OPINION

Hey everyone! If you happened to catch the last edition of The Hook, you would remember that Mimi Lamarre conducted an interview between Gus Benson and Romberg York about religion. Adele and I wanted to do something similar, except this time involving freshmen and more religious variation. Special thanks to our participants and their willingness to open up about their faith! Enjoy :)

 

Were you raised religious, non-religious, or somewhere in between? How did this shape your current religious belief?

 

Arjun: “I was raised very religious. My mom is more religious than my dad,  and I guess it kind of impacted my reasoning as to why things happen. I definitely look towards God for meaning in life."

 

Judson: “I was raised very religious; my mom, dad, and step dad are all religious. We go to church every Sunday, so it’s just become a part of my everyday life.”

 

Cal: “I was raised as a Christian. I went to church every Sunday and Sunday school. But, it wasn’t as much me wanting to go: my parents always went, so I just went with them. It shaped my beliefs because it's given me ideas and things to think about while wondering about some sort of higher being.”

 

Lilah Peck: “I believe that I was raised very modern; my parents didn’t have any specific view, they didn’t fall into any specific category of Judaism. As I grew older, my parents got divorced and my mom adopted what she calls "conservative Judaism." My dad became orthodox, meaning that he observes almost all of the Jewish practices. This is interesting for me because I get to see an orthodox Jew's daily life: it impacts what he wears, what he eats, even where he goes. On the other hand, I then see my mom, whose faith doesn't impact her nearly as much. So, for me I don’t have any particular identification on where I fall on the spectrum of Judaism."

 

Do you believe that religion is fact, belief or neither?

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Arjun: “I believe that religion is belief. If you think about it from a historical standpoint, people from different places of the world believe different things, and there is no way that all of those religions can be solely facts.”

 

Judson: “I mean… yeah, its belief. The way I follow my faith, though, I feel like it is facts that I believe in.”

 

Cal: “I think that religion is based on belief, but a lot of facts are derived from faith because some people consider the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah as facts. But, it is all based on belief.”

 

Lilah: “So, I believe that it depends on the person. Obviously, that's not a black and white answer but for my dad, religion is fact. And for my mom who’s obviously conservative and less religious, is belief. So, for me I think it's somewhere in between and at one point your belief becomes your fact regardless of if that fact has evidence or whatever, if you believe in it strongly enough and you have faith in that system strongly enough then it will be your truth and your fact. I think religion is about finding your own truth.”

 

What thoughts and questions do you have about each other’s belief system?

 

Cal: “Well I know quite a lot about Christianity with Juddy, but I’m not really sure about Sikhism. Arjun, could you give me a little info?”

 

Judson: “Yeah we're yet to cover that in world history…”

 

Arjun: “The idea is that it is monotheistic, so it is belief in one god. It was developed kind of off of Hinduism because our prophets sought to find a deeper understanding because a lot of Hindu beliefs, at least during the time, did not offer a deeper explanation. The prophets also developed Sikhism in order to counter the growing popularity of Islam. We keep our hair for purity: that’s why I haven’t shaved and I haven’t cut my hair yet. We are supposed to pray every day and we basically have the equivalent of the Bible or Qur’an called the Guru Granth Sahib which is 2,000 pages and we are supposed to finish it by the end of the year. So, you start it at the beginning and finish it by the end of the year.”

 

Arjun: “Cal, how did you develop into your agnostic ways?”

 

Cal: In church, I always heard the stories and they all just seemed a little made up to me. And in my life, I’ve seen instances where it seems like there has been some sort of religious higher presence in our world, but Christianity, for me, doesn’t perfectly explain what is goin' on up there. There definitely is some sort of higher power messing around up there, I'm just not sure exactly what it is.”

 

After being in WHI, did your extent of faith change after developing a further understanding of religious history?

 

Cal: “I’ll start this one off. If anything, World History just added to my agnostic-ism. I just realized that there is so many different faiths and beliefs all throughout the world, and like Arjun said earlier, it’s not possible for all of them to be true. But I do believe that for all of these people to somehow believe in some sort of religious existence in our earth is proof that there is some sort of higher power."

 

Lilah: “I definitely do understand other faiths better; however, I can’t say that I understand them fully and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say that! This year didn’t change me as a Jew because my Jewish education is very deep, maybe even unusually deep for my age one would say, I think many of the Jewish people in our grade (and no offense to them) don’t read all these things and go to all of these lectures because they are not as passionate as I am. I have always been rather educated and committed, and I think that this unit was less of me learning about my own religion and more of me getting to enjoy watching my peers learn about it.”

 

Judson: “I learned more about other religions, but my faith and my own religion is unfazed. Like, it’s here to stay so world history’s not gonna change my mind in that sort of way. But like, it’s good to know how other people believe.”

