Man, it’s been a good week for notpologists; in addition to Rush Limbaugh’s failed attempt at sincerity regarding his comments about Sandra Fluke and the non-committal response from all of the Republican candidates, Mars Hill has generously notpologized to the growing group of individuals that have come forward citing emotional abuse from the church and its leadership.

A formal statement was issued on Mars Hill’s official website, following a news segment from KOMO, Seattle’s local news station. Here are the most delightful bits:

“Rather than try and defend ourselves or refute misinformation, we simply wish to say that as a church, we’re saddened by this continual attempt to drag into public very private and sensitive issues that were church matters. As with any story that has two sides, the natural tendency is for people to lean toward their prejudices. If they don’t like Mars Hill, these stories will serve to cement their beliefs regardless of what we say. For those who are part of Mars Hill and love the church, there is a tendency to take the defensive.”

By “very private and sensitive issues,” I’m sure they are referring to their procedure of publicly calling for the outright ostracism of church members who choose not to endure their invasive and shaming “discipline” procedures… right? “Private” usually refers to events that take place between a very small group of people. Sending documents to a community group of 15 or more via the internet is not private.

“Here’s the bottom line: we love people. Our goal is always repentance and reconciliation in the discipline process and that the process would be loving, grace-filled, and reflect the heart of Jesus. We don’t always get it right. But, in this instance we ask that you would pray for your leaders, love your city, and wait until we all stand before Jesus to get the facts and a clear verdict.”

No, your bottom line is that you love to tell people that you love them. Undoubtedly, Mars Hill does a great deal of good in terms of mobilizing people and money in times of natural disaster and crisis — with 14 church locations and 19,000 members, they have both the ability and resources to do so. But let us be clear; shaming your own church members by publicly excoriating them and shunning them if they refuse to follow your highly specific discipline procedure is not love. It’s cruelty.

Second, if you believe that your congregation and community members should wait to be judged by Jesus instead of passing judgment… why go to such great lengths — in this lifetime — to prescribe how people should live? According to Pastor Mark Driscoll, Jesus has an opinion on anal and oral sex. He’s also given Driscoll the gift of “divine revelation,” which Driscoll uses to ascertain the specific nature of his congregation’s sexual sin and deviancy. Pornography is fine, so long as it occurs within the vivid imagination of Mark Driscoll.

The letter concludes in this way:

“Our desire is for reconciliation between us and you. This won’t mean we’ll always see eye to eye, but can and should talk face to face in a spirit of humility and grace. Please fill out this brief form so we can begin this process.”

If by “between us and you,” they meant “us and you and many members of our congregations and your close church friends”, then I believe you. But to be honest, given the track record that Mars Hill has for keeping church issues between the offending party and the church leadership, the impersonal delivery of such a call via the Internet rings hollow.

Please login to our Reconciliation Portal. A qualified Reconciliation Specialist will be with you shortly.

And I’m not the only one who feels this way. One ex-Mars Hill member wrote this statement on a blog called Mars Hill Refuge (emphasis mine):

“The statement seemed to blur the lines and imply that all of the people speaking out against Mars Hill were under church discipline and are taking those matters public.  To clarify, this is the exception and not the rule, as in our case and most others that have been shared here, we were not, in fact, under church discipline.  And since, in this post as well as the last two responses PR issued, they continue to stand by their stance on church discipline, one which I do not now or will I ever agree with, I am unable to be reconciled in the way that they wish to reconcile me.

…

What the Mars Hill pastors fail to realize is that those of us that have told our stories about our negative experiences at Mars Hill would attribute the abuses we experienced to our Community Group Leaders, Elders & Pastors.  We trusted them to treat us with love and grace then, and that is not what happened.  Why should we trust them to now? Forgiveness is not trusting someone who has hurt you.  And forgiveness is not neglecting justice for the oppressed.

I am not comfortable submitting my personal information on their form.  And I am not comfortable sitting down and meeting with Mars Hill elders on their terms.  I did not choose to subject myself to meetings with the CG leader when I left for the same reason I do not want to do it now.  It is not clear in their statement whether they are trying to get me to repent and be reconciled to Mars Hill, or if they wish to repent and be reconciled to me.”

It’s quite clear to me, from the recent attention and subsequent response from Mars Hill that it is significantly more important for the “reconciliation” to be a cleaner image to market to the masses. It doesn’t matter that individuals were actually hurt by their teaching or leadership; what matters is that those individuals approach Mars Hill in order to be reconciled to them.

Sounds like just the kind of forgiveness and grace that I’ve never been looking for.

