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.)

OK, are you suggesting I'm racist?

"And I sort of also think that Christianity isn't about me demanding rights."

No Sue, Christianity probably isn't about you demanding rights. Not sure, don't know.

DO know, however, that being a person - just a person - IS about demanding rights for you, me , everyone. Know that it's about standing up against injustice, whenever you can.

no of course I'm not suggesting you're racist. I was substituting race for sex for dramatic oratorial effect.

fair enough. Not the wisest dramatic effect you could have picked, but dramatic none-the-less.

Look, I understand why you're upset. And if my church was perpetrating injustice I would stand against it. But everyone who attends the church, be the male or female, does so because they want to, and no-one is being forced or persecuted by anyone else.

I think very wise dramatic effect, precisely because shocking.
I will respond tomorrow to the difficulty of free choice (for minors for example) within religious communities.

Nighty night.

nighty-night.

It might help you to know that we have just as much 'editorial control' about what the children encounter at church as anywhere else. It's really exactly what I'm talking about in that we can't really stop our children coming up against things we wouldn't neccessarily agree with, so we have to maintain an ongoing conversation with them.

SueBaroo, by taking your DC to that church rather than another one, you are in effect endorsing the message that church gives out. Which is that women are inferior to men. Have you got any DDs? Do you really want them to grow up thinking that?

Not in the least. We attend a church where at present there are no women elders. This may change in the future.

We could attend another local church where gay people and muslims are frequently spoken against from the pulpit, or another where we were surrounded by people in hypnotic trances and roaring like lions. Or there's the Catholic church, but hey, we're back to the women thing again there, and anyway, I don't believe in transubstantiation.

Given that I have good friends who are women vicars and leaders, and a Dh who works fulltime and is my fulltime carer, I don't think it's very likely that the gentle, loving fellowship we're part of, that serves each other selflessly (with its three male elders who mainly deal with the maintenance and cleaning of the small church building), is going to give my daughters the impression that women are inferior to men.

I used to be Chairman of my sons' primary school PTA.

One of the school governors asked me in all seriousness why we had a Halloween disco, not an All Saints' disco...

Errrr.... Not so much fun for dressing up?

I know it goes off at a tangent, but why are these people so sad, hateful and full of anger? Surely no real Christian can empathise with them.

UQD, they're a cult - mostly based around one charismatic man and mostly his extended family. Complete lunatics, and I know no Christian who thinks they're anything else.

And I think tangents have been well accomodated here

It baffles me not so much that they find homosexuality repugnant - people find all sorts of things repugnant, after all (I can't abide people who eat with their mouths open) - but that they then have to think about it so much.

You'd think that if they found it so disgusting they wouldn't want to spend so much of their lives dwelling on it. I have things which I find so distressing I can hardly bear to think of them existing in the world (extreme cruelty to chidren and so on) and so I tend to try not to think about them on a day-by-day basis...

UQD believe it's thought that people have a tendency to obsessively loathe in others what they most fear in themselves.?

Message withdrawn

There was a Louis Theroux documentary about them a few months ago, and they came across as quite terrifyingly rational, until you actually listened to what they were saying. One of them said that when people die in accidents they are sent to hell and the cult rejoiced in that. Picketing funerals of soldiers and anyone they knew who was gay. Thankfully most people manage to get exclusion orders against them, but it's awful. Their website is gross (and, nope, I wouldn't link to it in a million years)

Both my partner and I are not religious, but my son (8)is and that is fair enough. We didn't get him christened when he was a baby as we thought that would be a bit hypocritical of us, but if he decides that he wants to be baptised thats fine. He has to find his own way, and I don't think it's right for us to influence. The only time I get on to him is when I catch him praying to God to help him get to the next level on his playstation - not what prayer is for in my opinion. We have great discussions about the big bang and how the earth was created according to science and according to religion and I try not to poo poo the whole Adam and Eve thing. Good grief, I've just read that back and it sounds very sanctamonious (sp?). didn't mean it to be!

lol at praying to get to the next level on the playstation....
sue I do understand that the membership of the church is a personal matter and a matter of choice for you, but one of my major issues with organised religion is the retrograde pressure on the rights and equality of women. I don't blame god for this and whilst I do accept that it is a matter of conscience for people who wish to follow the tenets of that religion, I do then have a problem if those faiths are permitted/encouraged to have a political influence and a public voice and most importantly an educational influence.
I don't want my daughters being taught that women are inferior to men in any way and please don't rehearse the theological arguments about how submission of a wife to her husband is really the most loving thing because the husband has this huge responsibility to her life Christ to his church because I have truly heard it all before! but the J-Christian church from my experiences - Catholicism, CofE, Judaism, non-conformist etc - is, at best anti-feminist and at worst downright misogynistic,

Well, DD has a book of bible stories and we read them together. Just as we have a book of Greek myths and read them together.. and her Discovering Earth and Amazing Space books!

DW and I went to a very Christian wedding once - one of her colleagues - where "wives, submit to your husbands" (from Colossinas?) was chosen as the reading!

Colossians, that is.

at the wedding reading
we also have the Dorling Kindersley Bible Animals book
which I read with an air ofscepticism

"the first story of the Bible tells how God made the owrld in six days"

Now, that's not all that likely, is it dd1?

I can cope with any religious idea as allegory or analogy. I used to not see a problem with Communion as I assumed it was generally understood that the whole point of it was the symbolism - the wine and bread was a metaphor for a blood and body of Christ. When somebody finally put me out of my misery and explained about transsubstantiation I was first and then "You're not fecking serious??!"

for "the" not for "a".....gah, I have cod-itis today!!