to think that some non-religious parents over-react just a teensy-weensy bit when their children are exposed to religion in the most benign form?

[SueBarooeeooeeooooo]

s'ok if I am. But threads complaining about this sort of thing are a regular MN feature, and I can't help thinking that some parents seem tremendously precious about it. We're Christians and it often comes up that not everyone believes the way we do, and I talk to my children about it and they wander off and scribble on the lounge walls again.

I've seen people complaining about Christian mums and tots groups, simple 'thankyou' prayers and christian charities. I am 100% ok with you bringing your children up atheist, theist, or chocolate-worshipping. Honestly, if I whipped myself up into a panic over every mention of different beliefs or none that my children encounter, I'd never get anything done.

(Please note, this is not a church schools whinge, I'm against selection on religious grounds.)

lol oneb, 20 degress, will try it this xmas!

I don't think anyone would say Christianity is essentially British but they might say that Britishness owes quite a lot of its culture to Christianity.

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Dickens, TS Eliot are all full of references to Christian imagery and religions.

Cathedrals? Parish churches? Some of these are the best examples of architecture in this country.

Whole galleries of art are given over to, say, Renaissance paintings. You can't really understand them fully if you don't know who Mary is, for example.

You don't have to believe in Christianity but you do have to understand its imagery to understand a large part of our cultural history.

I'm a catholic and the money for the church and house was raised by the parishioners (labourers from Ireland) about forty years ago. They also bought the land with the money they raised themselves.

I don't know about the CofE church but I'd imagine the church land was given by the local landowners about six or seven hundred years ago. The church was built then and probably received donations from local bigwigs.
This link explains how the C of E is funded now. Seems it is self-funding but perhaps an Anglican can explain in more detail.

www.cofe.anglican.org/info/funding/

Totally agree, eliza2 - and an understanding and appreciation of the Greeks' belief in their gods and goddesses is essential to appreciating the way they thought, just as it's impossible to appreciate Western culture of the last two millennia without knowing the history of Christianity. But none of that makes any of it remotely "true".

Incidentally, nobody picked up on my comment about feeling that, even if you accept that a god made the universe it's another big leap to agree that it is worthy of worship. Does that make sense, or do Christians just not think like that?

The "abasement" really used to get to me even when I went to church - stuck in my throat having to utter phrases like "have mercy on us, miserable offenders" and to sing stuff like "saved a wretch like me" in "Amazing Grace". I am neither a wretch nor a miserable offender, thanks ver much. Seems a very unhealthy way of building a self-image.

Like Harpsichordcarrier, I grew up in an Evangelical Christian (church of England) family and also found it incredibly painful to break away, even though it's been totally clear to me ever since I did break away that I'm very ideologically at home as an atheist. It's hard as a child if you are taught by people you love and respect that there is one true way and one proper set of beliefs, then to just walk away from it all.

I am very keen to emphasise to my children that they shouldn't listen too much to any religious view - Christian or other religion or their own parents' atheist views - but leave it until they're older and feel they know enough to make up their own minds. I do get fed up of school, neighbours, plus all of DP and my extended families, promoting Christianity so much (mine don't go to a church school). I don't mind them having exposure to religions but my children find it hard for their teachers etc to tell them something is true when they know their parents don't believe it. They feel stuck trying to please all the adults in their lives, so dd1 will tell her teachers she believes in God and Jesus and tell us she doesn't.

Sorry uqd I did notice it but forgot to post. Agree wholeheartedly and specifically remember feelign of humiliation as a child.
Had a very similar conversation with a muslim frined recently about his desire to submit, which is central to islam as it is to Christianity (tho may be wrong?)
We just stared blankly at each other after a while though, sadly.

Eliza, no-one is arguing that the Christian religion has had a huge influence over culture in this country in the last thousand years,and over art and music in all its forms not just in this country too. the way I see it is that the Church is the guardian of these works for the nation.
no-one here has any problem with religious knowledge and understanding. some of us have a problem with being required/pressurised/expected to join in worship - not the same thing at all.
and tbh the influence over art / music /culture in the last 50 years has been minimal at best and at worst the church has been responsible for censorship and terrible crimes in the name of art, music and architecture.
viz:

every church built in the last fifty years .
terrible modern hymns/songs. awful.
ripping out organs and removing pianos and replacing them with electronic keyboards
the Good News Bible etc.
bishops condemning modern art/Lady Chatterley
the Christian groups campaigning to stop the BBC broadcasting the Jerry Springer Opera
&C

I don't think you have to believe in these things literally to see the beauty in some of the paintings or in Mozart's requiem or Durham Cathedral or in The Four Quartets.

Some may call them 'crap' but that simply makes me doubt their aesthetic sensibilities.

sorry Eliza I didn't realise you were Catholic
the Churches of course achieved their enormous wealth by the grace of god and not in any way on the backs and the sweat of the poor
tithes were crippling
wealthy landowners are what we call evial capitalists

my favourite phrase as a child comes from a carol I forget which one:

Christian children all must be
Mild obedient good as he

to which my response was always not he blardy wasn't! read the flipping bible!

more on the subject of childhood recollections, and whether or not I say the LP at weddings..

the real reason I don't say it is that it makes me cry, every time...

