The Way we learn religion

The sun streams through stained glass, yet the air is grey. The pew is warm, yet I am cold. My body is whole, yet feels hollow.

There I sat many years ago, in the church of my parents, surrounded by the worship of their congregation, realizing for the first time that the faith of my mother and father was not entirely my own. They were and still are Episcipalians by birth and practice; but, in that moment some six years ago, I realized that I had never really believed the way they did and that I never would.

What followed for me was an internal odyssey of the soul: I searched through the teachings of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and aetheism. I learned about the teaching of every religion I could. What I found after months of daily meditation is something that has guided me ever since. Now, I feel whole.

What is important is that I found me own religion, my own form of faith, no one showed me the way or told me what was right or wrong. I searched and let my heart decide. Then I picked up a book, "The God Delusion". While decidedly an unabashed attack un religion in general with which I mostly disagreed, there was one point the author made that struck me as horribly true: most people never choose their religion, but accept the faith that they are raised with. They are indoctrinated into their faith. Seeing this, I now know what public education's relationship with religion should be.

It is my opinion that public schools should encourage honest exploration of religion and foster free choice. Some on this website have proposed having a standard religion class that incorporated most of the world's faiths in different amounts. While not bad, that approach is flawed in the fact that some faiths will get different amounts of time and from different perspectives. The process must be self guided and open. I think instead that there should be a research class for high school juniors in which they are supposed to complete research on at least four faiths of there choice and weekly abstracts of various religions. The teacher would serve to guide the research: guiding students away from teachings of bigotry and radicalism (these can be found in most religions). Certain days during the year would be open forum in which students discuss what they have found in civil ways.

Everyone should feel free to post their own opinions on religious education. I based this off of the beauty of my own experience and the tenents of good scholarship.