Prayers and privilege

St. George’s is an Episcopal school that declares an “uncommon commitment to inclusion, in an atmosphere that welcomes families of any faith,” and is dedicated “to something stronger than mere tolerance – instilling, instead, a heartfelt respect for differences in thought and belief.”

According to the data collected from families when students enroll for the first time, 46.5% of the St. George’s community identifies as Christian (50% of families choose not to answer this question).

These numbers differ from regional statistics. According to Pew Research Center, 76% of adults in the South are Christian. This is higher than the percentage of Christians in the United States as a whole, which sits at 70%. Alternatively, 3.5% of first-time enrolling families indicate something other than Christianity. So while many families at St. George’s are Christian, some are not.

According to Wikipedia, Christian privilege is a social advantage that is bestowed upon Christians in any historically Christian society like the United States. This arises out of the presumption that Christian belief is a social norm, which can lead to the marginalization of the nonreligious and members of other religions through institutional religious discrimination or religious persecution.

The dominance of Christianity means people sometimes assume others are part of the norm. Junior Aiden Curry, who is agnostic, thinks that living in the South causes people to make assumptions about his religion.

“I think most people would assume that I’m a Christian person,” Curry said. “I think most people would just assume anyone’s Christian, going to this school or just living [in the South].”

Taking a world religion class, as all St. George’s students in the upper school are required to do, can help increase awareness of other beliefs. In this class students “cover the historical origins, development, thought, and practices of the world’s major religions,” according to the St. George’s website.

Associate Rabbi Bess Wholner of Temple Israel in Memphis worries that when people do not learn about other religions, terrible situations can arise, like the Colleyville Synagogue hostage crisis earlier this year, when a man took four people, including a rabbi, hostage.

“We even saw that, with Colleyville, someone believing that Jews were so connected that some random Rabbi could get someone freed from federal prison because Jews control the world,” Rabbi Wohlner said.

Rabbi Wholner said that it is hard for others to understand what is harmful to say when they do not see a problem with their words.

“Things people believe about Jews are often anti-Semitic, which is as old as Jews have been around, and I think that it’s dangerous in a way that other people don’t always understand,” Rabbi Wholner said.

The problem extends to other faiths as well.

When Mr. Taylor Cao, director of student life, was younger, he practiced Buddhism. Other children would call him slurs and frequently ask him uninformed, insensitive questions.

“People always had questions, they were always like ‘what’s a Buddhist?’, ‘what do you believe in?’, ‘is this just some big guy who sits all the time and meditates?’” said Mr. Cao. “I was a child and didn’t really understand the full context of it all.”

Mr. Cao believes that the St. George’s community is open to having conversations about religion. He said he trusts that this community is one that has the capacity to learn about other people.

“I do appreciate that we are at a school where we can have conversations like this,” said Mr. Cao. “We have teachers and faculty and leaders and students who are like, ‘I kinda wanna learn a little bit more’.”