Not with desire for God's forgiveness etc, but with sadness for the child that I used to be - desperate to believe and ashamed that I couldn't, a bit like Harpsi. And a feeling of being let down?

oh look the glory of god celebrated in architecture

Eliza2 I don't think anyone's saying that all art which is inspired/informed by Christian myth/symbolism is crap!

Oh boy do I agree about modern hymns and some of the ghastly churches! Time for them to GO.

But some people here were claiming that they paid for churches and I am wondering where they got that idea from?

good lord no Eliza,but it is possible to separate the subject matter from the beauty of the art.
In what respect is Mozart Requiem ~"Christian"? can it only be enjoyed by someone who has a faith
I understand the words have a Xian subject matter.
but beauty and truth and pain are not only to be found within faith.

Eliza, because we as a people did pay for the churches to be set up.
the Church of England is a massively wealthy organisation in capital and share portfolio and land and the whole shebang.
that money comes from, in the strictest sense, the people of this coountry. they were "Christians" but for a great deal of the last millennium there was no choice. no choice but to contribute. tithes were effectively taxes. common land was in many cases taken by the church.
sorry I am masively over simplifying but I need to collect my daiughter in a mo!
the Catholic church has a similar history though I don't know so much about it.
fabulous wealth does not come from nowhere. in the case of the Church of England, it came from the people directly or indirectly through the wealthy land owners.
god I really AM oversimplfying sorry

re architecture. harpsi that you mock this!!! It was all going so well! Can I persuade you to look at Tadeo Ando's Church of the Light ?

dp is archi. photographer so we leeerve modern churches at onebatcottage...

I would never claim that beauty and truth could be found in just one religion. I love reading Greek and Norse myths to my children. Many friends are Jewish. My son is visiting a mosque tomorrow.

IMHO the truly intolerant are just as often found among the militant atheists.

oh OBM I wish I could find an image of the church we rehearse in
hideoso. molto hideoso. like a corss between a big old barn and a branch of MacDs
the acoustic darling! like singing in a barn!
apparently they want to be warm and comfortable or something, honestly these Christians, got their priorities all wrong.I don't have a problem with modern churches in prnciple., Cov Cathedral, Liverpool etc. but the average suburban monstrosity

I love the interior, onebatmother! The light is very stunning the way it comes through that cross.

Not so sure about the exterior.

sorry Eliza you miss my point (but rather make it tbh!)
it is possible to find truth and beauty outside religion i.e. without religion. ime religious tolerance tends to extend to other relgions rather than none

Oh sorry, harpsicorpsecarrier! I read too quickly. I have no doubt that beauty and truth can be found outside faith. I can think of many poems, novels, pictures and pieces of music that seem to describe a non religious state of grace (for want of a better description).

I think you need to find b. and t. in something though. I know a lot of people find it in nature and the Wordsworth-lover in me can understand this.

totally agree with you Hc about every church built in the last 50 years plus music composed since then, etc.

But i do think you are talking nonsense when you say children are indoctrinated at CoE schools. I have about two friends who have [tenuous] Christian beliefs, all the rest are athiest. The ones who have Christian beliefs have felt very uncomfortable with the whole Christian Church doctrine shebang, and know, like me, to keep their Faith/Agnostic Christianity/whatever you want to call it because otherwise the rest of their social life will call them bible bashers/superstitious or assume they take on the whole of the church's hypocrisies etc. i have had many conversations with athiest friends and the assumptions they make about anyone who entertains the idea of Christianity are enormous.

And the idea [tongue in cheek I'm sure] of only those who are very bright and/or have authority issues 'getting away' from indoctrination both romanticizes athiesm and makes CofE primary schools sound like something out of Dicken's hard times. there is some quite intellectually able theology out there you know.

crucial adjective missing - to keep their Faith, etc, quiet.

I am an atheist and my son goes to JW church every fortnight. I don't see it doing any harm tbh.

I certainly don't dismiss your point of view Eliza - it can seemincomprehensible that a non-Christian could be moved by something which seems to you so obviously Xian.
it has taken me many years to reconcile with my lack of faith and to be able to listen to certain pieces of music again without finding it painful/impossible because in the past I would have appreciated them as having a spiritual meaning, about the grace of god, the eternity of life. but everyone has their own personal way to find to appreciate the beauty of human achievement.
to put it another way, I can be moved and stirred by a beautiful landscape. the fact that I believe god had no hand in it doesn't mean my appreciation of it is less than someone who is worshipping in that moment. it is just different. it is my own truth and there is beauty in it. for me, I can absolutely see the beauty in many religions, but for me there is no truth.
I really should have changed my name for such a poncey poist