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KJ Dell’Antonia of the New York Times Motherlode blog has a new post out: ”Children, Choosing Their Religion.” Here are a few salient quotes:
There’s nothing wrong with raising children outside of a religious tradition, and that upbringing doesn’t preclude them from being part of a community or later finding a community of their own… There’s no one religious community that everyone in our family will feel welcome in, and we have faith that our children will find their own way to the community they need, religious or not.
One unsought result of a family identity based in part on shared religion is that throughout history, families have struggled to accept the children who don’t remain within the religious fold…
My children may find their own ways to organized religion, or stick with the pleasant acceptance of its absence that their father and I enjoy. As long as they’re not picketing military funerals, I’ll be fine with whatever they chose. I don’t see our family life as “losing” religion. I see it as gaining an entirely different… trait: that of including whoever they turn out to be in our definition of family.
There are a few points worth noticing in her argument:
- Religion, as described by Dell’Antonia, is not a meaning-making language necessary for a full life, not a set of practices for the growth of the soul, not an irreplaceable force for good in the world. Religion is roughly equivalent to “community.”
- Because Dell’Antonia understands religion as community, it is optional. People can find their way into any community they choose. There is no significant difference between a religious community and any other community.
The fact that these are her assumptions means that she is just one more example of a seriously deficient system of religious education. She appears to have received some religious education, but not enough, and most likely as a child or teenager. <Sigh>
Dell’Antonia also postulates that families who practice religion have trouble accepting children who, as adults, do not keep the faith of their childhood. When I read between the lines, I wonder whether this statement is born of difficult personal experience: did her parents, or her husband’s, raise issues because they married each other across religious and cultural lines? Perhaps because they (rightly) suspected their grandchildren would not be raised in their religion?
I was raised more or less the same way Dell’Antonia is raising her children: with no exposure to religious experience. I am grateful that my mother has supported my ever-deeper involvement in religious life in my adulthood. (My father died when I was still an atheist.)
I discarded the secularism of my childhood for any number of reasons. Here are a few:
- Contrary to Dell’Antonia’s assumptions, “Religion” and ”community” are not synonyms. Religion is a way of making meaning of life. Religions endure because they successfully enable generation after generation to celebrate the beauty and wrestle with the agony of human existence. Nothing else – not shopping, not good friends, not even great dinner parties – substitutes.
- Religious communities are not an end in themselves. Their purpose is to practice the religion they profess. By the practice of their faith, they seek a depth of soul and connection to the Divine that is impossible to achieve any other way. Religious communities exist to connect human beings with God, the Eternal. (Religious communities forget this at their peril, but that’s another post.)
- Religion provides a connection not only with God but also with the hundreds of human generations who have told the stories, sung the songs, and practiced the rituals over millennia of human existence. A community which transcends time and space and exists for the purpose of intentional spiritual practice is unlike any other.
- Religion provides a countercultural force to the militarist greed which is the curse of 21st century America. Religion teaches that you are not defined by your fame, power or fortune, but by your faith: what is your relationship with your Creator?
I am raising my children in a religion because I believe that I would deprive them of something as necessary as food or water if I did not: I would deprive them of a language for life. English works, but it only goes so far. The stories and rituals of Christianity are the truest language I know to describe the purpose and meaning of human existence. There is no doubt in my mind that I would be a smaller and worse person if I had never become a Christian.
I can be (and hope I am) a practicing Christian without condemning or cutting myself off from those who practice other faiths or none. The idea that raising my children in one religion precludes my ability to accept them in adulthood if they choose another is fallacious.
Dell’Antonia believes she is raising her children “outside religion” and that they may choose their own religion later. She does not seem to recognize that she has chosen a religion for them. It is the religion of secularism. I was raised in this religion also. Only in hindsight do I see its tenets:
- Organized religion is unnecessary.
- God doesn’t really matter.
- To be a success in life means that you get a good education and a good job. If you want to get married and have a family, that’s ok too.
- Also, be honest and kind.
- We celebrate holidays because… we celebrate holidays.
Over that, I’ll take organized religion any day.
Worth sharing?
