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| Adam and Eve, where all the trouble started. |
When I pass through the Westfield at Bondi Junction, I realise that, like the migrating birds at Macquarie Marshes, sometimes it is full of kids and sometimes it isn’t. For parts of the year they must go somewhere during the day. I think that place is school. I don't think much about school children these days, so the debate about ethics classes and religious teaching in state schools all but passed me by.
I am not sure whose bright idea it was to legislate to make it mandatory for religious education to be part of the primary school curriculum in NSW but I suspect the dead hand of Henry Parkes. He is often named as one of the fathers of federation but he is also one of the architects of the White Australia Policy, being a man very much opposed to the Chinese.
As well, he saw Fenian plots around every corner and generally dumped the Micks, especially Irish Micks, into the same boat as the Chinese. The rise of systemic Catholic schools is attributed to his anti-Catholic views.
NSW sits strangely, when one looks at the Constitution (every day, now that you ask). It is an appalling document when it comes to setting out basic human rights and is really only a mercantile contract drawn up by warring colonies to manage trade between them. Many of the big arguments about federation centred on ensuring all these fancy ideas of human rights would not be in the final document. But it does have a clause which makes state-sponsored religion unconstitutional. I am sure this was to ensure the Micks (they breed like bloody rabbits) didn’t suddenly end up in the majority and started imposing Papist law on everyone. Bit like the idiot arguments run by the gibberers in the Liberal Party about Sharia law.
Plus ça change.
All this resulted in generations of NSW children having an hour a week of their precious time taken up with religious instruction. In my time at school that involved a Christian religion and the local vicar would come down and drone on. I only remember colouring in pictures of Mary and Joseph and, on occasions, sticking felt cutouts, representing holy icons, to felt board. This was around Christmas time. Of course, the felt never quite stuck and most lessons we occupied ourselves wondering if a sheep or a wise man would fall off the tableau first.
My partner is a Fenian of the sort hunted down and despised by Henry Parkes. For reasons I won’t go into here – except to say they had nothing to do with religion – she only lasted a week at her rock-hopper primary before asking for a transfer to the Publics, as the Fenians call it. She was delighted with the “Public” religious instruction, as it involved a lot of singing with accompanying gestures, although the only song she remembers is “build on the rock and not upon the sand”. Which shows that even in those days, people in the Eastern Suburbs had an unhealthy preoccupation with property.
At the primary school, a large proportion of the kids were Jewish. The Fenian grew up thinking Sydney was a Jewish city and she belonged to some minority cult. What the Jewish kids thought of it no-one knows but I am sure their parents, most of whom were survivors of the Holocaust or refugees from post-war Communism, just blessed every day that their kids could go off to school safely. What they sang, they could care less.
More recently, we discovered that the reptilian Christopher Pearson also attended the Fenian’s alma mater. She doesn’t think they could have been there at the same time as she is sure she would remember someone who was so obviously born offensive.
These days, religious classes are more of a rainbow coalition. All sorts of god botherers have the right to get in there and infect young minds. A lot of parents don’t like it and ask that their children be spared the indoctrination sessions. Kids who don’t go are often treated a little like pariahs and have to clean up the playground or sit quietly in a room.
So the idea of offering non-sectarian classes on basic ethics came up and all hell, if you will pardon the heretical pun, broke loose. Suddenly, the franchisees of the biggest religions saw themselves under threat. I didn’t notice the Imams, Rabbis, Buddhist monks or Brahmins saying much. For Imams, especially, it is best to keep a low profile. Just saying it’s a nice day can invite lengthy adverse comment in a Piers Akerman column.
The Libs promised to abolish this threat to western democracy but suddenly old muddle-headed Barry woke up and demurred. The most-times catatonic Mr O’Farrell said ethics classes would stay if he was elected.
The Christian conservatives promised holy war but it seems for the moment the policy will remain. But, as discussed in a previous blog, these loonies in the far right of the Liberal Party won’t let it rest.
Maybe a compromise would be to drop both religion and ethics. If not, we should look at what is on offer.
