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Originally Posted by FotoPlasma
I'm willing to bet a good sum of money that neither of the two houses of Congress have a rabbi or mullah on hand, in any official capacity, while they both have an official Christian / Catholic chaplain, with a personal office, on hand.
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While the House and Senate chaplains have almost always been protestants (the first Catholic was elected in 2000), there are many deputy and honorary chaplains who represent a wide range of faiths. I know a rabbi who was the chaplain of the CT legislature. A chaplain isn't supposed to represent his faith at all. That's very much besides the point however.
I have a lot to say about religion and government, but not at 2:00 AM so I'll just paraphrase something Aaron Sorkin wrote about school prayer: its not about suppressing Jesus, its about the 4th grader who gets beaten up because he didn't participate in the "voluntary" prayer, its tough enough being a kid without the people in authority showing you more ways you're different.
Ah, what the hell. I was never any good at shutting up.
In a college environment, when kids are supposed to be using their $@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@# detectors, its okay to teach one point of view on a subject people are passionate about or to promote one culture. But you can't do that in a grade school because the whole system is designed to cram as many skills and pieces of information down a kids throat as possible, and teachers are heralded as authority figures who MUST be obeyed. So it is a good teacher's responsibility to talk about as many viewpoints and lifestyles as possible. When you talk about Christmas in college its one lifestyle and you're supposed to be old enough not to have to want to conform to it, when you talk about it in grade school, you probably will end up talking about it exclusively, in which case a non-Christian student will feel like you're telling them they should be living a life they don't want to live. If you're Christian, imagine that you went to a Jewish school and all they did was sing Chanukah songs, after awhile you'd start to feel very different and very alone. It may not seem like a big deal, but I think it really can be. There are a lot of gay kids for example who don't experience blatant homophobia but still end up with all sorts of complexes about themselves because they grew up in a culture that told them to live a certain lifestyle that they just biologically can't live.
I'm sure that didn't make any sense (given that its now 2:15 AM) but I don't have the heart to delete it.