Dale McGowan writes: To help ensure that their children receive that gift of autonomy, secular/religious parents often preserve space around their children to breathe and think and explore ideas without wearing a label at all, religious or irreligious. The idea of raising a child with no specific worldview label is as confusing to some people as raising a child without a name. But it shouldn’t be. Referring to a child as “a Catholic child” or “an atheist child” should sound as silly to us as saying “a Marxist child” or “a Republican child.” All of these labels represent complex perspectives that they cannot yet claim to have examined and chosen freely. Until they can, there’s no need to force the issue. This doesn’t mean our kids shouldn’t engage in religious practices or belief. It means the exact opposite. Erecting a wall between the child and all religious experience isn’t necessary or good. In fact, closing children off from these experiences can violate their autonomy just as much as restricting them to a single fragment of religious opinion. This issue is about resisting the urge to place a complex worldview label on a child before she is ready for it. She can go to church or Sunday school, read the Bible, and pray without being called a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, just as she can challenge religious ideas, debate religious friends, and read The God Delusion without being an atheist. A child with one religious and one nonreligious parent is in a uniquely lucky position to do all of these things–learn religious concepts and challenge them, engage in religious practices and wonder if they are meaningful, pray and question whether her prayers are heard.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 20:02:58 +0000
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