Ok, I AM a Christian, so why does it bother me....

[tissy]

...that my 4 year old daughter comes back from her "non-denominational school" singing hymns and asking awkward questions about God?

I thought they wouldn't get much "religion" in P1, maybe sing "All things bright and beautiful" in assembly and work on the Christmas story a bit after half term. Instead, I swear she can sing at least five hymns by heart and has announced that she didn't come out of my tummy, as I had previously told her, but that God made her.

I know the husband of her teacher is an elder of the kirk, so suspect that it is coming from her, and she is lovely in other ways, so don't feel the need to complain, but I do feel a little uncomfortable with the intensity of it all, and a little upset for the children who do not come from a Christian background. There aren't many in Kilmarnock, it is true, but there are at least two muslim kids in her class.

I know of two SU groups in different local authorities and both hand out sweets.

Peer pressure exists with golf and gym clubs - if pals are going along at lunch time and your kid doesn't want to be left out, then you let your kid go along too. They'll learn a new skill, there will be no conflict with family beliefs.

And exactly the same peer pressure exists with SU clubs. Except the sole purpose of them is to recruit new people to Christianity under the guise of fun activities. No new skill and there may well be conflict with family beliefs.

I don't want my child to be left out. I allow her to make her own choices and I am open to all conversations so I let her go to SU (it's not called that of course).

Christians never can fault their methods because it's a Christian group. It's non-Christians who might have objections.

i find all of this very alarming, my dd is only 16months but i am looking at what is available.

i went to catholic school in a catholic country but i don't remember much indoctrination.
my niece's secondary is CoE and at first there was not much religion involved but the new headteacher brings people in to talk to the girls all in a very Evangelical vein
it really worries me this turn to more and more religion

Hmmm DS came home last Easter and crucified all his power rangers on the knobs of his chest of drawers.

I had this problem at DS's secular private day nursery. An otherwise fantastic teacher, with whom he had an excellent relationship, imbued their everyday activites with a Christian slant that my 'mainstream' chritian freinds were agog over. 'It's nbot sunny because we have done something to make God cross with us', a very gruesome description of the cruifixion - to which i would not have subjected a 3 year old, confusing and literal explanations of God and Jesus, which delivered piecemeal gave rise to much confusion when i was explaining that one of DS's freinds has 2 mummies because they are Mummies who wnat to live together instead of a mummy and a Daddy..."oh yes, Jesus has two Daddies, God and Joseph - so God wants to live with another daddy instead of a Mummy. Why didn't God want to live with Mary?'

Tissy - i geuss parents who want thier chikdren educated with reference to a faith choose a school which they trust to provide a clear explanation and practice of that faith. In a secular school you do not expect a version of the faith you don't feel completely aligned to, so it feels uncomfortable.

I would have a word with the head.

Mostly it was funny, but the bit about the sunshine dependent on God's pleasure with us...a few months after the Tsunami - was too much for me.

I know Scottish schools are not Church of Scotland, but at every assembly it is the CoScotland minister that gives a religious service. The kids do bible readings and sing hymns. There seems to be no consideration that not all children come from christian families. I was very active in various churches in my teenage years but became disalousioned (sp?) with orgainised churches that talk the talk.

It is summed up as someone said, we actualy exspect a choice, there is no choice at my kids school. They have learned a little about other religions but in a "thats what other people in other countries do" way.

The school is a great school, just had the HMI report home and it was glowing, and I don't want to single my kids out by asking them to be absent from assemblys, especially as this is also when prizes and presentations are given. Last thing any kid at this age needs is to be singled out for something like that.

The religious references at Scouts don't bother me as they are much more open and could apply to more faiths.

Its not true to say that Christians don't fault SU methods because they are a Christian Group. There are lots of Christian groups that I would have nothing to do with. My children dont do the CHristmas shoeboxes as I think the organisation is well dodgy.

I can only reiterate - if you have problems with the religious input in school, go and talk to someone about it, or write. I'm appalled at some of the stuff I am hearing here about it being slipped into the curriculum. Its incredibly unprofessional and if that was being done with my kids about Christianity or any other religion then I would be complaining - and I'm a pretty evangelical CHristian myself. It is NOT the place for it in school. Voluntary after school/lunchtime clubs are fine, IMO, but not within the class. RE shoudl be just that - Religious education , education about religion and about people with no religion.

If you have a complaint about SU methods, eg handing out sweets, then contact SU Scotland (or wherever) - they have a website.

I recall the life of St. Robert Geldof. As a teenager he was caught by Christian teachers whilst distributing Mao's little red book. His father wisely pointed out that if after a decade in their "care" they should be feel ashamed that their teaching could be undone by one crap book.

A while back, some fool gave DS a sort of cartoon bible. As a reflex, it was on it's way to the recycling bin, until I caught myself.

Firstly it was his property, and at 4 he had shown himself capable of making a degree of informed choice.

He has to make these choices myself.