49 Responses to You Choose Your Child’s Religion
Good to meet you! I’m Nurya…
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I completely agree! Raising our kids in a Christian community is of such high value. (For what it’s worth, I was raised in a devout Protestant home. I married a Catholic and later became Catholic myself. My parents were very accepting; they just were happy I was happy in a Christian setting. We are raising our kids as Catholics. That said, if they choose something else for themselves as adults, I will still love and accept them – but I would prefer they choose something Christian! LOL)
Thank you, Nurya! True and true and well-said.
[...] You Choose Your Child’s Religion | Plainsong Farm. [...]
Well said! I will share your thoughts on my blog!
Yes…what you said.. I was raised similarly to you and did, in fact, end up in church. Interestingly my mom is a pastor now, too.There is great strength in the relgious part of a religious community…
Actually I completely agree with KJ Dell’Antonia. I find indoctrination into religion to be one of the main reasons for continuing religious strife, religious violence, religious narrow-mindedness and bigotry. Check the history of religion to see what good it’s done in our world, what good it continues to do. For far too long religion has been used as an excuse to justify all manners of violence, even genocide, used to justify the division of humanity into us and them, the chosen and those not chosen, the saved and those not saved. The world could do well without such narrow minded divisiveness, our children would do well without being indoctrinated into such a useless and anachronistic view of humanity and the world.
I’m sorry this has been your experience of religion. There is no doubt that religion, as well as being a force for good, has also been a source of division, hatred, and violence. However, I don’t believe it’s fair to lay the blame for this at religion’s door. Human beings are good at hating one another–we do so both in the presence and the absence of religious practice. The purpose of religion is to counter this aspect of our human nature.
Religious strife is far more about power than religion: money and land. I want what you have, so my god “says” I should take it from you. Religion is just the excuse used when ethnicity, skin color, socio-economic standing, or plain greediness won’t do. Humans seem to have an innate need to feel superior to one another.
You seem to think that the non-religious aren’t as a rule narrow-minded or anachronistic. Good thing you’re neither or you might make sweeping generalizations about the vast majority of the world’s population. Because really, all of us that believe in god are both.
Larry you make a point, but you have focused on the negatives of religion. Yes, much of what you say is true, but you have not examined the other side of the religious coin and maybe are unwilling to do so for what ever reasons. Religion has given form and humanity to millions for generations. Nothing is all black or white – I don’t fail to teach my children science because horrorible things have been done in the name of science; much good has also been accomplished because of science.
Brilliant, Nurya! Makes me proud to be a fellow priest and a fellow Las Vegan!
For great analysis of the claim of “religion” being somehow uniquely culpable for genocide, etc, I highly recommend _The Myth of Religious Violence_ by the ethicist William Cavanaugh. It completely changed my thinking on the subject, and made me take a real look at the ways this claim has been used to legitimate violence against the Other by modern secular nation-states.
But what I really wanted to say: I too, like Nurya, was raised in a setting where religion was not in the picture. I was carefully preserved from contact with myth and so on. I have been an Episcopal priest for 18 years now, and I am thoroughly persuaded by Evelyn Underhill’s comment to clergy that “God is the interesting thing about religion.” Community, predictable events, personal growth, richer human connections, and so on would have been a very poor substitute for what I wanted and needed in life, and if I’d have been looking for them, I’d never have come to the church anyway. I wanted God. To talk about religion as if the embarrassing God-bit were an optional extra to getting to hang around with interesting people pretty much guarantees missing the point.
If there were a “like” button for WordPress comments, I would be pressing it with relish. Thank you for sharing your story and thank you, especially, for the pointed reminder that God is what matters.
The author in the “Children, Choosing Their Religion” seems to be talking *only* about religious community or organized religion, *not* about God or a spiritual life. I’m pretty sure that being a member of organized religion or having written one’s name on the attendance rolls of a church/mosque/whatever is *not* required by christ, mohammed, buddha, or any of those prophet/god figures in order to believe in the God. Nor is following the rituals of a certain denomination required for belief in Christ.
