Faith Is Not Above Criticism and Neither Is Your Music
Joseph Roberts
Issue date: 2/8/10 Section: Perspectives
It's not that I think religious groups don't have a right to proselytize. When I was a boy, I used to invite my friends on the playground to come to Sunday school or youth activities. If they said no, well, then the answer was no, and we went back to playing basketball. Other groups on campus use this same approach; they pass out juice, coffee, food or invitations to come eat virtually free meals at their facilities. If you're lucky, they might even throw in a Christian-side-hug. All of this is done fairly regularly, and it's not a nuisance. I can take the juice, eat the cheap food, never make it to a single Bible study, and they won't make a big deal out of it at all. They're exercising their First amendment rights and earning brownie points with their God, and I'm exercising my digestive organs with a certain satisfaction; win-win situation for Joseph.
But these straight edge kids on "the porch" are different. If you were going to Starbucks to study, read or meet up with friends, then you have to grit your teeth, talk over them or relocate. It's also very insulting to a great many of us who do not believe that morality and ethics require that you defer your moral choices to a celestial, supervisory agent; to those of us who do not think that we need to be saved; to those who have a healthy amount of self-esteem and do not seek a "point" to our lives through an external source; to those of us who already feel loved by our friends and family and, therefore, do not succumb to religion for emotional reasons.
There are plenty of people on our campus who in fact do believe that they're dirty sinners, that they need God's grace and counsel, and that God likes to hear songs that remind him of his inherent attributes, but they worship in the privacy of their churches. If they didn't, I'd go after them, too, but they keep to themselves. It's their business.
Look, I know that religious groups on campus are in the habit of getting things all their way-something, which is true throughout our society. But if you take the time to notice any study of religiosity over the last 10 years, you would see that the percentage of Americans who select "non-religious" with polling agencies like Gallup and Pew Research has doubled. The "new-atheism" or neo-atheism is a response to theocratic bullying and high-handed assumption making. That's not to say that non-religious means atheist, but the two definitely correlate. People are tired of having it assumed of them by total strangers that they are either Christian or sympathetic to Christianity or they have reserves of respect for the competing claims of monotheisms.
But these straight edge kids on "the porch" are different. If you were going to Starbucks to study, read or meet up with friends, then you have to grit your teeth, talk over them or relocate. It's also very insulting to a great many of us who do not believe that morality and ethics require that you defer your moral choices to a celestial, supervisory agent; to those of us who do not think that we need to be saved; to those who have a healthy amount of self-esteem and do not seek a "point" to our lives through an external source; to those of us who already feel loved by our friends and family and, therefore, do not succumb to religion for emotional reasons.
There are plenty of people on our campus who in fact do believe that they're dirty sinners, that they need God's grace and counsel, and that God likes to hear songs that remind him of his inherent attributes, but they worship in the privacy of their churches. If they didn't, I'd go after them, too, but they keep to themselves. It's their business.
Look, I know that religious groups on campus are in the habit of getting things all their way-something, which is true throughout our society. But if you take the time to notice any study of religiosity over the last 10 years, you would see that the percentage of Americans who select "non-religious" with polling agencies like Gallup and Pew Research has doubled. The "new-atheism" or neo-atheism is a response to theocratic bullying and high-handed assumption making. That's not to say that non-religious means atheist, but the two definitely correlate. People are tired of having it assumed of them by total strangers that they are either Christian or sympathetic to Christianity or they have reserves of respect for the competing claims of monotheisms.
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