it should come back into the fold.

I’ve heard atheistic arguments such as “You can’t deny objective reality and just believe whatever you want.”

For the past four years we were told “Trust The Science” when it came to the COVID shot and now we’re being told to believe that there are more than two genders. Parents are being told they’re terrorists for having concerns about what materials are being given to their children in schools and schools have adopted policies in areas where the children are being encouraged to transition and take puberty blockers despite both anecdotal and empirical evidence that this is harmful to children.

Meanwhile, evidence is piling on more and more every day that the COVID shot is, just what everyone though it was; harmful.

This is why I present this. We have a puritanical “social justice” religion already in our schools, we shouldn’t replace it with another. It will prove to be yet another in the series of overcorrections that will move goalposts, alienate people and foster even more in the way of resentment.

In 1996, when the Zero Tolerance measures were announced, I said that it would be selectively enforced and, in the end, would protect the bullies who don’t care what happens to them. In one report, after asking if this has had any effect on school violence, the report stated that violence in schools is as “crisis levels.”

The school resource officers at Parkland watched the shooter go into the school and did nothing at all about it.

Maryland, however suspended a seven-year-old for eating his pop-tart into the shape of a gun, something that to the child was unintentional. No one was harmed. No one but pearl-clutching staff was in fear for their lives and it took three and a half years to resolve that issue.

To bring it back, this is not the fault of the Commandments being removed. The problem really lies on the shoulders of administration and faculty. If you want to bring your public schools back to form in your locale, you’ll have to insist that faculty and administration get back to basics. Failing that, a much more constructive approach would be to run for spots on the school board and make intelligent and informed cases as to why the current person in that seat is an abject failure and what you plan to do about it. It’s a much more reasoned approach to the problems that are currently being faced.

I don’t claim to have all the solutions but a return to education rather than indoctrination is at least a good starting point. We acknowledging and upholding our civic duty (remember what I said about responsibility?) and holding ourselves to that standard serves as a better example than our apathy toward what’s going on in the classroom. Bringing it back full-circle, it’s time to ask yourself, after looking through nearly thirty years since I graduated, what has worked but, more importantly, What Do We Want?

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. Raven Wulfgar