So, who knows whether Dell’antonia actually is a believer or is “secular”? Frankly, she doesn’t equate belief in God with active participation in an organized religious community at any point in her article. She’s only discussing organized religion as it pertains to social/cultural values, not spiritual values. And all she says is that she doesn’t want to force family/friends into a specific religious community, because it would force them into following specific social/cultural values. This isn’t the cult of secularism. It’s a fundamental Christian tenant shown by Christ over and over again in the gospels, actually (Remember, he didn’t care what community/belief-system you were a part of or force anyone into his). For all we know, Dell’antonia could be a believer-in-christ and teaching her children to believe in a God, but avoiding church.
Tiffany, thanks for writing. The first assumption I note in your comment is this: Religion is a private matter. A particular religion can be fully lived in an individual relationship between a person and God. A larger community context is optional, not necessary.
This is a tenet of individualism. Individualism is not a religion. By definition, religions require some form of common practice. This is what makes them religions.
You say (approvingly, I think) that Jesus does not care what people believe: “he didn’t care what community/belief-system you were part of or force anyone into his.” I can see why you might admire this, but it is not true. The truth about Jesus is even better.
Jesus held up the Samaritan as a good example to people who despised Samaritans. He ate with the outcasts of his society, sinners and tax collectors, and rebuked priests and scribes, who were revered. As his mother sang before he was born, “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” (Luke 1:52) He cared very much about what community you belonged to, but not as we might expect.
He also cared what you believed: he taught that the first and greatest commandment was to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength. Being God, he taught his followers to “believe in me” (John 14). He was killed by the powerful because they sought to keep their power, and by rising from the dead he proved the infinite power of God is greater than sin and death. After his death he gave the Holy Spirit to the church… which is why (circling back to point #1) you cannot be a Christian alone.
IMHO, the Achilles heal of religion is its consistent and lasting dualism bifurcating secular and sacred. I feel your description of Mrs. Dell’Antonio’s religion of secularism, which I am sure she would reject, sort of buys into this dualism. It strikes me somewhat unfair to her; I didn’t read that in her article. What the dualism basically says is that “the sacred” and sacred community is found most poignantly at church. I feel various volunteer work meant to help the greater good and the greater community can indeed provide a sense of sacred community. I also feel the same about education. If the church is to last it is going to have to come down from its pedestal and realize the divide between secular and sacred are human constructs not inherent ones. If this cannot be done, simply realizing that even “the secular” has something to teach us.
I agree completely that bifurcating secular and sacred is an error. Perhaps I misspoke in labeling Ms. Dell’Antonia’s religion as secularism. I was looking for a handle, and that was the best I could do.
God is much greater than religion, and is found far beyond the walls of any church. Indeed, as Rachel Held Evans wrote not long ago, “God can’t be kept out” (http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/god-kept-out)
Thanks for commenting.
i came to your blog via the comment you made on Dell’Antonia’s post. i identify as an atheist humanist. i have one question for you. what did you find lacking in your non-religious life that you had to seek a religious one? was it the lack of community that organized religion provides, or is it god? if the former, i have to say that there is a path to that community without god. it is developing today in the community of secular organizations. if it’s god, i can’t understand that, because i do believe that any person truly capable of reason, and willing to give up on faith in the supernatural as an answer, if reason and fact point elsewhere, will conclude that god is unnecessary for a good and fulfilled life.
i think you have also oversimplified Dell’Antonia’s understanding of religion, and probably her religious education. reading what you have written here (and i confess i skimmed it), the first think is your assumption that god exists. as an atheist, i have to challenge that. your belief is based on faith, not on provable evidence, and unfortunately faith cannot be disproven, because it’s held to regardless of proof. the believer needs to be willing and able to question and give up faith to do so.
of course religion affords more that just community, and i think Dell’Antonia would probably recognize that. the problem is that you assume it is the only way to give meaning to life. you are mistaken. god is not the only way to give meaning. why can’t meaning just be found in giving and helping and striving for the good of humanity, both those you know and don’t know, as a way to give meaning and inspire an effort to live a meaningful life? is it only god that gives that. if so, i’d have to say, that makes us a pretty sad species. it’s time to get past god and the metaphysical, and focus on the real and concrete.
