CGS community members speak out on religious inclusivity
As part of Catlin Gabel School’s (CGS) commitment to inclusion and diversity, one area that some students feel is neglected and overlooked is the study of and conversation around religion. With the upcoming holiday break coinciding with predominantly Christian holidays, it leaves students to wonder: is CGS religiously inclusive?
For many CGS families, we are in the midst of the holiday season, full of family traditions, love and laughter, and late nights at the dinner table. However, Thanksgiving and Winter Break are also a reminder to those that have to celebrate their holidays outside the academic calendar while also worrying about academic, athletic, and extracurricular activities. What do our community members have to say about the Christian-centric school calendar and our celebration of religious diversity?
Jasmine Love, Director of Inclusion and Outreach
As Director of Inclusion and Outreach at CGS, Jasmine Love was quick to identify the general needs CGS has yet to fill.
“I think it would be great to start talking more openly about the fact that people at our school practice a variety of religions and provide spaces for people to learn from each other,” she said. “It is also important to see a variety of religions represented in our curriculum and learn about the history of religions and spirituality and give students a chance to learn about them from people in the greater Portland community.”
CGS is not alone in its academic calendar, and the issues this can cause. Love recognized that “the pressure to stay caught up on school work can take away from what should be stress-free time to celebrate the holidays.” This is especially true at CGS given the school’s level of academic rigor.
So what is the administration working on in terms of solutions?
“We need to find a way as a school to make some of those holidays homework-free days,” stated Love.
At the moment, an administrative team is working to find out which holidays are celebrated by those in the community in order to avoid giving major assessments and assignments on the same days.
Given the variety of religions represented, it is no small task. However, with CGS’ small student body, and more importantly, the tight student-teacher ratio, there is an opportunity for productive dialogue between the two in order to improve religious inclusivity.
Liz Harlan-Ferlo, Upper School English Teacher
Upper School English teacher Liz Harlan-Ferlo teaches the Sacred Narratives elective, served as chaplain at Oregon Episcopal School, and is a religion scholar.
Harlan-Ferlo provided insight as to why CGS may have an especially difficult time building and maintaining a culture around religion, or what she referred to as “religious illiteracy.”
“Part of CGS’ market share is to position itself as a secular institution,” she explained, as opposed to the religiously based and affiliated private schools in the area such as Jesuit High School, Valley Catholic School, Central Catholic High School, and most prominently, the Oregon Episcopal School.
The school further distances itself from religion because of what Harlan-Ferlo described as its liberal bias.
“[Liberal] people tend to actually be less literate about religion often,” she said. “They often make assumptions about religious people as being much more politically conservative, or there is this idea that you can’t be intellectually smart and a religious person.”
Because of these characteristics, liberals may be more willing to push aside discussions of religion.
“We do a disservice in schools by not talking about religion or educating people about religion in general because we just perpetuate that silence and that cycle of illiteracy,” said Harlan-Ferlo.
Not talking about religious matters makes religious people and religious minorities feel isolated and a need to hide their faith backgrounds. When they hide their religious practices, there is no one to talk about religion, and the cycle continues.
Catie Macauley, Senior
Catie Macauley, a CGS senior devoted to improving her community both through the Anti-Racism Collective (ARC) as well as through her position as Inclusivity Coordinator, portrayed a “no excuses” attitude when discussing religious inclusivity at CGS.
“The short answer is that they can do better,” she said.
A common question surrounding religious inclusivity is if there is a way to work around or modify the Christian-centric schedule to benefit everyone. Once again, Macaulay was not at a loss for words.
“I think it’s completely possible. We just manipulated the schedule to have a day off in the middle of the week. Especially online, anything is possible,” she said. “So there is really no excuse in my mind. Diwali was last week, and we should have had time off for that.”
Her inclusivity efforts are partly inspired by her own religious identity. Macauley grew up Christian as her father used to be an Episcopalian pastor and their family live on the church grounds. Her church and faith have been what she called a “safe space” since her early childhood, and her family carries out many Christian traditions around the holidays. For example, Macauley fasts on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and attends Sunday church service.
However, her faith has also distanced her from others in her greater community. “I grew up in places where faith as a whole wasn’t really accepted,” she recounted.
Referring to students with religious backgrounds, Macauley said that “many feel the need to compartmentalize their identities to become more palatable.”
In fact, Macauley reiterated Harlan-Ferlo’s view on CGS’ dismissiveness towards religion.
“It is more intellectual to be atheist,” she said, sharing her perception of common CGS beliefs.
“I think that CGS students and the administration have this weird competition going to see who can be the most intellectual, who can be the most detached from issues in classes, and who can be the most rational,” said Macualey.
Niah Sei, Sophomore
The Sei family have had all three siblings, Juma ‘18, Kenya ‘20, and current tenth grader Niah Sei, go to CGS. Both of Sei’s parents are Muslim and from Sierra Leone in West Africa and came to the United States around their college years. While Niah Sei described her family as “not extremely religious,” they do not eat pork, and each follows varying levels of fasting during Ramadan. They all celebrate Ramadan, the major lunar holiday in Islam, in addition to celebrating Christmas.
