Political/social foo: no religion here!

[alpharaposa]

Guides at Jamestown not allowed to talk about Christianity.

Hmm.

Reminds me of my 'World History' class. Being a preacher's kid, I knew that there were some really interesting things that happened between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. I even had a sketchy idea of some of the events.

And our class skipped it. We skipped over 800 years of history. Actually, we even skipped a lot of Rome, covering Julius Caesar and Augustus, then mentioning the fall of Rome happening several hundred years later. And when I complained, what answer did I get? "But you know what's even worse- all those millions of years before man showed up that we don't cover. It's horrible." Not an exact quote, but very, very close, always said in a joking, chiding tone.

Now there was a man who didn't take history seriously.

You don't have to be Christian to find the sheer ignorance of the religion taught in the present day odd or worrisome. When people ask about plaques, you should be able to at least tell them what they are, even if you're not supposed to try to convert them. Not doing so is like saying that a cathedral was just something people built back in the dark ages. Or, to be multicultural, that a mosque was an onion-shaped building.

How about this? "This plaque describes the Ten Commandments, which have their source in the Bible. This one contains The Lord's Prayer, a prayer specific to Christianity, which is also found in the Bible. This one contains The Apostle's Creed, which states beliefs important to Christianity."

See? Factual, historical information, and no proselytizing in sight. How hard is that?

Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

No argument here. However one may feel about Christianity, you can't ignore its historical importance.

Of course, nor can you ignore several other major religions either, such as Islam.

[aefenglommung.livejournal.com]

If I were leading people through a tour of the Old Stone City on Zanzibar or through Granada in Spain, pointing out the influence of Islam would be highly relevant; however, the influence of Islam on the founding of Jamestown would be less than nil.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

True. I was thinking in a more general context.