Thanks for the question. I found lacking a set of words, stories, and rituals that enabled me to make a meaningful connection with the Source of all life.
From your name, I understand that you are an atheist. It seems like this makes it more likely that we will misunderstand one another. In my past experience atheists tend not to understand what I mean when I say, “I believe in God” and I tend not to understand what atheists mean when they say “I don’t believe in God.” I tend to think such conversations are best not conducted in the comment thread of a blog post.
Blessings
Hi Madison,
You state an inconsistency (in the form of a question) of atheism that I’ve run into quite often both personally and with others. You ask, “…why can’t meaning just be found in giving and helping and striving for the good of humanity, both those you know and don’t know, as a way to give meaning and inspire an effort to live a meaningful life”.
If you do not believe in God, then that means you believe that we’re living in an accident (big bang, 2nd law of thermal dynamics, survival of the fittest, yada yada). As products of that accident, it follows, then, that everything we do is simply a continuation of the accident. Sure, you can decide to give something meaning by telling yourself (and others), “This has MEANING,” but then you are being inconsistent with the belief that we exist due to randomness. And as a random being, by definition, we CANNOT give meaning to anything. We can only continue the randomness. No matter how many words and actions you throw at it, it won’t change the fact that existence started out as an accident and will end as an accident and that we’re just along for the ride.
The minute an atheist starts throwing around that word, “meaning,” s/he is creating a tension within his/her beliefs as an atheist.
For me this tension led me to reverse my atheist beliefs. I could not sufficiently answer the question: “If this is all an accident, why would there be an organic tendency towards order? Why would there even BE a concept of meaning?” And trust me, I tried over and over again to answer that question.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts about my stated question.
This blog post comes across as saying that Christian people’s lives are better founded & more meaningful than secular people’s lives. Your list of secular tenets are a sweeping generalization that don’t hold true for quite a few secular people. I don’t appreciate that judgmental view and think many secular people will be put off by it. Yet again, a Christian saying that a Christian way of life is better.
Secular lives are not universal in their values and morality. Just as Christian ones aren’t. People can get meaning and guidance from many things/concepts/beliefs other than God, and that doesn’t mean they are wrong or less informed. It simply means that they understand the world differently from you. It is time to accept that you can have a wonderful, meaningful, moral life as a Christian, and that secular people can have just as wonderful, meaningful and moral a life as you do. Let go of the judgment and embrace love instead.
I think you may be right that the blog post comes across as sanctimonious. It was written out of some frustration at a set of assumptions and decisions that appear to be gaining strength in America (see “Feelings and the Rise of the Nones,” http://www.buildfaith.org/2012/10/23/feelings-and-the-rise-of-the-none/) and that I believe are misguided. Now that more than a thousand people have read it (which I was not anticipating) I wish I had given more thought to the tone before pushing “publish.”
However, I would like to suggest that your comment also comes across as somewhat sanctimonious. I am not a Christian saying a Christian way of life is better. I am saying that organized religion (which I never define as exclusively Christian) provides benefits that go beyond “community.” The organized religion I attempt to practice is Christianity, so I use it as an example.
My apologies for the sanctimonious tone, What I heard was that you were saying the Christian way of life is better & inherently more moral, but I guess that is not what you meant. The reason it struck a nerve is because my brother and I were raised in a secular home, yet I think our parents did a good job of instilling a sense of meaning, morality and responsibility in us. However, our fundamentalist Christian relatives often condemn us, tell us we have no moral foundation, and state that we have incomplete lives because we do not believe as they do. For years, their kind of self-righteous and judgmental Christianity was the only kind I had heard of, and it only drove me farther away from finding my own faith home.
Regarding your point about the benefits that organized religion can offer, I do agree, and it is a part of my life. On the other hand, my brother does not need any faith community to make his life more whole or deep, and I respect that and see that he finds other ways to be a good, kind, moral, generous, spiritual, loving person.
As a UU who sometimes struggles to understand what it is that we are “doing” in church–and why it speaks to my soul so–I find your comment interesting.
