Why do they still let me teach Sunday school?

[melannen]

Things I said to Mom's Sunday school class while last-minute substituting as teacher today:

1. So Jesus got, like, really pissed, and he totally trashed the whole place, dude. It was radical.

2. Why can't God be a girl if He wants to be? He can do anything; who says She's never a girl? (this got a cheer from the girls in the class, p.s.)

3. A fast overview of every Judas-apologia fanfic ever written for the Easter story, from the Acts of Pilate to the Gospel of Pilate, with a long digression about how by Easter the disciples were spending most of their time bickering like siblings who had been trapped in a car for too long.

Things I almost said, but stopped myself at the last minute:

1. Jesus hates teabaggers! (I didn't actually say that but I laid the groundwork. And I want a bumpers sticker now that says "God Hates Teabaggers: Matthew 22:21") I felt unexpectedly justified when Pastor decided to preach his sermon about how the Democrats in Congress are like Christ Triumphant riding into Jerusalem (let us strew roses at their feet) and the Republicans are just like the Pharisees and Sadduccees. :P

2. The reason they didn't listen was because it was women who saw them, because nobody ever listens to women, but remember that Christ spoke to girls first, before he spoke to the men; he believes we're the ones worth talking to first. (I almost said this but we were running out of time and I figured "God's a chick" was enough Christian radical feminism to start them with.)

3. Aslan is a fraud and Narnia sucks. (Didn't actually mention Lewis, but talked about *why* Aslan is a fraud. Also, didn't say "Jesus is more like a Time Lord than a Highlander," or compare "He will knock four times" to "before the cock crows thrice." Be proud of me.)


Let that stand as your warning: as today was Palm Sunday, and it's my very favorite Christian holiday, I plan to talk about Christianity, and specifically Holy Week and Easter, a lot for the next week. It will be in rather the same sort of tone as the above. If you'd rather not be exposed, filter or unsubscribe me; I won't be offended. It will be back to business-as-random-usual come Monday after next.

Comments

[loligo]

Well, can you sell me on any of those options without spoiling me too thoroughly? What kinds of issues or questions do they raise? I only have the vaguest sense of what Evangelion and Hellsing are about, and I haven't heard of the third one.

We had an all-ages combined class until around two years ago, though we didn't let kids start until they were five. It was *brutal* trying to come up with lesson plans that could incorporate the needs of all those ages, especially when we didn't know week to week exactly who would be there. I kind of hated teaching that class, but I took my turn once a month like a good parent *g*. But as soon as we got enough kids attending regularly to split them up, I jumped ship for the junior high class immediately!

The first thing we did was read Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I only knew what happened in the first section of the series, but people told me that Nausicaa had to make a decision about genocide at the end, so that sounded promisingly meaty. The kids loved it and the discussions were fantastic, but we had a lot of problems with getting everyone to keep up on the reading, so we did an anime next, so that we could all watch the episodes together.

[melannen]

Heh, I was mostly kidding about those. :D Evangelion and Hellsing are notorious as being anime that (are very good anime, but) take Christian symbolism and mythology and use them in a way that ... is very clearly someone who is looking at Christianity as something that is strange and exotic and "outside" that you can play with as set dressing however you want, rather than being this huge monolithic cultural underlier that Western people are used to - the way Buddhism and Shinto get used in some Western media. Hellsing is vampires and vampire slayers and has characters like ninja berserker nuns with split personality syndrome. Evangelion ... is eschatological and kabbalistic and the Christian elements make no sense to anyone, whether they have a Christian background or not.

Haruhi might actually be interesting, depending on what you want to talk about, though it's also deeply silly - I can't describe the Christian connection without spoilers for at least a few episodes, but it's basically "What if the-Great-I-Am-omnipotent-and-omniscient was born onto Earth as an ordinary Japanese High School girl?" It's very much a comedy, and it doesn't ever get explicitly Christian, but at least in terms of what fascinates *me* about the Christ story, I loved the way it addresses what it means to be fully human with human failings but also fully God, and what it means for the free will of the ordinary people around her, and the ethics of using that sort of power if you have it (and the ethics of not using it, too), and it's basically just an extended meditation on the relationship between God and Her Creation. But all done by way of a light-hearted high school comedy that also deals with things like bullying and relationships and making friends and families.

[elspethdixon]

anime that (are very good anime, but) take Christian symbolism and mythology and use them in a way that ... is very clearly someone who is looking at Christianity as something that is strange and exotic and "outside" that you can play with as set dressing however you want

Chevalier d'Eon does that as well, as does Angel Sanctuary. And really, it makes a certain amount of sense -- from an outsider perspective, high church Christianity is full of weird rituals, sometimes in languages no one speaks anymore, fancy/exotic pretty clothing and pretty buildings, secret society-like organizations, and a strange obsession with canibalism and blood sacrifice.

I've also seen a lot of manga not quite grasp the fact that being a nun entails what's assumed to be a permenant vow of celibacy and committment to the church (i.e. girls who are being nuns as a temporary thing until they get married).

Evangelion ... is eschatological and kabbalistic and the Christian elements make no sense to anyone, whether they have a Christian background or not

Is there any element of the overall plot of Evangelion that makes any sense to anyone?

[melannen]

I still don't know whether I ever did see the end of Evangelion - like, I know I watched most of it, but it didn't really come to an *ending*, or tie up any loose ends, or start to make sense, or anything. But apparently everyone feels that way.

A lot of anime does the exoticized view of Christianity, and I'm not actually meaning to complain about it - none of it's any worse than what people who do claim to be Christian have done, and I actually find it fascinating to get a little bit of what it's like to look at Christianity when you're not swimming in it. But I don't know that I'd recommend them to a junior high Sunday School class. :D (Although, if the kids could handle it ... talking about other cultures' use of Christianity, and what that tells us both about Christianity, and about the way we use other cultures, could be really cool.)

[elspethdixon]

I actually find it fascinating to get a little bit of what it's like to look at Christianity when you're not swimming in it.

I find it sort of fascinating/cool, too, actually -- and there's also a sort of cosmic justice to it, considering how often Christians go around using other religions like exotic window dressing while knowing nothing about them.

[sara]

...although I think the Marianism as mommy issues bits of Evangelion could be kind of fun in Sunday School....