Friday, February 8, 2013

The Children are Our Future...


"So Let's Make Sure They're Just Like Us!" 


Perhaps I’ve been a bit hasty in judging religious culture. There is really only one overarching issue posed by religion: indoctrination. Young minds develop around the religion of their parents. Toddlers, knowing nothing of the world, rely on the wisdom of their parents to guide them safely through the unfamiliar world. Accordingly, young children have no choice but to regard their parents’ words as fact.

The documentary Jesus Camp is a prime example of this problematic indoctrination. Take the following clip for example: Evangelical Christians home school their children to shelter them from science and other beliefs outside their own.



Later in the film, Levi states that he could never befriend or get along with anyone who wasn’t Christian. Perhaps had he gone to school away from home, his closed-mindedness toward other beliefs would not be quite so pervasive. But from a very young age, the children in Jesus Camp are trained to be members of “God’s Army”, and the issue extends to politics. The Evangelical Christian voting block is 99.9% Republican, solely for the right wing’s promise to keep God in government. There are many political issues (beyond religion) that members of this voting block may never acknowledge, and certainly won’t ever consider when casting their ballot. 

By keeping their children from experiencing the world freely and making their own judgments, the parents of Jesus Camp are breeding an army of religious drones guided only by the word of God and their overbearing parents.

Or overbearing preachers for that matter; take for instance Becky Fischer, the pastor who runs the Jesus Camp for the Evangelical children and their families. Undeniably a passionate and powerful speaker, Fischer has kids in tears as she washes their hands of sin and deems Harry Potter an enemy of God.



A colleague of Becky Fischer is Pastor Ted Haggard. Pastor Ted is another fabulous Christian speaker, but is better known for his 2006 gay prostitute scandal. Oh, and he admitted to purchasing some meth from time to time.

Point being, no one is perfect. There is no reason to raise children to believe that “our way is the only way”. Without exposing yourself to opposing beliefs and ideas, there is no opportunity for progress. Dissent is the precursor to discussion, which is the precursor to resolution.

For reasons they don’t understand, religious zealots hate opposing religious zealots and start violent and political wars instead of just accepting the inevitable and necessary impasse. Nearly every war in history began with one religion’s disapproval of another. Everyone thinks their religion is the “right” one, but even if this were the case, how does killing, hating, and terrorizing members of other religions help anyone at all? If kids were brought up to take pride in their religion without disrespecting the spirituality of others, we’d have a much more peaceful world.

Take the war in Northern Ireland: decades of violent conflict between the Protestant British majority and Catholic Irish minority. The conflict didn’t begin to reach a resolution until the Protestants realized that the Catholic prohibition of birth control would soon leave them outnumbered. And to this day there is bad blood between the Catholics and Protestants in the UK.

The resolution is simple. Let kids learn, let them explore, and let them learn for themselves what is the right way to practice their chosen religion. So much of an adult’s life is reflective of their upbringing. This issue is not widely regarded as crucial, but in weeks to come I will discuss the importance of childhood and proper parenting. But without a doubt, the absolute worst thing for a child is indoctrination. Children should enjoy the right to question, critique, and examine, for this is the beauty of higher intelligence! 

-Mendelssohn 

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