All of the holidays, none of the beliefs.
Today, Mr. A is taking M to see a christmas play with my parents. In the past year, there has been a bit of tension between my parents and me because they have been reading her a Jesus book and talking to her off and on about God (for the record, something I can never really remember them doing with me). They (my mom, really) think they have a right to share their beliefs with her. I think we (her parents) have the right to decide what kind of religious exposure our children receive.
I was very loosely raised Christian. I went to church with my grandparents most weeks (I now believe so my parents could have sex on sunday mornings) until I was about 10 years old. My mom had a nativity thing at our house, we owned bibles, etc. There wasn’t much praying or any other religiousity going on at our house. When I got older, I realized that I just don’t believe in any of it. While I believe that a man named Jesus may have existed, I don’t buy that he was the son of God. I don’t know if I even think there is a God anyway. I tried on the idea of being a Christian, especially when I spent two and half years working in churches, but it just didn’t fit for me.
If forced to stake my own personal beliefs on a religious tradition, they are probably closest to Buddhism, though I have never formally studied that either. I believe in karma and reincarnation. I believe, vaguely, in Nirvana or some other place your soul goes once you have evolved and learned what you are supposed to know from this world. Mostly, I am just not religious.
So, I am not a Christian. But I do enjoy Christian traditions like Christmas and Easter when they are stripped of all religious imagery. That is, I like the Easter bunny and I like Santa and the Christmas tree. Our christmas tree is decorated with lots of santas and jingle bells, a few angels that I received as a child, and other random ornaments. No baby Jesuses, no star or angel at the top, no nativity. At Easter, we are all baskets and dyed eggs. No crucifiction, rising from the dead, no Jesus.
Mr. A says he is a Christian, but there is little evidence of that in his daily life. He doesn’t go to church. He doesn’t read a bible. I don’t know if he prays. He claims he wanted to be a preacher at one point in his life, but given his current non-religiousness, I find that mind-boggling.
So anyway, my parents asked to take M to a see a christmas play at a local megachurch, which they do not attend. (Megachurches are a big thing here, there is one about every mile or so.) The play has live camels, so M wants to go. Mr. A is quite concerned that our kids get exposed to his idea of the “right” Christian theology (something he can’t articulate when I ask, but he claims he knows what it isn’t when he sees it), so he has been elected to go moderate M’s intake of camels, wisemen, virgin births and mangers.
I suppose it is no big deal. I wouldn’t mind if she was going to any other religion’s event. For some reason, though, I feel like Christianity is going to be so shoved down her throat via popular culture anyway, I don’t need to facilitate any more exposure. This is an area that has not been much of an issue for Mr. A and myself so far, but I wonder if it might end up turning into something as the girls get older.
When I was a small child this was a major issue between my parents and grandparents when my parents left the Catholic church for another church that would allow women to be priests. My parents made it clear that any attempt to make my sister and I feel bad about not being catholics anymore or creating any pressure of that sort would not be cool. For some reason my grandparents (pretty much) listened. This was the case with any racist talk as well…I think it was clear enough that our contact would be cut down if we as kids were exposed to that. Doesn’t sound like that’s a concern of yours, thankfully. But it sounds like a pretty common if really annoying struggle with g-parents.
Honestly, I guess I don’t understand. It seems in so many blogs that I read that Christianity is just not tolerated at all. Other religions… sure… they are cool. But it almost feels that if one is a Christian, they’d better now say anything because it is such a hated religion. And yet you say that you fear Christianity will be forced down your daughter’s throat due to popular culture. I actually get the opposite impression… I find your belief system and attitude to be far more common. I just find this subject very interesting and wish I had a better understanding of why there is so much intolerance for Christianity, yet openness to other religions. Buddism? Satanism? Islam? Hinduism? Christianity? Ack!!! I don’t get it. Please know I’m not being argumentative… just interested in an open discussion about this.
I was raised secular Christian (so Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but not Jesus), and started attending a UU church when I got pregnant.
