Melissa Joan Hart is more than just a one note actress, she’s one of those superior Christians who teach their kids that non Christians aren’t to be trusted. She said, in a recent podcast interview, that she had to move her son from a Christian preschool to a regular preschool and that she had to have a talk with him about whether nonbelievers were good people. I hate when people say crap like this.
Years ago, when her son was transitioning from a Christian preschool to a traditional school, Hart was nervous. At his old school, she knew everyone. She told her then 6-year-old son:
“We don’t know if these people are good people. We don’t know if they believe in Jesus…and he really took the Jesus part to heart.”
On the bus, her son made friends with a neighbor who was Jewish.
Later, her son wanted to know, “If you’re Jewish, how do you get to heaven?”
Hart got a call from the friend’s mother after the boys started discussing religion. Hart said she and the mom had “chats” about these questions of faith that were congenial until their boys reached sixth grade.
“The conversations got a little more heated. And some problems came out of that,” she said, but did not elaborate.
Hart said, overall, the two boys had good conversations. As a parent, however, she stepped in and said sometimes it’s best not to push certain things.
Hart stressed the importance of “respecting each other’s beliefs and listening to each other,” she said.
Hard told Faris, the podcast host, that upon reflection it was a difficult time.
“I was like, ‘Do I regret telling my son that we don’t know if people believe in Jesus so we don’t know their character? Was that a wrong thing to say? Did I just set my son on a wrong path or was that a right thing to say and I should defend that?'”
Since when was believing in Jesus a prerequisite for being a good person? She’s practically calling everyone else heathens. Kids don’t even consider religion unless their parents drill it into them, they just want to hang out and play. This is totally antisemitic. I want to know what “problems” came out of this. My guess is that her kid told the other kid they were going to hell.
Instead of apologizing, Hart wrote a comment claiming that we didn’t really understand, that she never said Christians were superior, and that she was just having a conversation with her son. This explanation really clarifies her previous remarks in that she’s not apologizing or taking the antisemitic complaints seriously.
This is not an apology this is doubling down. When people say “I don’t judge,” they f-ing judge. I hope she loses her next role as a goofball in a sh-tty Hallmark holiday movie for this. She can keep working on faith-based films or maybe she can get a job on CBN or Fox.
Photos credit: WENN
I don’t think she’s being anti-Semitic, but is fostering the idea of “other”. I grew up in a deeply religious society, and being taught that non-believers go to hell was totally normal.
Of course, a consequence of this thinking may be antisemitism.
But it’s not just a religion thing; it’s a conservative thing. We’re also taught that our family is everything, that our country is the best country in the world, that we shouldn’t trust “outsiders”.
It’s such an effective way of dividing people into groups and removing any feelings of community on a global scale.
@JANE this!! My husband was homeschooled up to college and this is the ridiculous crap he grew up with! That America must be white, Protestant Christian, and heterosexual. Of course they are Uber conservative and Trump loyalists.
she’s teaching the fundamentalist creed that a belief in Jesus is a prerequisite for being a moral person. These people believe that you can be the best, most ethical person who does no bad deeds & lots of good deeds but are relegated to Hell solely by virtue of their lack of belief in Jesus.
They think morality is based solely on their version & understanding of the bible, and that a person is incapable of being moral in the absence of G-d (because, even if they do the “right” thing, they’re not doing it because G-d/Jesus/the bible told them so). They also think they’re automatically absolved of all their hypocrisy & sins just by virtue of their faith. The irony is that their beliefs render morality completely arbitrary based on G-d’s whim as opposed to recognizing that, if there is a G-d, there are reasons why he’d think things are right or wrong and that, in giving humans free will, he expects us to think to act instead of just doing the right thing/not sinning so we can get some reward (Heaven) or avoid punishment (Hell).
@Ostone, I am a liberal Democrat, and the MOST important thing that I could EVER teach my children is that all people are equal and deserve to be treated with equal respect. I also homeschool my oldest, who is 13, because he was diagnosed with Aspergers and his teachers didn’t know what to do with him. I’ve been homeschooling him since he was in 1st grade, and he’s 1/2 way through 8th grade. More than anything, my husband and I regret not having the funds to send him to private school. He’s smart as hell, but socially immature. I don’t homeschool to keep my kids away from the non-Evangelical riff-raff (my son self-identifies as an atheist, and we are casually Christianish). I homeschool because my son learns at a different pace than his peers, and he deserves a teacher who understands and supports this difference. I hope you’ll think before painting homeschoolers with such a broad stroke again.
Catholic here, and yes, my church has a lot of problems, but I feel my strongest connection to my faith in a Catholic Church. Married to an sometimes atheist and sometimes agnostic who grew up Espicapalian.
It floors me that people think that what makes most sense to them should make most sense to everyone else. I think my partner is probably a better person than I am because he is a good person for the sake of being a good person and not for some reward in the afterlife.
If my children decided that the Jewish faith was the right thing for them, I would support and celebrate that choice. If they decided religion was not for them, I would support and celebrate that choice. And yes, I have two.
My faith is a comfort to me. If it does not bring comfort to my loved ones, I hope they find what does. I live close to a lot of LDS people and while some of their practices would not work for me, I admire their dedication to family and the support they give to the underserved.
If you need other people to follow your faith to believe in it, there is something missing Boo.
Yeah, it’s not so much of a Christian thing as it is a conservative thing.
All of these pious, holier than thou “Christians” and white nationalists who marginalize others (“Jews will not replace us!” – such “fine people”) seem to totally forget that their pal Jesus WAS a JEW! Guess that conveniently “forget” that part, and the part that says “love thy neighbor”, etc. Guess pick n’ choose, n’ twist n’ turn it are the “New Book of Jesus”?
I’m Christian.
My entire life and belief system is based on my belief in God and in Jesus Christ, a Jew.
Antisemitism mystifies me.
Jane, the sole concept of “otherness” is to strip those not like us from their humanity in order to create an order in which some are “more” than “others” therefore having more rights and privileges. That’s how the Holocaust began. This is not a joke. This is not me being all drama. This is HISTORY.
Right on.
This can’t be emphasized enough. The concept of some being ‘more’ than “others”- whether it’s just based on religious affiliation (or lack thereof), misalignment with certain religious ideas about gender and sexuality, or something similar- has done exactly what you said. It has fostered senses of superiority within the in-groups to the point where it becomes hard for people to really see the ‘others’ as whole, multidimensional human beings whose disrespect or suffering is worthy of doing much about. This way of looking at people has been so damaging to society, and has been so widespread and deeply ingrained that even for people who are just descendants of people who promoted ideas like that a long time ago, rising above it becomes an ongoing process.
THIS. THANK YOU. I have been subjected to little microaggressions of anti-Semitism like this for three years now, and I am exhausted from having to explain to so-called “woke” people why these kinds of things are so insidious in the first place. I am exhausted and depressed from it. It’s hard to deal with anyone anymore, I just feel safer in my own home not talking to people.
Yes, I agree with that. I figured I didn’t have to elaborate on it since we all know what otherness does.
It’s very important to me to not label this just as Jew-hate, because I’m not American and my country is the opposite of America, so our version of otherness isn’t antisemitism. We use otherness to marginalize other religious groups, and racial and gender minorities. It’s curious to me how America has this in common to a poor Asian nation, and the thread that causes this phenomenon.
I disagree – she is being anti-Semitic because she was targeting her son befriending a Jewish boy and questioning whether this boy is “good”, implying this has to do with religion.
Of course, she could be this obtuse and hateful towards other religions and ethnicity. I don’t even want to know what she thinks about Muslims.