A core defect in Christianity is that it sees us as sheep who have to be driven. A well formed child is a goat. You have to lead him.
He may not follow, indeed I occasionally worry that he is too believing, and we have a set of games and "jokes" where he is encouraged to spot defects in my assertions and reasoning.
I see that as a sort of vaccine against superstition.
You don't build a healthy mind by keeping it 100% safe from infection, but you train it to be able to take apart the burblings we inherit from the dimmer end of bronze age cultures.

Madly religious teachers who thank God for bad weather do their cause more harm than good.

To be sure it will catch a few kids with lazy parents, and whose intellect sets them up for a career on a supermarket checkout, but it's hardly a threat to my kids.

Hi, I am a christian too and I'd be very happy for my children to have the opportunity to go to SU clubs etc - but I can see why other parents might not be so happy for it. IMO it should all be very up-front rather than snuck in through the back door - which would give parents more of an opportunity to say whether they are happy with christian influences in their children's lives or not.

Dominic, it's fascinating tha tyour abiding impression of CHristianity's view of humanind is that of sheep. Yes, that image is used a lot in the Bible, but then again so are many others and if you took them all literally you'd have a very strange view of people - the Bible likens us to oak trees, a coin, a prostitute, baby chicks, a widow, grass, words written on the hands of God, eagles, vegetables, deer, a bush in the desert, a tree planted by water, a partridge, a little lower than God, the stars in heaven, the sand on the beach, sons of a father, oh yes, sheep too...and so it goes on.

The point is of course that the Bible does not simply characterise us as sheep - that is far too one-dimensional and a bit degrading - if God wanted us to be sheep, why make us human? Why not just make some more sheep??!! The Bible draws a very multi-faceted, intresting and intriguing picture of who we are and the issues that define us. I believe it gives us a remarkable status ("A little lower than God") and the study of it stretches our brains far more than any sheep's brain could handle!

In all of this I'm trying to say - don't assume that Christianty is for people who like to be shepherded and never think, reason or decide on things for themselves. I know a few christians like that but then again I know a few non-christians like that too. Most christians do seek to understand and question their faith. Look through history and you'll see that many people who questioned the reasoning of their day in many fields (from science to social justice) were Christians.

What do you make of that?

Tissy, have you spoken to the parents of the Muslim kids at your school? May be they don't object? When I was at school we had a Christmas play in which the Muslim and Hindu boys took part, they both did Bible readings and their parents came to watch. In some inner-city areas CofE schools have a majority of Muslim pupils as their parents would rather they went to a school where faith was respected rather than a secular school. There was a persuasive article I read recently that argued that secularisation is one reason for young Muslims becoming easy prey to those who radicalise them. If the parents at your school do object then you have a point and it should be raised with the school.

It's a myth that Christians don't criticise other Christians. I have huge reservations about Alpha, for example.

My dd1 has just started a school where the head 'doesn't have any time for Christians'. This in a small village school where I estimate a third of his pupils regularly worship in one church or another.

Message withdrawn

Why not just say what you know? ie 'Yes, some people believe that but it's just a story'?

Unless you do believe it, of course.

Well, indeed, sorrel. I do believe myself, but have no idea why those who are happy for their kids to believe in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy suddenly go off over God. If you think we've made him up, just tell your kids that.

Just another add on about SU groups. Firstly I think this applies more to SU Scotland, which is known mainly for its work in schools, than SU England (the two are as separate as SU in Africa for example). SU England concentrates more on its publishing arm and so there are far fewer SU schools workers in England than in Scotland.

Secondly, SU Scotland relies a great deal on voluntary support for it's school clubs, so the ones you're referring to PD will be run by parents or teachers, not SU staff. SU regional workers will oversee clubs in their area and offer training (child protection issues etc.), but the running and the content of the clubs will be down to individuals involved. They should not be bribing young people to attend and if this is really the case, then\link{http://www.suscotland.org.uk/SU Scotland}should be informed, after taking it up with the individual schools of course.

My secondary clubs were always creative, involving drama, art, role play and debate. None of the young people who attended were Christians or from Chrisitan homes and they enjoyed quite in depth discussions and the really argumentative ones came back again and again just to dissectthe Bible and what it teaches. There was certainly no indoctrination. My primary clubs were similar although with less debate!

LOL NearlyThree - touche! good point,

Meant to add, for an idea of how IME people of different faiths view each other check out the Shana Tova thread.

Texasrose is right, there are other metaphors, but none so pervasive as sheep and shepherds.
Fish come second...
Bishop's mitres are a shepherd's crook, not err umm whatever you lead goats with.

Yes Christians have questioned their faith as you say. However their fate at the hands of other Christians has often been quite horrible.

Look up what St. Thomas More did for a living...

DominicConor you are determined to be negative and find something wrong with what christians beleive. It gets a bit boring after a while, you know.

I am not a sheep, but I am delighter to be regarded as such byt eh Good SHepherd.

I think what bothers me is when someone you know is not a sheep (Rowan Williams, for example) starts acting like one.

I know this is such an obvoius point Dominic but the same could be said of any religion (except for the Buddhists maybe? They're such a peaceful lot...)