There’s next to no Chinese community in Tulsa; the Chinese school is run out of a Baptist church. When we went to sign Alex up for Chinese school, it turned out they didn’t have enough 4yos to make a class, but by then, she’d seen that there were swarms of Chinese kids there. So she’s been attending Chinese Baptist church for the last 4 weeks, which I have serious theological issues with. To the point that when she’s in the kid’s program, I sit in the hallway with a book, rather than attend services myself, and politely deflect attempts to obtain our phone number or address.
For me, the ability for her to be majority-ethnicity outside of our house is worth the questionable theology. But just barely.
“(something he can’t articulate when I ask, but he claims he knows what it isn’t when he sees it)”
Isn’t this sort of like Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography?!
honestly, the only people i know who have had a real issue with religion or christianity are those whose own parents forced it on them.
scott and i are christians, but whenever i talk to fisher about anything religious based, i always say, “daddy and i believe…” because it’s important to me that he make up his own mind.
I’ve been having similar problems. All of the sudden, my daughter started asking about God, and so I tried to be, “I believe there isn’t one, but this relative believes X, and other people believe Y.” I’m afraid, though, that she’s getting “What I believe is the way it is” from that one relative.
I think we have similar religious beliefs. Soon, though, I plan to get a good children’s Bible for my daughter, as I really think she needs to know who Jonah is, and so forth. We may wait on Sodom and Gomorrah, though.
We’ve had G-d talk all over the place lately. At 5, out oldest is starting Hebrew school at Temple. Her sister is trying to understand this whole thing. They have trouble with the fact that Mommy is neither Jewish nor Christian, but just is.
Religion is hard.. I think if you cover the basic “There is no right answer, people can believe what they want” you can’t go too wrong.
Seriously, Camels? Dude, that is so cool! Except for the camel poop.
I was raised as a Catholic. Took me a while, most of my adult life, to stop feeling guilty about not being a Christian.
Anyway, I too have been struggling with these similar issues regarding my 4 yo daughter. Have a MIL who believes it is sad that we should raise her any other way than as a Christian. Occasionally she goes to Mass with MIL just to keep the peace but I also teach her about other religious and spiritual beliefs, holidays, and ceremonies.
Thanks for blogging about this issue. Makes me feel less alone out here in the bible belt Midwestern state where I live.
This is something we’ve talked about a lot and kind of decided that we want the discussion at home to be more about what we believe, than what we don’t. jb was raised without religion-grandparents were assimilated Austrian Jews, so nothing was handed down. I’ve mentioned before that my family was so intermarried between churches, and my parents were agnostic, so there was just this whole-you can share anything you want with the kids, as long as you don’t have an agenda-so we went to services with everyone, but we weren’t allowed to participate in rituals or go to Sunday school. The result is, one sister definitely atheist (if she thinks about it at all), I’ve been Unitarian since I was 14, but very earth based, my older sister has this very eclectic spirituality which apparently makes sense to her (incorporating ritual from lots of traditions) and my youngest sister is a hardline Christian and director of religious education who worries about all of our souls (though she’s mellowing). I’m not so much worried about what my children will be exposed to-I think exposure is good. But I want them to have some meaning and context for understanding/evaluating. So we are celebrating the solstice, with a Yule tree in my Scottish tradition, incorporating elements from the Dongzhi tradition of southern China, and everything is centered around appreciating and respecting each other and the earth. Gifts must be handmade or handcrafted.
If my children later choose a different path, that’s often part of becoming an independent adult-but they will still understand our beliefs and where they came from. As I said, we had a LOT of conversations about this, and I also had to respond to a long essay question on it in the homestudy.
