I have the same feel­ing you do.….

We home­schooled our four chil­dren from 1985 until 2001. It was not SO much for reli­gious rea­sons, although as Chris­tians, that did per­me­ate out classes. We were in the mil­i­tary and moved 19 times in 30 years — it was more to give the kids a sta­ble, con­stant edu­ca­tion. One through 10 grade, the oth­ers through 8th grade. And even with that, one child attended three dif­fer­ent high schools in 4 years and the oth­ers each had 2 high schools. (If you’re think­ing about it, you will real­ize that the one who was home schooled through 10th grade still had two dif­fer­ent high school for 11th and 12th grade!) Every child received at least one schol­ar­ship, many were renew­able each year based on grades. One grad­u­ated summa cum laude and one cum laude.

I am so glad that we were able to do that, that the win­dow of oppor­tu­nity was open to us. And although I would love to see the same for my grand­chil­dren, I am fear­ful that par­ents will have to work espe­cially hard at home to counter what they are taught in the schools. The peer pres­sure to con­form to non-Christian ideas is so great, it is nearly impos­si­ble to counter with­out solid teach­ing at home! And too many par­ents either don’t real­ize it or don’t care enough — they don’t see the dan­ger. I fear our coun­try is rapidly going to hell in that prover­bial basket.

Poor Rifqa! We must all pray for her!

This has the smell of a double-standard.

That’s because you’re assum­ing there are stan­dards where there are none. First, these are two dif­fer­ent states. Sec­ond, one case involves a guardian ad litem in a divorced fam­ily where the other involves, essen­tially, a run-away (though, the 17year old is close enough to major­ity that one won­ders why they even try).

Besides the WSJ being men­tioned in the same story, the only thing these two have in com­mon is that their respec­tive states are now involved in the reli­gious up-bringing of these chil­dren but in nei­ther case did they set out to get involved in that.

What reme­dies would you sug­gest? And if you sug­gest broad legal reme­dies, have you con­sid­ered all the appli­ca­tions of them?

It was a cul­tural obser­va­tion from one hum­ble culture-watcher, and offered up just as that. The cases have some dif­fer­ent fac­tors, as all cases do, but I’m not sure that means they can’t be con­trasted. Appar­ently, the WSJ didn’t think so either, because they’re the ones that con­joined the two in one story, not me. Read­ing the entire story (HERE) might give more info, if you’re interested.

“Besides the WSJ being men­tioned…” should have been “Besides being men­tioned in the same WSJ story” since I did under­stand they were from the same story.

All I’m say­ing is that there are too many other fac­tors involved here to see this as symp­to­matic of a chang­ing soci­etal stance that favors Islam over Christianity.

I don’t think it’s a Chris­tian­ity vs. Islam issue. I do think there has been a pat­tern of refus­ing to con­sider Chris­tian­ity as a cul­tural force for good, and I think these are two exam­ples of that. I think that’s the rea­son that the authors con­nected the sto­ries, and the rea­son that I picked it up.

If it doesn’t strike you that way, then that’s your opin­ion. But I don’t agree that I owe it to the world to refrain from voic­ing opin­ions on my own lit­tle blog with­out some imag­ined num­ber of data points that would con­vince all read­ers all the time. I doubt that any­one really pro­ceeds that way. I cer­tainly don’t. I don’t think any­one who sticks around this par­tic­u­lar blog for long would be sur­prised to hear that.

But again, if you’re just feel­ing like a trip to the Argu­ment Clinic, you’ll want to go to the story on WSJ and wade into the com­ments sec­tion. Last time I checked, there were over 1,000.

Um… Did I come across as hos­tile? I hope not. If I did, my apologies.

I didn’t ask you to refrain from any­thing. I do think that if you aren’t will­ing to con­sider other ways of inter­pret­ing a sit­u­a­tion, you’ll rapidly become more and more para­noid about per­ceived slights. Which is not to say that per­ceived slights aren’t real — just that dwelling on them doesn’t do us a lot of good.

For Chris­tians in an increas­ingly sec­u­lar West, this can be par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult: where do we need to fight against sup­pres­sion and when do we need to let things go? I’m trou­bled by the num­ber of small offenses that peo­ple seem (to me) to blow all out of pro­por­tion. Send­ing a boy to a pub­lic school is not exactly mar­tyr­dom. The girl, how­ever, may have a real rea­son to fear for her life.

I’m really not look­ing for an argu­ment. I’ve said my piece. I’ll avoid com­ment­ing further.

Not hos­tile, exactly. When a first-time com­menter opens by putting me on the hot seat, I’m not sure where they’re com­ing from.

But on the big ques­tion we’re on about, I sus­pect it’s a sub­jec­tive mat­ter whether we’re over­re­act­ing or not.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for sec­u­lar peo­ple to under­stand how embat­tled Chris­tians feel. (Con­sider Anam Cara’s com­ment above.) We are pres­sured to keep our reli­gion to our­selves “in the pri­vacy of our own homes,” and now here’s a court com­ing into one parent’s pri­vate home and telling her she can’t raise her child in the faith. If it seems like we’re get­ting para­noid, do you see how it happened?

PS: Don’t refrain from com­ment­ing, if you want to. I love the MP skit about the Argu­ment Clinic, so I assume that other peo­ple will, too. I just know that I’m not very good at that stuff, and the WSJ com­menters are.

I just read that the author­i­ties in FL have found that there is no threat against Rifqa in FL or OH. The judge has yet to rule whether or not she will be returned home from her fos­ter care, but with no threat to her, how can he not send her home.….

I would think that apart from any phys­i­cal dan­ger she might be in, there would be an unbe­liev­able amount of pres­sure com­ing to her from her fam­ily and other Mus­lims, near and far. She’s a high-profile case of a young Mus­lim con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­ity, and I would think they’d try very hard to make her regret that deci­sion. Lord, have mercy (on her and on her new faith, which could eas­ily become dis­torted from this exposure.)

Grace,

I’m not a first time com­menter — if you look around you’ll find one or two other com­ments.. I’ve been fol­low­ing your blog for some time — as a fel­low Ortho­dox, you’ve had some inter­est­ing posts. I just don’t think pub­lic school is mar­tyr­dom. Even though my wife and I have cho­sen not to use the local pub­lic school to edu­cate our chil­dren