There has been quite a bit of times I have heard in the wake of some school killing or in light of rising school violence that the reason kids on our end of the world (North America) are so violent nowadays is because prayer (god) has been taken out of schools and so on. To people who espouse this type of logic, their line of reasoning goes along the lines that with the removal of god from the schools there has been a direct upswing in school troubles. If this is true, why is it that in countries like Sweden and other northwestern European countries where church and god have been basically placed in a trash bin like yesterday’s trash do we find relatively low crimes rates, prosperity and stability?

While we’re at it, another thing I find interesting is this. Many of us of the black race have grown up in or under the influence of Christianity, a religion that became part of our legacy in great part through slavery and colonialism that was thrust upon our forefathers by former European colonial powers like France, England, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Denmark. Well statistics continue to show that those nations are straying further and further away from taking Christianity seriously, treating it and the church more as a relic even in Italy the seat of the once universally powerful Roman Church. So the former slave masters have practically cut loose of their ties to one of their most powerful tools that helped to justify and reinforce their past crimes on Africans (as well as others) and their descendants yet those they inflicted it upon still cling to it.

For example, in Mexico, a largely Catholic country, colonized by Catholic Spain, only 2-3% of Mexicans do not believe in God (from a 2004 BBC survey) yet in Spain today, 24% of Spaniards consider themselves “atheist” of “agnostic.” It is also not surprising either that you are likely to find more (serious) believers and churchgoers amongst black people in the U.S than white people in the U.S relative to their individual populations.

Food for thought.