I read this post as a statement from a person of faith explaining the value that conscious, chosen, lived faith provides as we endeavor (individually and together) to make meaning of our lives. Need that lived faith be *Christian* faith? No. Need it even be theistic? Also no, though this assertion seems incredible to many atheists and Christians alike. But even we UUs are doing something more than coming together for coffee and a lecture when we worship in a way that builds Beloved Community.
I need that “something more” the way that I need air, and I know when it’s missing from my daily experience (and sadly, sometimes it’s also missing from my church experience). The reasons that secularism doesn’t quite get us there are helpful to me as a way of articulating what it is that I need from religion–and what might be lacking, when it seems that something is. Nurya, you have put words to the wonderings of my heart–thanks for this post. <3
This article, combined with the ensuing conversation, gives me great hope for the Church as a whole and for what God may yet do among us. Thank you.
Still struggling to get off my high horse, but here’s a little something. Note in the quotations from the NTY article that Dell’Antonia moves from talking about community to talking about family. The language of “family of choice” exists because some of us are not accepted in our own families (perhaps for religious reasons) and thus create “families of choice.” The author is proud of her children for creating families of choice and for including within that family people who do not share a common religious heritage.
One thing we need to tackle in our conversation about the changing social structures in the US is the primacy of place held my The American Family. Even Dell’Antonia falls into the rhetoric.
What makes organized religion potentially powerful is that it is most decidedly NOT your family.
Joseph H. Hellerman’s “The Ancient Church as Family” may be interesting reading. The family was paramount in Empirical Rome, as well, which is interesting….
In the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, one of the two teenager girls is pregnant and (the other?) is ordered by her roman father to abandon Christ. The first chooses death, even though her unborn child will die; her rationale (and the rationale of other Christians to bring their young children to be eaten with them by the lions, too!) for her choice may possibly jar you. The second girl disobeys her earthly father (something a roman daughter would have never done in these circumstances), and her rationale – that she obeys another Father – is telling….
Actually, every child choses his/her own religion. Many factors contribute to our individual spiritual journeys; family tradition is only one of them. Basic personality traits; direct experience with clergy, church-goers and the church; societal trends; peer groups; spouses — all of these seem to be just as influential in determining whether a child grows into a church-affiliated believer. On the other hand, a set of core values that transcend individualism, modeled by parents, seems to last a lifetime.
Nurya, thank you for this article. As a humanist agnostic who generally sees the world the way Dell’Antonia describes it, I truly appreciated your thoughtful response. I have to admit, one line from your article did startle me.
“There is no doubt in my mind that I would be a smaller and worse person if I had never become a Christian.”
The implication of your statement seems to be that other people who aren’t also Christian are quite possibly (probably?) smaller and worse people. I hope that isn’t what you meant, and your very next sentences says that you don’t condemn people who have no faith, but I’m sure you understand that not condemning someone is miles away from accepting and respecting them.
Organized religion can absolutely be a force for good, but I’ve seen too many people hurt by it to find it a source of comfort or guidance.
Thank you again for writing this.
Nancy, thank you for writing with this question. I appreciate the spirit of genuine inquiry with which you asked it.
I intended to speak personally, not universally. Christianity has been an extraordinary blessing in my life. I am unfortunately too familiar with situations in which what purports to be “Christian” has been what I would consider nothing of the kind. Such Christianity does harm, and often it is the only Christianity people know. As a Christian, I regret this profoundly.
Just what I needed. Thank you for this thoughtful post!! I will be forwarding to a FB acquaintance who disagrees with our decision to raise my little ones to come to know Jesus, saying that I’m “brainwashing” them.
Though it doesn’t bother me as much as it would have in the past, I know many who would be put off by your use of the word “religion” rather than “faith” or a “relationship with Jesus”… If one believes that Christianity isn’t just another religion but the “way, truth and life”, using the word seems to lessen the impact of what Christianity is all about. On the other hand, it’s the emphasis of “exaltation” of Christianity that has put off many non-Christians from the faith. Thoughts?
It’s been an interesting few days watching this post take off. I think one of the reasons people have shared it so widely is that it doesn’t exclusively support Christianity. That said, I have the same one-hand/other-hand feeling that you do.
