Much of my mother's side of the family belongs to the United Church of Christ (UCC). I was raised in the UCC--Sunday School, confirmation, youth group, etc. My problem was that I never believed in God so as soon as I graduated from high school I stopped going to church. Looking back on it now I see that God was a very small part of the experience. The focus of the local church was (and is) community, except for the 45 minutes on Sunday morning that were set aside for God talk. I still support the UCC--financially and otherwise. My niece and nephew also go to that church so I've been back for baptisms and children's programs.
My dad's family is Roman Catholic. My son is (or will be) Catholic. Not because I agree with the Church on a lot of things, but because I think that every person should get a good religious education. There is a fine line between education and indoctrination, so I will have a lot work to do. His mother is a practicing Catholic. As a child she attended the Methodist vacation bible school and did other things with protestant churches and she is pretty open to other religions. We discussed other options like joining the Unitarian Universalist congregation, but because of her experience and because she regularly attends mass it just makes sense to take him along. I think that my job will be to help him see that there is no one true religion and to help him get a background in comparative religion.
My personal, face-to-face contact with fundamentalist christians has been very limited. They've invited me to Wednesday night Bible study, I've been handed cassette tapes of 'christian rock', but I also I worked a summer job with a few girls from a nearby bible college. The college girls were very nice normal people. They were intelligent and witty and I enjoyed talking to them.
I also had another job that took me into people's homes to work with their children. (I know, people let a liberal atheist in their homes with their children!) It is a real eye-opener to go into the homes of strangers. And I've seen everything; from the homes where the children have their own suites with a bedroom, bathroom, and playroom with full entertainment center to the hot, smelly 40 year old trailer with cockroaches scurrying about. The children, however, were pretty much the same. Infants like to be held and talked to, toddlers want someone to play with them, and the 4 to 8 year olds ask question after question. Of course, each has her own personality but the differences are not due to income or ethnicity or anything like that. I loved that job. Well, I loved the part of it that involved the kids.
Anyhow, for some reason I visited a lot of fundamentalist Christian home schoolers. I always felt bad for those kids. First, because they were getting a really poor 'education' but also because they were generally lacking social skills and the one thing that they were learning was hate. They were being taught that anyone who disagrees with the their parents is worthless and going to hell. I don't know, it's hard for me to decide if it is worse that these children get a poor education from their mothers or for them to be in public school with their parents trying to get the curriculum changed to include 'Creation Science' and a morning prayer. I always wonder what the school prayer people would think if their kids were forced to say or attend Muslim prayers at school. Would they still be in favor of school prayer?
File under: Religion
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