In God We Trust?
On April 10, a group of teens gathered at The Spokesman-Review offices to talk about religion. The discussion was moderated by Our Generation editor Laura Crooks. Panel members were: Jack Nelson, Josh Silverstein, Kathy Bula, Brynn Potts, Scott Webb and Marian Thorpe. Here is an excerpt of the discussion. A transcript of the entire discussion can be found at http://ourgen.spokane.net
Q: What does religion mean to you?
Kathy Bula: To me spirituality is what you believe and religion is how you bring it forth into something concrete and how you live your life according to your beliefs.
Scott Webb: Everyone interprets it differently. Religion is a way you feel inside.
Jack Nelson: I think religion is what you believe. It holds your universe together. It answers a lot of questions to you about the world.
Josh Silverstein: Religion, at least, in its role in society is the organization of various people with similar beliefs into a singular entity in which they can find companionship.
Marian Thorpe: For me, religion is spirituality. I enjoy the companionship of church, of my religious community, but for me religion is more spiritual and it is more individual.
Q. Is religion something that was taught to you or is it something that you have found yourself?
Brynn: For me it was something I found on my own. When I was a little kid, I went to Bible school every Sunday. I went to church every Sunday. It was just part of my lifestyle. Then one day I started to think about it - it was like “I don’t know what I believe. I go to church but I don’t know if I really believe what they are telling me.” The more I thought about it, I started searching for what I really believe. So my beliefs and spirituality are something I came up with on my own, and morals I picked out are definitely influenced by my church, but not a carbon copy of what my church believes.
Josh: Religion is something that is taught to you in terms of a system of beliefs and just different rules. Spirituality you have to find yourself. What you actually believe you have to figure that out for yourself. For instance, I didn’t keep kosher about three years ago and now I do. And that was something that no matter how many times I was told I could do whatever - I could go to McDonald’s and have a cheeseburger if no one was there to tell me not to - but then as part of my spirituality, something that I came about myself, realizing that I wanted to keep kosher.
Scott: The religion can be taught but it is your choice on which path you want to choose. No one can force spirituality on you.
Jack: I agree. I kind of came about it on my own. I did go to church and did what I was taught but I wasn’t sure I believed it either. I didn’t know what exactly I believed so I stepped back and I thought about it. I questioned my religion and asked myself one question: “What if we created God so we wouldn’t feel so alone.” I thought that was probably the case but then I decided that if we believe in something collectively strongly enough it does become true.
Scott: They have proven that people cannot live without love and with love comes hope and so I thought that people made a god to believe in so that they could have an organization so that other people could come and feel love.
Kathy: Christians have a tendency to be very judgmental because it seems the more conviction that they have that they are right, the more they think that everyone else should believe the same thing. And not just non-Christians or homosexuals or whatever the target is at the time but even within a church. You see all this clashing. For myself, I don’t currently attend church because I think spirituality should be based around love and not clashing and hate.
Brynn: I agree with that. That’s my biggest problem with organized religions is that a lot of them tend to discriminate against other religions and it seems so odd because religion is what I consider to be the teachings of God. One of the major themes in the Bible that I noticed was God wants you to love everyone. Love one another. Love your enemies as you love yourself and we are all supposed to not judge. Some of the most religious people I know are the most judgmental and I always find that quiet interesting.
Marian: You see that not only in Christianity but in Judaism as well. The not getting along. … And I think teenagers can fall into the trap of not listening to other people’s convictions and not taking them on the same level as their own. Teenagers are just learning what they believe and developing their own spirituality and so often times they can be insecure about their spirituality and feel the need to put down others and declare that theirs is the right one.
Scott: I have a friend and she is a Jehovah witness and she follows what her parents tell her to. … I kind of thinks that’s wrong. Your family, your parents can’t force you to believe what they believe because it’s a personal choice. All these kids are following in their parents footsteps because they are sort of forced to or they’ll get in trouble is totally wrong.
Kathy: It doesn’t last forever though. Because those people invariably either question their belief and decide that its’ wrong or decide that it’s right. How many adults went to parochial school when they were young and now totally shun anything to do with religion at all or at least Catholicism. It’s not just Catholicism where that happens. I think whether or not you examine your spirituality in your teen years you will somewhere down the line.
