Stephan: Several readers wrote me today asking me why I feel that Christian fundamentalism is, as I have written, "the most dangereous toxic social movement in the country today." Was it just some "liberal bias against believing Christians, or do you really have evidence?" I think that is an important question so today's SR is dedicated to answering it.
I want to be very clear here. I am not anti-Christian, or anti any religion. Personally I am best described as "spiritual but not religious" as Pew Research has it. But I understand formal religious affiliation is an important part of many people's lives, and I respect that.
However SR deals in facts, and the facts are quite definitive: a large albeit minority of people in this country, using Christianity as their cover story, have serious psychological issues which they constantly and passionately try to impose on others who do not hold their beliefs. These people should not be confused with what used to be called traditional mainstream Christianity. And wherever this theocratic right minority are successful the social outcomes that result are notably inferior. On the basis of facts the Theocratic Right's view of how to order the world, again and again has produced measurably disastrous anti-life, anti-wellness results.
So let's start with the sexual dysfunction of the Right and what results.
I am doing this edition because we face a civilization threatening trend, climate change, and the Theocratic Right in a hundred ways is stopping us from dealing with it appropriately. I stress again, my position is not anti-religious. Religion is simply the form, not the substance of the issue.
In early February, Kelly Wortham’s sixth-grade son brought home a letter from Jarrett Middle School in Springfield, Missouri. The letter, from the Missouri State University School of Social Work, informed Wortham and other parents at Jarrett that their children were “being invited to take part in an abstinence-based education program designed to reduce teen pregnancy in southwest Missouri.”
The program, the letter assured, “is designed to teach teens about the benefits of choosing abstinence and how to better communicate with parents/guardians, families, and peers.” The course would utilize “Choosing the Best,” a self-described “abstinence-focused” curriculum published by a Georgia-based company of the same name. Unless Wortham and her husband chose not to sign the letter and consent to the program, it would be taught to their son in the upcoming month.
Wortham, concerned by what her son might be taught in their “deeply conservative state,” contacted the school and asked to see the curriculum. “We were told by the principal, the vice principal, and the health teacher that this was an abstinence-centered course but not abstinence only,” she explained. “And that generally nobody had a problem with it but we were welcome to review the materials.”
A few days later, Wortham received an […]
My experience with fundamentalist Christianity has been the same. I find relief in Unity – which is Interdenominational Christianity – in which all walks of life are welcome. To think children in public schools will be brainwashed with this bias thinking makes me sick, and even worse that my tax dollars will be funding it. When will people in our world ever learn to “live and let live?”
Much of this abstinence organization’s “proof” is perhaps misleading. I will point out, for instance, that the “American College of Pediatricians” is a very, very small group. It cannot in any way be said to represent most pediatricians in this country. The standard pediatric association is the AAP, “American Academy of Pediatrics”.
While I believe “abstinence” should be the predominant option to teach teens and pre-teens, sex-education should address and focus on teen immaturity factors, unhealthy social consequences (self-contempt, ridicule, promiscuity, stigmatization), destructive, lifelong medical consequences (sexual diseases), unwanted pregnancies, and of course, the financial consequences related to medical treatment and childbearing and rearing for teens.
For parents raising children in schools with the described cult-beliefs, I’d be more frightened for MY children being permanently indoctrinated and personally scared in a negative way. If education for CULTS is to be imposed, then equal funds for science-based education should also be administered, with options for parents to choose.