Karen’s Spiritual Journey

My apologies, but the video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons. That’s a pity, because it’s a fun clip and advertises the show very well, but the BBC has engaged a private company to enforce its copyright. So be it.

This video of Karen’s brief journey through the religious landscape of modern life is actually made up of clips from three separate episodes from season two of the BBC sitcom, Outnumbered. The first clip is from the episode where Karen blames mummy for the death of a mouse caught in a mousetrap in the garage. The other two clips are more incidental to the plot of the episodes they are from, but are linked with the reference to Miss Braebrook, Karen’s numeracy teacher, who just also happens to be a “Bible-believing” Christian.

There are quite a few interesting points one could make about the things said in this clip, but I will limit it to just one. There is no separation of Church and State in the United Kingdom, but even so, Miss Braebrook’s comments to Karen about Christianity and Satan would still be considered highly inappropriate, especially given Karen’s tender age.

But just imagine if it was legal for American teachers to talk about their personal faith in class to children no older than Karen. Who knows what sort of crackpot religious ideas children would come home with? And it’s not just non-believers and liberal Christians who would be constantly up in arms about what teachers had been telling their kids. Imagine the uproar if a liberal teacher began explaining to her six-year old students why she didn’t think that it was likely that Jesus was born of a virgin or that he was really resurrected from the death. (It would certainly would be a great way to introduce the word “allegorical!”)

So even though it does not suit them politically to admit it, the Separation of Church and State protects the religious freedoms of conservative Christians and fundamentalists just as much as, if not more than, everyone else in the United States.