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Monday, October 26, 2009

Buddhism, Mormonism, gekh met

Posted by Thomas Shevory at 8:37AM | 6 comments

At My Neighborhood Temple

In my Constitutionalism class, we’ve been covering First Amendment issues related to religion. My students seem especially interested in the topic. Turo tells me that this is because religion was suppressed during the state socialist years. Now, while Mongolia is nominally Buddhist, religious meanings and practices are generally not well-defined or understood.

This makes for some interesting exchanges. For instance, with the Establishment Clause cases involving public school prayer, I had to explain what a prayer is. My students were unfamiliar with the concept of a recited prayer, such as the Lord’s Prayer, which was the subject of Abington School District v. Schempp (1963).

Free Exercise cases offer a tour through some distinctively American religious sects. The first considered whether Congress could ban polygamy in the Utah Territory. (It could.) My students have some familiarity with the plaintiffs, given that there are, by some accounts, 8,000 Mormon missionaries in UB.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses were a party to no less than 40 Supreme Court cases, nearly all of which they won. (You have to admire their persistence.) Arguably, their most significant contribution to constitutional history, West Virginia v. Barnett (1948), confirmed that American school children could forego the Pledge to the Flag in school if it violated their religious convictions. Turo said that the Pledge reminded him of Mongolian state socialism.

Through a discussion of Free Exercise, I was able to introduce my students to Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostal snake handlers, Native American peyote eaters, and various other religious groups and rituals. Teaching this material from a distance, you begin to note that the U.S. is, if nothing else, a land of religious imagination and enthusiasm.

The case that attracted the most discussion was Wisconsin vs. Yoder (1972). Amish parents, after refusing to send their children to school past the eighth grade, were fined by state authorities. My Mongolian students could not seem to get their heads around the idea that a group of people would willingly choose to live without automobiles, television sets, cells phones, and the other accoutrements of modern life. (The population of Mongolia is, by the way, one-third nomadic).

As always there were questions: Did other students in the state still have to attend high school? Yes. Did the decision mean that Amish parents were barred from sending their children to higher grades? No. What if the child of an Amish parent wanted to go to high school, but the parent prevented it? Good question. Not sure. But, as I explained, some interesting cases have involved parents who have tried to withhold potentially life-saving medical treatment from their children on religious grounds.

We were ten minutes over. I'd get back to them.

Tags: Amish, Buddhist, Establishment Clause, First Amendment, Free Exercise, Mormon, Pledge to the Flag, religion, Seventh Day Adventist

6 Comments

11:55 a.m. on October 27, 2009 Betsy Hill said,

Such a refreshing article to read as I plod through another football season in Gainesville, FL...with the UF Gators winning more and more games...and the populace here totally immersed in the culture of American athletic worship...thanks for sharing from the other side of the world...I enjoyed the mental break and knowing how foreign we Americans are to most of the world!

9:51 p.m. on October 27, 2009 Michele Maciejewski said,

Hey Tom,

How are you?! We will miss you this week on the call, but I hope you are enjoying the sabbatical! So, I've been reading your blog and especially like the latest entry about free expression. Considering the bit you previously wrote about the swastika symbol being part of Hindu symbol and Turo confusing it with the yin-yang of the Mogolian flag, it seems that Mongolia has suffered a tremendous amount of oppression, population brainwashing, and loss of cultural identity. This really highlights how much we take our Constitutional rights for granted since many of your students cannot even grasp the concept that religion can impact political issues. And they don't know what prayer is?! I don't subscribe to religion but it's refreshing to know I can pray if I choose to.

7:08 a.m. on October 30, 2009 Tom said,

Hi Becky,
Happy to oblige.

7:15 a.m. on October 30, 2009 Tom said,

Hi Michelle,
I don't want to give the wrong impression.
The reason that Mongolians don't know about
recited prayer is partly because it wasn't
(and isn't) a part of Tibetan Buddhism or
shamanism (the two religious traditions that
have informed Mongolia). Tibetan Buddhists
have prayer wheels, but i'ts the twirling of the
wheel, rather than reciting words, that constitutes
the prayer. Shaminists are likely to engage in
ritualized actions. For example, whenever
Mongolians toast vodka, the person to start
dips their finger into the glass three times and
after each dip flicks vodka: once upward to the
sky, once downward to the earth, and once outward
to the people. This is, I am told, a shamanist
practice.

11:26 a.m. on November 19, 2009 Beth Harris said,

Tom, I enjoyed reading about your adventure teaching "Constitutionalism." Is this a course in U.S. constitutionalism, or is it comparative? I wonder if you use a text or a reader of some kind. I think it would be great for my students to hear about the questions and responses that you are getting. I liked your comment about prayer and explanation of the Buddhist and shamanist rituals not being based on prayer practices. As you probably already know, part of the challenge for Native Americans to gain protection for their "free exercise" rights has been that the law and justices often don't recognize Native American religious beliefs and practices as "religion" because of their ethnocentric focus on Christianity as being the model of real religion.

9:24 a.m. on November 23, 2009 Tom said,

Hi Beth,
In some ways, I think I have learned as much about American culture, or at least my own connections to it, as my student have, from teaching the course. For example, the New York School prayer case involved the Lord's Prayer. I found myself reciting it, or at least the first part of it, to my class as an example of the sort of practice that was at stake. I was raised as a Unitarian, and am quite sure I didn't learn the Lord's Prayer in church. So where did I learn it? Not sure, but it just seems to have been part of the cultural wallpaper when I was growing up. I wouldn't even have recognized that about myself or as part of my status as a denizen of the USA without having the opportunity to teach the class. I have found that insights such as that, some large, some small, have been a constant part of my teaching experience here, something for which I am deeply appreciative.

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