But what you describe is antisemitism. It is the antisemitism that was taught throughout history and that was the root for antisemitic crimes and the holocaust. Non-Christians are different, they can’t be trusted as they don’t believe in Jesus, they go to hell and aren’t good persons.
But not all non Christians are Jewish. I don’t think she’s teaching her kid to hate Jews, but to be weary of anybody that isn’t Christian (as if if there can’t be bad Christians out there). I’m not defending her at all, because this mentality she’s spewing is very problematic. I’m an atheist and I absolutely loathe the idea that I need to believe in God to be considered a good person. Personally, I think if someone needs religion to be a good person then they are the ones with a problem and lacking in morals. I just don’t understand how this makes her specifically an antisemitic person. She seems to be anti anything non Christian. If she had used a Muslim boy in her example then we wouldn’t even be talking about her being antisemitic. We’d be talking about her being anti Muslim.
I agree with Person3514. If anything, she would probably be more ok with a Jewish person than an atheist. Her issue seems to be more with non-believers and yes, maybe people who believe differently as well. And as OP said, her persistence in “othering” could easily result in intolerant behavior towards Jewish people. I’m just not certain that anti-Semitism is the true root or cause of her actions here.
Either way, she sucks. As I have said many times, I was teased mercilessly as a kid in my Irish Catholic town, just because I was a non-believer. Deeply religious people can be some of the most intolerant, bigoted people out there.
I think you’re both kind of right. Her intent most likely isn’t about Jewish people specifically; it’s probably about this idea that most people in general who aren’t worshippers of Jesus like they are are possibly ‘lost’ morally. But that kind of thinking does also fuel anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry too. Either way, not a good think to be promoting to little kids and sharing publicly- especially in times like this. There are probably also a couple of people gleeful about it and saying ‘Melissa Joan Hart is one of Us!’
Is it less antisemitic to be against Jewish people because of their believe, because she might also be an islamophobe and against anyone else because of their different believe or lack thereoff? Sorry, her being against anyone else doesn’t erase the fact that she specifically fueled ressentiments against Jews, because they aren’t Christian.
@kitten as a Catholic, please know how sorry I am am how hypocritical it is to tease someone about that. Because that is what Jesus would want. Those jerks can all take a long walk off a short cliff.
I grew up a very religious Hindu and it was NEVER taught to me that people of other religions go to hell. Neither buddhism nor hinduism believe less of those that don’t follow their religion, including atheists. I’m sad you dont’ see the problem in your beliefe. Someone like you once told me that my ancestors were all going to hell, despite being some of the kindest people you’d ever meet. And yes, my ancestors before Christ were all doomed to hell too..
It’s sad and wrong that you don’ see a problem with this..
This is one of the most damaging parts of Christianity- the pushing that they are better then others & that other people were going to hell, tempting them & are aligned with the devil, basically. It’s pretty sick. It is antisemitism and hateful to other religions and people. It’s a Christian thing, Conservative thing, and a Fascist thing, all in one.
I don’t think the og poster meant to say this is a good thing & I think they were seeing an issue with it. I just think they were trying to point out that it was an over blanket problem- saying that it’s not just antisemitism but anti-all-other-religions issue.
MJH can go to an island with Kirk Cameron and live out there days— leave the rest of us alone with their hate, please. They are going to be so disappointed when they die- lol.
It IS a Christian thing. I grew up in a conservative city and lots of Christians (especially the Evangelicals) think that anyone who doesn’t believe Jesus is the son of God is going to hell. PERIOD. I am almost to the point where anyone deeply involved in a Christian based organized religion scares me.
I don’t believe that people who don’t believe in what I do will go to Hell, nor do I think anyone from my background should be concerned with that.
It’s interesting to me that I see this in America, which is not where I’m from. My country is very different from the US, so I was curious to know how the allegedly most powerful country in the world has the same issue as a poor Asian country like mine.
And the problem is conservatism: a set of defensive beliefs used to alienate those not like us, fueled by fear that’s born out of ignorance. Though I think my country has a greater excuse to be this way, considering that most people are steeped in poverty, with little access to basic necessities and education. What is America’s excuse, I don’t know.
My blond haired (LatinX) child was physically bullied by a dominant group of Mexican kids at his school. These children were in a “sanctuary program” and coddled by the school. This group of kids intimidated, held down and literally cut my son’s hair because for his “donald trump hair”; they bullied him after he reported the incident. The parents of these kids called me explitives during pick up etc. The police in our town indicated the problem would get worse as my son is now a “narc”. We had to literally move to a new town, and have had to fight to not feel anti Mexican immigration. I had my young son study the Holocaust as a cautionary tale to not let resentment take hold- it’s been a fight to NOT give in to intolerance and generalization.
I mean, if it was a group of white kids who bullied your son, would you feel the need to generalize about white people?
I assume that this group weren’t the only Mexican kids at the school. Did your son ever have the opportunity to hang with them and maybe see that bullying isn’t unique to Mexicans and that there are plenty of kind and caring people from that region of the world?
That could be a really great teaching moment for him.
Anyway, sorry you went through that. It is really awful to see how Trump has divided our nation. He has demonized immigrants for merely wanting a better life and has forcefully separated immigrant families. I think these kids may just be very afraid at the end of the day and lashing out is a way to feel empowered. They may be subconsciously internalizing the hate that is directed at them from some people in this country, including the POTUS. Now that is NEVER an excuse for bullying, but something to keep in mind during these divisive times.
Shame on that school and shame on those parents. Bullying is sickening.
However, please do fight that need or feeling to be anti-immigration. Just as your son was unjustly bullied by Mexican children, consider the countless minorities being targeted by white kids and adults, every single day. Resentment only leads to more violence and hatred.
I hope your son and your family feel safer in your new town.
Bingo.
Ironic that a woman best known for playing a witch, on a show that targeted children and their families, suddenly thinks that her “born again” status makes her better than “non-believers?”
To these people Christianity is the default and everyone else is an aberration. It’s horrifying. More people have been slaughtered, more cultures destroyed in the name of this peace loving god than can even be imagined or counted. If the devil is real- he wishes he had had the forthought to die on that cross to create this extreme destructive hate filled force.
How you know she and other so-called religious folk are FOS:
What they say is the exact opposite of supposedly being ‘Christ-like.’
I don’t know if this is still the case, but she lived in Westport, Connecticut as of a year ago, which has a large jewish population. If she said that to her son it would be a very odd thing to say to a child going into a public school where potentially half of the students aren’t christian.
Yeah her neighbors, and children’s peers will include a large Jewish community.
If you’re only taught salvation is through Jesus, I don’t blame the child for having questions. But she as a parent should educated her children to understand other religions and to respect them.
Omg yes there is a huge Jewish population there. My town was mostly Protestant but I grew up near Scarsdale, NY and there is also a high Jewish population there. There was a synagogue behind my childhood home. The summer camp I worked at for three years was owned by a prominent Jewish family and they served kosher hot dogs as most of the campers were Jewish. I remember having to let down my campers gently once when they asked me what I got for Hanukkah each year and telling them “I don’t celebrate Hanukkah!” At that age it blew their minds to learn that not everyone celebrates Hanukkah. Parents really do need to learn how to teach their children how to talk to people of different faiths and also make them aware that not everyone is [insert your religion here.]
She grew up on Long Island, also a large Jewish population.
