warning, possible tl;dr

Hello to all! I was a long time lurker under another username many years ago, and I always enjoyed the back and forths of this sub-forum and found it to be somewhat intelligible. Hopefully this isn't too wordy.

What I am coming to you all for is a bit of advice. A little bit of backstory, I consider myself to be non religious, or 'unsure' of what I believe. I was raised in a mildly christian household, church two or three times a month, and went to a christian preschool/kindergarden. Baptized, learned all the stories of the bible etc, a few summer camps through the church etc. Somewhere around 14 or 15 it wore out on me as I naturally formed my own opinion of things and thought for myself. My family more or less kept their own beliefs and fortunately were not the type to force things on me or shun me for what I wanted to think or feel. To this point I haven't really investigated anything beyond my longtime and current position of non-believer. It's not so much that I have evidence to support why I feel the way I do, but more so that there isn't enough to make me think any other way.

Fast forward to present day. I am now 30yo and married with a 3yo boy and my wife is pregnant with another. She is admittedly christian and of a similar mild approach to my families but not as preachy. Her parents however are both christian and her grandparents, more specifically her grandfather, are very religious. He was even a pastor for a longtime and they ran a church here in California.

It has never been an issue that we have very different views on religion. My wife will be the first to admit that she's not perfect and not the 'ideal' christian as her teen and young adult years were very 'sinner-ish' to put it simply lol. We both also agree that we want our children to be free thinkers and we don't want to influence them one way or another but rather let them decide for themselves.

Where we do have conflicting issues, and what I'd appreciate opinions towards, is specifically with regards to our children's schooling. We currently have our 3yo son in a private pre-school that runs to 8th grade level, and it is also a christian based school. Not overly religious views as they know not all families are and its not a pre-requisite that they be. But they do openly teach things like bible verses, stories of the bible like Noah and Abraham and so forth. They do have an outstanding academic ranking in our area and it can be seen in our child's work (that may sound subjective, but I believe it to be true).

What ultimately troubles me is what her family believes and what this school teaches, and how it makes me feel that he is being unfairly forced into what I have come to feel is historically just a grand fairytale with an intent to control and influence people. I am struggling with how to communicate this to my wife in a way that she respects my stance but it is difficult because she really loves his school and I admittedly relinquished the decision of where he would go to school in the beginning, not anticipating that it would bother me and assuming it would be a passable phase. But the more he learns and the smarter he gets, he now says things like 'god made me' and speaks of the bible stories as truths.

I'm not sure if those little details bother me more than they should or if I should simply wait until he is of a more competent age that we can all sit down and discuss. Do you as readers see this as an overreaction that should be addressed at a later time anyways with no foreseeable issue, or is it your opinion that my child is on a path that needs to be corrected? It is difficult for me to stand idly by and it may come off that I am not seeing myself 'forcing' my ideology just as I hoped not to. It is just something I feel very strongly about as a critical thinker and I surely don't want to 'wreck' my child intellectually.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate your thoughts!

-Ben

Fold preflop.

Since it's too late for that, I would say that since your child is in an excellent school, to let it go. It doesn't really matter anyway. If he turns out intelligent, he will see out of the religious nonsense in his teenage years, as you did, and no harm will be done. And if he doesn't turn out intelligent, does it really matter? I don't think Christians are worse critical thinkers than atheists, apart from the huge lolwtf credulity around religion.

I went to a Christian school. I found it excellent. Faith and tradition is important for a good education; in some ways Christians tend to have stronger institutions and a more nuanced view of the world. Christian kids are also more restrained and conservative in some ways, and conservatism is the core of a good education and good environment for coming up with your own ideas. It is more important that the kid has an environment that's steadfast and sure of itself (even if wrong) than one that's more infected by leftism/activism/postmodernism/doubt. That it comes with baggage like nutty stories and a God delusion is just part of the package.

