Defining Secular

Apparently, being secular is okay as long as it doesn’t mean “non-religious” or “absence of religion”.

---

Recently, a member made a plea to a secular homeschooling group for help finding or starting a group in her area that didn’t have religion as the focus. I’ve been a member of the group for oh, maybe a year or so. Mostly the list has been pretty tame – the typical curriculum questions and general homeschooling talk. But this topic really opened up a can or worms. Dozens of members posted about their own struggle to find a decent homeschooling group.

The homeschooling world is full of groups that are religious in nature. These range from the “oh, a few bible quotes are fine” to the ones who require a statement of faith, which is meant to be divisive and exclusionary. [In other words to weed out all the non-believers and also any believers who happened to be sympathetic to homosexuals, evolution, women's rights, environmentalism, freedom of religious choice, etc.] Most of us on the list have struggled to find a group that didn’t operate from this point of view.

The conversation of the group got intense as people found similarities in their experiences and noted the common problems they’d encountered. No one bashed anyone else and all messages were written from an “I” perspective, as in “I think… I feel…”. Most people just shared personal experiences.

Yet before long a few people came out of lurker mode to say they were feeling “repressed” and “harassed”. Not surprisingly, these were the people who had deeply held religious beliefs.

One might ask why religious persons were on a secular list, and the answer lies in how people think of the term ’secular’. Some people join because they aren’t homeschooling for religious reasons – even if they are a religious family. They aren’t homeschooling as a way to “train up” their child in the way of god as the fundamentalist homeschoolers are, so they feel out of place in those circles (where biblical words are used for spelling lists and even the math books have religious stories). These people seek out a secular group because the academic education of their children isn’t religiously focused.

However, also on this group are people who define secular in a much wider sense. These are folks who are non-religious in general, not just in homeschooling but in their lifestyle. They might be atheists, humanists, or defy labels altogether, but they aren’t religious people. Many might even feel anti-religious. They join a secular homeschooling list because they want to be in a group with other non-religious homeschoolers.

So there is the disconnect and it explains why several people – who weren’t even participating in the discussion, just reading along silently – got their feathers ruffled when the non-religious (secular) homeschoolers engaged in a discussion about how they struggled to find a non-religious (secular) group and to raise their children in a non-religious (secular) environment. But it’s all in the way people choose to define ’secular’. Those who choose to be non-religious in only one aspect of their life (education) tend to find it annoying (or take it personal) that other people don’t separate their lifestyle and philosophical views from academics as well.

One person wrote, “I came here to talk homeschooling and now I feel like I have to defend my beliefs.”

Why he felt this way is a mystery. No one bashed his views or said, “your beliefs are ridiculous.” In fact he hadn’t participated in the discussion or posted about his beliefs, so there was no opportunity for anyone to question them. The discussion was mainly people sharing their own experiences and many of those happened to be people searching for a way to live non-religiously. Therein lies the problem apparently.

A mom mentioned that in regards to her children, she approached religious stories from a mythical viewpoint. Another mom spoke up and asked the first mom to please not teach her kids that these stories and beliefs are “myths and lies”. No one had called her beliefs “lies” although I’m sure many people on the list were of that opinion. However, she felt attacked and insulted simply because someone mentioned an alternative way of looking at religion.

She went on to say, “I’ll teach my kids not to think you’ll burn in hell if you’ll teach your kids not to think we’re idiots who believe in a bunch of hooey.”

I think I see the point she was trying to make but she’s pushing her beliefs on other people, and what gets me is that she feels this is fair and that’s she’s being respectful of other people’s choices. It’s one thing to ask for tolerance, but it’s an entire different ballgame to demand that tolerance equals agreement. It’s not her place to insist other parents not view religious beliefs as mythical. They are myths! Religious people choose to believe in the myths and see them as real. She has completely out of line asking someone else to raise their children to believe the same.

A third mom responded with the voice of reason. She wrote: “If a person asked my son about Noah’s Ark, he would say it is a myth. Would he be expected to simply agree, rather than share his view? I have also taught my kids there are many different beliefs, which is fine if people don’t try to push them. I would not tell them to lie about theirs. If my son said he believes the Bible is myth and lies, that is his opinion. He would have every right to make that statement. It has to work both ways!

In order to ensure my kids don’t think religious beliefs are “a bunch of hooey” I would essentially have to push this woman’s beliefs on them, to teach her myths as being real and true. That’s what she’s asking and although she means well and probably has no idea of what she’s asking (or does and feels its perfectly reasonable), it’s still extremely arrogant. It’s people like this who think they are being respectful and tolerant and just can’t understand why other people don’t see it their way.

Another person wrote, “I feel as if I’m being told I have to live a faithless life – and isn’t that a religion in itself?”

Oh, for crying out loud! The very essence of religion is faith – something accepted or believed despite lack of evidence or proof (or even evidence to the contrary). How in the world can someone equate being faithless with being religious?

I have a really hard time listening with any amount of respect when Christians and other majority religious groups claim to be repressed and harassed. All it takes is for one person to mention they aren’t religious or to say they view religious stories as mythical, and certain religious people will automatically feel attacked and defensive.

It seems the biggest issue is that these people tread into areas where it’s obviously clear that their views and beliefs are not going to be catered to. But they nonetheless want special treatment simply because of their faith. They expect their views to be upheld and supported, to not have their beliefs questioned and for everyone to show “respect” by not mentioning alternative ways of living and thinking.