How do you resolve conflicting religious parenting

[Contemplates]

My husband doesn't want our children to be allowed access to both of our (differing) religious views, only his.

He is atheistic and I wanted to introduce our preschooler to Sunday school if he wanted to try it.

He loves preschool and wanted to see what this was all about too, and I had always been open about the fact I intended to encourage exploring God as an alternative to atheism, without forcing anything.

Obviously his Dad's alternative viewpoint is also and equally well known in our household. However I don't silence my husband the way I feel he is trying to silence me and I'm trying to remain balanced and fair.

This morning he was saying how he didn't want our son to attend Sunday school as he doesn't like it; which led to our son saying he didn't want to go anymore. So this morning we went to the park instead

Has anyone experienced this parental conflict before and how did you deal with it? There must be some balanced compromise that we can reach, while still enabling our children freedom to make their own choices.

Earlier on in the thread I mentioned religious upbringing.

Add message | Report | Message poster capsium Tue 25-Mar-14 13:18:07
CoreDAzur I don't agree. It can be much more organic than you describe.

My parents have different beliefs and even those have changed throughout their lives. We did not go church services as a family apart from christenings, weddings, funerals and maybe a Carol concert. However I knew about God from and early age, my mother and grandmother told me stories from the Bible and sang hymns and our family has always been open to lively debate, about religion, politics and everything else in between, at all times. Then I learnt more from RE at school and there was lively discussion in our lessons too. More at university. I studied English and my course tutors recommended some Bible study as well to help understand themes and symbolism.

It was when I was older though, that I seriously started to pursue my Christian beliefs and was completely my own choice

Yeminite - your child isn't jewish though. His father may be but that doesn't "make" him anything. Religious belief should not "trump" non belief and certainly in your case I would not have backed down, but I am not you.

I'm not an atheist. I choose to believe what I do. This way I am empowered not disempowered. If I believed without conscious choice, in ignorance, then that would be disempowerment.

atthestroke being Jewish is a race as well as a religion.

Ah yes- all those athiest Jews.

capsium - So you are religious, as I thought you were.

Then I thought you were saying that you have an atheist viewpoint, which was confusing.

So what I said applies to you re empowerment/strength.

No, I was referring to an atheist view point. You cannot say I am not standing alone from an atheist viewpoint, since you do not believe in what I am 'holding' on to exists.

"That could be because the crutch you are holding helps you stand so is easy to confuse with real power. You know, the power of standing on your own."

So my hypothetical crutch of belief either exists, at least functionally, or not.

Don't be so naughty Cotes! Of course I read your post about RE being more Islamic orientated than anything else. But I moved on to your infant upbringing and we hadn't talked Sunday school yet so I popped that little question. Separately.

So I can't call myself Jewish because I don't believe in god? To me, being Jewish is the same as being black, or being Chinese. I have traditions and cultural reference pints which are part of who I am and how I was brought up. It is the very essence of me and certainly has nothing to do with god.

My son is Jewish because he is. You can't say 'your son's not black' when he is born to black parents. I'm not going to force him to believe in a supernatural being if he chooses not to, just as I am not going to force him to eat vegetarian like I do.

I am an atheist. I am very much Jewish.

I assumed that you were commenting on thread because you were religious. You have the freedom to call yourself what you like. I find the fact that you are athiest and still chose to circumcise your son surprising. You don't have even the god excuse for that one.

"You cannot say I am not standing alone from an atheist viewpoint"

What does "standing alone from an xxx viewpoint" mean?

Do you mean you are standing apart from an atheist viewpoint?

"I find the fact that you are athiest and still chose to circumcise your son surprising."

I don't. And neither would millions in the US, I imagine.

Circumcision isn't only done for religious reasons.

My decision to circumcise my son was more to do with the cultural background I'm from - my dad, my brother, my husband, 99% of all Jewish men I know are circumcised (and don't start with comparing it to FGM because it's not the same at all).