Google “ Melissa Joan Hart and Farrah Fawcett” or check archives of this site ( June 3, 2009)
That was all I needed to know about this woman. Maybe she should practise more at being a “good person”
Or maybe, she could read the Bible? It blows my mind how many “Christians” act like they’ve never read the gospels or even heard of Jesus, because he was pretty clear about not being a sanctimonious A-hole.
+1000. It really does and it’s so frustrating that my in-laws who think they are the cream of the crop Christians support this president and the GOP who are so obviously the exact opposite of what Jesus was and wanted us to be. How can you justify it? Because you don’t know the scriptures or you just pull out the ones you like and twist and omit what doesn’t fit your agenda.
And to add not only do they support this president but they worship him like a cult leader. They never did this with past republican presidents. My parents and in-laws never talked about Bush or Reagan they way they do with him and just fawn over him. My father in law brings him up in every conversation no matter what it’s about, he finds a way.
The thing is, a lot of them don’t. They just do what they’ve been told to do, and judge what they’ve been told to judge. I know a lot of people who were raised to be kind of a–es about religion, and I could quote more from the book than they could. They just use it as a them against us kind of thing. Other people are going to hell and they need to be controlled… but when one of ‘our own’ does something terrible it’s okay because Jesus will forgive them.
It’s genuinely mind blowing how this kind of person acts. Not saying that’s ‘all’ people into religion. But there’s an AWFUL lot of ‘pious’ individuals who really don’t have a clue about what they’re spouting off.
Yeah I didn’t realize what a B she was until that Farrah Fawcett cover situation, and its something I can’t un-see, I see that horrible attitude in most of her actions these days.
Yeah it also says on the cover “I realized that I don’t have to be heavy just because I have kids” as if she’s accusing mothers of using motherhood as an excuse to give up on taking care of themselves. It’s a bit shame-y although nothing compared to her horrible comment about Fawcett. Just another good Christian…
Bummer, I really liked her. Didn’t realize she took her Christianity to the extreme.
This message from this type of messenger is the start of the slippery slope into Religious persecution. She lays out character “we don’t know if they are good people” right next to “we don’t know if they believe in Jesus” to correlate the two for her son and fellow believers and then denies she was correlating/implying causation because THEY AREN’T. She’s dog whistling (poorly) and deserves the outrage she receives. But her clumsy attempt at brainwashing is a good primer for teaching our kids critical thinking.
Yeah, this was my exact train of thought. And it seems crazy that she automatically assumed anyone in the Christian school was “good people.”
I teach preschool and I once overheard this conversation between two four-year-old girls, it was so bizarre and made me sad:
“I’m Orthodox Christian, what are you?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“Jewish is like magic and magic isn’t real.”
I was like WTAF? Also, the Orthodox Christian girl’s mom was a public school teacher!
Esmom
Omg!!! That is crazy!!
I really dislike that idea that somehow believing in Jesus magically makes you a good person. I grew up in a very Christian community, the self-righteousness coupled with such amazing hypocrisy (not to mention the misogyny) made me walk away and never look back.
All those pedo priests and nuns believe in Jesus after all and they aren’t good people. (Though I’m sure MJH believes that catholics are Satan worshipers).
And there’s definitely something wrong if an elementary school kid is so fixated on religion; the parents are traumatizing him.
That’s what happened to me when I went from Catholic school to public school. In 6th grade (SIXTH GRADE!!!!!!!), kids thought that we sacrificed babies in the baptismal fonts and drank their blood for communion. Not to mention what they did when I tried to explain that my dad was raised Russian Orthodox. :/
I am an adult.
An adult my mother’s age asked me if I had a tail when she learned I grew up in the Catholic church.
People are weird.
@arpeggi, MJH is Catholic. Die hard Catholic.
@JustCrimmles I somewhat doubt that, she keeps saying she’s a christian not a catholic and catholics tend to identify as is (and a quick google search seems to say that while she was raised catholic, she’s now presbyterian, I had to check). Many hardcore protestant faiths (southern baptist, mostly) demonize catholicism because of the “worshiping of false idols” (mainly, the Pope, Mary and all the Saints) which I’ve always found kinda ridiculous. To me at least, the amount of stuff they have in common is much greater than their differences so why all the hate? (which is also true for all the monotheist religions and humanity in general)
Arpeggi is right – Catholics identify as Catholics and very rarely will call themselves just Christian. That school was not a Catholic school for sure. Catholic schools today tend to have a lot of non-Catholic kids as well. This is especially so in the inner cities but might still apply to others as well.
From other things she has said, she was probably raised as a nominal Catholic but became serious about religion more recently as an adult and fell into the hands of some more fundamentalist or Evangelical Protestant types. So she is basically a recent convert. They do tend to be problematic and more dogmatic than the birthrights.
There have been plenty of studies showing religious faith and moral behavior are not intrinsically concurrent. People who pretend otherwise are just revealing their ass.
I agree. Even today, so many horrible things are done in the name of believing in Jesus. Going to a Christian school guarantees nothing. Saying that you believe in Jesus guarantees nothing.
Telling the kid to be wary of other kids is just setting him up to judge, to look for a bright-line distinction that doesn’t exist. You can only tell your kids to have open hearts, to look for how kids treat others, to be as generous as they can be and understand that sometimes kids are hurting, sometimes they need a friend, sometimes things are going on that they don’t know about. It sickens me that she’s teaching her kid to put kids into arbitrary categories that have no relationship to whether the kid is worthy of friendship.
I had a similar experience, OriginalLaLa. What made me fall out of Christianity the most was seeing how all of the “Christians” in my town treated people terribly. While they were teaching us children about the “Jesus loves me” aspect of the religion, I saw that the adults were frequently using other aspects to be hateful to people.
I thought she was raised Catholic but then switched to Presbyterian or Baptist for her husband. Not sure though.
I read an amazingly depressing article not too long ago about the congregations of Christians going out for breakfast after Sundays sermons. The WORST. CUSTOMERS. EVER. Like unbelievably horrific stories from these poor restaurant workers. Sundaysaretheworst.com. This tells me all I need to know about a certain type of Christian. How do their heads not explode from the extreme hypocrisy of their lives??!!!!
Her statement literally said “I try not to judge” and that her son would have to “judge for himself” whether people were good or not. The old judge/judge conundrum. LMAOOO. hard pass on this bish for life.
I thought we decided she’s an idiot years ago…
Religion aside, having a talk with your kid as he heads off to kindergarten and saying “we don’t know if these are good people” is pretty messed up. Kids are supposed to go off to kindergarten all happy and ready to make new friends. What a dumb parenting decision.
Exactly. Projecting her hangups onto the little guy.
That kind of circular reasoning is so messed up, anyway. “We’re good because we’re Christian and we’re Christian because we’re good.”
I can’t imagine sending my kid to kindergarten with that in their heads. I feel bad for her kids.
Right??? What better way to calm your kid’s first-day-in-a-new-school fears than “Now Billy, just remember that we don’t know any of these kids so some of them may be terrible people. Anywhooo, have a good day at school!”
Exactly! Also, why would you assume ANY of the little kids in a class are possibly “not good people”? That is gross. And not very Christian..all. Generally, a child has whatever religion their parents impart. I don’t in any way, shape or form agree that not believing in Jesus = not being a good person. (nor vice versa, frankly) But even if you do think such backwards thoughts…do you think a 5 year old is a bad person that deserves to be ostracized because their parents are “heathens”. Likewise, if a 5 year old believes in Jesus solely because their parents told them not believing will land them in hell…well, that really doesn’t count as a real devotion anyway.
I totally agree!
She must be tight with the Cameron siblings.