 

Arjun: “My knowledge of other religions and how they intercommunicate and interact has definitely grown. But to the extent of my own religious belief, it has probably not been altered. I understand now how, at least, other religions are interconnected, as you can see with Islam and Christianity and Judaism, but I don’t think that’s changed my view of my own faith.”

 

Have you ever attended a service of another faith, if so, what did you think? If not, would you be open to doing this?

 

Arjun: “My mom is very religious, so if she by chance was somewhere and they don’t have a temple, she’ll go to a church or a synagogue. She believes that a House of God is a House of God, that God is in the place. If the chance to go to church was given to me, I wouldn’t mind and I probably would take pleasure in doing so. {Does she go to a church service or just to go pray in a church?} I feel like she’s walked in on a church service before, but she hasn’t intentionally planned to go to one. But mostly she’ll just go to pray in a church if there’s not a temple.”

 

Cal: “I’ve been to some bar and bat mitzvahs, and those were interesting to see because like Christianity they have the Old Testament, but they also have all that Hebrew chanting. It was something I’ve never seen before. It was just eye-opening. Also, once I went to my friend’s Catholic church service and even that was different because before you walked into the pews you had to kneel and do a cross over your body with water. And that was kind of new to me.”

 

Judson: “Let’s see, I’ve been to a bar mitzvah after party, but I’ve never been to a bar mitzvah service. I’m- what am I- I’m Methodist, so I’m Protestant, and I’ve been to Catholic services before and they seem pretty strict so I’m content where I am. But I’d be open to go to another religious service just to see how people do their thing.”

 

Lilah: “So, I have never attended a service of another faith partially because in more religious Judaism it is not necessarily frowned upon to enter someone else’s house of worship, but in more orthodox circles doing so is not looked upon lightly. Which makes sense, but I don’t know how I feel about this particular rule. Why could you not go to someone else's house of worship just to observe? I would be open to it, but I don’t know how comfortable I would be with it simply because of this rule. I'm actually currently in a show being performed in a church. Me and my dad had a conversation about whether he can go to the show due to his own faith. I won’t be offended if he can’t go, but it’s interesting because it might stop him from being able to go."

 

How does your religion impact you on a personal level? Describe the extent of your faith or lack thereof in everyday situations. Ex: taking time out of the day to pray, going to services, reading faith-based material, etc.

 

Cal: “As an agnostic person, when I’m scared or want something I don’t really know who to pray to. So sometimes half-joking in my head I’ll just throw up a prayer to someone random. Sometimes, when I go hunting I send up a prayer to Artemis, saying "Please let me get a deer." And if I’m scared, I'm like, "Yo, if there is anyone out there, like, can you help me out?” It's partially as a joke, but it's also a pretty personal thing. That being said, when I’m hunting or outdoors, I see nature and I think that there’s just no way that all this beauty could have just happened somehow. I think that someone, something up there has made this for us to enjoy.”

 

Arjun: “Religion dictates a pretty large portion of my life. I pray every morning, I go to temple on Sundays if I can. When I was two or three years old, my mom made me make my own decision about my religion by asking, “Do you want to keep your hair?”  I decided that I really did want to. Every morning I go to our little prayer room and I do a quick prayer. And even in my signature I have Punjabi script that means "God is one," it's become a sort of habit. Our main holidays are our Prophets’ birthdays and Diwali is a major day for us. Sikhism was a small thing until it became noticed by all of India, when our Prophet was able to get the king to sit with him with all the poor people and have dinner instead of sitting in some royal place. And, to me, that was a big influential movement.”

 

Lilah: “My religion impacts me on personal level immensely. I use it as a way to guide my values and personal decisions,  like how I treat people and how I define what is right and wrong. For me it’s a way of writing a moral code. On a more specific scale, I don’t go to synagogue frequently only really when my dad wants me to.I feel like I can connect to God anywhere and frequently that means nature not a building. A big part of Judaism for me is finding God in everyday life. It helps me to realize that everything is going to be okay when it feels like it won’t and to be grateful for when things are going well. My favorite “religious” phrase is “This too shall pass." I think about that a lot when I’m down to know I can push through but also when I’m happy to remind myself to appreciate what’s in front of me.”

 

As Lilah, Arjun, Cal, and Judson opened Adele and I up to their own faiths, we hope you all also got to experience their faith (or lack thereof) in both a cultural and religious sense. Leading this interview helped us to see the religious depth of our school's melting pot, and the environment we have created as students and faculty to allow people to express themselves freely. Though we conduct ourselves as a secular institution and allow students to worship whomever or whatever they please, there is always room for improvement. Adele and I hope you all enjoyed this interview as much as we did conducting it!

-Ellie and Adele