I am a Christian because I have experienced Jesus Christ as the way to salvation, and I want to share that.
But I used to be an atheist, partly because I thought the core teaching of Jesus was “Unless you believe in me, you’re going to hell.” (I have since learned better!) So, I definitely don’t want to reinforce that concept of Christianity.
Trying to find the words to be honest about my beliefs while respecting that others disagree… I think that’s an ongoing challenge.
What do you think?
Love this post. What’s really interesting, to me, is reading the comments from those of us who’ve lived without the church (or religion, or faith) for a large part of our lives. We seem to value religion (faith) for itself far more than people who’ve always been involved with the church.
That says something important, to me. I think maybe people who’ve always had faith in their lives – religion of the helpful sort, I mean – aren’t able to imagine what it might be like without it; they have no basis for comparison. For us, though: the difference is stark and plain.
One of the really interesting things about A.A. – and A.A. members are also very, very clear what the difference is between living with faith and trying to live without it! – is that it’s empirical. It’s a report from the front lines of the battle to survive, and is entirely about “what’s worked for us.” It draws very heavily – and says so plainly – from religious practices and traditions.
Here’s one of the plain kinds of statements it makes, in Step 11: “In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge and experience. All those who have persisted have found strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom beyond their usual capability. And they have increasingly found a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances.” Later on, it says: “It has been well said that ‘almost the only scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.’”
The church offers so much that it doesn’t seem to know about – or be able to impart – itself! It’s become about “rules” instead of about helping people live, This post seems like a really good start in helping explain what those of us who lived without faith have found in living with it – just as A.A. does. So I hope you’ll keep reporting.
Thanks so much for this comment! I have been wondering what it is that struck a nerve with this post, and I think you did an excellent job describing it. I appreciate the encouragement.
P.S. “Organized religion” is organized so that we can come to services every week and be reminded of the things that help us to live. Honestly, I don’t really think it’s any more complicated than this – but of course, on that basis a whole host of other things become available as well. We get involved with other people – and can help them through the tough times that everybody has to face. We hear the story each year – the story about human life on earth, as it actually happens – each time it’s told, and get a chance to discover even deeper things about it. We can contemplate these things we’ve learned and discovered during odd hours of our lives. We learn to pray better and more deeply – which in turn helps us (see above). Maybe we learn to sing – and from that we can have joy, and so can other people have it too. Maybe we want to do “good works” – and that’s available, too. It’s a good system, really; everybody can benefit….
Dell’Antonia sounds like a much more sane and reasonable human being, just from the excerpt in the op-ed above. Secularism is a blank slate, acknowledgment of what is given before us, and the limitations of our existence. If one needs to accept the parameters given by some outside institution in substitution of developing their own through experience and social interaction (maybe because their lives have gotten too difficult to cope with), then fine. I’m all for religion providing hope in times of weakness, and it can be a good deterrent from suicide. But to rob a human being of the chance to take life as it is and create a philosophy and an ideology based on the experience and knowledge given to them throughout life is nothing short of barbaric and totalitarian. Secularism is not a religion, it is honesty.
Thanks for reading and commenting. If I am reading you right, you believe that one can either “accept the parameters given by some outside institution” OR develop one’s own “through experience and social interaction.” In my experience, these are not two opposing options; for me they were a both/and.
Now that I have been called “barbaric and totalitarian” for daring to raise my kids in a religion, I think I’m going to develop a new comment policy. Thanks for your help!
Nurya, if you haven’t read it, you might be interested in the article “Unapologetic,” by Francis Spufford (from The Guardian).
My favorite quote: “The funny thing is that, to me, it’s belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. Belief demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending – pretending that might as well be systematic, it’s so thoroughly incentivised by our culture.”
Much more about that at the link. He’s got a book out on this topic now….
[...] You Choose Your Child’s Religion [...]
Thank you for this article. The comments have been honest and thought-provoking. Thank you for taking people’s comments, for better or for worse, and responding with love and compassion.
Not every Christian denomination stifles creative thought and budding philosophy; mine happens to celebrate and embrace it. Dialogue is important. Respectful and insightful conversations like this are important for showing everyone that many believers do accept everyone, whoever they turn out to be, in our definition of family. Oh, and the Episcopal Church welcomes you.