Lol. I was thinking the same thing…
Now that’s a party I’m glad I’ve never been invited to.
How about you just don’t plant the idea AT ALL that a child might be a bad person if they don’t believe what you believe. Maybe just don’t drill that kind of shit into a 6 year old’s head when it isn’t something that they would come to naturally?
Did I just set my son on a wrong path or was that a right thing to say and I should defend that?’”
A. Yes and B. No, you should not defend it. It was ugly, hateful idea to put in a kid’s head. Congratulations on being a shitty person and spreading your poison.
“Hart told fans” was at least some comic relief. Who is this fan?
Wonder if Hart knows Sabrina would burn in hell according to her religion.
Right??? She played a witch … but that was just pretend for $$ i guess, so she gets a pass??? What a jerk.
Sabrina would burn in Hell only after being literally burned at the stake.
Since when does believing in Jesus a prerequisite to being a “good person”? This is the same person who complained that hurricane Maria ruined her family’s vacation plans….. 🙄
https://www.google.com/amp/s/people.com/tv/melissa-joan-hart-complains-hurricane-maria-ruined-vacation-plans/amp/
I’m an atheist and while I have a personal dislike of all religions, I believe ‘to each their own’ and I have no problem with people who believe and practice quietly. It’s the ones who insist on shoving their beliefs onto others and think that their way is the only way that I have a problem with. I’ve found that it’s people who identify as ‘Christian’ who annoy me me the most (people who identify by a particular branch of Christianity are usually not as annoying for some weird reason), and of the Christians, the American Christians are the absolute worst. I work in a busy tourist town, and in fifteen years, the two rudest encounters I’ve had, from dealing with people from all over the world, were both American “Christians”. MJH is the epitome of that kind of mentality.
Ugh…religious affiliation or lack thereoff does not automatically make someone a bad person. As an agnostic theist, I have met non religious people who are truly great human beings i want to be friends with and have also met some who portray themselves as religious and have done some REALLY cringy, crappy stuff to me and others and vice versa.
I think it is safer to teach my children to always keep their eyes open and look at people’s actions, they speak volumes about who they truly are inside regardless of what they say or what groups they identify with. Wherever ones goes there will always be those who choose to be a part of the solution and those who choose to be a problem.
“Religious affiliation” is a cover. This has nothing to do with beliefs. This is about MJH distrusting Jews because they are “other.” Antisemetic people feel Jews are different on a molecular level, it has nothing to do with belief system, any more than hitler opposed Jews based on belief.
The Christians you encountered were most likely the conservative, evangelical type: probably non-denominational or Southen Baptist. As a Christian, I can telll you that there is a core of rot at the center of evangelicalism. It’s all based on power and appearance which results in hypocrisy. When I was 18, I had the sense to leave a denomination like that and went to a more liberal denomination where people were much more truly Christ-like.
I feel so bad for liberal Christians. My uncle is one of them and he’s such a great guy. It hurts me to think that people would lump him in with the jerks.
Just came in to say that her eyebrows annoy me. One is round, the other straight….
All you need to know about christianity is the Canadian government sent little Indigenous kids to religious schools to “get the Indian out of the child.”
Exactly.
The fact that she teaches her kid this is nuts. Just because you are a Christian does not make you a good person. I’m Canadian, and myself and my three siblings were baptized in the Catholic Church (I no longer practice any religion), all by different priests. All four of those priests ended up accused and three convicted of sexually abusing young boys. That’s four priests, in fourteen years in one small church in a tiny community. Some of the most horrible things in history were done in the name of Christianity.
Horrifying that they did it and even more horrifying to read/listen to the accounts of those who were abused in those “schools”. Shameful.
The Spanish did the same to the Indigenous Indians here, too. Sent them to Catholic schools to convert them. Mormons sent out missionaries to convert. Hell, the Inquisition, the Crusades.. ALL in the name of the “true” religion…of the holder. Organized religion is a crock of cr@p, IMO. Most are about power, control, and money.
But believe or not, it’s what’s in your heart, how you treat others, help others. That IS the basis of it all. It’s all the rest that gets warped.
Not sure if that tells me as much about Christianity as it does Canadians.
The US government did the same thing. Not just the Canadians and not just the Spanish. In a documentary about it some years ago, people still alive had vivid memories of how they were taken from their parents and sent to boarding schools and prevented from speaking the home language and anything culturally connected with home.
Add the Australians to the list too…
what do you think it tells you about Canadians? that’s a strange assumption to make when the practice of taking children from their parents and culture was done in the name of christianity.
It’s how religion is used all over the world and has been for millenia. It is not unique to Canada, though Canada needs to take responsibility for the horror that was the Residential Schools (the last of which only closed in the 1990’s).
…”discussions wth friends and neighbors that it might be a tricky (sic) for children to navigate….”
It doesn’t sound like she did a whole lot better, from where this Jew sits.
There’s a discussion in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 105A) out of which emerges that (to use the translation that’s come down through the ages) “the righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come,” (https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.105a?lang=bi) which is theological shorthand for “Your religious preference is not a prerequisite for getting into The Good Place.”
So MJ and her kind are teaching their kids that “the only way to the Father is through me” and the rest of us are all destined to rot in Hell. I’m so over this tired trope, but I guess I should thank the lady for her help in keeping my New Year’s Resolution: Disaggregating my white privilege and my Jewish identity – one which provides me with great advantage and the other in which I am other/marginalized. I’m working to examine and process what, exactly, that means and the ways in which it affects me as I walk through the world.
cannibell, thank you so much for this. And same in your last paragraph. Often, liberal-minded white American Jews, especially those living in more “Jewish” areas, don’t realize the extent to which their lives are buffered by their whiteness. This period in time, including the shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue, has probably made many more uncomfortably aware that they (we), too, can still suffer hatred and violence & it be best to ally with other oppressed peoples – as Jews have in the past, to great effect.
It would sure be interesting to hear the perspective of that Jewish mother on the other end of the line. She deserves her privacy, but I can only imagine the aggravation in dealing with this zealot intent passing down her bigotry to her kid and trying to pretend it’s something else. The only discussion that’s “difficult to navigate” is the one with the small-minded bigot.
Thanks, WATP: I’m kind of at the beginning of this exploratory journey, so no idea where it’s going to take me. And I feel sorry for that mom – and that kid. What’s interesting also is that the discussions only became “heated” around sixth grade. Which, presumably, is when the Jewish boy started training for his bar mitzvah…..
@cannibell and WATP: normally I lurk on this site for juicy celebrity gossip but I’ve come out from hiding for once – I am a Jewish Asian woman with an Ashkenazi father and this is such a complicated topic for me! We both face antisemitism but I am typically not read as Jewish and my father is read as “basically white.” There are times when I am very jealous of this because I have faced racism my entire life and it’s incredibly frustrating to see some white Jewish people “wake up” with the violent antisemitism of this country when many have done their best to assimilate to the white default and have even participated in racism to do so. Subsequently they will not admit to having received the benefits of white privilege which is very alienating to POC and contributes to tension/frustration. That being said there are also people of color who participate in antisemitism which is bad too. I am still sorting out my place in this and wish there was more of a dialogue about it that actively prioritized solidarity and celebrating diversity in the Jewish community rather than defensiveness.
To be a person of color in America is to endure a society that is constantly violent toward you. Like literally every day something violent happening, whether emotionally or physically, is a constant threat. I don’t mean to downplay antisemitism and as a Jew it is also a painful and frightening experience. But my dad will never know what it’s like to get followed at night by a man, getting screamed at on the subway and fearing you’ll get attacked like an Asian woman you saw on the news last week, or finding out they caught a rapist working at Berkeley who targeted only Asian women (the rapes went unsolved for over a decade while he walked free) and feel so scared you don’t want to leave your house for a week. How do I even broach these topics with him? He will just never understand.
