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The following article is excellent – and the part about history is really good, especially, for this forum: One excerpt:
Quote:Religions tend to rewrite history, and the sooner we can come to terms with the discrepancies, fabrications, or willful ignorance of religious traditions, the better . . . What you do with that information, however, matters.
History doesn’t ask you to throw away a faith or dismiss religion altogether.Nor should it make you distrust academia for disseminating some nefarious agenda. Instead, at its best, history can help us ask how we make the future better. That excerpt, Ray…is flat out plain outstanding. That really resonates with me. Another good excerpt:
Quote:Unfortunately, students usually have institutions and parents who do not foster a sense of consciousness about the peculiarities of their position. Once students recognize this, disenchantment often begins. That is never a professor’s intent, but students would be bettered fortified if they understood their tradition as having developed in particular ways and for particular reasons.
I think as a young mormon in college, I thought I was exempt from this. I figured it was easy to know the church was restored…so, no need to know how things “develop over time”…it was just restored as truth and it was a blessing being in the true church.
But…clearly…mormons are not exempt. Reading RSR by Bushman helps see what this professor is saying about the need for knowing our history.
One more good excerpt Quote:I like to make recourse to the great Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard, who insisted that faith is choosing to believe
despitethe absurdity of it.
Many of the points he makes are to get students to think. I like that. I need to send this to my daughters in college.I also liked this quote: Quote:People do what they do and believe what they believe not because there is incontrovertible, scientific evidence, but because association with a particular identity helps us understand who we are in the world.
I agree, Daeruin. A lot of it does have to do with the community or tribe, regardless of what is being taught. It’s good to recognize that. Quote:4. All religions are not the same.
This issue is so critical that one of my mentors wrote a book about it. Different religions make different claims to truth, and the exclusivity of those claims matters. Students tend to accept and defer to pluralism without considering how they might be running roughshod over the claims of their own traditions. This is a good thing for civil society, but a problematic thing when it comes to explaining tensions between religions.
I spend weeks working to help people realize that while their neighbors’ faith may not (to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson) pick their pocket nor break their leg, it does seriously impinge upon assertions that one group of people is chosen and another is not. This matters. If it doesn’t, then you’ve sacrificed a part of your beliefs upon the altar of good manners. Not that I’m against manners, but we should know the consequences of our bargains.
It would be interesting to sit in on this lecture/discussion.
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