Mandatory, state-imposed religion won’t help

April 18, 2007

In 1999, I distinctly remember helping prep my then-boss for an episode of Crossfire on CNN. The topic was religion in schools, an issue I worked quite a bit on. But even I was a little surprised when Bob Novak insisted that the Columbine tragedy wouldn’t have happened if only the killers had been forced to be religious. “Can you really imagine a Christian, a believing Christian, somebody who had accepted Christ, performing the way these two killers did at Columbine High School?” Novak asked.

I remembered Novak’s question when I read this blog post from conservative Gina Cobb on “how to prevent the next mass killing.”

Religious training is clearly necessary. God should at least be mentioned in the classroom and workplace from time to time. God is mentioned on our currency; he certainly should not be ignored completely throughout the school day.

God should be even more prominent in our colleges in universities. In universities where students choose their own courses of study, there is no reason not to offer courses in religion. There is no good reason not to have chapels available. There is no good reason not to acknowledge God on the nation’s campuses.

The world’s major religions encourage and even require one to acknowledge a higher power than one’s own immediate gratification. If they are any good, religions also inspire people to decent behavior. The total blackout on even mentioning religion in public schools and universities — and in many privates ones — leaves kids in a moral vacuum and has the potential to undermine the religious training children receive elsewhere.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on Gina, but I get the sense, from reading this and other conservative perspectives, that her approach is rather common. What we need is a religious society, the argument goes, and then tragedies like the ones at Virginia Tech and Columbine wouldn’t happen.

I suppose it’s a comforting thought for the faithful, but it couldn’t be more wrong.

“God should be even more prominent in our colleges in universities”? Take a look at the list of student organizations at Virginia Tech.

African Christian Fellowship at Virginia Tech
Ambassadors for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship
Christ Gospel Ministries
Christ’s Church at Virginia Tech
Christian Concert Planning
Christian Leadership Network
Cornerstone Christian Fellowship
Episcopal/Anglican Christian Fellowship
Friends Adventist Christian Fellowship
Graduate Christian Fellowship
International Christian Fellowship
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship
Korean Campus Crusade for Christ
Korean Christian Fellowship
New Life Christian Fellowship

And this is just the list of student groups for Christians, not including the Christian fraternities and sororities. Virginia Tech also has plenty of religious classes and a chapel. A “total blackout on even mentioning religion”? I don’t think so.

Taking a step back from VT specifically, I’m puzzled why anyone would believe religious people are less prone to violence. One could, perhaps, pick up a newspaper and consider the carnage caused by religious people around the world every day. Or one could, perhaps, pick up a history book and consider all of the blood shed in God’s name over the last several centuries. Or one could, perhaps, remember 9/11, perpetrated by monsters who had plenty of “religious training.”

For that matter, since when is American society a bastion for secular humanism? We have some of the highest church-attendance rates on earth. We have some of the highest theism rates on earth.

And yet crimes happen anyway.

I would go further- mainland Western European countries are highly ambivalent about religion, yet their violent crime rates are miniscule compared to the U.S….

So, the more religion a country has, the more likely that violence is to occur… Somthing to think about…

  • How will more religion going to help an unbalanced person who hated organized religion in particular Christianity (at least according to news reports I’ve read)?

    I’m just waiting for Gina to lump us atheists in with the killer Cho.

  • …where students choose their own courses of study…!?

    Is it suggesting that someone, or something, other than the student chose their course of study? Isn’t that what the commies did?

  • It’s too bad there aren’t time-travel machines, so Gina Cobb and other idiots like her can see what it’s like when people are more informed about religion and let it influence their daily activities more, and stand up for what they believe in, the way people used to… like all the religious wars they used to have in Europe, because they thought God was on their side.

    It’s too bad people who think we’re insufficiently religious can’t go somewhere to see what it’s like when religious sentiment is more commonly expressed in public, when people take their cues from God and religious followers, and when there are all kinds of guns available to keep people from casually shooting up public places.

    Oh, I forgot about Iraq. Any conservative who says we need more guns and more God should go wander around Iraq with only their own guns and religious material and see what happens there.