I appreciate that you are thinking deeply about these issues and wish more people would in general and exercise more compassion. It’s so complicated.
Oh, man. I wish I could just take this thread off-line and interact with the two of you. It would make this whole adventure I’m embarking on easier because there’d be other people with whom to process it.
What a story, Rie – and I am totally here for the celebrity gossip and, as it’s turned out, news about the Swamp Things in Washington, but it’s the posters that have made the site somewhere I turn every morning – so many people here are fascinating and interesting people – more, in many ways, than the glittery folk we come to read about!
And now that I think of it, my Twitter handle is @maveniac, if either of you – or anyone else, is interested in a virtual meet-up site to explore this further.
I’m a Jew in the Bible Belt. This shocked me not at all. I’m used to feeling weird when my Jewishness or whatever comes up, but nowadays I dont just feel weird. Nowadays I feel…. a little freaked out. A little bit full-of-dread. I feel a little more…. eyeballed … than I used to. And I glance at my shiksa-looking daughter and I’m grateful that her dad’s WASPy genes won that battle, and for her dad’s WASPy last name. Antisemitism is a Thing, it has always been a Thing, and it will always be a Thing and that’s just how it is. But now its, like, fashionable again. Its acceptable. Just like hating brown and/or black people is totes cool now, too. White nationalism is openly claimed. There’s a rapist on the supreme court, and a malignant nutjob in the White House, and everything is bullshit and I CANT EVEN.
THANKS A LOT SABRINA. I like you better as a Satanist. 🖕
How can you not feel freaked out? I will say that even here in blue Massachusetts we’ve had some incidents of anti-Semitic graffiti on schools etc. I’m sure you are all to aware that there are anti-Semites everywhere. It just really floors me how Trump has given a voice to these people.
She has the red carpet pose down pat… That’s all I’ll say, but 🙄
I think it is not only anti-semitic, but also anti-muslim, anti-atheist and anti- everything that´s not pure christian. I wonder what her position towards christians of colour is?
Or is she against everything that is not white conservativ heterosexual christian?
She was specifically targeting Jews in her comment and it’s offense to make this about Muslims or people of color. Presumably, her sons know not to trust non caucasians. Jews, in her mind, are more insidious because there is no external signifier.
she was specifically talking about her son’s Jewish friend but her concern was about whether his school chums were “good people” based solely on them believing in Jesus, which would mean that any non Christian friend would be considered a bad person.. it’s a pretty horrifying thing to teach your child!
I mean, she said “We don’t know if these people are good people. We don’t know if they believe in Jesus…and he really took the Jesus part to heart.”
The subtext here is that people who don’t believe in Jesus are not good people and yeah, that includes atheists and Muslims, not just Jewish people.
Reading this was hard for me. I grew up under the rule of a strict, Pentecostal mother. It was indoctrinated in me that basically, we were all bound for hell. Especially people of different religions, the LGBTQI community etc., etc. Now at 37, I’m an atheist and think it is disgusting to think like this. Teaching your children that people will be damned to hell for eternity for any reason is so wrong.
I was raised atheist but my mom was born catholic like everyone born in Quebec before the 1960s. She recently sent all the forms to officially apostatize because she stop believing a long time ago. When she told me, my first response was “Good! So now you’ll be able to burn in Hell with my brother and me! We’ll stick together like a family should!”
The fact that some people actually believe that is astounding
Ugh.
I am a practicing Christian – former Sunday school teacher and served on the board of my church – and this stuff makes me cringe. While I know there are a lot of professed Christians who spew this offensive nonsense, not all of us do. My kids have been taught religious appreciation and cultural understanding (their former babysitter was Muslim and my daughter got invited to a Bat Mitzvah yesterday, actually) and (I hope) would never confuse reliosity with morality. So on behalf of the non-offensive Jesus lovers….sorry :-(.
+1
Fellow practicing Christian, and I hate how these holier-than-thou sects and followers have destroyed Christianity. (Jesus literally taught that judging others is a sin!!)
I grew up a Christian in a Jewish community and always felt a special respect for my Jewish friends because we shared devotion and faithfulness as common goals. In fact, my Jewish neighbor (who often invited us over for Passover and Shabbat) was the one who encouraged me to apply to a Christian college when I worried it would be lame. She was a great mentor and friend, and I miss her dearly.
All that said, I think MJH is an idiot beyond being an intolerant Christian. What parents send a kindergartner off to school with that kind of advice? If anything, I’m always getting after my kids to be more inclusive and more open to new experiences and people. I’m starting to think that Hollywood is filled with a lot of folks who fell into acting when their lack of common sense couldn’t open other doors.
imagine a six year old questioning their new friends on how to get to heaven and if they are shitty person because they don’t worship the same imaginary person? My six year old spends her days worrying about if she will be allowed to have chocolate after she eats her dinner, or if she gets to play with her friends on the weekends. She meets a new friend and asks them if they like lol dolls or if they like going to the playground. I don’t think they spend much time thinking about the afterlife or some great messiah who probably didn’t exist
I had many Jehova witnesses in my elementary school cuz it was close from a temple and OMG the weird stories they would tell us! They didn’t think we were less than them because of our differences though (or at least they didn’t show it), but the stories of the apocalypse were gruesome and astounding! I remember that it was really weird that a church would think it’s ok to tell such tales to children and terrify them about being damned.
I’m so thankful that my parents didn’t force religion onto my sister and I. So many religious people I know are morally bankrupt compared to me, and I have zero religious beliefs.
Same. And if your parents were like mine, they always gave you the option to go to church or believe whatever you want to believe. The point is that it wasn’t FORCED upon us.
Oh, Christians are totally the worst. My fundamentalist brother-in-law told his wife (my sister) that our recently deceased father would not be going to heaven because he had never accepted Christ as his savior. My sister has some emotional type problems, so this totally sent her over the edge. That was just cruel.
That is beyond cruel. When I was a teenager I had to go to classes to practice for my confirmation into the Catholic Church. I hated going and had no interest but mom really wanted me too so I did it. The lady who taught the class told me a week into it, in front of the other people there who were mostly my friends, that my mom would be going to hell because she had a child out of wedlock in high school, and was divorced from my father. I was devastated to hear that, I didn’t believe in the heaven and hell thing but for this women to say something about my mother like that was really hard. I never told mom she said it, I just finished the classes, went to confirmation and told my mom later that it wasn’t for me and I didn’t want to go anymore. She said ok and I’ve never appreciated her more. To this day, fifteen years later, I haven’t told her because it would hurt her to know people in the community felt that way.
What a burden to place on a child. Thanks, christians!
I’m so sorry that happened to you Bryn.
if you say all Christians are the worst, aren’t you being like the anti-Semites or people who say all Muslims are evil?
I know exactly the type you’re talking about, and it’s more of a conservative mindset than a Christian one.
I get what you’re saying–I really do–but the problem is that American Christianity has become almost inexorably intertwined with conservative politics. We’ve never had a true sense of church and state in this country–EVER–and for decades we have Christians who see fit to legislate their religion.
As I said above, I DO feel for good liberal Christians who have to fight back against these preconceived notions but…still, you have to admit that it’s hard to separate conservatism from Christianity when 80% of white Evangelicals voted for a bigoted, awful man and continue to believe that this terrible person is “sent from God”.
