Now that I'm not tired, I can explain the last post more coherently. It was a cohesive thought until blogger ate half of it.

We live in an extremely Chrisitian community. There are about 30 various Chrisitian churches in this town of 10K, incuding a fair number of them fundamentalist or conservative Christians. The Christian culture is very strong here, almost overwhelming. The court house on the square downtown plays music year round; in December that music is Christmas carols, not just secular ones, but also religious ones. There was a huge upset a few years ago because someone complained about the fact that a monument to the ten commandments was in a public park. The city sponsors an Easter Egg hunt. This is a very Christian town.

Compounding this is the fact that the homeschooling community here is dominated by conservative Christians. I'm talking about the kind of Christians who feel that Catholics and Lutherans aren't real Christians (not just my impression, but that of some Catholics and Lutherans I know too). We have our core group of homeschooling friends, but we cautiously guard our religious beliefs from others in this community. We were asked to stop attending a dance class when I simply let it be known that we were not Christian. We left our 4-H group because it was overtly Christian. Abigail came back from a Girl Scout Thinking Day activity having learned "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands". When Isabella joined Daisy Scouts, I checked with the leader if they did any religious content, and was told "well, this is a Christian organization". NO, according to Girl Scouts International IT IS NOT.

So, while members of the conservative Christian community may claim they are under attack, that their values and beliefs are being banished from our society, from the perspective of someone outside of the mainstream, I can say it's not true. The Christian culture is everywhere in our society, from the obsessive coverage of the Pope issues (would it be covered so much if it where the Dali Lama or a Muslim leader?) down to the way that store clerks assume they should wish me a Happy Easter and people think I'm happy to hear "I'm praying for you" (when I haven't asked them to) or have them tell me "Jesus Bless You".

Honestly, I wouldn't even mind these biases so much if there even the slightest bit of fair trade on this. If the media covered other religions as obsessively as Christianity. If conservative Christians could accept that other people have a right to believe in other religions. If the courthouse here played traditional Jewish songs around Passover, Islamic ones for Ramadan, etc. If people who felt it was okay to share their religion with me wouldn't judge my family for being Pagan, wouldn't ostracisize us due to their unknown biases.