    Until that happens, they can shut the fuck up, because they’re too fucking stupid to contribute to the public discourse without getting themselves, or more likely and more often and more’s the pity, other people, killed.

  • “Can you really imagine a Christian, a believing Christian, somebody who had accepted Christ, performing the way these two killers did at Columbine High School?”

    What a stupid question. First, I’d give Novak ten bucks for each person he could find that fit his exact description (I can afford to lose 50 bucks.) Second, why just Christians? Does this mean we can expect nothing both blood-shed and violence from the other religions in the world? Finally, how the hell do you create such a Christian as described by Novak and then test him to make sure he’s really an’ truly a Christian (and therefore doesn’t have a violent bone in his body)? You can’t of course and sitting people down in church on a regular basis doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. I think in some instances, thinking that God wouldn’t approve of whatever the hell you’re doing gives the sickos an extra tingle.

    As proof, I offer as Exhibit A, Dennis Lynn Rader. President of his church council, cub scout leader, key member of his local Republican org. and city inspection officer, by day; one of the most infamous serial killers in US history on his off hours.

  • I’m interested in starting a new on-campus crusade (I love that word, crusade):

    Packing Heat For Jesus
    Motto: There’s more than one right way to skin a cat.”

  • When you think that your belief is the only true belief, then others are less human than those who believe what you believe. That’s a recipe for genocide.

    The Right’s talking points are as connected to reality as Bush’s foreign policy.

  • The most amazing thing to me is that these idiotic theocrats who want to force everyone to convert to Christianity are exactly the same as the idiotic theocrats who want to force everyone to convert to Islam that they claim to oppose so stridently. I am much happier being whatever I please and letting everyone else do the same. Why can’t everyone else accept that? Live and let live? Judge not, lest ye be judged? Etc, etc.

  • See my comment from yesterday, this is yet another brand of snake-oil. It would be an interesting exercise to see a list of all the things that this tragedy gets exploited to flog.

  • Also, aren’t the “Islamic fascist terrorists” kind of religious? Aren’t klansmen and white supremacists? Isn’t it typical that, when asked to explain their actions, many violent acts by mentally deranged people are perpetrated because, “God told me to”? Weren’t the Crusades about religion, just a little?

    I believe that looking for religious reasons for Monday’s events is a dangerous enterprise. While I’ve been very impressed with a huge majority of the students interviewed in the media, I was bummed by a guy who mentioned that his frat brother was supposed to be in one of the classrooms in Norris, but had decided to sleep in on Monday. He said, “I guess God or somebody was looking out for him.” So God was looking after a hungover frat guy and ignoring everyone else, including a Holocaust survivor? Granted the kid was in shock.

    As a Va Tech grad I can tell you, religion has a definite presence on that campus. Not nearly as much as you’d find in, say, a small Amish school. But, I would think enough of one to where, if religion could possibly stop someone from going on a killing spree, it would have there.

  • In England, Oliver Cromwell (God rot him in hell) organized the fundamentalist army of fanatical protestants that the religious influences on the air force academy probably want.

    He brought them over to Ireland, where they hung women from trees and their babies by the women’s hair.

    And then there’s John Brown, who did all his work in the name of religion.

  • Well, in fairness, the usual argument one sees from Novak, Cobb et al is not that *religious* people won’t go on killing sprees, but that *Christian* people won’t go on killing sprees. Even so, it’s still crap. Do we need to start listing recent mass murderers who went to church?

    Not to mention, the country is full of non-believers who nonetheless don’t go around murdering people. Clearly, internalized moral/ethical codes can help individuals restrain violent impulses, but to suggest that Christian churches are the only or even the best places to get those codes is ludicrous. And besides, all the religious training the world won’t suppress mental illness or deep personality disorder which seems to have been at work in the VT case.

  • Now, I don’t mean to pick on Gina…

    I do. And so…

    God is mentioned on our currency; he certainly should not be ignored completely throughout the school day.

    Here I thought “In God We Trust” was a meaningless, ceremonial phrase. Now it’s being cited as precedent. Reason enough to abolish it.