It's a shame he's so young. Is there any way you can keep him out of religious studies? Many schools allow that now. Failing that, just tell him that bible stories are made up and that people say they know what God is, but they really don't and that God is mysterious. You don't need much of a seed of doubt to stop him swallowing it all.

Have you had the honest conversation with your religious wife?

If you try to make "critical thinking" mean "will believe what I believe about God" then you're making a significant error. If you really mean "critical thinking" to mean "critical thinking" then you shouldn't have anything to fear. Many, many, many religious people are critical thinkers. And it's very likely not religion per se that makes people not-critical thinkers.

Send the children to the high quality 'not overly religious' school. You will always be there to answer questions and express your own beliefs and, by your post, it appears that you will be able to do that in an appropriate manner.

The sheer boredom of church services will work in your favor.

I think if that school is academically superior to other options, it's worth it. I think the best approach is to acknowledge what they teach at the school and discuss what you believe and what other people or groups believe and let your kids come to their own conclusions.

Teach critical thinking and and expose them to as much knowledge as possible including comparative religions.

Fwiw, I'm an atheist and I went to private Catholic schools from grades 2-11.

If you want your child to become a free thinker in terms of religion, it is not a good idea to have him in a school which teaches religion as true. He should be learning of religion, not learning to be religious.

Such an approach (a secular school) will of course also lessen the chance of him actually becoming religious. That is hardly up for debate. Children who are taught religion as true are far more likely to be religious when they grow up. But this does not mean that sending a child to such a school is teaching him not to become religious.

And for what it's worth; According to the bible, Jesus was baptized as an adult. There should be nothing wrong with waiting until you are a grownup to fully adopt Christian faith.

I don't see this as being something that would impact your child for another 5+ years. So I would keep him in the institution that is going to set him up the best academically for the future right now and deal with the rest later. Besides it pretty much an American cultural thing so i doubt it will mess him up too bad.

This is basically where I am at now. The school is academically one of the best if not the best in the area for pre-k - 6th grade. It may just be more of an internal conflict in me struggling to not put my influence on my child. While my in laws are religious and my child spends a great deal of time with them, they are at least very opened minded in that they don't force things upon him. They are very respectful of letting my wife and I as parents 'guide' him. I suppose I am just making more of it than I should at this stage and should let it 'grow out' of him. I would much rather wait for him to raise the question than to force him into a decision to stay true to my approach in raising him.

this is the part I struggle communicating to my wife with regards to religious influence on my child. She only sees it as positivity and morality teaching at his age, and at his age that is all it seems to be, but I see it from an adult perspective in that its just a matter of time before he starts learning of the more graphic and radical ideals and I don't want him to latch onto something so young out of fear-mongering that it becomes engrained and brainwashes him.

I guess the tricky part is identifying the right time to communicate to him about ALL aspects of religion and just to tell him what we believe, and let him make his own choices. FWIW I don't care if as an adult or even as a teenager he decides to be religious, as I shouldn't, just so long as it's his own educated decision. I want him to have all the information to make the right choice for himself.

This is where I'm at, and how I feel going forward. I'm just fearful of the fear-mongering influence at a young age that he'll latch onto something. I find it tricky to find the right point in time where he can digest it all and make an informed choice.

Thanks all for the responses. I suppose I didn't need advice so much as I just needed to collect my thoughts. It does get worrisome for me trying to envision my child's future with the current state of the world. A lot of things appear at first to be much more harming than they really are at this point. Over-protective nature kicking in haha

Hi Ben,

I am in a similar position as you. My son is turning 2 and me and my wife are having some of these discussions.

Curious. Does your family go to church? If so what denomination is it? Also what denomination is the school based on?

I think if you and your wife are both on the same page about raising kids which are critical thinkers then you are in good shape.