At the risk of getting totally flamed right out of town, I think it's important to draw a distinction between culturally-imbibed religiosity and true biblical Christianity...and yes, I know that it is God alone who judges the heart and therefore He alone can make the final distinction. But western history is dominated by people who said and did things in the name of Christianity that were simply not Christian (Mary I sent however many thousands to their deaths for not being Catholic).

It's a real mistake to judge Christianity on the abuses of it - it's like judging parenthood by citing examples of neglect and physical abuse (IYSWIM!) Instead, judge it on Christ himself, on what He said and did. You'll almost certainly be surprised if you read the gospels with an observant eye and an open mind. If that's a bit too much, there's a book by J.John called 'The Life' all about who Jesus was, how He has been interpreted through history and what He means to believers. It's published by Authentic and I think it's only £2. (I don't work for them, honest!)

Going back to the sheep thing...Biblical metaphors tend to draw out one aspect rather than the entirety of a thing (eg. 'under his wings you will take refuge' - so is God a chicken? No, of course not, but we can find in him the same kind of rest and peace that baby chicks have tucked into their mother's wings). Yes, I totally feel like a sheep sometimes - a bit stupid and prone to wandering off and getting lost, at the mercy of the shepherd - but that's not the be-all and end-all of who I am. And that's certainly not how other people see me, it's me being at my most vulnerable and honest before God. Anyway, I'd dispute that fish is the second most frequently-used metaphor - I'd say that it is sons of a father. Go on, read one of the Gospels! You see what it says!

I think the problem DC is that you are confusing the Church with Jesus Christ. The Church (by and large) tells us what to think and do - it does treat us like sheep, which is why I left. But if you read the Gospels you see Jesus says, 'So what do you think?' in relation to his teaching. The Church teaches me that I should be giving it great wedges of cash towards £100k for work on two buildings (our parish churches - average attendence 25) - if I look at the teachings of Jesus I see I'm better off giving my money to the AIDS charity that is trying to raise exactly the same sum for an orphanage outside Cape Town, and worshipping in the pub, or my living room, or in the woods. The Church tells me that true, faithful love is sinful if it is between two people of the same sex. Jesus Christ teaches me that God is love and that all ove comes from him. The Church teaches me that women aren't quite equal yet (if I were a Catholic that'd be not at all) but Jesus Christ teaches me I am a child of God first and my sex is irrelevant.

The Cof E has (or used to have) a reputation for tolerance. In fact, if its priests dissent from the current party line they are often in big trouble. In the 60's John Robinson had his career ended by having the temerity to put in words that lay people can understand the theology of Tillich and Boenhoffer - you can be taught it at theological college but the people in the pews are too stupid to take it. More recently, Anthony Freeman has been forced to leave the Church because of his Christian humanism. And if you saw the C4 programme on gay priests then you will have seen the guy who had an article in the Guardian about being a priest and in a gay relationship refused a license by his bishop. All because they refused to be sheep.

Two of the greatest men of the 20th century took their methods directly from Jesus' teachings - Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Hardly sheep, were they? The terrible thing is that Ghandi said that the whole world would want to be Christian, if only Christians were more like Christ. For that, every Christian and every Church should be ashamed.

Nearly3, It is a great shame that Christians and 'christianity' don't reflect Christ more. It makes me feel so sad...(BTW off the subject but my fave Ghandi quote is when he said he first learnt the principles of non-violence in his marriage )

But...the church is still worth sticking with, despite all its faults and shortconigs. In fact I'd go as far as to say that even in its imperfect state, it's still the best reflection of Christ we have in this world. It is his 'amazing grace' coming through the lives of people that is the heart of CHristainity. We get a glimpse of that in our lives as individuals but it's through meeting and haring with other CHristians that the awesome and life-changing power of God becomes obvoius and compelling. There are good things happening in the church - even in the UK! (by 'church' I mean every gathering of believers in every context across the world - Jesus said 'where two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst of them').

It's also why forgiveness is at the heart of CHristianty - because we are fallible, selfish and sinful, both individually and organisationally in the church. Families have to keep on forgiving in order to stay together and so does God's family. Being a 'lone ranger' is not really an option if you belong to CHrist

(BTW this is defintely not a dig at you because I know how much you are looking for a church family - I guess I feel that the CofE is my family despite all the rubbish and therefore I have to keep forgiving the bad and seeking out the good just like I do with my natural family)

Sorry if I've offended - I cetrainly don't mean to. As you can prob tell I do feel deeply about this! Anyway, off to the chidren's farm today - and skipping church to go

texasrose, you are right that you can't go it alone, I know, I've tried. But having been very involved with the CofE, I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that, despite some very holy people beng among its members, it ultimately serves itself. You can't deny that the CofE at its best reflects Christ to the world - I am thinking of those priests that serve on inner-city estates where even the postal services won't go - but most of the time it only reflects its own prejudices and petty beaurocracy. Can you believe that when my friend buried her ds our parish church charged for the priest's services?

I suspect that any church my family does join in the future will be one with as little structure and heirarchy as possible.

Btw I should add that on forgiveness, I can (just about) forgive the narrow-mindedness of my local church family, but that doesn't make it a fit place to raise my own children. It doesn't reflect God's justice.