My suggestion would be that you and A keep having the dialogue and try to articulate what you would like your children to take away as a core value-my suspicion is that you are a lot more worried about teaching them to think independently and explore what is meaningful for them, and less interested in exerting energy against Christianity-so maybe reframing the concern might be helpful. ~lmc
Idle curiosity– is it a full play, or just a living Nativity? We have a living Nativity here called the Living Christmas Tree– live EVERYTHING, camels, donkeys, sheep, etc., with accompanying music and a few Scriptural readings to mark the different points in the Christmas story, but no actual teaching thrown in. It’s extravagant in content but beautifully simple in composition, and really visually stunning– if that’s what she’s going to see, she’ll probably come away talking more about the live animals than the Scripture
That said, I agree with what Anne said about finding an anti-Christian, secular sentiment much more common than a Christian sentiment. As a Christian I do find that the general attitude today seems to be “acceptance of every religion is cool– unless it’s Christianity! We don’t want that!” which especially irks me because there are SO many different denominations out there, some of which scare the pants off me! Personally, I’m a non-denominational Christian; I used to think I was Baptist but then I found out NO other Baptist church is like the one I was raised in (an extremely inclusive, welcoming and accepting congregation) so now when I move to a new town I just try various churches to see which one has the attitude I feel is most in line with what I believe.
For the record, I do take the Bible fairly literally, but some people get confused by what I mean when I say that; I’m actually planning to do my Master’s thesis on various passages that are either so badly mistranslated or so very much need to be read in historical context that to read them “literally” today requires an extensive history and/or language lesson first
(there are a lot of these, particularly in the New Testament. It’s like a treasure hunt for me! It would also be very hard to get some conservative churches to agree that this is in any way an acceptable form of Bible study, but ah, well!)
So I guess this is my very long way of getting around to saying that even within one denomination congregations can vary widely. Do you think getting Mr A to really sit down and articulate his ideal version of Christianity would help you see where/if it greatly differs from your own concept of spirituality? It may be possible what he sees as his ideal is actually philisophically not terribly different from yours, which means it might be possible to find a church where you aren’t completely uncomfortable with M attending Christmas services or the like, provided their philosophy and interpretation of Scripture doesn’t deviate too much from your own outlook on life.
*winded*
Both hubby and I are Agnostics (w/ a heavy leaning towards athiesm) but our daughter (who is nine) says she believes in “diosito” (what she calls Jesus in Spanish). My mother taught her the “our father” and has taken her to see a few plays. This has been an interesting experience for me because she seems fascinated by anything religious/bible related.
We have many interesting discussions in which I will explain that although she believes that “god” is the answer we believe otherwise, and that she has to be tolerant and understant that there are many different views on just about any issue, so I guess her wanting to believe and what my mother has taught her has actually helped us in defining and explaining what we believe and where we stand so I don’t see it as a bad thing or a point of contention. I guess I would if I felt she was trying to convert my daughter but she is not that intese…just one prayer and some minor “god created” discussions which we counter w/ our opinions.
She does try to bible-thump us every now and then which we find hilarious but I figured that if I make this a bigger issue or force her to not believe or not be a Christian (in her eyes) that it will probably back-fire on us so we take in stride as long as we don’t feel that she is being converted…we let grandma tell her what she believes and this gives us an opportunity to discuss what “we” believe and then she makes up her mind.
I guess I have a hard time w/ the concept of faith and since she professes to believe and have it who am I to stand in the way. I don’t have it (faith) but I can’t quantify or define it and if she does well…so be it…as long as she learns not to be self-righteous about the whole thing. I do read the Bible (love the stories), I too believe that, possible, there was a man named Jesus (more political activist than Messiah though), but I’m more likely to believe we are an alien race’s science experiment than crated by some omniscient being that keeps screwing up BUT if my daughter thinks there is something out there she has faith in I don’t think there is any harm in letting her explore it (as long as it doesn’t get too deep/fanatic)…just enough for us to explore these concepts and counter her views.
I must admit that I do enjoy our talks because I’m actually well versed in the Bible (something that shocks most people after they find out I don’t believe/lack faith) and love using the stories to suit my point of view (no evidence to support the existence of a God/s) and it allows her to express hers.