I don't like the idea of a male circumcision but I did a lot of research and couldn't find anything that made me feel that it was a mutilation of any sort.

He is now like all the other boys in my community and when he gets married, if he chooses to marry a Jewish woman, then it won't become an issue.

I understand why people would find this barbaric etc - I have heard all the arguments, but I was responding to the OP about differing opinions within a marriage - it was extremely important to my OH and I knew that. I wasn't in favour of it but I also didn't feel so strongly about it that I was willing to go into divorce procedures.

And being Jewish is certainly not about religion for most of the secular Jewish population.

It's interesting that you still consider yourself Jewish, that's all. Unlike Chinese or Afro-Carribeanean people there is no unifying race or ethic type. there are Jews from Africa, Germany, Georgia, Ethiopia, China, Iran, Isreal etc, and although all claim to have stemmed from Isreal, the link is acncient and tenuous.
I wonder what actually keeps you "Jewish" if not religion?

My Oh wsa a born Jew, his family come from Lebanon, but since he became athiest he no longer considers himself a Jew.
He did briefly mention circumcision when I was pregnant with my first, but the look in my eye told him alll he needed to know. Unlike you it would have meant divorce if he wanted to press ahead.

Sorry I don't want to hi-jack the thread- I know circumcision is a hot topic so I shall leave it there.

What keeps me Jewish? Thousands of years of tradition and culture, the way my mum always made chicken soup on Friday night, the way I have a seder night on Pesach (nothing to do with religion, we don't say prayers, we sing songs to do with Bible stories, which for my family are stories about how we became a race).

I think there is a unifying race to being Jewish. I am in my roots, Polish/Russian and my husband is from Yemen. We have so many things in our lives which unify and define us. It's really hard to explain but anyone here who considers themselves Jewish would completely understand what I mean.

Interesting. My OH doesn't feel like this- he feels that his "jewishness" is tied up with a belief system and when he renounced that he was no longer jewish. Of course that doesn't mean he renounced the chicken soup and other customs, but he no longer considers himself a Jew.

Surely your OH couldn't have gone ahead with circumcising a ds without your permission atthestroke?
Just hoping it would need both parents agreement. I'm strongly against it personally.

I guess not iwe didn't take things any further, but I made it clear it wasn't going to happen.

Now he regards circcumcision as cruel as I do. I caught him a few weeks after our first son was born cradling his boy in his arms, tears streaming down his face. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had just been hit by the brutality of circumcision, having his tender little boy in his arms he couldn't imaging subjecting him to such an act. My OH was crying for himself, his brothers, all his family who had this uneccessary assault carried out and having no power or voice to prevent it.
It is one of the things that turned him against his faith.

OP do you think he would find it less threatening if you just went to church with DS rather than Sunday school? That way he's just joining in something you do rather than something bespoke iyswim.

On atheism as a belief system I think the point capsicum is making is about epistemology. I.e. how we can know about things. The majority of Christians are perfectly comfortable with science as a method for finding out about the world, they just don't think it's a very good way of finding out about the existence or non existence of God.

For example, as a Catholic I agree that there is no scientific evidence for God. But that doesn't make me an atheist, it means that belief in God is about faith not proof. And I'm perfectly willing to accept that is 'irrational', though I find deluded a rather loaded term.

Glorious - It had crossed my mind but I had stayed in the Sunday school with him as it was his first time and I wasn't prepared to ditch him with strangers unless he was felt inhibited by me being there!

He's the sort of child that runs off as fast as he can to explore a new place and I don't see him for the dust! I normally have to drag him away from whatever he's doing when it's time to go, so I was expecting him to probably be like that.

The idea then would be, once he was settled, I'd be free to be in the next room in the proper service, easily accessible if he changed his mind. I thought he wouldn't understand the adult conversation and would naturally be as bored as watching the news at home. I didn't really want to subject him to that if I didn't have to.

