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closing the askbox

Hello faithful followers,

I am terribly, terribly sorry for not being more present. This is not an excuse, merely an explanation: I’ve been spending a lot less time on tumblr lately. My social media habits changed, and so I’ve been neglecting this blog. I just cleared out a bunch of asks that have been sitting in there for who knows how long. Years, possibly. I don’t know.

Given that I don’t spend any time on this platform anymore, I’ve decided to just close the askbox and spare you all the suspense of wondering whether or not this blog is still active. (And spare myself the shame spirals!) I hope the content that’s still here is useful to you, and I’m grateful for your curiosity and support while this blog was still active. You’re generous, thoughtful, and trying so, so hard to get things right--and that’s important, these days now more than ever.

Stay loving, everyone. Peace.

Hi, I'm wondering why religious dietary restriction don't include Buddism? It's too common to hear of Muslim, Kosher, even Jain and I'd see them on airlines. Except that every Buddhist temple or Buddhist restaurant were strictly vegetarian. I know not every Buddhist is vegetarian but not even every Muslim or Jewish or Jain even followed their religious diet either.

This is...a really good question! And this is an answer pulled straight out of my ass: I didn’t do any research on this whatsoever (and I’m not even sure how I’d research it).

If I look at this question strictly through the lens of the airline meals, my guess is that “Buddhist” isn’t on the list alongside Kosher, Halal, Jain, etc. because Buddhist are generally covered by vegetarian/vegan meals. I guess it’s true that “temple food” generally also doesn’t contain aliums (shallots, ginger, onions, garlic), though...hmmm...

Meanwhile, Kosher/Halal food laws have to do with rules governing slaughter and prohibitions of certain kinds of foods and combinations of foods. These laws are very specific, and it’s generally understood that abiding by these rules is a requirement of the faith. Of course, as you say, not everyone does--I know Jewish people who eat pepperoni and Muslims who love to drink--but the option still has to be made available for the ones who do. Kosher/Halal diets can generally be satisfied with the vegetarian or vegan option, but then sometimes people get upset that they didn’t have the option of eating meat, so it’s easier to head off complaints by just offering a Kosher option that’s just, like, chicken or something.

I’m really stuck on the aliums, though. I guess it’s not a religious requirement not to eat aliums? Maybe? Like, I don’t think that’s in the Sutras anywhere? Now I’m trying to remember if any of the vegan meals I’ve eaten on airplanes had aliums in them....

In an "all myths are true" setting, would there be a way to include Abrahamic elements (golems, Holy Grail, jinn, etc.) alongside elements from other belief systems without stepping on religious readers' toes? My planned approach is to acknowledge pagan deities as powerful entities, but not on the same level as the Abrahamic God -- more on the level of, say, the most powerful fae. I wouldn't go into whether a universal God exists, even if I do include elements like the Grail. Would that work?

I dunno! I can’t really speak for....all religious readers, and it also depends on what you mean by “religious.” I see pagan readers as being just as religious as, say, Christian readers, so if you made the pagan deities as being weaker than the Abrahamic God I’m not sure that you wouldn’t wind up with--theoretically--pagan readers being offended that you think their gods are less legitimate than the Abrahamic God. Probably someone is going to be offended no matter what, and you’re going to have to decide if you’re okay with that.

Other people have asked variations on the “is this offensive?” question and here are some of my previous replies.

what is daily life in a catholic school like? how does prayer work in school? also, are the teachers nuns even at all boy’s schools?

This sounds like a question for....all of tumblr! I never attended Catholic school and don’t really know anyone who did (which seems weird, now that I think about it)...so readers, please sound off in the comments/reblogs!

Hello, is this blog still active? And as my actual question, does the concept of Hell or similar place of eternal punishment exist in Islam? I'm writing a fanfic with one muslim character, and there's a scene where I'd like to describe events that happened to him as hell/hellish/living hell, but it would feel sort of awkward and stupid in my mind of the character in question doesn't believe in such a place. I've tried googling it myself but I'd still like to hear your answer. Thank you! :)

This blog IS still active, although as you can tell I....check it kind of infrequently, because I haven't gotten any asks in a long time. And this one seems to be incomplete. D:

EDIT: OH NO WAIT, IT WAS COMPLETE AND THE APP JUST CUT OFF THE ASK LMAO. Okay, this answer requires me to be sitting down at an actual computer and write out an actual answer, so I'm gonna leave this up as a placeholder for a bit. Thanks for your patience!!

