Were you taught Religious Studies at school?

[Jodah]

Not the actual religious aspects but we did delve into the historical points. Like when they were founded, main players both within the religion itself (IE Jesus, Allah, Buddha) and those that teach it (IE Various Popes, priests, etc), and some historical events caused by or involving said religions (Crusades, Jihad, etc.)

We probably spent more time on mythology, however. I remember at least one English section and one history section that involved Greek and Roman mythology.

I did take a philosophy course in college that went into religion from a moral point of view. Much of which was silly. You don't need religion to be a good person and to say you do implies you can only do what someone else tells you is a good idea. But here I am rambling...

Edit: I'm an American and was raised Catholic though I now consider myself Agnostic.

 

[Syzygy23]

In years 6 and 7 I did scripture. I went to a public primary school and the course was optional. The program wasn't about Christianity, it was endorsing it. It was a fun thing we did once a week that was more about teaching us to be good people than it was about preaching to us.

The teacher was very engaging, he made learning about the bible genuinely fun. He didn't use any cheesy, watered down cartoons of bible stories. When whenever he explained anything to us it was done in a way that an 11 year could relate to. A great example was when he told us about God's love for us by using parts of Finding Nemo. I learned a lot from doing that class.

I'm not religious and never really have been. My obsession with paleontology from a young age ruined that. I enjoyed doing the religious studies though, the only people that didn't participate in it were the Jehovah's Witness children.

Why would paleontology ruin your religious beliefs?

As for me, I live in Washington, a very much "Blue" state in the US, i.e. high concentration of democrats, and by that extension so-called "Liberals". (Kind of a broad brush to paint people with, but they all tend to the same way of thinking in my experience)

Seperation of church and state was strictly enforced. I got my Bible learnin' in Sunday School and my standard education in Hell... er, High School. Sorry, I get them confused sometimes!

Joking aside, I did go full atheist in high school. Found myself back in the Christian pool two years into college after I had a chance to meet with and talk to several of my childhood heroes. Realized most of my problems with my faith were rooted in the Old Testament, and I was shown to have been ignorant of a part in the New Testament where Jesus himself denounced the Old Testament as outdated and wrong.

Hey, if even Jesus himself could point out that the world was NOT made 5000 years ago, then he must've been smarter than I gave him credit for. Perhaps a little TOO smart... almost... Omniscient...

The way I see it, if a human can design and build a desktop computer, why can't there exist someone/thing existing on a larger scale capable of creating universes like our own? It feels arrogant to assume that we know enough to disprove God. Our brightest minds haven't even been able to colonize any planet(oid) other than our birth-planet. It's 2012 and STILL no flying cars or martian terraforming in the works, and I'm told there's no God? It's the blind leading the blind(er).

 

[Akimoto]

My country keeps religion out of the education system. Any teacher or principal caught trying to teach even the mundane aspects of anyone religion can be reported.

In short, nope. Even my Christian kindergarten was careful on the topic of religion.

 

[Wintermoot]

a bit then again in Holland Religion and State are separated.
Although my sister told me they do have bible studies in her Christian school.

 

[GoldenFish]

In my (New Zealand) Primary school (years 1-6) for most years we would have a term (quarter of the school year) of religious studies. These religious studies had to be paid for by the parents for each individual student and were optional (parental consent needed). It pretty much consisted of Christians coming in once a week to discuss Christianity (no other religions). My school was not Christian nor a private school.

 

[loc978]

Northwestern US (yes, there's a huge difference in schooling depending on the State you're from, city or countryside, et cetera), high school through the late 1990s.
Religious education was a part of history classes for me. They were presented in the ways they affected culture, nothing more. We took the separation of church and state seriously.
Now if we could just get religious unions and holidays out of the Federal government, I might be a happy camper.

 

[Iron Mal]

United Kingdom here.

I had to do Religious Studies up through Primary and Secondary school (even got a C in it for my GCSE's) and despite me being an Athiest I did find a lot of the stuff they taught us pretty interesting.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe anything they taught was 'true' or an explanation for the world or morality but that doesn't mean that other people's beliefs can't be fascinating to learn about and understand.

 

[Lizardon]

I went to a Catholic school for Years 2-7 in Australia, where we had a few classes of Religious Education every week. I honestly can't remember most of it. I know we didn't do much reading of the Bible or learning about the history, so I'm not really sure what we spent all that time doing. I do remember it being fairly simple and straightforward stuff.

I just dug out some old report cards. Whatever I did, apparently I was good at it. The teacher wrote "... understanding of the material raised this year has been extraordinary"

 

[Akyho]

Scottish and Scottish education.

From primary 1-4 I remember a stronger religious education mostly focused on Christianity.
We even had our local Parish Minister come in and teach us. Problem is he always sounded preachy. I always ALWAYS challenged him. I have alway been atheist so for a 5 year old to 10 year old keep challenging him must have been something.

In Primary 4 I openly said "Could Mary have been cheating with say Josephs friend. This being ancient middle east she would be stoned to death. So concocted the whole story of god and such to explain why she is pregnant which Joseph being the god fearing man beleaved it. Which sparked a whacky adventure."

I came up with this thought all on my own. Except he was always able to win why? Because he would started talking from the bible and from a pool of knowledge I had not gained yet.

When asked what my faith was i answered "Protestant!" Because I had asked my dad whats not Catholic and he replied Protestant. What I meant was not religious. So from age of 5 I always wanted to say non religious.

However we always butted heads and not in the simple manner of a child arguing with an adult it always was more like an adult arguing with an adult although not as learned.

From 5-7 we were taught more other religions and stuck on Judaism for a long time..