The Fenian tells me that after she returned to the bosom of mother church in upper primary, they didn’t read the Bible at school and she never had one. Well, I went to a church school that had recently converted from High Church of England to what the High Church men called Low Church, or Evangelical. High Church was sort of Catholic lite and if it was wrestling with any substantial doctrinal issues, they have never been apparent to me. Years of being a state-funded church left them with a prevailing sense of ennui, redolent with the slight whiff of port, Stilton cheese and chats after the women had left the room.
The Evangelicals are the original god botherers. They set out in the vanguard of empire, pestering the life out of innocent natives around the world. A lot of them got speared for their troubles and it is sometimes hard to feel much sympathy for them.
My school was big on scaring the bejesus out of you, so we spent a lot of time mired in the Old Testament, where the barbarity, killings and sex were better. It was administered by a hard god. The simple message was “no having fun; God is about”.
I am not sure whose bright idea it was to legislate to make it mandatory for religious education to be part of the primary school curriculum in NSW but I suspect the dead hand of Henry Parkes. He is often named as one of the fathers of federation but he is also one of the architects of the White Australia Policy, being a man very much opposed to the Chinese.
As well, he saw Fenian plots around every corner and generally dumped the Micks, especially Irish Micks, into the same boat as the Chinese. The rise of systemic Catholic schools is attributed to his anti-Catholic views.
NSW sits strangely, when one looks at the Constitution (every day, now that you ask). It is an appalling document when it comes to setting out basic human rights and is really only a mercantile contract drawn up by warring colonies to manage trade between them. Many of the big arguments about federation centred on ensuring all these fancy ideas of human rights would not be in the final document. But it does have a clause which makes state-sponsored religion unconstitutional. I am sure this was to ensure the Micks (they breed like bloody rabbits) didn’t suddenly end up in the majority and started imposing Papist law on everyone. Bit like the idiot arguments run by the gibberers in the Liberal Party about Sharia law.
Plus ça change.
All this resulted in generations of NSW children having an hour a week of their precious time taken up with religious instruction. In my time at school that involved a Christian religion and the local vicar would come down and drone on. I only remember colouring in pictures of Mary and Joseph and, on occasions, sticking felt cutouts, representing holy icons, to felt board. This was around Christmas time. Of course, the felt never quite stuck and most lessons we occupied ourselves wondering if a sheep or a wise man would fall off the tableau first.
My partner is a Fenian of the sort hunted down and despised by Henry Parkes. For reasons I won’t go into here – except to say they had nothing to do with religion – she only lasted a week at her rock-hopper primary before asking for a transfer to the Publics, as the Fenians call it. She was delighted with the “Public” religious instruction, as it involved a lot of singing with accompanying gestures, although the only song she remembers is “build on the rock and not upon the sand”. Which shows that even in those days, people in the Eastern Suburbs had an unhealthy preoccupation with property.
At the primary school, a large proportion of the kids were Jewish. The Fenian grew up thinking Sydney was a Jewish city and she belonged to some minority cult. What the Jewish kids thought of it no-one knows but I am sure their parents, most of whom were survivors of the Holocaust or refugees from post-war Communism, just blessed every day that their kids could go off to school safely. What they sang, they could care less.
More recently, we discovered that the reptilian Christopher Pearson also attended the Fenian’s alma mater. She doesn’t think they could have been there at the same time as she is sure she would remember someone who was so obviously born offensive.
These days, religious classes are more of a rainbow coalition. All sorts of god botherers have the right to get in there and infect young minds. A lot of parents don’t like it and ask that their children be spared the indoctrination sessions. Kids who don’t go are often treated a little like pariahs and have to clean up the playground or sit quietly in a room.
So the idea of offering non-sectarian classes on basic ethics came up and all hell, if you will pardon the heretical pun, broke loose. Suddenly, the franchisees of the biggest religions saw themselves under threat. I didn’t notice the Imams, Rabbis, Buddhist monks or Brahmins saying much. For Imams, especially, it is best to keep a low profile. Just saying it’s a nice day can invite lengthy adverse comment in a Piers Akerman column.
The Libs promised to abolish this threat to western democracy but suddenly old muddle-headed Barry woke up and demurred. The most-times catatonic Mr O’Farrell said ethics classes would stay if he was elected.