Oh, you’re right, Kitten.
She’s a mess.
The worst people I have ever met in this life or the next…
Sat in a “Christian” church…at least once a week…sometimes more…knew the Bible front to back…and taught their children…HAMMERED into their children that…”Jaysus Christ is the one and ONLY WAY…”
And that’s all I have to say…about that…
Hold up – although what she said was ridiculous, you do realize that comments like “Christians are the WORST” and “I knew this Christian once who was so awful…” are also inappropriate, right? Discriminating against someone because of their religion is BAD. Call someone out for being a bigot or abusive – call out their behaviors, but not their religion. Religious tolerance goes both ways.
She’s just sharing her experience. My experience is similar. My brother is a devout Christian and the most judgmental person I’ve ever met in my life. My experiences with Christianity makes me want nothing to do with it.
@Snowflake – I completely respect that people get turned off by Christianity because of their experiences with the faith, but where I get uncomfortable is painting an entire religion with fairly stereotypical brush strokes. I call out people for saying that “Muslims are X” or “Jews are Y” for the same reason (I don’t see a ton of antisemitism where I live, but I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve defended Islam). The “war on Christmas” is absolute nonsense, but there are parts of the world (not in the US or most of the west) where Christians are killed for their beliefs TODAY – just as there are parts of the world that slaughter Muslims, Buddhists and followers of tribal religions. Discrimination based on religion is not ok, ever. Criticize the behaviors, but not the beliefs.
Well, she says the ones she’s met, not all. I can see your point though that we shouldn’t generalize
Actually, it sounds as though Melissa is a relatively recent convert to whatever form of Christianity she now has adopted. So she might be overcompensating for her previous heathen ways… Converts are often annoying, no matter what the context (religious and others).
Also the school her son was originally in sounds like a small school where everybody knew everybody else as well as sharing her flavor of religion, which might have been a new but pleasant experience for her.
It’s possible that she was putting it awkwardly and just meant to say that she knew the families of all the kids in his previous school and knew what kind of people they were, what they considered to be right and wrong, but didn’t know the families in his new school. She never should have included that bit about whether or not they believe in Jesus (although that would be relevant in comparing to the old school), but it also sounds as though she herself has some regrets about bringing that up with her son because he went in different directions with it than she had anticipated. She does not sound sure that she talked to him properly about such things.
I went to Catholic parochial schools and have no memory of any taught antagonism toward people of other religions. Some kids had one parent who was not Catholic and there was no talk of anticipated hellfire for them. We had some teachers who were non-Catholic (Protestant and Jewish). I went to several different Catholic schools and we knew that Jesus was a Jew and it was the Roman occupiers of Palestine who killed him and that Catholic ritual is very much based on Jewish practice. But I know Protestant churches in our area were teaching something a tad different – my best friend announced that Catholic priests drank the blood of babies during Mass and I couldn’t convince her otherwise. When JFK was running for President, every Protestant Church we passed had titles of sermons on boards with topics like the danger of a papist in the Presidency. They seemed convinced that the Pope would be running the USA if Kennedy were elected. When he was assassinated, the mood of many of these good Christians was joyful.
So Hart may be educable, even though I’m just as baffled as anybody else why she felt she needed to warn a young child this way about his new classmates. But I don’t know what experiences she herself had in school. There may be things she isn’t mentioning here. I grew to hate school and the neighborhood myself because of the nasty kids I encountered after we moved to a new town. Maybe she was trying to protect him a bit against that kind of problem and went too far.
Converts tend to be some of the most extreme.
I’m jewish AND i put ice and seltzer in my white wine. Eff this effing sh*t.
LOL. Count me in! I’m Jewish and occasionally I like my red wine chilled, so I’ll put a cube or two in. Call me a peasant, but Ah likes wha’ Ah like! 😄
It is 500,000 degrees 360 days of the year where I live, I put ice in All The Things. Also, I like my wine cold, dry, and watered down a little, just like I like my men.
L’chaim! 🙂
I love it when these conservative Christians conveniently forget JESUS WAS A JEW.
+1000
ITA.
Jesus would have never wanted for the Jewish people or any other people with different beliefs to go to hell or have bad things happen to them. He wanted to share his vision of Spirit, to help people and them teach them ways to release their soul from suffering.
The bible was written many years after and is just fear mongering people into thinking that they should live a certain way or heaven will not accept them.
I’ve seen and heard it from a few spiritual teachers that this is simply not true. Wether you believe or not, at the end of your life you choose where you want to go. However it’s true that certain people stay in limbo because either they can’t forgive themselves or remain earth bound for other reason’s, but never because Jesus or God wants that to happen or as punishment for being a “non believer”.
It’s too bad that a lot of hard core Christians don’t want to incorporate a less harsh and rigid version of the Bible. I feel it would make them nicer people and they might even feel happier about themselves and the world we live in.
You guys are letting her off easy. This is passive anti-Semitism, in the same way, this would be casual or passive racism if she were talking about black or Hispanic people. This is dangerous for her children. She really thinks she’s a morally superior person because of her religion and other people aren’t. That’s how genocides happen.
You’re 100% right.
I’m not going to read this article. Not because I’m not interested in Celebitchy’s take, but because I’m seething with rage. I’m 1/4 jewish and my country’s one terrorist attack was aimed at our jewish community. Jews have been persecuted and punished for no reason at all.
Just this Saturday I visited the Anne Frank House in Argentina and this Tuesday I’m reading about a Hollywood actress, idolized by so many due to her successful sitcoms, teaching her children antisemitism. She’s basically teaching her children to hate those who are not like them.
She’s so beyond cancelled for me.
I couldn’t agree less with Melissa and her ideas of good people and Christianity, but I wouldn’t call her issue antisemitism either, you have to be careful to throw that word around, it has more implications than simply religion. She does seem to distrust anyone who is not a Christian (and I’m guessing her particular brand of Christianism), so it’s not prejudice just against jews, hence, it’s not targeted hate.
That being said, I hate that some parents raise their kids with that mentality. It’s no different that what other extreme religions do, and look at where we are in the world.
Josh Duggar believes in Jesus.
Boom.
He’s more an appearance-based Christian. They say certain things just to impress others, then do whatever they want. I know the type well.
I know plenty of people who are not good people, and yet they believe in Jesus. These concepts are not mutually exclusive.
As a budding heretic, once in my early teens I told my brother that “going to church doesn’t make you good, and sometimes it can make you bad”. He gasped in mock horror, and claimed he was afraid to stand next to me at Mass (we were chronically late and all seats were always taken) lest the earth open up to swallow me and he got swallowed too by mistake …. 🙂 What a card.
He still tolerates my heresy, even though he is in the devout Catholic category. He tells me I won’t have any trouble getting into heaven (which is a nice thought but I don’t actually worry about it). Of course, he thinks that about everybody. My uncle once said that maybe Hell exists but is completely uninhabited. I do not come from vengeful people.
We attended Catholic churches and Catholic schools in several different states and never ran into a priest at all interested in the topic of hellfire and damnation. Their sermons always just encouraged kindly behavior based on the Gospel reading of the day. Maybe it’s more of a Protestant thing in more modern times? Of course, Catholic sermons tend to be rather short and so no need to fill up the time. I asked a friend studying for the ministry (he’s a Methodist pastor now) if fear of Hell really kept people from doing bad things, and he said he thought it did for some.
I know a few Christian people who are not “good” at all and can rot in hell as far as I am concerned. I have no problems with religion persay but when you start to declare moral superiority just because of the church you go to then I have issues. I hope her son continues to have friends of other faiths and with other viewpoints so he can grow into a healthy well adjusted person.
