Meeting of 25 July ‘Suffer the Little Children: Faith Formation or Religious Indoctrination?’
The North Brisbane Group has explored the broad religious education area on several occasions in the past but always with a focus on the school sector. One meeting was devoted to the history of religious education in Queensland State Schools while the vexed issue of the current school chaplaincy program has been discussed a number of times.
The decision to address some of the wider issues relating to the religious upbringing of young children at the July meeting had two stimuli. First there was the assertion by ‘the new atheists’ that it was deleterious for parents to have the right to impose their religion on their children. Second the home parish of some of our members was currently reviewing the program offered in its Sunday School. Like most mainstream Christian communities the children of the parish have generally ceased coming to both Sunday School and Church services once they reach the age of ten. Sunday School and Parish were both clearly failing in one of their ‘missions’.
Three of the Sunday School teachers from the Parish attended the meeting and tabled summaries of both the program they had been running and a survey of suggestions from members of the congregation. At the beginning of the meeting several of those present acknowledged that they had been through much the same process of youthful rejection of religion themselves. In some cases but not all they had made some kind of return to ‘faith’ and/or church attendance at a later date. This generational pattern at least gave them some insight into the factors involved even if it did not suggest any obvious action. Nor was there any agreement as to whether or not faith development was a necessary or even desirable goal for parents to hold for their children. There was agreement however that all children should receive some education in religion or more particularly about religions. Without at least a basic knowledge of Greek philosophy Judaism and Christianity young adults would not have a good understanding of Western culture or of our social political and artistic endowment.
As children pass through secondary schooling and further education it is to be expected that most will question ‘child-like’ religious stories and doctrines – if that is what they have encountered. Their lived experience and growing knowledge of science and history will expose the improbability of literal interpretations of many Bible stories. For our ancestors the fear of death after a ‘short brutish life’ once served as a sufficient rationale for orthodox Christian belief with its promise of eternal life. In contemporary liberal Western democracies however better education longer more comfortable lives and opportunities for wider spiritual experiences within the family community and the arts greatly weaken the fear and the need for simple certitudes. Perhaps liberal Christian families and communities should base the induction of their children into religion on two things. Most importantly they should model as far as is humanly possible the kind of loving serving compassionate life that Jesus taught. They should also lay the foundations for later more mature metaphorical understandings of Bible stories and Christian teachings.