The first 2 stanzas of the lyrics were included in the packet. But according to our little religious wankers here that somehow is not the promotion of a religion.
What, that Amazing Grace is a beautiful song that has been used to mark times of trouble and how humans persevere somehow?
But the difference here is that amazing Grace… Is just a song.
I mean, its primary value is as a musical expression. People like listening to it because it sounds nice.
Intelligent design isnt like that.
I mean, if you wanted to try and make a more apt comparison, you could take a story like “the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe”.
The Chronicles of Narnia has extremely strong religious overtones. But it’s still an interesting literary work of fictional fantasy. Are you upset if your child were to read that in school?
I’m just not seeing how you can be so overbearing as to get upset over playing a song like amazing Grace. What possible negative effect do you imagine it having on your child?
It really is reminiscent of religious parents freaking out about their kids listening to rock and roll.
And to be clear, since you clearly are confused on this point, I’m not religious.
To me, the solution is not silencing Amazing Grace (that’s like banning books) but including alternative songs from other faiths and cultures alongside it.
Hey, if they’re willing to include a Slayer song in the program, then we can talk.
I have said multiple times this would be a very different issue if this included other religions in this musical packet. It does not.
However I do not think we would have agreement. I think we have found an area where people who believe in a particular invisible pixie believe that it is okay for that to be exclusively taught in schools. You have people here in this very thread advocating that the Bible should be taught in school to elementary school children but then want to somehow insist that is not indoctrination. They dance around trying to use excuses like art, history, western culture, etc. yet those very same reasons are used to promote outright racism and bigotry in other areas that we all profess to find abhorrent.
I’m not a Christian, Granath.
In all honesty, you are much better versed in it then many Christian’s on television though.
Yeah, it’s important to understand Christianity, even if you aren’t a Christian.
But if you disqualify songs with inaccurate lyrics, you can’t use most of those either. After all, are you REALLY a little teapot?
Yeah, sorry, that doesn’t rise to the level of outrage for me. It’s a familiar, easy-to-play song with a simple, pleasant melody, and people are quite capable of enjoying it purely on a musical level. Playing the tune, mixed in with a variety of other songs, isn’t going to indoctrinate you into believing that the lyrics associated with it are literally true, any more than playing “Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are” makes you forget that it’s a burning ball of gas.
And the first two stanzas are honestly pretty oblique in terms of the religious imagery. Would you be okay with the situation if they just omitted the lyrics?
I agree with you on keeping religion out of government institutions, but this seems like a real stretch of an example. Why not advocate for removing “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance first – that seems much more indoctrinate-y in my book.
No, it is not. It is a Christian hymn. No matter how you try to dance around it, id est, quid id est. It is what it is.
I’m just not seeing how you can be so overbearing as to get upset over playing a song like amazing Grace. What possible negative effect do you imagine it having on your child?
Do you have any idea what it is like to be a minority in this country? Do you know how hard it is to protect your own culture’s values and ideas? This is one of the many challenges of being a minority and that same idiotic question is asked almost every single time by the tyranny of the majority. “What is the harm”? You know what? There probably is no harm in learning Amazing Grace. Then next week there is no harm in the local educational system putting on a Christmas play. The next week there is no harm watching the local government stick a nativity scene on the Town Hall lawn. There is no harm in having an Easter celebration either.
Yet we all know there is harm done ultimately, do we not? Is there not harm in making some feel like outcasts? Is there not harm done on how that mono-culture sees those who are not part of it? Is there not harm done in what promotes separatism and ultimately bigotry? Much like there is no harm in one cigarette, there is harm in smoking many of them.
Actually, let me back track that a bit. Fuck that. That is the thicker skin talking. Let me present the real version. There is harm. Have you ever been forced to stand up and sing a Christian song, knowing that you were not of that faith and do you know the feeling of the shame for doing so? The shame of betraying your religion? The shame of betraying your culture? Yourself? The shame of having your parents shift uncomfortably in their seats while you sing (or play) some praise to a God to which your family does not believe? Have you heard the snickers of those around you, the jokes about how you are finally learning the “correct” faith or path? Do you know the shame of the alternative which is having to sit out and be a pariah because you cannot take part? I have. Do not tell me there is no harm to a child feeling those emotions.
So fuck any of you for trying to belittle my attempt to prevent my daughter from feeling that same shame. I have been in this country a long time and grown a very thick skin when it comes to such things. But I will be damned if I do nothing and let my daughter put up with that same shite.
I do. Under God was put in the Pledge in the 50s to combat Communism. It was stupid then and it is stupid now.
