Losing My Religion

I watched The Invention of Lying this past weekend.  The movie, written by and starring Golden Globes Golden Boy, Ricky Gervais, takes us into a world where no one has ever lied, until Ricky’s character decides to comfort his dying mother with tales of a “man in the sky” and a safe and happy afterlife.  That’s when the fun begins, as we are introduced to the birth of religion in the modern world, complete with the “rules” being presented on two “tablets” made out of pizza box lids.  It had a Monty Python-esque quality that held the whole movie together for me.  I would grade it “Rental Option”, which is below “Rental Priority”, but ahead of ”Skip it”.

Some of you would consider the entire enterprise of comparing the birth of religion to the creation of a lie a bit blasphemous, and you would probably be right.  The dry British wit works well, and I did enjoy the movie, but it may leave the more religiously grounded a bit uncomfortable.  Is Gervais saying that all religion is a lie?  Quite a heavy message for a light romantic tale, wouldn’t you say?  Pass the popcorn.

I also saw the 7^th Harry Potter movie with my son.  As full disclosure, I have never read any of the books and I have never seen any of the other movies.  I did know what Muggles were, and I knew that Hogwarts was the magic school attended by young Harry.  That’s about it.  (Spoiler alert!) The movie involves Harry and his companions searching for 3 items that together would give the bearer mastery over death.  Talk about your religious overtones! 

 

Harry Potter and Ricky Gervais do not represent what one would call your ‘mainstream’ religious traditions, but these days, how can you tell?  A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that our pious citizenry scored only 50% on 32 question quiz on world religions.  The questions were basic, such as “What is the first book of the Bible? (Genesis, btw).  This is an indictment of our entire system of learning in this country, of course.  If these questions were never on a state Standards of Learning exam, how could we expect any child to know the answer.  I think the issue goes deeper than a lack of general learning, however.  Religion has been a building block of civilization since the dawn of time, and it is about time we starting teaching religion and learning religion in schools.

No one need be an expert on every religion to thrive in our newly integrated global community, but a basic understanding of religions, other than your own, is required to understand political, economic and cultural decisions that are made around the world.  The course of history has been driven by religious beliefs.  Globalization is here, and religion plays a key role in most, if not all, of the developed and Third World.  Can you understand the Arab World without a working understanding of Islam?  Can you understand the source of tensions between India and Pakistan without knowing what Hinduism teaches?  How can we solve world problems without studying the traditions that shaped the world in the first place?

We require students to learn a foreign language to graduate, but that’s just words.  Real communication with others is more nuanced, and is enhanced by a basic understanding of how religious traditions impacted a culture.  This would go a long way towards improved communication. 

 

Education need not be synonymous indoctrination.  Let’s teach world religion in schools.  The goal is not recruitment, nor is it to place all religions on an equal footing.  Granted, that’s a difficult needle to thread, and it will be hard for some to find that balance.  There is a difference between informing and endorsing, and that balance is worth finding.

Here’s the stark choice:  we can teach world religions in schools, or we can just let the kids learn it from Harry Potter and Ricky Gervais.