Friday, November 21, 2008
Explaining Religion in Japan
So I was in argumentation class and mentioned that there was a church in North Carolina that told its members hat they couldn't have communion if they voted for Obama until they confessed and did penance.
Students: Communion?
Jen: Yes. Well, it's...see, in the Bible, Jesus gave his followers bread and wine and told them it was his body and blood, and they needed to eat it to go to heaven.
Students: [look slightly appalled]
Jen [struggling to keep the English simple]: So...in most Christian churches we eat bread and drink wine together, and it means our sins are forgiven and we can go to heaven. So by telling people they can't eat the bread, this church is telling people they can't go to heaven.
Students: So...Christians believe that if you don't eat special magic bread, you don't go to heaven?
Jen: It's a little more...complicated...well...uh, sort of, yeah.
Moral: Everyone should have to explain their religion in language simple enough to be understood by people who've only studied it a few years. It definitely forces you to look at it in a different way.
We went on to discuss snake handling (when discussing stereotypes of Southerners,
one of the arguments we were looking at mentioned the practice). So I found them the passage in the Bible that explains that followers of Christ have "power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you" (Luke 10:19), and explained that a few churches have been known to use that as a reason to handle poisonous snakes in their ceremonies.
Students: This seems a case of excessive literalism to us. [I'm paraphrasing here just a bit].
Living abroad is a lot of fun some days, even when it's very surreal. :)
Students: Communion?
Jen: Yes. Well, it's...see, in the Bible, Jesus gave his followers bread and wine and told them it was his body and blood, and they needed to eat it to go to heaven.
Students: [look slightly appalled]
Jen [struggling to keep the English simple]: So...in most Christian churches we eat bread and drink wine together, and it means our sins are forgiven and we can go to heaven. So by telling people they can't eat the bread, this church is telling people they can't go to heaven.
Students: So...Christians believe that if you don't eat special magic bread, you don't go to heaven?
Jen: It's a little more...complicated...well...uh, sort of, yeah.
Moral: Everyone should have to explain their religion in language simple enough to be understood by people who've only studied it a few years. It definitely forces you to look at it in a different way.
We went on to discuss snake handling (when discussing stereotypes of Southerners,
one of the arguments we were looking at mentioned the practice). So I found them the passage in the Bible that explains that followers of Christ have "power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you" (Luke 10:19), and explained that a few churches have been known to use that as a reason to handle poisonous snakes in their ceremonies.Students: This seems a case of excessive literalism to us. [I'm paraphrasing here just a bit].
Living abroad is a lot of fun some days, even when it's very surreal. :)
// posted by Jennifer @ 10:34 PM 
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Or *especially* when it's surreal!?
WTF? If you don't eat magic bread and step on snakes you won't go to heaven?
This gave me my first laugh of the day--thanks!
Have you ever read the "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"? I read it in a high-school class on Africa. It describes in anthropological terms the extreme behaviors of a particular tribe--only after we'd read and discussed it did the teacher instruct us to read the title backward. I just googled it and discovered it's from 1956. You can read it here:
https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html
WTF? If you don't eat magic bread and step on snakes you won't go to heaven?
This gave me my first laugh of the day--thanks!
Have you ever read the "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"? I read it in a high-school class on Africa. It describes in anthropological terms the extreme behaviors of a particular tribe--only after we'd read and discussed it did the teacher instruct us to read the title backward. I just googled it and discovered it's from 1956. You can read it here:
https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html
You know, I don't think I'd read it, but I know I've seen it referenced before. I find quite interesting that some it has shifted (dressing to hide pregnancy and not nursing the young, for example). But modern mores would still be quite odd put this way.
You know, this actually ties in nicely with the Delany issue, and how science fiction helps us see the world as an outsider. Science fiction is a kind of anthropology--an expecially interesting realization since I've started re-re-re-reading Ursula LeGuin's "Always Coming Home," which explicitly bills itself as "An Anthropology of the Future." I'll have to post about that book later...
You know, this actually ties in nicely with the Delany issue, and how science fiction helps us see the world as an outsider. Science fiction is a kind of anthropology--an expecially interesting realization since I've started re-re-re-reading Ursula LeGuin's "Always Coming Home," which explicitly bills itself as "An Anthropology of the Future." I'll have to post about that book later...
I really haven't read sci-fi since high school (1970s)---when it was still mostly all boys or feminist reactions... I'm eager to check into it again--both the good classics and the newer stuff which I'm hoping will be less cranky?
(Though come to think of it visionary forms like sci-fi always attract visionaries and cranks, and sometimes they're the same!)
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(Though come to think of it visionary forms like sci-fi always attract visionaries and cranks, and sometimes they're the same!)
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