Orders from the Church
The rules of Church and State is give the church less power than is used to have. Back in the middle ages illiterate people would just believe what the church told them, because people had no way of proving them wrong. Book burning is not as common as it was, but in Rob Boston’s article Fanning the Flames: The ‘Golden Age” of American Book Burning discusses a local religious man attempting to get permission from the fire department to hold a public burning of the Harry Potter novels. The fire department refused, so the man used scissors to dismantle the book in front of a crowd instead (Boston 36), but that doesn’t make the man godly. I grew up with a religious background and I found it odd that having the lack of understanding the word meant that you couldn’t be religious or that you weren’t religious enough. The idea of religious groups (36) censoring secular texts gives the church back that ultimate control that they once had, in some sense. The same censoring, Boston explains, happened with southern protestants removing education texts that “mentioned the dreaded e-word (evolution)” (Boston 36). Every year, IUP and other education institutes have banned books week, encouraging students to read and share their favorite banned book. Does teaching subjects like evolution, sex, violence, and fantasy benefit students, if the church used it to teach religious understandings; maybe if the church took this approach they would encourage education to be a tool in religion instead of church member grieved by fear.
Book burning and banning, as we discussed in class, are ways to protest against nonreligious subjects that may contaminate young students and children. When these sources are banned, then the amount of “safe” sources are limited. Boston continues this concern by reminding that with the age of the internet accessing texts is easier than ever (37), but that doesn’t mean that more people are reading. Boston reports a study that found “25 percent of Americans” had not read one book in the past year (37); I am surprised by that number knowing that I read at least seven books a year.
If book banning doesn’t make a difference, since the number of young readers is low, then wouldn’t the church benefit by teaching religious studies with books. The men that wrote the parts of the bible would have been educated men and familiar with texts of the time. The church could do the same, by teaching religious ways with books like Harry Potter, because beyond the fantasy are many qualities that children can benefit from: loyalty, courage, wit, and ambition are a few. Studies have been conducted about young readers do better in school and navigate the world better than children that don’t. The Christian church supposedly practices loving your neighbor and that all have sinned. If this is true, why do some leaders preach that being a Harry Potter reader is as sinful as cheating on your wife? The church pushes people from religion by being judgmentally instead of informative. The reason that this tactic never works is because people catch on, and when they catch on the scam falls apart.
One thing you could do with this journal is talk more about book banning. I think it’d be interesting to explore the idea and how it’s basically not worth it anymore. Since you state in the article about the internet and people being able to find books easily. You may also want to discuss people not reading as much anymore. You also discuss your own religious background, you may want to add your family’s feelings on you reading Harry Potter.
Hi, Katherine! Your journal isn’t really separated into paragraphs so I’ll do my best to be as specific as possible in where I’m suggesting changes. (I would recommend adding some paragraph breaks into your journal if there aren’t any – it can be a bit confusing to read one big block of text).
To start out, your first sentence is a little fragmented, and you may want to refer to it as “the separation of church and state” rather than “rule” as it’s more widely known with the word “separation.” I also think you may want to back up the claim that illiterate people had to rely on the church, as the church is generally associated with literacy (it essentially provided ways to teach people to read through the Bible – http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/literacy/church.htm ). It may be that you’re looking more at a case of bandwagoning than illiteracy.
You should separate the title of the article from the rest of the sentence by putting it between commas and also between quotation marks (example here: http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/quotation-marks/titles-of-books-plays-articles-etc-underline-italicize-use-quotation-marks/ ).
With this sentence, “The idea of religious groups (36) censoring secular texts gives the church back that ultimate control that they once had, in some sense,” I’m not sure what the citation is referring to – it would likely fit best at the end of the sentence, and it should also feature Boston’s name in it if this is the right place for the citation. On the flip side the next cited sentence, “The same censoring, Boston explains, happened with southern protestants removing education texts that “mentioned the dreaded e-word (evolution)” (Boston 36),” does not need Boston’s name in it because you already gave credit to the author earlier in the sentence, so the citation was a bit redundant. (You can see the rules for this on Purdue’s website here: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/ .)
I’m not /positive/ on this, but I think it should be “educational institutes” rather than “education institutes.” I know that this was just a statistic from the reading, but I think it’s important to consider what other things people are reading – just because 25 percent of people didn’t read books, they likely read articles or even road signs (essentially, I think you could comment that perhaps the reading is making it out to be worse than it seems with a statistic like that).
Sometimes your sentences include questions but then end with periods; in some cases this works as you answer the question in the same sentence, but in the case of, “…wouldn’t the church benefit by teaching religious studies with books,” you end on the question, so the question mark would be the better punctuation there.
Bible should always be capitalized when referring to the text, because that’s its proper name (just as we capitalize the Harry Potter series).