    There is no good reason not to have chapels available.

    I can think of a reason, in the case of city campuses, anyway: there’s probably a church or five right around the corner. I know that’s the case for my local U.

    The total blackout on even mentioning religion in public schools and universities — and in many privates ones — leaves kids in a moral vacuum and has the potential to undermine the religious training children receive elsewhere.

    Religious training elsewhere needs reinforcement from public schools to take hold? That’s absurd. Indeed, religion is verboten in public schools *because* of the risk that such lessons would contradict those from church. (It’s bad enough when religious education conflicts with real-world subjects, like geology or health.) The “blackout” on mentioning religion in mixed company stems from simple politeness — it’s one of the subjects that frequently leads to arguments.

    Gina Cobb reads these comments, right???

  • Actually, the modern (secular) form of government we enjoy in western societies is an answer to England’s religious wars, and the only thing that separates us from fundamentalist Muslims who still kill over religion.

  • I’m not saying that religion doesn’t make people better people, just that it doesn’t necessarily- at all- do so. And there’s no reason to think that more access to religion or even forced religion is going to help. It could be that the pastor is a dickhead.

  • “Can you really imagine a Buddhist, a believing Buddhist, somebody who had accepted [the teachings of] Buddha, performing the way these two killers did at Columbine High School?” MN Progressive asked.

  • How many psychotic killers have heard divine voices in their heads telling them to kill? A whole lot. In fact religious determinations of right and wrong, the saved and the damned, the saints and the sinners are often how mass murderers describe their premeditated acts.

    It’s not religion that will prevent future mass killings, it’s improved socialization. The VaTech shooter was as anti-social as they come and that’s one of the root causes of his behavior. Don’t ask me how to solve this problem, but virtually all insane acts of violence are committed by people who feel extremely marginalized and then feel vengeful and hateful as a response. Religion is, unfortunately really good at drawing lines and tagging people with titles like sinners and infidels that will suffer retribution for their acts.

    But I do have to admit, you don’t hear of many devout Buddhists or Amish going on rampages. Maybe it’s that we just need to have more peaceful religions on campus. Given how so many fundamentalist christians are chanting their war chants along with the Decider, I wouldn’t qualify them as a peaceful religion.

  • I am a spiritual person who would not want to live in a religious state. Power corrupts, just look at the inquisition or the crusades.Kovac is always an idiot. People who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior are torturing prisoners this very day. He should know better than to lump people together like that but then he’s closer to being a white supremacist whose speech is always filled with hate and prejudice. He should stick to leaking classified information for the WH.

  • I have no idea whether Eric Rudolph has accepted Christ as his personal savior, but he blew up the Olympics, a nightclub, and an abortion clinic (sending hundreds of nails into a mother of two, Emily Lyons) for religious reasons. Christianity: not automatically a preventer of murderous behavior.

  • CB, I’d just add to your list the fact that Virginia Tech is on the John Templeton Foundation list of Colleges and Universities which build character. From the Foundations homepage,

    The goal of the John Templeton Foundation’s College and Character Initiative is to encourage colleges and universities to do as much as they can to reinforce the positive values instilled by parents, such as honesty, compassion, self-discipline, and respect. The initiative seeks to foster widespread conversations within the higher education community about character development and to inform college-bound students, parents, policy makers, and the general public about how colleges and universities, individually and collectively, are responding to this challenge.

  • Of course, when a conservative says ‘religion’ they don’t mean religion. They mean their particular brand of hypocritical Christianity.

    Kinda like when we use Kleenex to mean all tissue.

  • Dylan’s “God on Our Side” effectively refutes Gina’s ill-begotten viewpoint. -Kevo

  • The women of Afghanistan seem particularly happy with life in a religiously fundament society.

    And Shrub seems pretty Christlike everytime a car bomb goes off in Bagdad

    And with the knowledge that less than 10% of the population would vote for an athiest for President…

    I don’t actually understand the thesis or Gina’s argument.

  • Thanks Steve M. Cut and pasted the right tag and then accidentally changed it later. You are correct as to where it should have pointed.