Christianity has had a bit of a sexism problem since it began; with all of the apologetics surrounding the issue, I believe that the problem starts with the opening narrative of man being created in God’s image and the woman a lesser copy, made in the image of man. Even in the most favorable of contexts, the Bible cannot be seen as a guide for any individual who values egalitarianism — it’s rife with issues of financial, gender, and racial inequality. While many churches reject the most extreme strictures of gender stereotyping, embodied perhaps, in the infamous Quiverfull movement, the ideology of men and women having certain “callings” or “spiritual gifts” fall across gender lines. Men’s spiritual gifts, as taught by the church I grew up in, consisted of things like “leadership” and “organization,” while women were typically granted with “listening” and “nurturing.”

(Here’s a link to a frackin’ huge manual on how to discern your spiritual gift and how to put it to use.  Bear in mind, though, that this is the Evangelical Lutheran denomination and they are known to be a bit more progressive about women’s roles in the church. In the church I grew up in, women were restricted to leading the praise and worship (though never alone), teaching children’s Sunday school and children’s church, and sharing an occasional testimony or musical piece.)

Issues of sexism, much like anti-intellectualism, homophobia, and racism, tend to be pervasive, systemic. You can hack off an offending bit, but it’s an exercise in futility, knowing that the rest of it is rotted through as well. The trick, then, is to convince people that it’s not actually rotten, or maybe that rot is good for you, or maybe that it’s been this way for years, so why bother?

One of the most convincing lines, though, is the one that tells us “it’s fixed!” or “problem solved!” It’s a pretty common line that gets trotted out by theist and atheist, skeptic and non-skeptic alike; when atheists tell us that feminism is irrelevant, or when non-minorities tell us that racism is a thing of the past, it makes it that much harder for the feminist and the anti-racist to be heard. No one likes a whiner — especially someone whining about a problem that people don’t believe exists.

And there’s the rub: sexism and racism and all of the other –isms are still very much alive and well in this country. It took us forty-four presidents before a black man won the office (and there were virtually no viable female candidates this time around). Up until recently, anti-choice activists played a key role in the leadership of the Komen Foundation.  A 16-year-old female is subject to objectification within the atheist community.

But, unlike our theist counterparts, we have no need for the reliance on dogma and rhetoric; if we want to, we can employ a healthy dose of skepticism to the problems we see around us, hopefully generating human-oriented solutions to human-created problems. It’s daunting, no doubt about that, but the tools of critical thinking and skeptical inquiry are our best bet at confronting inequality. Our community needs sober eyes and empathetic hearts.

Unfortunately, theism — Christianity in particular — is forced to recycle the same old dogmas into the mill, hoping and (literally) praying for something revelatory to be excreted. At the end of the day, you’re ultimately confined to the boundaries of the holy book you insist on following; if unhappiness results, it’s because you failed to follow the formula, not because the formula is crap to begin with.

Take this song, for instance. Lecrae is a Christian rapper, and while I haven’t been immersed in Christian music for several years, it seems that he embodies their favorite “ghetto redemption” narrative. These lyrics were posted on Facebook by a theist friend, explaining that the song is an interpretation of Proverbs 5:1-14, a passage written as a warning against the evils of adultery. As I read through the lyrics, my heart just sank… as with much of Christian culture, it reeks of sexism, impossible expectations, and endless guilt. Check them out:

“Walking to my grave letting evilness enslave me

Evil looks so lovely covered in her lace of lies

And the silky smooth seduction just manipulates my mind

Her fabrical fabrication is fueling my fascination

While I’m intoxicated she starts her assassination

I’m losing all my honor and my years to the merciless

Giving all my life away but I’m just so immersed in this (killa)”

And this one:

“Her feet go down to DEATH, so don’t let her consume you

Even though her heart is black, her exterior’s beautiful

She’ll take your life away, strip away your joy

Pretends that she gon build you up but she’s just gon destroy you”

In Christian culture, femininity is a dangerous downward spiral into immorality. The difference between “wholesome” and “seductress” is an exceptionally thin line that varies wildly from group to group; sometimes it’s hemlines, sometimes it’s haircuts. Despite the fact that a woman can unknowingly step into the “seductress” category, Lecrae’s seductress is purposeful in her intent, complete with the idea that she is “manipulating” him and “assassinating” him, like the “merciless,” cruel, sexy bitch that she is. Consequently, you get the idea that any woman who is behaving in a way that you interpret as “seductive” is doing so with knowledge and intent.

