This week I've been thinking a fair bit about tolerance and respect. This has mainly been specifically about religion and religious views. This all came out of a conversation I was having with Chrissi at the tail of the weekend.
I thought a decent amount about the politics - the irony of the contrast between separation of church and state and the opposite in the UK (with the Queen being the head of state and the head of the church, there are bishops sitting in the House of Lords, CoE schools are standard and we still have 'D.F.' on our coins as a fair indication of the relative difference). Yet here people are a lot more accepting or non-caring about the belief of others. It's considerably less judgemental.
The main thing that came out of it, however, was a gratitude to my friends for despite being mostly church-orientated (this great phrase courtesy of my Dad - 'religious', 'devout' and similar all have oddly sinister undertones!) - despite being church-orientated, none have really questioned, challenged or judged my own very different beliefs. This, I get the feeling, is rare, so I'm appreciative of that.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
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2 comments:
Church-oriented sounds like people terrified of existing labels and futilely trying to distance themselves from those OTHER people. I'm not fat, I'm big-boned.
On an entirely unevangelistic note, this post has reminded me of that book I was going to lend you. Its called 'Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?: A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity'. Catchy, no?
I'll throw in some Bad Religion CDs for good measure too...
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