  • Re: Comment 26 — The list on the link, while lengthy, isn’t complete. I know there’s a Blacksburgh Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and there are probably other congregations that never made it to that particular list.

  • I know, let only ministers and priests sell guns, denying all those deemed not worthy.

  • How many psychotic killers have heard divine voices in their heads telling them to kill? – This comment reminds me of something I read yesterday (emphasis by me)…

    “Cho – who arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., where his parents worked at a dry cleaners – left a note that was found after the bloodbath. A law enforcement official who read Cho’s note described it Tuesday as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “You caused me to do this,” the official quoted the note as saying. Cho indicated in his letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done, the official said. He also expressed disappointment in his own religion, and made several references to Christianity, the official said.” -Associated Press, 04.17.07 http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/17/ap3623559.html

  • Hmmmm. Stalin spent a lot of time in the Tiflis seminary. Sure helped his disposition later in life, didn’t it?

  • #35 bubba: “Tim McVeigh was a Christian, no?”

    At the time, not really. He was reportedly more motivated by “Star Wars” and saw himself as Luke Skywalker and the federal building as the Death Star. He did request a Catholic priest at his execution, though.

  • Placing their personal faith above medical knowledge, all five Catholics on the US Supreme Court just voted to outlaw the safest method of late-term abortion. Two of the justices said they could find no basis for Roe v. Wade in the Constitution. Just as it completely loses all control over European nations (which apparently had enough of religious meddling in their histories), the Church of Rome begins its takeover of America. Do burkas come in red-white-and-blue? Will Americans wake up from their TeeVee-induced torpor in time to prevent the religious fanatics and other ignorant yahoos from destroying the Constitution utterly?

  • More people have been killed by “religious believers” than for any other cause in recorded human history.

    “Gott Mit Uns” – the belt buckle of every German soldier in WW1 and WW2.

  • By the way, my comment at #17, which referred to religious wars, was actually supposed to refer to Religious Wars, historical events that people talk about in Western Political Thought classes, not just any war Britain fought in that had a religious justification. Scholars of Locke and political thinkers from around his era in Europe will refer to this usually as England’s religious wars, I think, but it seems there is a broader context.

    Also, I know some Protestants may think that accepting Christ as your lord and savior, or whatever formula you are supposed to say, is the only true religion, but is there any reason to think this makes you any less violent than not saying those words?

  • Maybe it’s God that’s the problem. Do they ever consider that possibility?

    What is this ‘God’ anyway? Is there any evidence for it? Can it be tested experimentally (remember, the Pope used this as an argument against evolution: that it couldn’t be tested experimentally [which is not true])?

    If there’s no evidence for this ‘God’ and no one can say what it is, surely indoctrinating children to believe in it is the worst thing you can do?

    I believe thousands of children suffer terribly when subjected to this kind of vague, confusing, tautological fairytale. What they see is an adult invoking some remote, tyrannical entity to impose rules and restrictions without any logic or justification.

    There are the punishment-reward strategies of heaven and hell. Sin and you go to hell, do good (i.e. do what I tell you) and you go to heaven. There’s no logic to it, and so naturally youth reacts and rebels.

    My recommendation is — give the whole damn God thing up. It’s a menace and all our problems come from it.

    Now, most people who have not thought outside the theistic paradigm, or who have not encountered and explored authentically valid alternative systems, may complain that if you remove what is already not there anyway (= God) there will be some kind of vacuum. Well, of course, it’s ridiculous when you think about it; but if you’re trapped in it (like a lot of Americans seem to be) then it could be frightening.

    The issue, however, is not whether children are suddenly deprived of a restraining moral code if God is removed from or denied access to the classroom, the issue is whether youth are given a meaningful, logical basis upon which to choose the best action in every situation. There is such a basis. The trouble is it is not taught within a theistic system. The very invocation of a hypothetical controlling super-being automatically supplants and suppresses naturally wholesome decision-making in the human being. Young people are thus encouraged to surrender control of their actions to an external authority, with no guarantee or proof that their best interests are being served. It is a stunting and humiliating system, all-too easily usurped for nefarious ends.

