To be shocked that children don't know the Lords prayer anymore

[shaka12003]

Something that came up today whilst watching the jubilee celebrations. The church service came on and the Lords prayer was said my 2 dcs don't know it and havent been taught it in school.

AIBU to be shocked by this apparently I am as we now live in a political correct society and can't teach children these things.

That's strange, isn't it Technoviking? I said on another religion thread the othe day that most of us have quite a good instinct for genre - we know when we're readng a fable / news report / poem - yet with the Bible, it's almost as if that function is disabled and we go into the mode of thinking that everything is forensic report. I think it stems from the idea that God can only communicate by giving out orders - which of course is not the Christian view of God at all. But it's worth unpicking where this notion that the Bible is all 'fact' comes from.

It's quite rare to teach the Bible as fact though, isn't it?

There's only once school I know of that does that, and it is openly religious and selective, so you couldn't exactly fail to notice there's an agenda.

I think in some situations, noting that the Bible is contradictory and objecting to Christianity on those grounds is a little like reading a book of the history of science and saying 'oh, no! Newton and Einstein don't completely agree! It must all be lies!'.

To many Christians, the Bible is a book, guided by God but certainly written and compiled by people who are fallible - it may be one of the best guides we have, but that doesn't make it perfect, only the best wisdom people had at the time.

True, LRD. Ii is a)logically impossible to be a true Biblical literalist, and b) you'd get arrested if you tried.

op if you are religious and your children don't know the lords prayer...it is you who is at fault

LRD, I'm talking about how it's taught to children. It's all "the bible says" and "the bible teaches". No one ever said "Red Riding hood teaches", as it's obvious that there aren't wolves eating grannie. The bible is taught as fact, pillars of salt and all that.

And if religion isn't taught as fact, where do all the nutters come from? Religion is often used as an excuse / reason for bigotry, intolerance and outright wickedness. When's the last time a serial killer or warmonger said "I'm doing this in the name of Slytherin"?. (Obvious tongue in cheek there).

You might have had a different experience from me, tehcno. I didn't go to a religious school so of course, no one ever said 'the bible teaches' to me. I think if parents decide to send their children to a religious school, they can hardly complain if it teaches religion.

I have never heard of the Bible being taught as fact, except in one very religious school. Even the Catholic schools near me (well, I suppose especially the Catholic schools) only teach it as what some people believe. I think that way is much better.

'Nutters' (please don't use that term!) come from, um, being mentally ill.

If you mean religious bigots - well, who knows, but it is certainly true that bigots have found good sources of support in established religion.

My DS doesn't know the Lord's Prayer but can recite several sura.

He also sang in the choir for the school carol concert and we had a sing along to the Bryn Terfel last night of the proms for a laugh the other day (I know the words to Rule Britania and Land of Hope and Glory and I'm Welsh!)

My DH has worked hard to teach him his prayers in Arabic because that's what parents do if it matters to them.

I didn't go to a religious school, but that's how it was taught. Personally, I don't agree with religions teaching children that their way is the right way. Let adults make up their own minds.

Well both Blair and Bush cited God as their influence in going to war, are they mentally ill? No, they are liars but being able to hide behind religion with no recourse is distasteful to me.

In that case, yes, that would put me right off. I am Christian and I would want to take children to church, but I think it is not a great idea to insist that one particular way is the right way.

My point about 'nutters' is it's a perjorative term for the mentally ill. I don't really get whether you mean 'people who do bad things' or 'people who are mentally ill' but some people would assume you were equating the mentally ill with people who hide behind religion.

I agree it is deeply distasteful to do that, esp. in the Blair/Bush context.

The Lord's Prayer itself is presented as fact.

It's not Our metaphorical father, whom some believe to be in heaven although there is a lot of debate about what heaven really is... is it?

Is it quite rare to teach the Bible as fact?

Certainly, few would keep reminding their audience "this is all 100% factual".

But when you've got a group of young children kids and you say "and then Jesus did this...", "and then Jesus said this..." - what is that? And you can't really preface what you say with "this is just a story, it didn't literally happen" because some people won't like that.

Best for schools to steer clear of the whole damned thing IMO. Let parents teach it if they want. It's no business of the state.

YABU. Not every person follows your Lord and thus do not teach the prayerss to thier children. Especially not these days.

LRDtheFeministDragon
IMO 'nutters' is more likely to mean people with extreme views. The etymology of the word may be to do with the mentally ill, but I think it's lost that specificity in common usage.

MrsBethel, Jesus was a real historical figure, and the New Testament is based on fact, even if you don't believe the miracles actually happened.

The Old Testament, on the other hand, is based on a variety of origin myths / rules for how to live properly / tribal history, and certainly the older parts would have been passed down orally and therefore subject to getting distorted over time.

The New Testament is fiction.

I'm a real historical figure. But if someone wrote a story about a load of advenures I went on where I used lots of superpowers, that would be filed under 'fiction' rather than under 'biographies'.

LOL at "Our metaphorical father, whom some believe to be in heaven although there is a lot of debate about what heaven really is... "

MrsBethel - IMO, it is fiction with an element of fact at it's core, in the same way most other myths are.

A bit like 'Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Slayer', then?

(An actual movie I saw a trailer for t'other day. I kid you not.)

If it bloody bothers you that much teach it them yourself, it isn't against the law or anything.

Waste of time in my book, but there you go.

Do we also need then to explain that Little Red Riding hood is just a story, and not real?

The Bible doesn't need to be 'presented as fact' any more than you need to specify that other stories are fiction. The boy I babysit right now used to want to find Meg, Mog and Owl. This did not make me worry that he was likely to found a Meg cult in adulthood.

'Nutters' is as far as I've heard only used as a rude term for people who're mentally ill. If it's also used to mean extremists, I'm sorry if my quibbles didn't make sense - I didn't know that usage.

I'm waiting for someone to object that 'Jack and Jill' is also 'presented as fact' and therefore we should really insert 'which would be against health and safety, and by the way, also, you don't literally fall to pieces if you roll down a hill, and the medical efficacy of vinegar and brown paper have yet to be demonstrated in clinical trials'.

Since no-one gets pedantic over other texts read to children, it seems a bit odd to claim the Bible has some kind of special status as a story that's taught as factual, IMO.

A Meg cult could be fun.

It could that, squiggle. It would be a very good-mannered cult, too.

LRD the other examples you use do not have large buildings dedicated to them, there are no fairy tale characters with an automatic right to seats in the house of Lords, adults do not believe in and promote the stories veracity in the street as they do with christianity. (Every summer I get cross about the hell fire preachers on the promenade. But they are allowed to be there, for some reason. Apparently it's fine to tell small children their mothers are going to hell.)

Just as an aside, my local high street has become a real interesting melting-pot of ideologies being publicised (it's a pedestrianised high street). The little Christian stall has been there a whole, and over the last few years others have followed suit so we now have Islam, Christanity, Buddhism, Humanism, and various other groups out on a Saturday and sometmes on other days. What with the buskers, and Big Issue sellers, it's all a bit busy....