Yeah I meant religious syncretism, didn't know that word though. I would understand that if it were laymen, but a priest confined to the rules of their religion?? Like say, if you are reading directly from scriptures, you don't suddenly get a section from another religion do you? That's what my confusion is about.

Oh!! Okay, I think I understand your question now.

I don’t know anything about the origins of the Quanzhen School of Taoism (I assume you’re the OP of this previous question about Taoism), but I would hazard a guess that–like many religions–its scripture came about after the religion itself has already been around for a while. A lot of religious knowledge is passed down as oral history, especially at first.

So probably what happened (and this is pure speculation; my knowledge of the history of Eastern religions is extremely weak) is that a Buddhist monk went wandering around ancient China, which had already contained a strong tradition of Confucianism and Taoism (Taoism is pretty old, IIRC; again, like many religions, it actually predates Laozi writing anything down) and told people some stuff about Buddha. People nodded and were like, “hmm, that makes sense, and actually it seems pretty compatible with some of the stuff we already believe about how the world works.” So they added some statues and some practices to the things they were already doing, because you know, why not, and at some point some of those people became priests/monks on their own, and they decided to actually write some of this stuff down for other people to follow. And then some of those people argued that “their” version of this religious fusion was the most correct, because of Reasons, and they split into different sects.

And that’s the history of basically every religion ever, really.

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Hello!! I'm writing a book and one of my characters is a young Muslim girl who ends up converting to Christianity. I'm so worried about portraying negative Muslim stereotypes. I know it would differ from family to family but in general how would a Muslim family react to a conversion? How would her Mosque react? Would she still be allowed to contact her devout Muslim friends? What does the Quran say about it? Thank you so much!!

I thought about kicking this over to my Muslim colleague–and I still might–but I thought I’d take a crack at this myself. I hope you don’t mind!

As you said yourself, this situation would differ from family to family, and the cultural context of that family matters too. A Muslim family in Pakistan is likely to react differently to this than, say, a Muslim family in the United Kingdom; even Muslims in the United States will differ depending on if they’re, say, an Indonesian immigrant family v. a Black Muslim family. I’m reluctant, therefore, to say “generally” anything because there are so many variables, and there will always be exceptions.

I invite you to think, briefly, on how this would feel/look if the situation were reversed. Say she’s converting to Islam from Christianity. How would her family react to that? How would her church react? Would she still be allowed to contact her devout Christian friends? (For that matter, would her devout Christian friends still want to talk to her?) Well, you might say, that would depend on a lot of things: how conservative is the family; what kind of church do they attend; what kind of neighborhood they live in. You might also say that the two situations are not analogous, and you would be right; Christianity currently occupies a different status in the world than Islam, especially in the West. I don’t want to diminish that.

What you have here, at its core, is a story about family: parents concerned about the decisions their child is making, and a child struggling to make decisions independent of her family and become her own person. So, what kind of family are they? What are her parents’ concerns? Are they immigrant parents, worried that their American-born child is assimilating beyond their control? Do they want to be supportive, but are worried about what their community will think? Is one of her parents supportive while the other one isn’t? Does she have siblings, and if so, how do her siblings feel about this?

I’m not sure the Quran says anything explicit about converting to Christianity per se, but it does say that God neither begets nor is born, so it’s explicitly anti-Trinitarian. That’s all I’ve got for you on that front.

Hope that helps!