    This is not what young people need. What they need is respect, trust, open-mindedness, wisdom, compassion and companionship, supported by a valid, coherent system of understanding that does not hide behind flimsy beliefs and screwy dogma. They’re not stupid. If they’re treated as stupid, they’ll react just to show how wrong those adults and society are that presume to preach at them such self-serving inanities.

  • Mystics appropriated morality in pre-history, dogmatic religion solidified the bond with ancient texts, and humanity is been paying a terrible price for it ever since.

  • And let’s not forget that embodiment of religious peace and harmony, The Crusades.

  • I’m amused by this talk about how America needs more religion, yet IS very religious – and has high crime rates for a first world nation, poor social support, a growing rich-poor gap, and is involved in an unwinnable and illegal war.

    At this rate, it sounds like secularism is a damn good choice.

  • There has been what might be called a natural experiment on this. I haven’t seen any studies, but I’d bet that during the first half of the 20th century, in the Bible Belt, there was plenty of religion in the public schools. Which means that all the night-riding Klansmen, all the folks in those old pictures pointing at the burnt bodies of lynched blacks while they partied, all the “good folks” that enabled Jim Crow, all grew up with plenty of religion in their schools. Certainly didn’t make them into paragons of virtue and compassion.

  • How about the women in Texas who drowned her five kids – she had to keep having kids despite her homicidal fantasies and post-partum depression after the first kid, because of their religious beliefs.

    How about the minister’s wife who shot the minister in the back at home in front of the kids (somewhere in the south). Good religious people.

    How about the regular church-going guy, where was it, in Kansas, who turned out to be a torturing serial killer?

    Just a few examples who come to mind.

    Apologies if redundant – haven’t read all the comments.

  • I grew up in a Catholic Boarding School, which is exactly why I became a non-believer. When I ended up moving to America and seeing how much religious fervor there is here, I became an agnostic… And I’m reminded on a daily basis that I made the right choice.

  • “Can you really imagine a Christian, a believing Christian, somebody who had accepted Christ, performing the way these two killers did at Columbine High School?”

    As a matter of fact, I can imagine just such a thing. I can imagine the pious frauds of America’s earlier years murdering milions of American Indians freely and then crossing themselves in church on Sunday. I can imagine Hiltler’s christian goons shoving Jews, homosexuals, and the physically handicapped into the gas chamber all the while pondering Der Fuhrer’s dictum on the need for a “believing people”. I can imagine the Slavic christian ghouls as they destroy the lives of Muslim men, women, and children in the republics of the former Yugoslavia.

    The trouble with shitheads like Novak is that they

    DON”T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT!

  • These kinds of Shootings are only done by less than 1 thousandth of one percent of Americans. That’s hardly a sign of widespread depravity and supposed “moral decline.”

    One of the most peaceful societies on earth is the Netherlands, which is quite secular and even has legalized pot and prostitution. And one of the most violent is the Middle East, where religion dominates. Gotta love that “old time religion”

    I don’t mean to imply that religion causes violence. But, people tend to get the most religious when society doesn’t seem to works so well. Peace, success, and material progress tends to breed a less religious population. Sometimes, though, domination by religion can impede progress and undermine liberty, and incite violence. A vicious cycle of sorts.

  • I think the shooting was caused by the people who made up global warming. I just need to figure out how……

    By the way, for all of you claiming Buddhism is all soft and fuzzy, one side of the civil war in Sri Lanka is Buddhist. The problem isn’t any one religion, it’s extremism.

  • It’s not the religion, it’s the person.

    In the head of your everyday sane person religion can be a good thing (I say this as an atheist) or at least not bad.

    In the head of a psychopath all that teaching about sin and retribution can push them over the edge.

  • Kindly note Novak’s modifier of BELIEVING Christians never killing innocents, unlike those filthy pretend Christians in the IRA.

    May I suggest a tribunal to decide who true Christians are and who can be designated as diet-Coke-Christians?

    To save time and tax money, we might instead log on to a reputable campaign contributions site and enter “Bush” in the search engine. Close enough.

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