To the Editor,
To be clear, as an atheist, I regard evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity as repugnant for trying to hold on to ideas that should have died out at the end of the Bronze Age.
So, it is galling to me to admit that the evangelical mother complaining about Indigenous smudging and prayer has a point. No religion should be taught in school unless, perhaps, in a course of comparative superstitions.
If for good reason in a pluralistic society we no longer teach Christianity in public school and allow prayers to that imaginary sky daddy, we should not be teaching the beliefs of the aboriginal culture as such practices are a primitive form of religion. Before the Europeans arrived, the native culture was still in the Stone Age and that is a fact that will not make the political correctness mob happy with me.
Beyond this situation of smudging in school either pro or con, I am not a supporter of reconciliation for this reason. I am a lifelong supporter of equality in Canada no matter how long one’s ancestors have been here. I believe in equal rights for all, not special rights and privileges for any one ethnic group.
I just wish there was a way that I could also bring charges of religious indoctrination against any parent who sends their kids to Sunday School or worse, private Christian schools, and thus steal away the rights of those kids to make their own decisions about whether to believe or not believe in the supernatural and magic.
Robert T. Rock,
Mission City, BC