El Perro Negro

St. James Quarter

Edinburgh, EH1 3AE

UK

by Beau Cadiyo

To an American, one of the strangest things about British schools, and the British system, is the complete lack of a wall between church and state.  In Scotland, kids must generally have two public schools to choose from: a normal state school (that has no religious affiliation) and a Catholic school.  Either way, they are going to get a ton of religion thrown at them - while all religions are tolerated, and many religious holidays are celebrated, it is abundantly clear that the Church of England is the official state church and Christian rituals are dominant.  There are no "winter holidays" or "spring break" - Christmas is the reason for the season and its attendent vacations, and the Easter break comes at Easter, which just happens to be in spring.  

This week, all of the kindergarteners at my son's private school participated in the school nativity play.  The reaction of other parents is telling: the British ones get nostalgic about their own participation decades before, and are giddy at the thought that their child may be a king, or a sheep, or even Joseph or Mary.  The foreigners, too, loved it - there were Asian, African, and Middle Eastern parents in the audience with us who hadn't had the same experience but thought it was adorable to see their kids participating in this quaint British tradition, and maybe saw their child's participation as evidence of their having been accepted into British society.  Attending the performance as an American, I was...well, comfortable with it, knowing that my son is getting a healthy dose of skepticism at home, has never believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and is learning about all sorts of things that would prevent him from slipping down the road of blind belief.  

But seeing five-year-olds pretend to be wise men made me revisit my attitude to religion.  One thing I am  trying to be careful of is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  While I am not a strong believer in Christianity (if anything, I have a strong affinity for the Old Gods), I believe that mainstream modern religion has a lot of good in it, and there are a lot of life lessons that are effectively communicated through many of the Good Books.  For example, the virtues - I don't know of any sane person who would say that fortitude is bad, or that we should keep people from being just.  Loving thy neighbor?  Kindness?  Mercy?  All good things to normal people.  

In my son's nativity play, Joseph and Mary go from inn to inn in a foreign land, looking for a place to stay, and every innkeeper turns them away until one lets them sleep in the barn with the animals.  I thought: if an American voter was faced with the option to help these folks, about to birth Jesus, would they tell Herod to build a wall?  Would they say, "Send the man on a bus to New York and the woman to Florida and let them try to find each other"?  Would they want to put Jesus in a retaining cell away from his parents for months on end, then send him "back to where he came from" without them?  I think the answer must be, "Yes, absolutely."  Perhaps it is the experiment in separating Church and State that has led to a situation where the vast majority of American voters would call Jesus a slur, demand identification from Joseph, and say that Mary and her kind should keep her legs closed.  

The question, then: how to transmit these religious virtues to modern American voters?  How to get them to think more about charity and love than Kx Kardashian or how to get another credit card?  

I don't know the answer.  Maybe we need to amend the Constitution to be more in line with traditional Christian values like compassion, respect, humility, honesty, generosity, forgiveness, and self control, and inculcate these values in the citizens.  Maybe we need laws to enforce Matthew 6:5-6, or 19:9, or to encourage Luke 14:12-13 and Matthew 5:44.  

Maybe, too, El Perro Negro needs to rethink their sauce policies.  They have damn good burgers, but charge £1 for a small cup of ketchup.  Maybe they need Keith Lee to visit.