Neither my wife or I attend church the way we did as young people. In our 5 years together we've gone maybe 3 times, and it was just tagging along with her parents. Our son hasn't been baptized though we've discussed it. The church I grew up around was Lutheran but it was a pretty mild and passive church. Her's was more strict as her grandparents, specifically her grandfather, was the pastor or was at least very involved otherwise. Not quite sure the exact focus or denomination though. My son does spend a great deal of time with the grandparents and has attended church with them on a few more occasions. Thankfully they do have the respect for us regardless of their views to ask our permission when taking him anywhere, particularly church.

The school my son attends just identifies as 'Bradshaw Christian School', and it has a junior high and high school affiliation at another nearby location. Other than the name it doesn't come off as overly religious in my experience being there. I can't speak to the higher grades, however. I did have a friend that attended it throughout K-12 and said he wishes he could've avoided it but his mother was an administrator and insisted he go. He gave a stern warning of the higher grades when they really begin to start shoving it down your throat, but I suppose that could have more to do with the individuals than the institution.

My wife seems a bit more influenced by the outside voices than me, but in private conversations and when speaking bluntly about our children, we do take it very seriously and have equally shared opinions on how we want to go about raising them, so that's definitely a positive.

I don't have kids, but I can speak of my personal experience.

A non-religious school in England isn't really an option in theory, though frequently can be in practice these days. I was sent to a state school in a reasonable area and while they weren't heavy on the indoctrination, there were religious overtones to a lot of things. Morning assembly usually involved singing a hymn, and RE classes were usually done from the perspective of teaching us about Christianity (with occasional lessons on other religions). It was more an implicit assumption that if you hadn't specified an other (there were two Hindu kids that usually didn't take part in the school assemblies at their parents' request) you were a Christian.

In one RE lesson we were learning about christening. A few kids knew what denomination they were and the teacher told us to ask our parents what we were to talk about next time. So I asked my parents. The answer was that I was never christened because my Dad didn't want me to be. I remember being pretty confused. I was about 8 and the concept of someone not being christened hadn't been mentioned. It was at this point my parents explained to me that while my Mum had liked the idea of celebrating her kids, my Dad hadn't liked the implications, and neither of them believed the Bible. As far as I remember, in the next lesson, it turned out that I was the only non-baptised/christened kid in the class.

Where I'm leading with this is that from a completely dull lesson about something I didn't much understand, I discovered my Dad held quite different values about religion to most people (at least, people in the context of lower-middle class 90's kids and their parents). So I started asking him questions. And suddenly I'm finding out that someone doesn't think all those Christmas stories are true, or doesn't believe in feeding the five thousand, or anything else that had been passively taught.

They hadn't really mentioned any of this to me. Mostly because they didn't want me to be that kid who goes around telling all the others that Santa isn't real and the Nativity play was bull. But simply the fact I knew they didn't believe all of this suddenly had me rejecting a whole load of the now crazy sounding stories.

It's only my personal anecdote, but my point is that your kids are going to find out at some point how you feel. They'll ask you something about Jesus, or why you don't go to Church, and you'll tell them. And that answer, whatever you give, will influence them because they're kids and they'll respect their parents. I simply don't believe the idea that you can not influence your kids is either practically achievable or even advisable.

It's a discussion that will happen and you need to decide how to approach it. And you shouldn't feel bad if that discussion entails telling your kid why you think religion is wrong. You can do it in the context of "But all of these good people, including your mother disagree", but you can't simply not influence them and then expect them to have a free choice.

Whatever they end up believing, introducing critical thought to your child is going to be a positive for them.

Thank you for that! Great perspective.

Good post.

My feeling on how it reflects many people is that they're placed in cultural settings (like a religious education, religious family) where Christianity is treated as a given. For me, in a school that hadn't much of a religious focus, Christianity was the default and not much was ever done to discuss other religions and nothing at all was done to mention non-religious people. I assumed school assemblies were like science lessons, because why wouldn't I?

There's a reasonable likelihood that if OP stays silent with his beliefs, that his kids will fall into religion without much question. Maybe one day they'll fall out of it. But culture and the people in their life will influence your kids, so don't be scared to join in.

