How Can We Make This Fun?
I read this article the other day, and the final sentence leapt out at me. Apparently, the gentleman around whom the article centres, has urged institutions who share his beliefs "...to become more accessible to the young, for faith leaders to make religion fun and put more emphasis on teaching religious ethics."
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It brought back memories of groovy young clerics who attempted to make religion fun in the make love, not war days of forty, or so, years ago. I don't think they were very successful - singing happy-clappy songs can be vaguely fun, but it's all those DOs and DON'Ts which always seem to be a stumbling block in the fun stakes. And with DOs and DON'Ts which are based on the immutable, absolute truth, there's not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to making them fun, when they are plainly not.
Together with the happy-clappy songs, the tactic seemed to be simply to not mention the bits which are not fun, at least not until later when the poor unsuspecting victims of all the smiles were already ensnared, by which time it was much more difficult to extricate themselves. However, the figures for religious affiliation in the UK, over the last forty years, suggest that, as a strategy for arresting the decline in interest amongst the young, making religion fun was a dismal failure.
It's not that surprising, really. Religion never has been about fun. It's been about unconditionally obeying instructions, and, as far as I can see, it still is. The fact that the instructions are supposed to come from a god doesn't make them fun. And the fact that some things, which seem and feel like fun, are the subject of instructions which prohibit them doesn't add to the gaiety.
I suppose it's an example of that saying "some people never learn"? But perhaps that's a little unfair to the man featured in the article I linked to above. After all, he's probably not had direct experience of the failures associated with previous attempts to make religion fun. For Ahtsham Ali, a cleric and the Prison Service's Muslim advisor, it probably feels like a bright new idea which is sorely needed in view of the numbers of young men in UK prisons who are considered, at least by him, to be Muslims.
It does make me wonder what they talk about at those interfaith dialogue meetings. Perhaps, assuming he attends, he never thought to mention his idea, and, consequently, was not given the benefit of the experience of the now aging groovy clerics whose efforts in the last century showed how ineffectual such initiatives tend to be.
But really, if he read his own words with some detachment, he should be able to see that making religion fun and putting more emphasis on teaching religious ethics, are two concepts which, when put together, will surely end in tears.
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