Every now and then she’ll trick me. We were watching a show and she asked a few pointed questions about the origin of earth/people and after I gave her my explinations she said something to the effect of “well mom since you don’t seem to be sure then it must have been God…I think I’ll believe it was God until you come up w/ something better” - so see…she is nine and already trying to convert me but I don’t feel threatened by this at all because things could change and I figure that if I fight her on this she’ll just hang on harder to it.
Just my thoughts…to give you an idea of what is like being an agnostic (almost athiest) w/a believing child…just makes life more interesting around here and it teaches her that there are many ways to look at the world. She started pretty young too w/ her fascination (plus I’m sure my mom teaching her a prayer and talking about god got her rolling but it was my child who did take to it like a duck to water so I can’t blame my mom completely) so we have set some parameters. My mom can talk about God to her, can teach her prayers or psalms if she likes but she doesn’t go to church (I’m too lazy and she can take her own ass to church when she starts to drive at 16!) and has to accept/understand that others (mom and dad) believe differently, and no one (my mother especially) is allowed to tell her that their views is the “only” way. It has fostered tolerance in her already which is great and it has kept her bond w/ her adored grandma intact (they are very close and the god part is a very minor part).
I don’t know…I guess I’ve catalogued this under “grandma’s house, grandma’s rules/views” as I have done w/ sugar and soda (can’t have any soda until the weekend and even then only one in our house). Hope she liked the play - the first time my daughter saw one she came running yelling excitedly that she had hugged Jesus…I explained he was an actor and she was broken hearted…was pretty funny actually.
Holy crap…that is the longest message I have EVER left anywhere….my apologies!!!!
I’m interested in Angela’s response, because I have actually read the bible many times-and read a lot of the OT in Latin in graduate school. My grandmother’s copy of Children’s Stories of the Bible is on S’s bookshelf, along with books from several other traditions. I think that what I learned from my upbringing is that a lot of the core values that are important to me are reflected in several traditions but, when it comes down to it, I just don’t have the faith part-so if my children find that they do have faith, who am I to argue with them on it? I know lots of Christians with deep faith who do amazing things in the world-I have a neighbor who is a Franciscan nun tirelessly raising money for disabled children in Vietnam-I hope my children do learn to admire these people as much as I do. ~lmc
Just wanted to make clear that a Buddha is merely a name for someone who has attained enlightenment on their own.
So no one “worhips” a Buddha, but instead it’s something you try to become.
In fact there are Buddhists who consider Jesus to be a Buddha as well—and throughout history there are tons of Buddhas.
So Buddhism isn’t an exclusive religion. You can be Buddhist and something else as well
Live camels!? Who in heck thinks that is a good idea? Those things are scary and mean. And they poop.
Anne and Andi, my perspective is this: I do not have any problem with people who believe in Christianity. My mother is a Christian, and I was raised in the Presbyterian church. However, I do have a problem with people who profess Christianity and yet pursue hawkish, homophobic, and racist agendas and try to turn their fundamentalist beliefs into laws that affect everyone else. If you are seeing a backlash, in my opinion that is the fault of the right-wing “Christians” in this country who have given your religion a very, very bad name.
Oh, I just read all of the comments and would also like to add that there are many, many types of Buddhism. In several branches, “the” Buddha or many incarnations of Buddha are, in fact and in pratice, worshipped as a deity. In mainland China and Taiwan, you often see Buddhist temples where this is happening. Do research Mahayana Buddhism, one of the largest branches in the world today, if you are interested in the deification of Buddha.
In China and Taiwan, they are often practicing a mix of Buddhism and Taoism.
So the Buddha they pray to isn’t just the “original” Buddha, but also “The Happy Buddha”, Kwan Gong, Guan Yin and an assortment of “buddhas/saints” like the Kitchen God, the Land God, etc…
But one very clear thing is that even in these branches of Buddhsim, there is no restriction to who you can pray to.
So a Buddhist can pray to Jesus and that would be totally fine.
and they spit…lets not forget that nasty spit (re: camels)!LOL