I work at a public high school. The part of that statement which concerns itself with my rant is “public,” i.e., run by the government. Last time I checked, the government is not a religious institution, nor does it promote a particular brand of religion. In the United States, there is supposed to be a distinct separation of churches and the state. Quite frequently, the line is blurred as in when our President says “God bless America” on TV and radio, but for the most part, they’re separate entities. In a public school setting, people shouldn’t have to leave their religion at the door, but they also shouldn’t be forcing it down other people’s throats either. Every day at the beginning of the day, we have a moment of silence for the students to do whatever they want during. I just grade papers, but if someone wants to silently say a few words to their deity, so be it; I don’t care.

What I do care about, is receiving unsolicited propaganda for a particular religion via the public school’s e-mail system. One, it’s a public school; this material does not belong in the first place. Two, the e-mails sent and received at the school are archived in a public record for three years after they are mailed which means forwards, spam, and chain letters are getting stored (i.e., wasting space) and saved when they don’t belong in the public school system anyway. Three, I just don’t like forwards trying to persuade me to do anything differently than I normally would just because someone out there has a problem keeping their opinions to themselves.

So onto the e-mail itself. I’m not going to reproduce the e-mail in its entirety here because it’s not mine to do with as I please (I’m not the originator, and as such, it’s really school property, not mine) and because it’s fairly lengthy. The gist of the e-mail is this: The Golden Compass, a movie coming out December 7, based on the books written by Phillip Pullman, is an atheistic movie intended to destroy good Christian children’s image of their god, turning them all atheist through its flashy, alluring imagery. The original writer of this e-mail (not the person who forwarded it onto me) probably read this article on Snopes.com about it and panicked, fearful that this work of fiction might make some people think differently. The entire e-mail was an atheist-bashing, Christian-praising, paranoid scare tactic to get parents to not take their children to the movie or buy them the books. To say the least, I was immediately irate at having received this e-mail. Not about to let this go, I drafted a response to the “considerate” person who forwarded this missive to me and sent it during my lunch period. It reads as follows:

While I’m sure your mass-forwarding of this message to every teacher in the school system was well intended, I must protest it as having offended me deeply for a couple reasons. First, public schools are secular places where one’s beliefs should not be forced upon another since church and state are separate entities. Sending a mass mailing about this book series and subsequent movie is, in my opinion, a blatant violation as the message’s content is clearly intended to support Christianity at the expense of those who do not believe. Second, as an atheist, I am appalled that I and my beliefs are so marginalized and feared that even just a fictional book and movie can cause such remonstration in the religious community that its members feel a need to attack any indications that there are opinions out there that differ from their own. I’ll thank you to never include me in such a mass mailing again because I’m sure that if the situation were reversed, the same would also be true: you would be offended and annoyed to receive an e-mail which portrays your beliefs in such a negative and harsh light.

The response I received fifteen minutes later? It was a misspelled, curt, and insincere “Sorry” message adding that the sender hadn’t meant to offend “anyone.” No heartfelt apology, no personal “I didn’t mean to offend you,” or even so much as an “I won’t do this again.” One line–that’s all I got. Knowing how people react to the plight of the minority, the types of comments around this person’s work area probably included, “What’s her problem?” or “Atheists are all crazy like that” if the sender shared my response with anyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if this affected the sender much at all except to think, “That Doyle woman is overly sensitive” or some similar remark, one possibly containing less than glowing terms.

And what if the tables had been turned? The forwarded e-mail talks about how The Golden Compass and its series were written as a counterpart to the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis’s books are clearly religious in theme and nature, heavily Christian, and tons of people like them because of that fact alone. Had I sent a mass mailing about how Lewis’s books are Christian and we should boycott and ban them from our school library as well as telling people that we should keep our children from watching the movies, I would have set off a powder keg of controversy. Everyone would have attacked me, and everyone would have gone off on a tear about how Christians are “so persecuted.” They would have told me I should read the books and see how good they are, they would have told me to watch the movie and see how spectacular it is, and they would have pointed out that it’s just a book series and I shouldn’t judge it so harshly if I don’t know anything about it.

**Ahem.**

I’m over halfway through the first book of Pullman’s series and have yet to discover anything in it that goes beyond typical fantasy fiction, and even if I do find something which supports atheism in the face of a largely theistic world, it’s fiction. The same people decrying Pullman’s books are the same ones who don’t understand the difference between fantasy and reality as in the case of The DaVinci Code book and movie. The Golden Compass is a book which has been turned into a movie. If people don’t want to see it, they don’t have to see it. If people want to see it, they shouldn’t be ostracized for doing so. If I wanted to have open opinions about religion at the workplace, I would have gone to a religious school, not a public one.