I know there's a fusion of several Asian religions, but at first I thought it'd cause trouble when I have a Taoist priest in my story set in Jin dynasty. But OMG I read about the Quanzhen School of Taoism and they even use Buddhist and Confucian ideas? They're not laymen picking up everything, they're priests! So um... yeah? PS - Your page is misleading, when my friend referred me here I saw the url and replied how do I expect a pastor to help me? :-/

I…am not sure what your question is! I think you’re asking about religious syncretism, which I’ve written about before a couple of times. I don’t really know what to say beyond that, especially since you’ve clearly done a lot of research and I honestly don’t know the Quanzhen School of Taoism from an apple tree. I know even less about Chinese history!

And I’m sorry that the name of this blog confused you. I really struggled with naming it; scriptreligion seemed overly broad, and scriptchristianity too narrow (also I’m not Christian, so that seemed to misrepresent this blog in a different way). I eventually settled on scriptpastor in the hopes that it informed people that I’m mostly knowledgeable about stuff having to do with ministry, and used the “prays well with others” cover art in the hopes that it let people know that I’m pluralistic. Really, though, I know a little bit about a lot of things, and not a whole lot about any one thing in particular. Basically, I’m useless! I’m amazed anyone writes into this blog at all!

I hope that provided a starting point!

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Would it be possible for a minor to request that their family not force them to attend any kind of religious service or receive any religious ritual claiming that it is against their religious freedom? Either by some court order, or with the support of the leaders of the religious service refusing to serve the child?

I’m no lawyer, and I’m sure this sort of thing differs by country as well. I can see the answer to this question being very different in, say, Saudi Arabia v. the United States.

From a U.S. perspective, it seems to me very unlikely that the courts would intervene in this unless the minor in question is emancipated, in which case they can make their own legal decisions. If the parents have been absentee for a long time--let’s say the kid’s been more or less living on their own and the parents suddenly pop up to say, “okay, now time for you to undergo the Midnight Blood Dedication!”--there could also potentially be some legal grounds there. Otherwise, your best recourse is to go with the religious leaders refusing to go ahead with their ritual. Maybe the ritual requires consent; maybe they have a better relationship with the child than they do with the parents and “side” with the child; maybe the Blood God told them not to serve the child, who knows. But I mean, it’s pretty hard to go ahead with a religious ritual that requires priestly participation is the priest isn’t on board! Then you’d have to, like, go over that priest’s head and find a bishop, or another priest, and things get all complicated...

Hope that helps!

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I'm planning for a novel set in a Catholic boarding school in England and have a few questions: primarily, I'd like to make my cast of characters as diverse as possible, but I don't know just how common it is for non-Catholics, and non-Christians, to attend Catholic schools. For what reasons would people make this choice? In what ways would the treatment of non-Catholic people in Catholic schools differ from the way Catholic children are treated, in terms of prayer and other things? Thank you!

This is one of those situations where my own personal experience is pretty limited; fortunately, this is also one of those situations where my followers are likely to have plenty of personal experiences of their own. I expect them to add their own experiences in the notes!

I’ll say from my own observation of this in the United States that it’s extremely common for non-Catholics and non-Christians to attend Catholic schools. In the United States, it’s because Catholic schools are all private, and so parents who want to avoid sending their children to public school for whatever reason will often opt to send them to a Catholic school. (This might be different in the U.K. where parochial schools might still be eligible for government funding because they don’t have the same laws about separation of church and state).

Catholic schools are pretty much the same as non-Catholic schools in terms of subject matter, except that generally all students are also required to take religion or theology classes, regardless of how they identify. Any student that tries to object is probably gonna get a response along the lines of, “Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have gone to a Catholic school.” (Plenty of the Catholic kids will probably find this class boring as heck or irrelevant too! Just because a kid was raised Catholic doesn’t mean they automatically have an interest in religion.) I imagine they also have regular Mass and/or chapel that students are required to attend. They won’t force everyone to take Communion, in the same way that nobody is forced to take Communion at a regular non-school Mass either (and in fact you’re not supposed to, if you’re not baptized or haven’t been to Confession or whatever). As for prayer, they can’t...force you to pray? I mean, any kid who gets up during a prayer and starts doing cartwheels or something is going to be disciplined for being disruptive, but they’re not going to discipline a student who decides to just stare into space and think about lunch during a prayer.