But it seems that for now the problem is sorted anyway, so thanks

"On atheism as a belief system"

It is not a belief system. We don't all believe the same thing. Most of us don't believe anything, including whether there definitely isn't a watchmaker God who created the universe. It is basically saying "Your God hypothesis makes no sense to me, sorry". That's all.

"perfectly comfortable with science as a method for finding out about the world, they just don't think it's a very good way of finding out about the existence or non existence of God."

Why on earth not? The scientific method of observing, testing, comparing results etc has served us very well in our quest to understand the universe. You say the universe and everything in it is created by your God? We should be able to expect seeing a proof of this creation somewhere in there.

Maybe one day we will. Until then, though... Your Hypothesis Makes No Sense To Me

Cote, perhaps you would like to say how scientific method might be good for finding out about something outside the universe?

The Christian doctrine of panentheism says that the cosmos (this universe and any other universes that might exist) are all part of God, but that God is more than the cosmos. He contains it; it is part of him.

It would be as impossible to use the scientific method to prove God's existence as it would be to prove the existence of other universes, because the experimental method can only deal with entities that are in this universe. And if the entire universe is inside God, then looking for proof of Him inside the thing that is part of him would make no sense. There is nothing in this universe that is not part of God, so there can be no grounds for comparison between things that evidence God and things that do not: God is simply in everything and everything is in God.

That is why it makes no sense to use the scientific method to try and prove the existence of God. It is a category error -- that is, using a proposition from one level of reasoning, or one form of knowlege, on a level of reasoning or form of knowledge for which it is wholly inadequate.

Cote Following on from what niminy said the Bible describes God as a spirit. The best way I can describe spirit is this:

Since something a spirit is a non -physical entity, it does not exist in the physical sense. So cannot be proved to exist.

A spirit is believed to act as an agent affecting physical matter. So any changes could be described a physical manifestation of spirit but only if you believed in the possibility of spirit, otherwise they would be seen as spontaneous. So it still cannot be proved a spirit was the causal link.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spirit

However people can recognize spirit in other ways. Books can be described as containing spirit, reading them can affect a person emotionally as they get involved in the story, there can even be physical responses for example the heart rate could raise if they were particularly exciting. Many people do not like violent films or video games as they believe it desensitizes a person to violence. Zeitgeist is said to be another form of spirit, cultural beliefs affecting an individual. People are often described to be in low or high spirits.

There is 'Game of Thrones' quote I like that talks about people being able to live a thousand lives through reading books. You yourself said you make decisions based on your own and other people's experiences.* The Bible contains some very ancient accounts of people's lives but on reading it I am struck on how these people come across the same dilemmas, have the same motivations and aspirations as people today. So as you refer to your own and other people's previous experiences, I also do, but include the experience of those people from the Bible in my consideration.

"I believe in the kindness of people etc but that is not the same thing, since that is about expecting to see something I have already witnessed in others....

...I don't have to learn the specifics of every scientific discipline & verify their every study hmm Other scientists do it for me. Studies are replicated, their results peer-reviewed, meta-analyses are done."*

And you still have not said what you think about the possibility of talking carrots!

articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/10/mycorrhizae-plant-communication.aspx

^another article. I have studied some linguistics and know the sheer variety of forms language can take, so this plant communication is fascinating to me. Daniel Everett found, for example, that the Pirahã people have no recursion in their language, no narrative, because anything outside of immediate experience is seen as Taboo and is said to have gone out of existence.

Capsium, I think you and I are talking about different things. A spirit would be an entity in the universe panentheism is the doctrine that God is in everything (immanent) but is more than the universe (transcendent). So God as Holy Spirit is in everything. In Jesus God made himself an entity within the universe and became subject to its laws he lived and died.

By the way, pantheism is the idea that the universe is God -- when atheists talk about their wonder at the amazingness of the universe they are really reiterating pantheistic ideas.