The Christian conservatives promised holy war but it seems for the moment the policy will remain. But, as discussed in a previous blog, these loonies in the far right of the Liberal Party won’t let it rest.
Maybe a compromise would be to drop both religion and ethics. If not, we should look at what is on offer.
The Fenian tells me that after she returned to the bosom of mother church in upper primary, they didn’t read the Bible at school and she never had one. Well, I went to a church school that had recently converted from High Church of England to what the High Church men called Low Church, or Evangelical. High Church was sort of Catholic lite and if it was wrestling with any substantial doctrinal issues, they have never been apparent to me. Years of being a state-funded church left them with a prevailing sense of ennui, redolent with the slight whiff of port, Stilton cheese and chats after the women had left the room.
The Evangelicals are the original god botherers. They set out in the vanguard of empire, pestering the life out of innocent natives around the world. A lot of them got speared for their troubles and it is sometimes hard to feel much sympathy for them.
My school was big on scaring the bejesus out of you, so we spent a lot of time mired in the Old Testament, where the barbarity, killings and sex were better. It was administered by a hard god. The simple message was “no having fun; God is about”.
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| Abraham and Isaac have a bit of misunderstanding after dad hears a few voices |
But problems with the Bible begin in book one: Adam and Eve and the kids who became the people of the world. I was on a site recently where the question of incest and the first family was raised and some religious nutter said that, strictly speaking, it was incest, “but that's how they did things in the day”. Really?
Some of my more uncouth friends (don't get me started) say it makes Tasmania look good. I am not sure what they mean. To me it looks like Hillbilly Heaven … oh, I get it.
Anyway, let’s just say it seems to have been a close family back in the day. Even young minds are troubled by this. Mine still is.
If you are a boy, you wonder what the message of Abraham and Isaac is all about. Abraham suddenly has a vision that God has told him to slay and smite his son Isaac and he has him on the rock about to do the business when God comes back from shopping, looks down and thinks, WTF? He asks Abe if he is off his meds, tells him to step away from the knife, the ritual sacrifice doesn’t go ahead and Isaac goes on to have a long life. Although now he steers clear of dad when he is having one of his “down” days.
Interesting ethical issue there, in that, if you slay your son and then say God told you to do it, it is all right.
King Solomon is much revered. His biggest gig was, when asked to decide which woman “owned” a particular baby, he came up with the idea of cutting the infant in half. Thankfully, above the hubbub of the watching crowd, he was heard to call out “just kidding” and, after thunderous applause, “thank you, thank you. I am here all week. Tell your friends.”
King David, another hero, had eight wives, some think many more. Once again, in what was a monogamous society, he told the mob God said it was all right. Not sure that would wash with the Fenian and not sure I will try.
David, not satisfied with what he has, lusts after Uriah’s missus, Bethsheba. She gets up the duff and Uriah is called back from some war by David and told to “lie with his wife” so that they can all pretend he is the dad. Uriah refuses, so David sends him back to battle, where he is cut to pieces. Uriah’s last thoughts were probably, “I should have taken plan A”.
David’s behaviour might be explained by the fact that he was unsupervised as a child. He killed a local bogan called Phill. We grew up thinking it was acceptable behaviour to pelt adults with rocks.
We, of course, found other bits in the Bible about masturbation. Spill not your seed on the ground, I think it was, which was pretty stupid as we all used our hankies.
There was a bit about stoning to death menstruating women who accidentally wander into a Synagogue. We had no idea what this meant. The stoning idea had some appeal in the general Gothic horror section but it was an all-boys school, girls were a mystery and that other thing, who knew?
Moving into the New Testament, we get a reprieve when Jesus arrives as he seems sane and is responsible for the least-quoted bit of the Bible, The Sermon on the Mount. Now it is viewed as subversive, as it inconveniently puts the wood on people to act decently and care about the less fortunate in society. The hypocrites can’t handle it so don’t mention it and get angry when you do. An aberration, obviously. Jesus was off his game that day and probably should have fired his minders for letting him off the chain in such a way.
So we move into Paul’s letters to young churches, which are paeans of misogyny that really form the basis of the Catholic Church’s teaching on everything. It is no accident that Popes see themselves as the keepers of his flame. The world would be a better place if it was extinguished and we went back to The Sermon on the Mount.