[Comments moved from “Where do we go from here & re-posted by JES]
THANK YOU, NURYA. My apologies for the length of my comments, and potentially for double-posting, but I wanted to be thoughtful in my response, another version of “Why religion?,” not as an across-the-board response, but again from personal experience.
I said recently, before Nurya’s original post was forwarded by a minister-friend, we don’t wait until children are “ready to choose” whether to brush their teeth or go to bed at a reasonable hour in the evening. So, likewise, I chose on behalf of my children to raise them and now my step-children with regular religious practice and membership in a local church. Why?
I often tell people, “I’m religious but not spiritual.” I say that to get a conversation started, beginning with my premise that the word “religion” comes from a Latin word meaning to re-link. My religion links me in a special way to a Being greater than myself and to other humans, regardless of their religion. I wanted those links to exist in the lives of my children, so, just as I wanted them to brush their teeth before they chose to do so, I took them to church as infants. My two step-children have significant cognitive impairments, and in the past three years a religious community has given them acceptance they found almost nowhere else.
Some folks like Nurya find their own way to (dis)organized religion as adults, but I didn’t want my children to wait that long before they got something out of ‘religion.’ I confess feeling sad for how much the folks raised “none of the above” missed out on along the way, never mind my sadness for all the folks who live their whole lives outside of the connectedness of religion.
I’m lucky that the hurts I’ve experienced from (dis)organized religion are far smaller than hurts I’ve experienced in academia, political life, corporate America and other workplaces, and even, yes, even in nuclear and extended family life. I couldn’t opt out of most of those institutions, and I’ve chosen not to opt out of religion. Nevertheless, I grieve for those who have been wounded, particularly children, by people in some official religious authority. I do what I can to prevent those wounds, including challenging rigid authoritarianism in religious bodies, both the one I’m part of and others. I pray that religious bodies and other institutions will require better accountability from their leaders, to prevent similar wounds in the future.
I tell people that church for me is like a big family reunion, where everybody usually behaves better. I believe Someone bigger than ourselves helped set the rules of engagement, making it a little easier to let go of many ‘family’ feuds. I appreciate being some place where the chatter goes beyond the weather and how the Red Sox are doing. I’m happy to be welcome in more than one religious community where the chatter moves beyond the theological nitpicking I’ve found in some religious communities.
A conversation with a thirty-something young man, “Matthew,” raised in a mostly ‘secular’ home, revealed the paradoxes of life outside formal religion. Asked how or whether he was observing any of the recent holidays, Matthew was pretty clear he’s rejected ties to any religion. BUT, Matthew was headed to India for two weeks of sightseeing and intensive studies in meditation and contemplation. I suspect that the models for meditation Matthew will be using come out of very old religious practices, so he hasn’t rejected everything religion has brought to the human story.
I appreciate BLS’s post in which s/he suggests that folks who have lived without religion for much of their lives value religion more, once they find it, than folks who were always part of it. I can’t speak for anyone else. I don’t know what it’s like to live outside a community of faith – I do know that I’m a better person Sunday at noon (or Wednesday at 8 p.m.) than I was two hours earlier, if the previous two hours were spent where I like to be. I know that Monday morning will look better, depending on where I was the day before. (It’s a lot like how I feel after a Twelve-Step meeting.) People who have never experienced the difference in life with and life without religious community have no idea of the differences I see in myself and others, especially the visible differences in my cognitively-challenged step-children. They can’t explain why they feel better afterwards, and neither can I.
By the way, if you really want to give a place in your life for religion and you can’t tell a difference from the pre-worship and post worship you, it’s probably time to change pews, maybe even to change venues.
JES, I’m glad to hear you say so! Perhaps it’s just in my particular circles, but many people I know and talk to seem to feel that the value of the church lies primarily in its service-to-others aspect, rather than in how faith just by itself can help us. In fact, while it’s extremely common in A.A. to hear people say things like “They can’t explain why they feel better afterwards, and neither can I” – I’ve never heard anybody in the church say it (although I do know some priests who would certainly agree with this). It seems to important to me, and I was beginning to think I was alone in that feeling!