I agree. No matter what you do, your kids will grow up within some sort of culture. And whatever that culture is will influence who they become. But it doesn't dictate who they become.

If they grow up in a largely secularized environment, they will likely be very secular. Not necessarily because they've critically reasoned through their beliefs, but because that's the "default" (to use your words).

Similarly, if kids are brought up being told that religious people are nut-cases who don't think for themselves, they'll likely adopt that viewpoint and believe that, but more likely on the basis of culture rather than anything resembling hard evidence and depth of thought.

Religious parents send their kids to public (secular) schools all the time, and they don't necessarily become atheists. Some atheist parents send their kids to religious schools, and they don't necessarily become religious. There are other (often more significant) factors that lead one towards or away from religiosity than their K-6, K-8, or K-12 academic experiences. (More significant factors include interactions with family and extended family, and the particular friends they have and the families of those friends.)

Your concept of "school assembly" must be very different from what they mean in the US. School assemblies in elementary school are things where you go to an auditorium and get bored out of your mind while someone tries to get you excited and have school spirit, or tries to teach you about stranger danger and looking both ways before you cross the street.

School spirit wasn't really a thing aside from being told to be friends with everyone and all hold hands and get along. There's a law on the books in England that mandates school provides a daily act of worship. In recent years there's been discussion about what constitutes "worship" and most schools choose to interpret this in a very loose sense like my secondary school did. Worship then means some sense of community spirit or moral message.

My infant/junior school (ages 5-12) generally told us some Bible story with a moral teaching followed by a couple of hymns, often a prayer where we all had to say "Amen" at the end. It wasn't done in a way of telling us "Here's the Bible and it is truth" but more of a passive "Let's hear another story about a miracle". I honestly don't remember anyone ever asking "Did that really happen?". It was just passively accepted that you were being told true stories.

My school was certainly less religious than one of the others in the town where one half was a school and the other half was the attached Church. And that was a state school too.

My (ex) wife insisted on bringing our kids up Catholic and that they go to religious school. She's not in any way a religious nutcase, but wanted the standard Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, etc.

I went along with it, and just encouraged both of my children to think for themselves along the way. I never pushed them in one direction or the other. They are both atheists now and what I'm most proud of, is that they both arrived at their skepticism on their own! The way it should be, imo.

That would be the ultimate satisfaction to me, religious or not. To just have children that are independent and completely self sufficient.

My suggestion is to make sure they become scientifically literate and encourage them to ask questions. What follows, follows...

My oldest believed in god longer than my youngest did, which was fine with me. I really don't care if either believes in god or not. But I INSISTED they learn the true facts about things like the age of the earth, the universe, and the Theory of Evolution, etc. It's okay to be wrong in our beliefs, but there's no excuse for being ignorant about basic science, or any other educational subject. Assuming a reasonable education, of course.

And that's the wall between me and my wife intellectually. I mean no offense to her, but with regards to religion, there are just things where she'll give me the standard "well prove that it isn't that way" response when I ask a question and it infuriates me. I assume that's the byproduct of not being given the access to information or wasn't raised to think outside the box, per se.

It's not that she is THAT ignorant, but she'll ignore the elephant in the room sometimes and that also bugs me. In those times I'm just thinking to myself "why won't you admit what I've told you?! It's irrefutable!" lol

sending kids to catholic schools is a good way to raise atheists

I'm pretty sure most people who claim to be catholic don't actually believe many of the things they are supposed to believe to be catholic and don't even know what those things are

I remember when a teacher in one of my classes explained the idea of transubstantiation and I said something about it must mean some kind of a metaphorical or symbolic change

he said, no, the eucharist is physically the body and blood of jesus christ and to believe otherwise is anathema (i.e. you can't be catholic if you don't believe this)

my response was that I didn't have to wonder if I was catholic or not anymore

Unfortunately, he didn't, and now he's been checkraised on the turn.