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.)

But that is what God is GooseyLoosey, it is just that some people, especially those in power at any given time, choose to define God according to what suits them at the time. We can never really know what God is, we can only have clues and get glimpses, maybe like the origins of the universe. that is the truth, and I don't trust anybody who says otherwise [eg says God is a big white bloke who doesn't like gay people]

I actually agree with you Ruty, but I suspect the organised variety is much more prevalent.

Cappuscreamo, no I don't think that if you got rid of organised religion the world would be elevated to a state of strife free bliss. I do however think that that mantle of religious certainty and rectitude incites some fairly ordinary people to much greater excesses than they might otherwise be capable of.

Think I might go and look for some fairies now too.

I was musing on this stuff over lunch.

Part of it has been discussed already - basically the churches have the infrastructure. They have the church halls, which are the only public spaces in many villages. They have organisations like the Brownies. There isn't always an alternative, and setting up an alternative simply isn't often realistic. Most people don't mind too much so go along with the status quo. I don't really think that anything done at a M&T club is really going to have much effect on the T, only on the M .

However... I was thinking about this word 'benign'. What small kids get presented with has to be pretty benign - I don't want lessons on the Inquisition in primary - but its all so darned nice and cute and cuddly. In reception DDs class were doing some sort of introduction to what the Bible was, and reading their little bits of work the main message they'd picked up was 'Jesus said be kind to animals'. Now, its a while since I last read the NT but apart from a couple of donkey rides the only animal story I can remember is the Gadarene swine... . My especial favourite hymn 'who put the colours in the rainbow' goes on about all sorts of nice things but never a mention of viruses or parasitic wasps. Oh no.

So they are washed over in this warm bath of 'religion is nice and good and god is love' from an early age, but (rightly enough) protected from the editorial balance of the flip side.

Fairies are crap. They know nothing about politics. and try meditating with them. The buzzing of their wings drives you crazy.

Agree with the wings thing - very annoying. Do you think I could try pulling them off?

I would say Sue (thank you for making me feel better about my parentheses ) is right, at least in part, on the faith groups/policy making issue. Over here, the churches have been a major voice in the debate about welfare reform because they are doing the work/advising the families/running the soup kitchens on the ground.

Well Emsmum I jolly well hope you sit your dcs in front of the news and explain in depth how many people have died today and how in the interests of editorial balance.

Life is painful and complicated. The bible reflects that. It is just people's struggle to comprehend their lives , to comprehend pain, beauty, love, and to comprehend God. Children will experience all that soon enough. And i think then is the time to introduce more complicated spiritual issues.

Emsmum, ah, to be fair, I agree with you there.

Personally speaking I'm not a big fan of cutesey inaccuracies, and would much prefer it if, after telling children about the mass judgement of the flood of Noah's time, when all the animals were saved in the ark, they were told that a great load of animals were sacrifices upon leaving the ark.

But that's why we're raving fundy homeschoolers, so we can tell our kids these things ourselves.

Just you try Goosey - you'll get deadly nightshade up your bum.

I can't say I really comprehend God myself, tbh, even though I believe in him/her

Goosey, you are right in 'that mantle of religious certainty and rectitude incites some fairly ordinary people to much greater excesses than they might otherwise be capable of'. But for 'religious' you could equally read 'ideological' or 'political'. Ask dh, who was brought up in an atheist dictatorship with father who, it emerged, collaborated with the state security service and struggles with what he did to this day.

I can't say I really comprehend God myself, tbh, even though I believe in him/her

Goosey, you are right in 'that mantle of religious certainty and rectitude incites some fairly ordinary people to much greater excesses than they might otherwise be capable of'. But for 'religious' you could equally read 'ideological' or 'political'. Ask dh, who was brought up in an atheist dictatorship with father who, it emerged, collaborated with the state security service and struggles with what he did to this day.

oops

The animals were sacrified?
very interesting thread, (again)

or even sacrificed?

Oh I agree Berolina - I have a problem with any idealogy which is based upon an assumption that the believer's world view is right to the exclusion of others and that those who don't share it are in some way inferior.

Onebatmother, oh, not all of them, just the ritually clean ones, of which there were more than one pair anyway.

Er Ruty, I said that children should be protected from hearing about the bad stuff. Which is why what they get exposed to early on is so unbalanced.

Though I did tell DD Noahs Ark with some mention that it really wasn't a very nice story for all those poor innocent animals to get drowned. I don't think they do that version in schools and playgroups.

oops, sorry if i misunderstood EmsMum. I would probably find a lot of cute cuddly stuff irritating myself [especially evangelical stuff] haven't got a school age child yet!

But, Sue, presumably you are bringing your children up as Christians? So how would you feel if they came home from school saying that their teacher had told them they had to draw a Pentacle and invoked the Mother Goddess before maths that morning? Or that they had each been given a prayer mat and told to face Mecca and pray to Allah?

LOL at Sue's M+T groups actively encouraging sectarian violence. Is that before or after juice and biscuits?

I think the biggest problem most of us have with the 'benign' forms of superstition being peddled to our DC is that it makes superstition too much a part of the infrastructure. Plenty of, for instance, M&T groups are run by church people who are perfectly kind, tolerant, sane (well, apart from their having imaginary friends of course) - but just supposing the local church gets taken over by some radical headcase who bans the Tellytubbies because Tinkywinky's allegedly gay? Who says, with a tight smile that Muslim families would perhaps be better off 'mixing with their own kind of people'. Again, many religious types are openminded and sensible BUT religious organisations have actively campaigned to be entitled to both state funding and the right to discriminate against people. So you could get situations where certain local facilities are run by the supersitious, but discriminatory, yet funding is not available for a secular group because 'the Xx Faith Group provide the services'...

back to the op..
I think the reason that the Athie's get so cross is to do with power. \

It still feels to me that the Church, which after all is a group of people who come together because of a faith (not a fact) that they share, is enormously powerful in public and local life.

I knooooow you said you weren't talking about faith schools but..(apols in advance)
son didn't go to my school of choice with his best friend bcs it was church school.

That means that the church has exerted power in my life, and it feels horribly unfair! and people who feel unjust power has been enacted upon them get really shouty!

While those holding the cards can chiiill.

Some atheists don't mind corrupting their kids minds with religion when it comes to selecting the best schools or celebrating Christmas or buying Easter eggs for that matter.

seeker, that's why I said I'm sort of side-stepping that by HE.

Maybe schools should be secular [not athiest] in the interests of fairness. But does what you are taught in school have any bearing on your future beliefs though? My dh was brought up in communism at home and in school. He now has a sort of spiritual [vaguely Christian] faith of his own. I think teaching Creationism is inexcusable. And I don't know if Muslim schools, for example, teach a similar kind of thing. But I'm not sure if the fluffy round the edges moral stuff from CofE primary schools can really affect how anyone thinks.