No Cross, No Jesus

Every so often, something completely unexpected happens and knocks you off your feet. Today, I had this experience while leading a Halloween BINGO game with a bunch of 6 year olds. While instructing the children to draw a cross on their wipeoff boards to create 4 different squares in which they would place pictures of Halloween words, a small, slight girl of 6 simply saying no. Taken aback, I looked at her and instructed her again to make a cross on her board and again, she replied, "no Jesus." Completely disoriented and caught off guard, I clumsily muttered for her to make an x on the board up and down and drew a cross in the air and she, more indignantly this time and with more force replied, "no cross, no Jesus" and proceeded to draw an X instead. I, feeling a bit awkward and a bit defeated from being humiliated by a 6 year old, scurried along in fear of being accused of Christian indoctrination from forcing a child to draw a cross, ignoring that she was unable to completely participate in the game due to this blind and passionate refusal to draw two intersecting lines in the middle of her whiteboard.

It's at least mentioned let alone taught in almost every French class that I have ever been in that France is a "laïc" nation. The fact that France is secular is one that has been ingrained into my head every step of my academic life but today was the first time that I saw that firsthand. Hours later, I am still completely overwhelmed by my feelings from earlier, both confusion and raw anger, that stemmed from the request to draw a shape. While a cross is one of the most powerful and symbolic Christian images known to mankind, it also happens to be a shape that is used commonly in school that before today, I had never really associated with Jesus.

 The separation between church and state is so vast here that one would believe that it is almost unpatriotic to be religious in this country. The "curious" wonderings of various Europeans who want to know more about the lack of separation of church and state in the US is both patronizing and an exhausting topic that I have come to dread. Upon further thinking on the topic, I've come to realize that in the US, the church is separate from the state but the state isn't wholly separated from the church. There are various examples strew throughout the fibers of the American way of life from mottos on currency to prayers from the President during times of grief and turmoil of core Christian values that are a part of the nation. There will never be any laws created that directly inhibit the freedom of religion but the elected officials all bring various backgrounds of spirituality into the backbone of the nation.

This brief yet powerful encounter with my student today is one that I will not easily forget. It has caused me to be extremely uneasy in my thoughts today and, I imagine, will be an experience that I will look back on and perpetually be perplexed by.