Amazing Grace is “just” a song (i.e. a beautiful piece of music) to some people and it’s a Christian Hymn to others. It connects me to black history in America more than it does to any church or faith. I don’t think of it the same way you do and yours is not the only way to think about it. There’s a distinction between art and faith even if the art came from a certain faith. It can get separated over time and according to personal experience.
Amazing Grace was written by a member of the Church of England. I remember having that drilled into my head (though I do not remember who so I was obviously not that good of a student). You could get away saying the Saints Go Marching In is just a song. It has a long history in jazz and bugger me is a sports anthem. You cannot say the same about Amazing Grace. While significant to African-American history, it has always been and remains a Christian hymn.
C’mon, I’m about as anti-religion as they come. But it doesn’t get much better than Judy Collins’ version of Amazing Grace in The Culpepper Cattle Company (and why the hell isn’t there a video of this on the internet!).
…and a beautiful piece of music. I believe strongly that the solution to this kind of really-very-valid issue is not the silencing of one type of art or voice but the addition of other types of art or voices to balance it out.
If your email to the music teacher was as strident and uncompromising as your posts have been in here, you’ll likely find you created resistance to your message rather than understanding. I feel bad for that music teacher if you took this kind of tone with them.
Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.
Go read my original email. I said I politely emailed him and I certainly was.
I only became indignant when certain wankers here started telling me to relax and that the promotion of their religion is fine because it is a “beautiful” song. The tyranny of the majority is so easy to sell yet those same arguments are used to sell some absolutely abhorrent ideas.
You want a solution? Stop trying to slip in exclusive religious endorsements to impressionable children in the guise of “art”, “beauty” or “western culture”. There is your solution.
No. It’s just a song. You can appreciate it without believing in God.
Apparently in this case, yes, as I’m not a Christian.
And yet, hearing amazing Grace is not threatening to me in the slightest. Just like hearing a Muslim sing the call to prayer isn’t. Or reading stories from Greek mythology.
None of it is threatening to me. They are just elements of our multifaceted culture.
In your zealotry to try and banish Christianity from the public eye, you are harmful.
Certainly it’s just to oppose elements of religion which serve to oppress others. But you go too far. You want to oppress them. You are saying here that it’s unacceptable for any aspect of their religion to creep into the public space. But that’s absurd. You are simply saying that the public space is for your beliefs, and yours alone.
It’s a song, dude.
To me, since religion is a part of most people’s lives, it’s unrealistic to try and scour it from public life. And there’s no reason to. As long as those views aren’t harming me, then it’s fine.
If you try to say that the entirety of their religion is bad, then you will never have any impact on their views on anything. They aren’t going to listen to your views regarding gay marriage, when you lose your shit over hearing an entirely inoffensive song.
Society isn’t going to be better if we hate what makes us different and try to force that all to be compartmentalized. Even if you aren’t the same religion as someone else, it doesn’t hurt you be exposed to their beliefs. It doesn’t hurt you to sing their songs. It enriches us to appreciate this from each other.
For Christianity, so much of Western culture was built around it. To cast aside anything associated with Christianity means to cast aside an immense amount of culture and art. Doing so doesn’t make anything better. It makes your life worse.
Ultimately here, you are attempting to make a fallacious argument based on a slippery slope.
I’m not religious, but such things don’t make me feel like an outcast. Why would they?
I would feel like an outcast if, when I tried to express some aspect of my own culture, i was told that i couldn’t do that in public. But that’s what you’re doing.
You’re targeting a majority, but you’re trying to make them feel like outcasts. And it’s not productive.
If someone else wanted to celebrate a religious holiday in school, i would defend they’re right to do so. Because i wouldn’t want them to feel like that aspect of their lives wasn’t welcome in society at large. To me, the answer isn’t to shut out all of those special elements of us as individuals.
I remember when i was a kid, they had Christmas stuff up, as well as Hanukkah stuff, since it was around the same time of year. There weren’t many Muslims, but i recall there was one Muslim girl when i was in elementary school and there were some things we learned about Islam too (this was before all the 9/11 crap and the crazy island that followed). And like i said, we all learned about various other religious mythologies, but i don’t think we had any practicing ancient Greeks.
Yeah, i guess i did? I never felt ashamed of it though. It was just a song.
What shame is going to feel from playing a song?
The only shame here is going to be some messed up baggage that you instill in her.
I identify as an atheist more than anything else.
This is not a hill worth dying on.
Did you just put the word art in quotes, Granath?