Stories
Jane's post today about her experiences of a Catholic schooling prompted some memories of my own religious education.
I went to a VC primary school, which meant while it was owned by the County it was heavily Church of England biased. We had daily assemblies where we sang hymns and heard bible stories, and weekly sermons from the local Vicar.
I came out of it with very vague ideas about Christianity, mainly because it was never made clear where the Bible stories ended and the general fiction began!
One story I distinctly remember being told was on the origin of racial skin colouring. I swear that this was told to me as a little dodger at my school assembly...
LONG time ago everyone was black. And then one day there came a rumour of a magical lake that would turn your skin white. Everyone around the world rushed to the lake to bathe and turn their skin white.
After a while the lake was so over-used that it started to dry out. The last people arrived at the lake to find it was little more than a muddy puddle. So all they could do was press their hands and feet into the left-over mud.
This is why only some people are white, and to this day black people have pale hands and feet.
Now, I don't need to point out the wrongness of this story. Even taken as a fictional story it's horribly bigoted. The idea that everyone would want to be white and the people who turned up late were unlucky is fundamentally racist.
I thought for years that it was a Bible story, because anything that dealt with "a long time ago" at school was biblical. So it got slotted into my head along with Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. I'll never be sure what the story was supposed to teach me, but if nothing else it taught me not to trust any story that starts "a long time ago", Biblical or not.
I went to a VC primary school, which meant while it was owned by the County it was heavily Church of England biased. We had daily assemblies where we sang hymns and heard bible stories, and weekly sermons from the local Vicar.
I came out of it with very vague ideas about Christianity, mainly because it was never made clear where the Bible stories ended and the general fiction began!
One story I distinctly remember being told was on the origin of racial skin colouring. I swear that this was told to me as a little dodger at my school assembly...
LONG time ago everyone was black. And then one day there came a rumour of a magical lake that would turn your skin white. Everyone around the world rushed to the lake to bathe and turn their skin white. After a while the lake was so over-used that it started to dry out. The last people arrived at the lake to find it was little more than a muddy puddle. So all they could do was press their hands and feet into the left-over mud.
This is why only some people are white, and to this day black people have pale hands and feet.
Now, I don't need to point out the wrongness of this story. Even taken as a fictional story it's horribly bigoted. The idea that everyone would want to be white and the people who turned up late were unlucky is fundamentally racist.
I thought for years that it was a Bible story, because anything that dealt with "a long time ago" at school was biblical. So it got slotted into my head along with Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. I'll never be sure what the story was supposed to teach me, but if nothing else it taught me not to trust any story that starts "a long time ago", Biblical or not.
This is the sort of thing (along with the intolerance in general) that has caused me to become more and more disalusioned with traditional structured religion.
I will agree that the church (like society in general) has for a long time been intolerant. And it still hasn't got it right yet. But some areas are getting there.
Now what the hell is that supposed to teach our children? Different than you? Don't let it around you, and don't go around it! I couldn't believe it. Any kind of discrimination based on nothingness is just evil.
I guess we can all see the flaw here. All 'men' are obviously not created equal, unless... all men have a little secret that they would like to share!
I heard that same lake story when I was little, from my racist, white supremacist brother. I never gave it much credance.
You know that in the 19th century, cross-dresers were considered to be 'possessed by demons'!
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