In fact, I’ve been thinking and writing about just that thing lately – trying to find somebody else who has written on or studied it, to no avail so far – and especially wondering why nobody ever brings it up as a point in favor of faith! I get worried that if people are always talking about “what we’re supposed to do for others” – which is, of course, a good thing – well, that nobody will be aware of these healing aspects of faith – or that people who come really needing to feel better won’t think the church is for them.
Sometimes I think it’s because people just aren’t aware of the effect or something – or do they think it’s something not very important? I’m very puzzled by the whole thing, actually….
[...] that be possible?” I was reacting to the swift and widespread (for me) sharing of the post You Choose Your Child’s Religion, which brought many more new readers to this blog than I ever anticipated. That single post has now [...]
[...] second is entitled “You Choose Your Child’s Religion” by Episcopal priest (and parent) Nurya. In this, her response to the Dell’Antonio piece, [...]
Huzzah! Well said, Nurya, and thank you.
Excellent response!
You say ” There is no doubt in my mind that I would be a smaller and worse person if I had never become a Christian.”, but why is it people always say religion makes them better people. I understand many people choose to follow the guidelines of religion and say they are better people because of it, but should that not also be a moral and personal decision that one can make on their own outside of religion? Why do you need religion to decide to become a bigger better person?
I needed religion because it provided relationship with a transcendent reality which promised and provided unlimited love, strength and grace when I reached my human limits.
“I can be … a practicing Christian without cutting myself off from those who practice other faiths or none.”
Well, if you can be, then I’d sure like to see it.
“Religion, as described by Dell’Antonia, … is roughly equivalent to ‘community.’ …
The fact that these are her assumptions means that she is just one more example of a seriously deficient system of religious education.”
The fact that you call these Dell’Antonia’s “assumptions” shows a significant lack of respect, on your part, for what may very well be Dell’Antonia’s well considered conclusions.
As a well educated individual who has studied religion and psychology, I can tell you that my conclusions concur. Religion is “not a meaning-making language necessary for a full life”, and certainly “not an irreplaceable force for good in the world.” There are many forces for good in this world.
“Religions endure because they successfully enable generation after generation to celebrate the beauty and wrestle with the agony of human existence. Nothing else … substitutes.”
I celebrate the beauty of human existence, and wrestle with its agony. And, yet, I’m an atheist.
Is my celebration, and my struggle to understand the vicissitudes of life, worth less than yours because you do it in the name of God, while I do it single-handedly?
“Religious communities … by the practice of their faith, seek a depth of soul and connection to the Divine that is impossible to achieve any other way.”
Is this depth of soul and Divine connection different from the one provided by Buddhism? How about Taoism, or Deism, or Existentialism?
Where do you draw the line between religious communities and spritiual communities? What about philosophical communities?
“Religion provides a countercultural force to the militarist greed which is the curse of 21st century America.”
Religion is a countercultural force, yes, along with liberalism, and libertarianism, and the Occupy Movement, and the New Left, the American Left, the Punks, the Hippies, the New Age movements, and every other countercultural force that America is home to.
Religion is a powerful and usually good force. It gives meaning to many peoples lives, yours, clearly; my sister’s as well, it has given her life great meaning, and that’s fantastic. But it has never given meaning to my life, and that’s okay, too.
Religion is not necessary for meaning. Many people live healthy and happy lives without religion.
Shouldn’t we teach our children that every option is equally acceptable? That they can seek meaning, or not seek meaning, in whatever way touches their heart?
Which is, I believe, what Dell’Antonia was saying.
Thanks for commenting. The comment is long and significant enough that it would require a blog post for a reply. So, I’ll say only this: No, I don’t believe we should teach our children that every option is equally acceptable. And frankly, I don’t think you believe that either, because there are ways of making meaning in life that are despised by atheists and Christians alike. At the risk of cliche, I doubt that either of us would support a child’s desire to make life meaningful through involvement in the neonazi movement.
I’m glad you’re here, because I don’t want this to be a site where I only talk with people who agree with me. Welcome.