Q. Is it important for you to socialize with people who have similar beliefs?
Scott: I don’t hang out with people because of my religion. It has no effect. I hang out with my friends because I have similar interests with them, something in common.
Jack: Neither do I. I hang out with them because they are my friends. One of my friends is Mormon, one is Jewish, (one is) Protestant. I am a Christian.
Josh: I don’t think my religion restricts who I hang out with. Certainly at school most of the people I hang out with aren’t Jews because there just aren’t very many. Most of my really good friends are Jewish and I think that’s because we have similar beliefs. That’s part of why we are such good friends. But religion does provide a certain link that you don’t necessarily find everywhere.
Marian: Certainly your friends are people that have similar likes and similar beliefs and religion can play a part in that but so do other things like hobbies, and lots of things.
Kathy: Personally if I wanted to I couldn’t choose my group of friends based on people who believe like me. I just try to make it a non-issue with my friends and I have friends of all religions.
Brynn: It’s not an issue with me at all because religion plays very little in who my friends are. My friends are usually people who are fairly open-minded but it has more to do with their personality than their religion.
Marian: You limit yourself so much if you only hang out with people who are the same religion. It’s kind of boring.
Brynn: It’s a type of discrimination.
Josh: Diversity is very important, but I’ll admit it, I like Jews. I go to these Jewish conventions and stuff. It’s an international convention where there are thousands of Jews and it’s really cool - there’s not a lot of us in Spokane so it’s really cool to be with that many that are of the same religion. But at the same time, I would not want to be only with Jews because that would be a very narrow-minded perspective.
Jack: Nothing outrages me more than when you cross that line, when you try to influence your beliefs on others. Like one of my friends is Mormon and if he started influencing his beliefs on me that’s the point for me.
Brynn: The ultimate turnoff is to have someone try to force their beliefs on you.
Scott: I think maybe some people try to push their religion on other people because they might be insecure about it so they want to get it approved by their friends.
Josh: It’s like whenever more people are Jews, it’s like “go Jews” but at the same time everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. One of the main problems I have with Christianity is the plasticization thing. It can be so in your face that you just want to slap them, and I think that’s where it starts to go too far. That’s what leads to so called holy wars.
Q. What do you think about school prayer?
Marian: I heard this second hand but this school prayer issue came before the Supreme Court recently in Texas about prayer before football games and the commentator on the radio said, “Well, some feel that diversity is good” and then they switched to a Christian saying, “I don’t see anything wrong with a Mormon or a Jew saying a prayer to Jesus.” This is not tolerance. If we tolerate one type of prayer, as they seem to be doing in Texas, they need to tolerate others’ prayers too. For me I think it is just safest to let it be after school or before school not in school.
Brynn: We don’t have prayer over the loud speaker at school and I agree with that. I don’t think it should be a public thing. But like the football team in the locker room, getting ready for a game they’ll say a personal prayer and choose one of the people on the team to lead them in prayer but it’s a personal choice that everyone on the team made. I think that’s OK. But to make it a public thing over the loud speaker is taking it too far.
Jack: If they come over the loud speaker asking you to stand up and pray and if you don’t want to, then don’t. Close your ears. If you come to a football game and they ask you to stand and you don’t want to, then sit down.
Josh: There’s a difference between a moment of silence and “let’s all pray to Jesus.” There is nothing wrong with a moment of silence.
Scott: Pray on your own time. Make it an individual thing. Don’t announce that you are praying.
Kathy: If you are forcing your religion on someone then you’re not separating between church and state. If you are allowing it, that’s debatable. But if you are denying it then you are denying them freedom of religion as well as freedom of speech. … It’s going to happen anyway. People are going to gather around and pray or gather around and talk about God anyway. I think it’s kind of silly if the school thinks they have the power to control that.
Q. If there was one thing you could change about organized religion what would it be?
Scott: I’d try to get people not to push religion on their kids. It’s your own belief and if you want to organize and get with other people who believe in the same context as you that’s great but try to keep it in perspective to what you believe in and don’t push it on other people.
Josh: I would like to change the intolerance that has occurred and does occur because of organized religion and differences that people can’t accept. Have people be tolerant.
Kathy: I’d like to change the judgmental attitudes of people.