1950s children's homes in New Jersey

[mad_bertha]

I'm writing a short piece that will be based on a fictional home for juvenile deliquents in New Jersey in the 1950s. Anything you can contribute in the way of sources, tidbits, even building descriptions or photos might be useful, but my more specific questions are below

Comments

[lied_ohne_worte]

would the state also send children to Christian or Catholic homes?

Psst: Catholics are Christians, in case this somehow comes up in the story. ;-)

As for using chaplains: If you have a Christian institution, you should look into what that denomination's ministers are called - different denominations use different terms and have different kinds of offices.

Your responses

[mad_bertha]

Thanks, zenicurean, that's useful. lied_ohne: sorry, posted that too quickly. I was redirected to this site after posting that query to a fanfiction site. As a rule, I'd prefer to write around something I'm more familiar with (the old adage of writing what you know about), but, decided to try my hand at these specific characters, era and place. That's just to provide a context for what I'm about to say: in the protestant school I went to in Singapore, the church-goers tended to refer to themselves as Christians, and Catholics as a category unto themselves, so I rather lazily replicated their schema when I posted that. It's a good reminder of how these distinctions may not be replicated in other cultures

Re: Your responses

[ekaterinn]

Hi, I don't know much about your question, but I wanted to let you know that the commenters above will not see your response to them since you replied to the post and not to their comments.

If you want them to receive your response, you should press the "reply to this" link at the end of each of the comments, type/paste what you have here in the box, and press "post comment".

Re: Your responses

[mad_bertha]

Precisely, I'm enquiring about the legal, policy side of things.

Re: Your responses

[lied_ohne_worte]

I don't really know much about US law and procedures, so I can't help you with the other things you mention. However, in regards to this:

in the protestant school I went to in Singapore, the church-goers tended to refer to themselves as Christians, and Catholics as a category unto themselvesThis is not completely a cultural problem, if you go by certain countries' cultures; rather, it has to do with how a specific denomination of Christianity defines themselves. Catholics absolutely think of themselves as Christians - if you were to tell one of them that they aren't one, they'd at least be confused, but likely offended. By official church doctrine, they are the only true Christian Church; other Christian denominations and churches are at best misguided from the path of the True Church, at worst heretics. (Note: This is official church policy. The Catholics I know in real life, and I know plenty of them, absolutely think of Protestants like me as actual, valid Christians. But then, their official policies tell them many things that

Open to all

[mad_bertha]

Actually, I want others in this thread to see my query, not just the commentators above.

Re: Open to all

[lied_ohne_worte]

Any comment you leave in this entry can be seen by everyone by default, no matter if you leave it as a reply to their comment or not. What ekaterinn meant is that the people you replied to might not notice that you have replied to them if you reply to your own entry and not to their comment - usually, people don't check back in on old entries in order to see if someone has replied, but most people receive a comment notification when you reply to their own comment. So, if you want to continue a conversation with someone, it is generally better to reply to that person directly.

My Question

[mad_bertha]

I'm familiar with what you are saying but really didn't want to get into that specific discussion. The reason I mentioned culture was because I didn't want to be ethnocentric and assume that the patterns I observed in Singapore applied to the State. I acknowledge that, in my first post, I was unconsciously replicating the definitions of the Christian students and teachers in my school but it was not my intention to say Catholics are not Christians. I'm aware that these distinctions are subjective and dependent upon context, and I don't hold strong views on which denomination is 'correct,' not being Christian

your tip

[mad_bertha]

Happy to receive responses about the original questions from others.