“To be honest, I feel like CGS has been good about giving people days off or at least [decreasing the] homework load,” Sei shared.
However, Sei expressed support for incorporating religious material in the curriculum, especially during religious holidays.
“In history classes, having short discussions about those holidays and short units about them would be really interesting,” said Sei.
Sei's interest in learning about religious traditions is not necessarily shared by her social circles and does not come up in day-to-day conversations. She described religion as “taboo” and described that “no one is really that religious,” at least within her friend group.
Benjamin Olshin, Senior
Benjamin Olshin identifies as a Reform Jew. His family’s cultural background is European from Vienna. He celebrates the Jewish high holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) as well as Passover and Hanukkah.
Personally, he resonates more with the heritage part of Judaism, and the value of “world repair,” or Tikkun Olam, in Hebrew. Reform Jews tend to take their sacred text, the Torah, the least literally out of the three major groups: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.
He began with a message of satisfaction about how inclusive CGS is when it comes to religion. “I think that CGS has done a really good job, and the best job they can do,” he said.
However, he expressed that his main concern was the high holidays, whose dates change every year since they follow a lunar calendar.
“It does feel like one of the stresses of the first month of each year is building a relationship with the teacher and telling them about the high holidays and seeing how they will react,” said Olshin.
Anushka Gupta, Senior
Both of Anushka Gupta’s parents were born in India and raised as Hindus. While her father is more culturally Hindu, her mother is both culturally and religiously Hindu. Gupta identifies with the religious aspects as well.
Gupta tells the story that once a month, her grandma (who lives with them and keeps track of Hindu holidays) tells them about the current holiday and how they will celebrate. During these celebrations, they do not eat any meat of any kind. The major holidays are Diwali and Holi. Diwali, which just recently happened on Nov. 14, is a time to pray together, eat special foods, set up fireworks that represent light winning over darkness, and give and receive gifts. They also light candles by every doorway to protect against the darkness. Also known as the Festival of Light, Diwali is the largest celebration of the year for Hindus.
However, Gupta’s family also celebrates Christmas non-religiously by exchanging gifts. Gupta described how her parents lived in New York, Wyoming, and Utah before settling in Oregon and guessed that they began celebrating Christmas after being surrounded by “American culture and having a lot of white and American and Christian friends.”
When talking about her religious experience at CGS, Gupta conveyed a sense of uncomfortable responsibility or pressure.
“The only way my religion will be represented is if I am the one that has to represent it,” she said. “Like in classroom environments, there’s sometimes this underlying pressure to talk about your religion and to share with the group. And I think it comes from a good place because the people are just interested and want to learn from you. But on the other hand, it, I think especially for younger students, it can be polarizing and make you feel like you stick out more.”
Gupta also mentioned an idea of how to solve this religious spotlighting.
“Maybe at the beginning of the year if students were to be able to disclose which religious holidays they celebrate and what time they will need off for those, then teachers could know that at the beginning of the year and make accommodations,” said Gupta.
In fact, Gupta has a platform to enact this idea.
“I co-lead the ARC [student-led Anti-Racist Collective] education team which is the team that focuses directly on curriculum,” said Gupta. “So right now we’re working with Krystal Wu [part-time Antiracist Curriculum Coordinator] to figure out how we can increase diversity in a bunch of different ways. One example is a mandatory ethnic studies class which I think could also bring in different ways to talk about religious diversity.”
Traci Kiyama, Upper School Math Teacher
Traci Kiyama is a teacher in the math department whose religious background reveals the costs of assimilation. She identifies as Pure Land Buddhist, Jodo Shinshu in Japanese, a religion out of Japan which she adopted from her mother. Her family came from Japan to the United States in the early 20th century.
The religion in and of itself is not very dogmatic. In the words of Kiyama, it is “Buddhism that was developed for the layperson.”
Obon, the summer festival, luckily coincides with summer break. It is the equivalent of the Latin American holiday Day of the Dead where there is dancing and an entire fastival. Often it is the “biggest fundraiser for temples in this country,” Kiyama described.
However, it is not used as a fundraiser in Japan. There are many changes that have come about within the Japanese-American community because of the pressure and threat they felt to conform to mainstream American society.
Haramatzuti, for example, the celebration of Buddha’s birth, naturally happens to be celebrated around the same time as Easter. Japanese-Americans celebrate the holiday with an egg hunt in addition to the traditional special service and a day off at temple.
“As a kid, that’s just how I grew up because we’re in America, and that’s what everybody else is doing,” said Kiyama. “It just felt normal. And it wasn’t until I got older and started thinking about these things and then learning more about the history of my church that I was like, ‘Wait, that’s really messed up.’”
During World War II, the Japanese internment camps threatened and isolated the Japanese-American people more than ever. To more closely resemble Christian church services, Buddhist services were moved to Sundays, and pews were added to the inside of the temple.
CatlinSpeak would love to hear what you think after reading this story. What religious holidays do you celebrate? What changes would you hope to see for our school culture to be more religiously inclusive? Please share in the comments below.