We went to church every holiday and sang hymns and such which I always disliked of course.


When I hut High school we were taught RE from people who had degrees in Religious studies. However they were not christian's and thus didnt try to convert us. Tried to get us to think in our own ways. Which was very engaging. That was only for my first 2 years. Then is was gone.

I feel I have had more of a Religious study in my times since In my own research. I am still atheist and have only became more rooted as an Atheist.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

I went to Roman Catholic school for a while, they didn't like me. I challenged them constantly on the faith and it naturally made them uncomfortable. I didn't accept the fact that whenever I did anything good I should thank the Lord, but when I did something bad it was all my fault and not even a bit of the Devils.

When I got into college however I learned the basics of many religions. Including, Christianity, Muslim, and Judaism. And since it was a public college, I was free to question whatever the hell I wanted.

 

[loudestmute]

In small town America, so that was completely left out of my K-12 years. Took a bunch of electives on the subject when in college (helped a bunch for my minor in Peace and Conflict Studies, more than the geography class). History of Eastern Religions was what it said on the tin, a historical study of anything well outside the judeo-islamo-christian trinity. Religious Studies grazed over everything in general. Religion and Moral Issues was a debate-centric class, frequently organized around finding objective truths on subjective subjects.

Also, the latter two classes shared a die-hard Christian. Who carried a 10 pound bible along with the rest of his course materials. And he would frequently argue with professors. Much to everyone's amusement. Paraphrased exchange follows.

"You're trying to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about? After spending 30 years of my working life studying around the world, working with leaders of every religion on the planet, you're trying to say I might be wrong?"

"No sir, what I'm saying is I know you haven't accepted Jesus as your savior, so I know you're inherently wrong."

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah I had RE lesson too during the early years in High School. Now I say early years because I was pull out of it so I had more special English class (I'm Chinese and my English was bad back then).
I can't remember much of the RE lesson other than I was taught about Heaven and Hell, the differences between Catholic and Protestant and abit of Judaism (baptists).

 

[TheIronRuler]

Were you taught Religious Studies (or Religious Education) at school? And what was included?

To provide some context, include what country you live in (or were schooled in).

For example, I live in the UK. I had RE (Religious Education) lessons at primary school (up to the age of 11) covering the "Big Six" religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Then I had RS (Religious Studies) lessons for the first three years of secondary school. The first year was entirely devoted to Christianity (and was mainly spent reading the Old Testament). The second year covered the other five religions. And the third year was more of a philosophy course.

(To provide a complete picture: My primary school education also included Christian hymns, prayer and Bible readings. But that was kept separate to the RE lessons, and pupils belonging to other religions were exempt. For some reason, coming from a family of atheists wasn't enough to exempt me!)

.
Israel, learned the Hebrew Bible for 11 years. Huzzah.
Though you should bear in mind that the Hebrew language leans on many phrases and words from that damned text, so it actually enriched my vocabulary and understanding of the language.

 

[GeorgW]

Sweden.

We had religious studies years 7-10, with emphasis on studies. Sweden is a very atheist country. 7-9 was in basic education, one year for each of the big 3 religions, with some of the minor ones thrown in from time to time. In our version of high school in year 10, I only studied one semester since I was a science major, but we covered pretty much every big religion in depth.

It was all just studies on the facts of the religion, and how it affects the culture. It's baked into social studies until year 10, where it becomes its own subject. To actually have prayers in school here in Sweden would be met with outrage, we have a strict separation of church and state. I really like it, that way each student can decide for themselves if they want to be religious, and decide intelligently which religion. However, I must say that, especially in the younger generation, there is a lot of stigma attached to being religious. It makes people uncomfortable.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Yup, every year.

From Year 1 to 11, there's no escape!

 

[HardkorSB]

Were you taught Religious Studies (or Religious Education) at school? And what was included?

Yeah.
It was called religious studies but it really was Christian indoctrination, without any mentioning of other religions.
Ever since I remember, I was always making fun of it, pointing out the plot holes in the Bible (my favorite ones were the incest among Adam and Eve's children and Noah's family after the flood, which had to occur in order to keep humanity alive). The grade wasn't really important, you could fail the subject and nothing would happen but I remember when I almost managed to do that, people were looking at me like I was Damien from Omen or something.

To provide some context, include what country you live in (or were schooled in).

I (used to) live in Poland. It's a self proclaimed Christian nation. Within the last 10-20 years (so basically since there's public internet access in Poland), things have started to change. We still have a long way to go though.

It's because of our history.
Poland was forced to convert to Christianity in 966 by Germany. It was either that or war. Ever since then, we were ruled by the Catholic church. During the Middle Ages (later as well, just not to the same extent) priests were the wealthiest and the most powerful people in a large portion of the country.
In 1772, after a long term European conflict, Poland was taken apart by Germany, Russia and Austria. There was no Poland until 1918 when World War I ended. During that time (1772-1918), the Catholic Church was one of the few places where the Polish language, culture and history were preserved and taught. They were also doing it during the Nazi occupation of Poland (which was illegal and punished with death at the time). So in a way, the Catholic church is one of the main reasons why I'm not German.
I guess that creates this reasoning that Christianity saved Poland and that we owe something to the church. The new generation (like a lot of young people all over the world over the last decade) is finally seeing through the bull shit, younger politicians are starting to come out of their closets about their atheism so it's OK, I think.

This brief history lesson was brought to you by iwasboredsoiwrotethis.com

 

[imnot]

England, it was really wierd they where like ,
"God is real jesus is realNow heres what hindus belive, its wrong of course!"
only for one year though after that it was the normal stuff.