We went to discuss DD's christening with the vicar today.
DH and I are not serious believers, but we were both brought up as C of E christians and live life to that moral code. Although God has fallen out of the centre of this, we still want to bring our children up this way, and I feel strongly that I want our life events to have the thread of continuity and resonance which church services give us - using the same words for weddings, baptisms etc as our parents, grandparents, etc etc used, and being in spiritual places for these important moments.
The vicar - not our local one, as she is being christened in MIL's village - interrogated us pretty intensively about the extent of our faith and church going, asking us questions apparently designed to trip us up and made it pretty clear, without actually refusing to baptise her, that we weren't very welcome. He told DS, 4 this month (also christening in MIL's village but by a different vicar), that God and Jesus love him more than Mummy and Daddy, and that Jesus died because we all do bad things and need forgiveness. DS spends a lot of time asking/being concerned about death etc so this was not very helpful. I have started to tell DS bible stories but completely ducked Easter so far as too confusing.
I appreciate that to some people we absolutely are being frauds and hypocrites, but I find it depressing that we have today experienced the Church of England as an exclusive, unwelcoming, cultish sort of religion.
Anyway, have bought a children's bible to try to assuage the guilt this has left me with.
Sorry - rambling and ranting.
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Had a drubbing from the vicar, feeling bruised and guilty
34 replies
Chestnut99 · 28/09/2013 23:14
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ProphetOfDoom ·
28/09/2013 23:23
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