She is a moron and makes other Christians look bad. I live in the Bible Belt and sent my son to a Christian preschool. When he started public school, I had *exactly* the opposite talk with him. We discussed why he wouldn’t be learning about Jesus in school anymore, the fact that people of all religions, races, ethnicities, nationalities, etc. are loved by God, and no one should ever be treated badly because of these kinds of differences.
He was actually worried that his K teacher had done something bad when she mentioned offhand that she went to the same church as one of his classmates. (I’m like, no, she’s allowed to say she goes to church–she just isn’t supposed to be teaching you Bible lessons.) More recently, he made an offhand comment that Christians can’t be anti-Semitic because Jesus was Jewish. I kind of did a spit take and had a “Yes, that seems logical and correct to me, too, but unfortunately …” chat with him without going into too many unpleasant details because the kid is still young.
tl;dr, Melissa Joan Hart seems to have forgotten about the whole “do unto others” thing, which seems to have been a pretty big deal to Jesus!
She sounds like a family friend of ours whom I once offered to attempt to help her daughter once I learned Reiki. She’s a crazy Christian – I myself and spiritual and Christian – and she said “no,” abd that she had “explained about Reiki” to her daughter regarding the Bible and therefore they had chosen not to have me try. Her daughter has a lot of pain from having Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, pernicious anemia, and some other issues. I didn’t push the subject but wondered what she had said to her daughter because in my opinion, Reiki is similar to the laying on of hands mentioned in the Bible.
Melissa is canceled. I think that she’s lying and she completely believes that if someone doesn’t give their life to Jesus, that they are horrible people. (I believe in God and don’t believe that someone has to ask Jesus for salvation to get to heaven – if heaven even exists at all.)
This is definitely low-key antisemitism. The weird thing I see happen in my community is that people get “bothered” big time if you aren’t some sort of Christian and then on the other hand, they bend over backwards to praise Israel as God’s chosen land, BiBi as a truly great man and leader even though what is happening in Palenstine is a human rights abomination, and Jewish people as God’s chosen ones. While condemning them to hell. It truly baffles me how hypocritical they are and its the mainn reason I quit going to church and decided to worship on my own. I can’t stand that bullshit and I’m pretty sure Jesus feels the same way.
And why would you even have that “talk” with a 5 year old? I always told my kids to treat everyone in school like a friend – until a kid bullies them or is just plain mean then it’s ok don’t go over there and be a doormat. I’m appalled she equates Christianity with being a “good” person. As my folks say, is the word “good” tattooed on their forehead?
We’re religious (not Christian) but we don’t belong in a temple. My folks think the organized houses are a scam (some cases yes) and they don’t believe in using religion as a crutch to pray away your sins (like the Maggots do).
When I was in college, I once had a 6 year Baptist old say to my face that I was going straight to hell because I didn’t believe in Jesus. Um okay but where I come from, we were taught we’d all end up there…it just depends on which level.
Proving once again that not everyone should have children.
When I was growing up in Prague during the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, I had several Jewish friends from school. Many of them would have swastikas spray painted on their mailboxes overnight or the Star of David. It was horrible, especially considering that Europe went through 2 World Wars and the second one was mostly aimed at eliminating Jews in the most horrific way possible.
You would think that the world and mostly Europeans would have learned something after such horrific events.
I don’t understand why some people are antisemitic. I’ve had only good experiences with Jewish people.
In every group of people there are good people there are some bad, but race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality doesn’t define, if someone is good person or a bad one.
Being Christian and believing in Jesus doesn’t make someone a good person, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
I was born catholic, but I’m not a practicing catholic, although I believe in a higher power – GOD, but I’m not religious. Religion is often a divider and I don’t want to be a part of that.
Sadly I’ve met plenty of know it all, arrogant so called Christians that lacked compassion, kindness and honesty.
My mother in law was the only Christian I knew that truly lived like a Christian woman.
Melissa is being passive aggressive antisemitic, she should be ashamed of herself for filling her son’s head with bigotry.
No wonder the hate in our world continues with parents like her.
I think its fine to believe in God ora higher power/afterlife whatever have you. But I do hate the judgy preachy “You have to do/be XYZ” to get into heaven. There are plently of people who are athiests, Jewish, Muslim etc who do more good for the world than some of these so called Christians. The same way people who are gay or have had abortions etc. Just because you go to church every Sunday doesnt make you a good person.
Her comments weren’t specifically anti-semetic. They were a general, “I hate and fear anyone who isnt Christian”. That includes Muslims, Jews and Athiests. The irony of this for me is that for me as a Muslim it always makes me laugh when ignorant ill-educated so called Christians say things like this. Because Muslims DO believe in Jesus. We simply don’t believe he was the son of God. He was a prophet. And a really important one within Islam.
I wanted to speak up because I believe Christianity is given a bad name in this thread. I was raised in a non-denominational church and we only focused on being positive and loving all people, regardless of backgrounds. I think the problem is that there are SO many churches out there and people pick what they want to focus on and believe. We grew up knowing to “be kind to others”, “treat others with respect” and love first. No one was denied, regardless of background. And we didn’t seek out to “change people”. It’s terrible how Christianity has been given a bad rap lately. And I agree, I’ve seen LOTS of proclaimed Christians do unspeakable acts. But I think it should be separated – the religion from the person. Christianity has always taught that each person has “free will”. You can do whatever you desire. To accept Jesus as your savior is a personal commitment. And not everyone will do it and that’s fine.
For MJH to even have this sort of discussion with her 6 year old is a little bizarre. I have a 6 year old as well and I’ve taught her to be loving and friendly to everyone. Now, if we have a problem, that’s something else. But she goes to school to learn and make friends and work with all different kinds of people. That’s how the world works. You go out there and learn to work with everyone, no matter the background. Everyone deserves respect, period. We always start there – then move forward.
Eh a lot of people here are speaking from their personal experiences…
The summer between 6th and 7th grade, one of my friends was killed in a go kart accident. The first thing another friend told me and the rest of my friends was that he was going to hell if he wasn’t “saved.” Needless to say, we weren’t friends for much longer after that.
Ugh people like this drive me crazy. When I was 8 years old a Sunday School teacher told our class that Jewish people could not go to heaven because they didn’t believe in Jesus. I got into trouble because I spouted out that I was going to go to hell then so I could still play with my friend (who was Jewish). I grew up in the south where things like this were thrown arriving like verbal bullets. My mom sat me down and explained that the teacher (who was a third-cousin) had never been very bright and I had to ignore her. Parents are so powerful in the ability to create open-minded kids. Clearly this lady is trying to do the opposite. This was traumatic for me, it was almost 40 years ago and I remember it because the thought of my friend going to hell was terrifying. People like this are why it has been 10 years since I stepped into a church. I have no ill will towards churches, but I have the life long feeling of feeling out of place because so much of what I was told had nothing to do with the actual Bible.
I think this is honestly what people don’t understand. Antisemitic statements like the one you just mentioned hearing in Sunday School are SUPER commonplace in those settings. People in environments like that church, especially children who don’t know any better, are sponges and they grow up absorbing those messages over the years. Before you know it, they’re going off to college and earnestly asking their Jewish roommate if they could show them their actual horns growing out of their head (true story!).
Bitch, I l put crushed ice in my wine. Fight me.
