Growing up in a non religious
family,
by no means atheist
– my parents
believed in something,
but god was never
mentioned when I was
a child, so all
I learned of religion
was from
christmas, and easter
and whatever
other delightful commercial
holidays
the public received.
Between the
ages of 5 to 9 I had
a friend who’s
family were devout Hindus
which
I did not really know
anything about except my friend couldn’t eat
meat pies, or sausage
rolls. except that one time at camp
when she was really
hungry and had a bite of the sausage sizzle
I had – schools back
then were not really equipped to deal with
anything different from
the herd. Which is quite shocking really.
If she couldn't eat
anything, she was to go without. I’m sure her
supreme being wouldn’t
punish a hungry child.
Anyway, so I had crap
all knowledge of religion, let alone grasp of
the concept of god,
and I had never thought about it to ask. How
can you ask when you
don't know what you're asking about? One
day they introduced
bible study at our poor public school which I
thought was illegal
[aren’t church and state supposed to be kept
separate? or is that
just in america?], I mean now I think it is
illegal I didn’t think
these things when I was 8. So here I am at
school learning about
this great man Jesus and singing songs
about him and being
informed on how much he loved me. This
sparked an interest
in me and it was not long until I persuaded
my parents to go to
church and since we knew some catholics,
catholicism was the
way we went.
These episodes were short
lived, church was boring and the
church we went to did
some cultural thing that we did not
altogether understand.
I didn’t really note the ethnicity of the
people in the church
– I was 8, but I think they were Samoan. They sang songs in their language
anyhow and we were more than a little out of place. A non catholic
family not able to participate at all.
A couple of years later,
we moved to Auckland and attended a
catholic primary school.
This experience was extremely traumatic
for young Genie and
I had heaps of jumbled imagery of what
catholic schooling might
be like from books and movies, but also
from the kind students
of my former school, I was pretty terrified
of what was to be expected
from me – a non christian, non
catholic. Before
starting school both my sister and I were briefed
by my cousin on how
school was run in a catholic school. In the
short time before school
started we learned the Lords Prayer, Hail
Mary, how to do the
sign of the cross, and practiced our
handwriting.
I imagined pious little
children in perfect uniforms [I had never
worn a school uniform
prior to this] and no laughter or playing.
Fortunately this was
not so, and after the initial terrifying month
or two of being the
new girl in a new city, school system and
uniform, it wasn’t too
bad. After primary school I continued in the catholic schooling system
to an all girls catholic school where
now, I am glad for as
it has exposed me to religion in a way that
I would not have been.
Religious education [or r.e as we called it]
was stuff fed to us
through worksheets aided by our teachers to
educated us in *our*
religion. Although I did the work, it didn’t
really interest me at
all. The subject wasn’t religious education,
but rather catholic
education. And I’d pretty much already formed an opinion of catholicism.
As we moved along through
the system, RE turned into RS the
change in initial was
subtle but very important. We were no longer
being religiously educated,
but to study religion. Finally, the
system had decided that
they had done all they could do and if
they hadn’t turned us
into earnest catholics by now, we were
screwed anyway.
We were finally able to study other religions. I
loved it. This
is what I wanted. Lots of discussion and room for
individual thought.
This year has been even better with the study
of cults, sects and
new religious
movements only a few
weeks ago. Although
I wish we went into
it in more depth,
I know that others don’t
particularly
see things my way, but
finally after
6 years of spoon-fed
inanity on
learning to be a better
catholic and
the history of catholicism,
I was
learning about new stuff.
Good
stuff actually relevant
to today.
I know it’s not particularly
fair to
criticise the
system they don’t have
a lot of say since their
following is
so small and so I suppose
they’re working
especially hard on us
with this aspect,
since this is really
all that makes
them special from other
schools. I
now don’t associate
myself to
any religion, and for
now I’d rather not do as I find religion both
restrictive and prejudice.
But maybe I'm just prejudice I mean I
haven’t experienced
all religions, I’m just making assumptions
on my own experience…