The only questions I have are actually around Muslim students attending Catholic schools. Like, are they allowed to wear their head coverings? Are they allowed to do their daily prayers? A cursory Google reveals that yes, Muslims do attend Catholic schools in England, and their parents can pull them out for Eid and stuff, so...that’s a thing!

Hope that helps!

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Hey, another question about the Catholic/Muslim wedding. So, if the husband is Catholic and attends a Catholic church, what would his church think of the family when they have to marry somewhere else? How about just attending normal services after marriage, both at churches and at mosques for the couple?

Uuuggghhh how long has this been sitting in my inbox–

I know several interfaith couples where one is a Catholic, and it really depends on the couple. Some couples attend church twice on Sundays (!), others split up and attend their services separately. I’m not sure the priest at the Catholic church in question would have an opinion on this; it probably depends on that priest. Most priests are happy enough to have people showing up and taking the Eucharist, I think. And I mean, what’s he gonna do, really, demand that spouses attend? Bar people from attending without their spouses? XD;; This might become more of an issue if the couple has children, because that raises the question of whether or not the children will be baptized, which faith the children will be raised in, etc.

Hope that helps!

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Many of my religious changes uses the Been There, Shaped History trope and that there's more to the context. Example like someone kills Sri Chaitanya, but in order to correct history, a shapeshifter becomes him. And it turns out, that always had happened. And evident as an original painting had something from the shapeshifter only. Another one is that Cain actually killed Abel because Abel was abusive. Cain's scar was given by Abel, then God turns it to be a protective mark.

(I’m assuming this is the OP from this previous ask.)

Hey, there’s an article about the Been There, Shaped History trope!

I still can’t really advise you on how “not to be offensive” because that’s still really subjective. Again, somebody out there is going to be offended, and I don’t want you coming back to me all like, “But you said this wasn’t offensive!” I, personally, am pretty difficult to offend. I don’t want to set the bar at my level.

That said, I see very little to be offended by if you’re not actually changing history to, say, erase entire peoples/cultures/religions. I mean, someone can probably make the argument that it’s disempowering to certain groups, or that you’re invalidating certain religions/miracles by “reducing” it to Aliens Did It, but are you ready to give up your concept because of some hypothetical naysayers?

One of the things my mentor used to ask me was: are you ready to have this conversation? For instance: is it okay for me to have Christian iconography up in my office? (Bearing in mind that many Unitarian Universalists are allergic to Christian iconography.) She’d never tell me not to do anything, but she’d ask me: are you ready to have this conversation? If someone comes to me saying that they’re offended by my office decor, am I ready to listen to them and have a conversation about it?

That’s...not the advice you asked for, I guess, but it’s the advice I have. Hope it helps!

How do I make sure I'm writing an historical event or religious figures but changing it to fit my storyline and do not offend the religion? I know it's done in a ton of fiction but I have no idea if any of it is offensive.

Well, chances are it’ll offend somebody, because it’s a big world with a lot of people in it. I’d encourage you to not worry about it too much, because it’s a big world with a lot of people in it, you know? You can’t prepare for everything.

It’s hard to give any kind of general advice on this because it’s really a case-by-case thing: it depends on which historical event, why you’re changing it, what you’re changing it to, etc. The best general advice I can give you is to just be as thoughtful as you can. Think about how marginalized these faiths and these people are in the world before you go messing around with their historical events. Like, don’t, say, kill Muhammad so that Islam never existed, because Islamophobia is bad enough already; similarly, don’t mess around with Judaism too much, because anti-Semitism is alive and well and we don’t need any more of that, either. Ask yourself, “Why do I want to make this change?” “What story am I trying to tell?” “What outcome am I hoping for?” And if the answer is kind and reflective, and not judgmental, then probably you’re doing okay. It matters a lot that you worry about this in the first place, and I think that’ll take you a long way.

Hope that helps!

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Do unborn dead babies go anywhere in any religion?

This was a weirdly difficult question to research, which is probably why you asked it here. The only one I know off the top of my head is the Catholic idea of Limbo, where deceased infants who haven’t yet been baptized go (since it’s pretty crappy for a baby to go to hell when they weren’t even old enough to, like, really sin).