I really like her so it hurts a little to read this. I remember when my daughter was younger, a Baptist minister lived across the street from me and his daughter was best friends with mine. We got talking and I stated that while I believe in God, I feel the people who do not still go to Heaven…if someone really believes a cow is sacred, that is their belief. I do not think God judges that. He was a wonderful man and was very kind and just said he would like to get inside my head (many would, but that’s another story). Years later, my very Catholic brother married a Jewish woman, had 2 kids being raised Jewish. He practices his Catholic religion and the kids are doing their Bah/Bar Mitzvah in June. They are all amazing, good people! I have a few atheist friends who are totally great and have the biggest hearts out of anyone I know. I have a few relatives who go to Church regularly that I try to avoid with their nastiness. Point is, it’s what’s in your heart that makes you a good person. I am SO SICK of this whole our nation is a Christian nation and if you are not, you are not worth being here!
what a massively huge stretch to say that she is being anti-Semitic specifically. She is saying that anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is a questionable character, or simply not a good person. It seems strange to me to pull anti-Semitism out of that. She didn’t say a single word about Jews. She’s talking about every single person in the world who doesn’t believe in Jesus. There are a whole lot more people that don’t believe in Jesus then just Jews.
She’s clearly a massive bigot and completely ignorant, but this headline is very misleading. I don’t doubt that she is anti-Semitic, but that cannot be logically deduced from what it is that she said. What can be logically deduced is that she is a bigot and thinks that anyone who doesn’t believe as she does is possibly or probably about person.
And just for the record, I’m not saying that she’s not anti-Semitic. I am saying that she is anti-Semitic and so much more In addition to that. She seems to think that only Christians are good people, which excludes literally everyone else in the world who is not Christian. My beef with the headline in the story is that it is misleading by saying that she’s being specifically anti-semitic.
@Themummy :
Excuse me, but the article specifically mentions a Jewish boy her son befriended and she got a call from his mother.
I don’t think it is a stretch at all.
But it isn’t though. It’s about how her son came home questioning his Jewish friend’s ability to get into heaven. As @LoveBug said, there is a degree of specificity here that makes this instance of it antisemitic.
Here is a review of her film ‘God’s not dead’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4UMi7WdcPc
@ Darya-thanks for the link, that was truly hysterical. I’ve never heard of ‘The Cinema Slob’, I’m glad I did 🤣
In her words she started with a blanket warning: we don’t know who the good people are because we can’t know who believes in Jesus and who doesn’t. Then her son comes home asking how his Jewish friend gets into Heaven, so someone has already made it clear to him that a. Jesus is how you get into heaven and b. Jewish people don’t believe in Jesus (believing in Jesus to a Christian means believing he’s the path to heaven for whoever was splitting hairs on Jewish people do “believe” that Jesus exists.)
And that’s how we get to the anti-semitism headline. Of course she feels the same way about all other religions…
Hate the sin, not the sinner, but to me it’s a lot of cherry picking of beliefs and practices to be part of any dogmatic religion and say to each their own and think you mean it.
I have never liked this thirsty hussy.
Just a quick response to some comments about the US being a “Christian” nation. There are two ways of looking at that: as the posters have commented, that people expect that real Americans will be Christian, particularly the Protestant brand of Christianity that they themselves practice, and secondly, that the ideals of the new republic born of the revolution in 1776 were based on Enlightenment philosophy which was, in turn, based on Judeo-Christian ideals.
It is the second version that I find more accurate, and explains how a slaveholder could pen the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” and why the separation of church and state, a critical element of the Bill of Rights, developed out of Puritan beliefs in the spiritual necessity of keeping government out of an individual’s relationship with the Divine.
I could say more, but I’m out of time.
I am so sad to see that a parent would say of other children that they may not be “good” due to their religious (if any at all) affiliation. I am so saddened when I see the divides we place amongst one another. It does NOT have to be this way.
my parents are buddhist, but not really religious or anything. they would go to temple on their birthdays and maybe new year to make merit. my dad and his siblings went to catholic schools. no one, on both sides of my family, ever forced religion onto the kids or said no to trust people of other religion. i can’t even tell you the tenets of buddhism. i remember in second grade a kid asked what i believed in. i told her i believe in being a good person. she was aghast that i didn’t believe in god. then in 5th grade, another girl told me i was going to hell because i didn’t believe in god.
I do think it was antisemitic, because the kid in question was Jewish, as was his family. The whole, “Jews don’t believe in the salvation of Jesus,” thing has been a common precursor to antisemitic violence throughout history, and it’s no different here. There’s a general intolerance, and a specific, person-based intolerance that’s at work, but they’re both present, and they’re both egregious.
I distinctly remember being told by multiple classmates when I was growing up that I was “going to burn in hell” for not believing in Jesus. I had a very obnoxious classmate tell me once that I should “stop taking god’s name in vain” because I said “oh my god.” I told her that I wasn’t Christian, that my religious background had no such compunctions, and that she had no right to tell me what to do as far as I was concerned. She still insisted, and I still kept on with saying “oh my god.” All this happened in a public school, incidentally.
So yeah. I have no patience for these types. I don’t understand what she expected when she told her son this. Of course he was going to take it literally. A lot of kids do, and their peers bear the brunt of that teaching at the end, and honestly, that’s probably the whole purpose.
That seems worse than anti-semitism. She’s anti-everyone not Christian.
So many interesting comments, I’ll say.
I love this place.
I’ve always looked at religion and spirituality as different things. I often think many religions are based on fear and spirituality is based on love.
I believe every religion can be misinterpreted. Hence, the ignorance. So-called believers of Christ want to feel important and exclusive so their own fears of being inadequate are extinguished. And that is not just Jesus based religions.
For ME, the irony is this; the religions most bent on Hell seem, usually, to create a Hell on earth for others.
In other words, the more you fear, the more you infect others.
I believe in coming here via free will, doing your best to follow your higher self, learning and moving on. No judgement, no separatism.
It saddens me when I hear people say they don’t believe in a higher power only because religion screws them up.
There are other alternatives. You don’t have to believe in all man made preaching to find an inner inspiration.
@kitten. I consider myself progressive and literate. I wrote “dominant” group of Mexican kids; I didn’t say each and every Mexican kid or parent tortured our family. However, these types of families have ruined that town, what I’m tellin you is true. They can’t keep teachers, and after buying a home, we had to move. I don’t think you’re sorry that happened to me or to my family. You came across as didactic despite my explaining how we fight to NOT generalize etc. What i explained is what us liberal bleeding hearts don’t want to acknowledge- why are we in this debacle of anti-immigration??? We don’ t want to see what We personally experience. I’m sure this post will be deleted!!
This reminds me of the author of the book Girl, Wash Your Face. It was exclusive to the non-Jesus believers.
Not fun fact but…
freedom of religion == freedom to hate …
as long as you stay in legal boundaries and also stay polite (lawsuits).
Also includes right to hate MJH.
Omg. I could hardly read that garbage. Do NOT get me started on religion and Christianity bullshit. I have stories upon stories upon stories pouring out of my head. Crap you wouldn’t believe. I still can’t believe it. But this is the precise way so many sanctimonious pricks speak. In hushed tones (as if that offers the necessary respect), We just don’t know if these people are good people honeykins. We don’t know if they believe in Jesus. And omgawd sweetikins, we can’t be around non-believers (barely audible whisper). That was hard to say in my head without a Southern accent. Oh well. To hell with all ’em. Besides if there’s a Jesus, then there’s the red man. And the red man is rolling around in fire laughing his ass off waiting for hypocrites to die off.
If she’s willing to say this sh*t so publicly, I can’t imagine the stuff she says behind closed doors.