The evangelicals in America, fundamentalists of the scariest kind, love the Old Testament but they adore Revelations in the New. Anyone but them reading it recognises at once that it was written by some drug-crazed lunatic who was hearing voices and having hallucinations. But not the good ol’ boys and girls in the US. They love the rivers of blood, the horsemen of the apocalypse, the slaying of thine enemies in the Holy Lands so that the blood will be waist high. And finally, the bit where all your clothes fall off as you float up into Heaven.
Is this really what we want people teaching in our schools?
Some of my more uncouth friends (don't get me started) say it makes Tasmania look good. I am not sure what they mean. To me it looks like Hillbilly Heaven … oh, I get it.
Anyway, let’s just say it seems to have been a close family back in the day. Even young minds are troubled by this. Mine still is.
If you are a boy, you wonder what the message of Abraham and Isaac is all about. Abraham suddenly has a vision that God has told him to slay and smite his son Isaac and he has him on the rock about to do the business when God comes back from shopping, looks down and thinks, WTF? He asks Abe if he is off his meds, tells him to step away from the knife, the ritual sacrifice doesn’t go ahead and Isaac goes on to have a long life. Although now he steers clear of dad when he is having one of his “down” days.
Interesting ethical issue there, in that, if you slay your son and then say God told you to do it, it is all right.
King Solomon is much revered. His biggest gig was, when asked to decide which woman “owned” a particular baby, he came up with the idea of cutting the infant in half. Thankfully, above the hubbub of the watching crowd, he was heard to call out “just kidding” and, after thunderous applause, “thank you, thank you. I am here all week. Tell your friends.”
King David, another hero, had eight wives, some think many more. Once again, in what was a monogamous society, he told the mob God said it was all right. Not sure that would wash with the Fenian and not sure I will try.
David, not satisfied with what he has, lusts after Uriah’s missus, Bethsheba. She gets up the duff and Uriah is called back from some war by David and told to “lie with his wife” so that they can all pretend he is the dad. Uriah refuses, so David sends him back to battle, where he is cut to pieces. Uriah’s last thoughts were probably, “I should have taken plan A”.
David’s behaviour might be explained by the fact that he was unsupervised as a child. He killed a local bogan called Phill. We grew up thinking it was acceptable behaviour to pelt adults with rocks.
We, of course, found other bits in the Bible about masturbation. Spill not your seed on the ground, I think it was, which was pretty stupid as we all used our hankies.
There was a bit about stoning to death menstruating women who accidentally wander into a Synagogue. We had no idea what this meant. The stoning idea had some appeal in the general Gothic horror section but it was an all-boys school, girls were a mystery and that other thing, who knew?
Moving into the New Testament, we get a reprieve when Jesus arrives as he seems sane and is responsible for the least-quoted bit of the Bible, The Sermon on the Mount. Now it is viewed as subversive, as it inconveniently puts the wood on people to act decently and care about the less fortunate in society. The hypocrites can’t handle it so don’t mention it and get angry when you do. An aberration, obviously. Jesus was off his game that day and probably should have fired his minders for letting him off the chain in such a way.
So we move into Paul’s letters to young churches, which are paeans of misogyny that really form the basis of the Catholic Church’s teaching on everything. It is no accident that Popes see themselves as the keepers of his flame. The world would be a better place if it was extinguished and we went back to The Sermon on the Mount.
The evangelicals in America, fundamentalists of the scariest kind, love the Old Testament but they adore Revelations in the New. Anyone but them reading it recognises at once that it was written by some drug-crazed lunatic who was hearing voices and having hallucinations. But not the good ol’ boys and girls in the US. They love the rivers of blood, the horsemen of the apocalypse, the slaying of thine enemies in the Holy Lands so that the blood will be waist high. And finally, the bit where all your clothes fall off as you float up into Heaven.
Is this really what we want people teaching in our schools?
I once had to interview a low church evangelical, which meant sitting through a service, complete with a band and lyrics to the "hymns" projected on the back wall together with a bouncy ball indicating which line we were on. It was all about "come to Jesus". I then interviewed the minister who spent 30 mins spitting venom about gays and women...
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