Hope that helps!

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Hi, in my story there's an interracial and interfaith marriage. Can a Catholic church accept that some rituals are substituted for Muslim ones? Also the bride is a in a traditional Muslim wedding dress too.

Dang, I don’t know how long this ask has been hanging out in my inbox! Once again, if you don’t get an answer within a week, resubmit; chances are I either never got it or, uh, forgot about it.

Anyway, no Catholic church is going to be on board with swapping out one ritual for another, especially if it’s the wedding. The whole point of the Catholic wedding is that it’s a sacrament and therefore a highly formalized ritual. The dress swap might actually be okay, though.

If you need a church that’s more okay with interfaith marriages, you might try the Unitarian Universalists, who will cheerfully mix and match rituals any way you like. (DISCLAIMER: I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister.)

Hope that helps!

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My beta asked me why do I just pick what parts of religions my characters follow - that they can't be really religious if so. I know rules can differ or be lax. I mean I personally know Muslims who eat pork and a Buddhist who actually works in a slaughterhouse, or ones who never go to places of worship or pray, and of course all the LGBT ones and those having premarital sex, etc. But honestly I don't understand what makes one religious in the first place when you decide your own rules.

At my church today, we did an exercise where two people stood at opposite ends of the room and made opposing statements, like “Winter is my favorite season!” v. “I can’t stand winter.” People then arranged themselves on the spectrum between these two opposites.

One of the statement pairs was “I’m spiritual” v. “I’m religious.” Literally everyone stood on the “I’m spiritual” end of the spectrum except for myself and the senior minister. Not weird/uncommon at a Unitarian Universalist church.

“Being religious” has a lot of baggage in North America. People associate it with adhering fiercely to some creed or dogma and being judgmental of/rejecting others who don’t fit that creed. That’s why people often say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” They see their faith as being a personal journey or exploration, not having to do with following rules or decrees.

But really, what it comes down to is, you’re religious if you decide you’re religious. How is anyone else going to define that for you? “Being religious” looks and feels different depending on who you ask. As you’ve noted, there are Muslims who drink and Jews who happily eat bacon; there are Christians who protest outside of abortion clinics and Christians who bless those same abortion clinics; there are Buddhists who burn incense in their homes every day and never set foot in a temple, and there are Buddhists who meditate on the reg in their sanghas. Sure, there are people who will say someone “isn’t really a Christian” or “isn’t really a Muslim” because they don’t follow this rule or that, but who made them judge of that? Religion, like so many other things, is largely made up, in the same way that “gender” or “capitalism” is made up.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Gender and capitalism are, despite being made up things, also things that have enormous influence over people’s lives and deaths. Just because they’re rules we made up doesn’t mean they don’t have power. What’s important is recognizing when rules should have power, and when we should change them.

That got awfully philosophical, and I don’t even know if it answered your question! I guess what I’m saying is, there’s no real answer to your question. But it’s a question worth answering, and an answer worth pondering.

I hope that helps!

Related Viewing: The Good Place (the first two seasons are on Netflix; the third season is currently airing)

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Hey, a couple more questions here. How about baptism when it's an unmarried single parent who adopted a kid? And how about documents on baptism perhaps if they are lost or maybe a fake pastor baptised illegally with illegal documents? Thanks again, you've been quite helpful so far.

WOW HOW LONG HAS THIS ASK BEEN SITTING IN MY INBOX??? I’M SO SORRY. ONCE AGAIN, IF IT EVER TAKES ME LONGER THAN FIVE DAYS TO ANSWER AN ASK, PLEASE ASK IT AGAIN.

Anyway, if this is still the Catholic Church we’re talking about, light research indicates that this unmarried single parent with an adopted child probably won’t run into any problems as long as mom, like, actually attends church and stuff. Baptism is a promise that you’ll raise your child in the faith, so the Church kinda frowns on someone showing up for a free baptism and then disappearing immediately afterward.

I have zero insights to give about fake pastors with illegal/fake paperwork though, sorry. :V That’s just way...way outside my purview.........

Hope that helps!

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