Reflection, Class 4

The laptops were fun to play with, I completely agree, and the program was interesting if a little slow. I suppose my feelings toward the book are still the same. If anything I want to talk a bit more about religion. I've taken a few classes in it and as I've stated previously, if you consider being a religious person one who regularly attends services, then I'm religious.
Roman Catholic, actually, so the whole anti-Catholic thing has always been funny to me, but only because we're past it...mostly. I'm not sure what gets Protestants freaked out more, our doctrine or the pope. I'm thinking the latter, based on comments made during Kennedy's campaign and the fears about the pope dictating things, well Kennedy did a nice job in stamping that out, too bad Al Smith couldn't come up with it when he ran. Probably too soon. Anyway, religion.
Not to be ironic, but it can be used to cover all manner of sins, can't it? That depends on whether you consider nationalism a sin, which granted it can be or can't be. We used religion to "civilize" the Native Americans because we wanted their land and one way to do it was turn them around to our point of view through educating them and converting them. In my Sex, Gender and Culture class last semester we read an article about the Montagnais Indians in Canada that were converted by the Jesuits (yes, a Catholic example!). This priest had a four fold plan: permanent settlement and establishment of a central chief, the introduction of corporeal punishment, the education of children, and the introduction of a European family structure. These elements would stop nomadic tendencies, the basis for civilization, once you have punishment you can introduce the idea of suffering, educating the children to European standards would bring them out of their parents' backward ways, and a European family structure would place the man at the head instead of their traditional woman, which would help them to respect a central chief. Once you have a centralized system that has an element of suffering you can show them how it's like the church and how through suffering they can get to heaven.
My point? Religious rhetoric can turn an entire tribe's way of life on it's head used with the right pressure and it's historical welders were very good at using it. So the idea of America is inherently tied to religious language. Could we really expect differently based on our history? I mean we were founded by people who wanted to do things their own way, but mainly the religion thing, they still liked most of England's system just not their decadence in religion. So my point, if I even have a point at this juncture, is that maybe we need to accept that we'll be using religious language for better or worse and as long as we don't shove it down people's throats, we can live with it. And part and parcel of religion is making yours better than the other guy's...so it follows that whatever you're supporting has to be better than anything else. The words simply demand it.