I can’t think of a more permanent set of shackles than that given to Christian youth by being told that their bodies are the source of their immorality, that bodies are something to be thoroughly covered up, forgotten, out of sight, out of mind. If you fail to do so completely, if you leave a bit too much skin uncovered, or wear a shirt that’s a little too tight, the assumption is that you are inviting depravity and sin into your life and you know it. I have to wonder how many of my adolescent and teen years I wasted, intentionally distancing myself from my male peers who could have been my friends in the name of purity/fear (I can never remember which…) or patting myself on the back and reassuring myself of the supposed superiority my purity gave me (“It’s so sad and empty to live a life trying to impress all the boys when you could have a greater purpose in life, like me”). There is never enough that a girl can do to secure her purity — it’s in what she wears (every piece), how she walks, how she stands, how she does her hair and makeup, how much eye contact she makes… in a self-selecting survey about modesty, men from a variety of ages answered questions about what constitutes modesty. Check out the results of the agree/disagree statement “the way a girl walks can be a stumbling block”:

75% of responders agree that girls walking can be difficult to deal with.

And some of the written commentary:

"This type of immodesty can only be deliberate."

And I can’t even speak to what the boys go through. The other side of the coin that women’s bodies are responsible for these sexual indiscretions (which could be as small as thinking about another person in a sexual manner) is that men are made to believe that women are sins to commit, rather than individuals with agency. Remember a couple weeks back, when Andrew bravely shared his story about his grisly excommunication from Mars Hill? Remember how his fiancé and fellow fornicator was faced with the same excruciating treatment and ostracism?

No? Neither do I!

It, too, falls into the same gendered crap where women are seen as “weaker vessels” that succumb to their own wicked desires while men are the strong leaders responsible for their redemption. Andrew, you see, was not a strong or leader-y enough of a man (according to Mars Hill standards) to resist the temptations of the flesh; it was his fault and his problem that he had had a “physical” relationship with his fiancé and it was his fault for succumbing to the temptations of the flesh, not that he had broken the trust he had established with his fiancé.

The Christian model of gender roles leaves one side voiceless and the other overburdened with unearned responsibility. Neither position is enviable.

The takeaway here is that we can do gender so much better. As non-theists and as skeptics, we need to understand the pervasiveness of the inequity that surrounds us (in whatever form it takes) and to be honest about our own personal investment in these stereotypes. The atheist and skeptical community may not have the toxic written dogma of religious institutions, but I think we should hold off on the cake and the streamers until we understand how closely we are knit to our long-held beliefs.

Once, when I was twelve or so, my dad forgot to pick me up from play rehearsal after school. In the pre-cellphone era, I just stood at the big double doors of the school’s entrance, watching for headlights in the rural blackness of middle-of-nowhere, Indiana. The evening janitorial staff kept shooting me these pitiable looks, and I was starting to wonder how comfortable the tile floor would be to sleep on, and how I’d never live down wearing the same clothes two days in a row, when at last my dad pulled up in the old Aerostar van. Finally!

Apparently, he just plain forgot that he was supposed to pick me up after a meeting he had had that night. He’d arrived home, and rather than a “hello,” he was greeted with a suspicious, “Where is our daughter…?” My mom says he turned eight shades of green, darted back to the van, and rushed to get me in a flurry of apologies.

Now, we sarcastically refer to this event as if it was the ultimate treachery, and in case my father ever has anything snarky to say to me, I’ll just point back to that fateful day as evidence to his “horrible” parenting. We laugh about it now, about his daughter-erasing brain fart, and my melodramatic response of seeking some sort of habitat for a night in the wilds of my small middle school.

At the time, though, I remember one thought in particular that kept circling my adolescent brain: “I’ll never do this when I have kids.”

How often have you all said similar things? Back then, it was a petulant response, extrapolating an honest, adult mistake to be a horrible symbol of my father’s lack of concern for me; but now, I find myself asking myself the same sort of questions, for very different reasons. Instead of slighting my parents for every piece of clothing they didn’t buy for me or event I wasn’t permitted to attend, I’m now starting to question what things I would do differently.

As a hypothetical parent, I would be in completely uncharted territory, as my own beliefs are radically different from my own parents’ faith-based approach. My parents were Christians, as were their parents, my friends and their parents were Christians…come to think of it, I don’t even personally know any atheist parents.

This does have a positive side effect, though: since there are no models to emulate within my immediate experience, the tough tussling with difficult concepts ultimately comes down to discussions with my husband, which is exactly where they ought to be. As I’ve discussed before, leaving the tough choices about parenting to someone outside of you and your family can have enormous repercussions. Religious institutions in particular often call for prescriptive parenting instead of descriptive; that a child will “become” such-and-such an individual if you follow such-and-such discipline program, as outlined by everyone’s favorite child psychologist — the preacher.

So what exactly would I do differently? What parts of my hypothetical parenting would deviate from my own experience being parented in a Christian household?

I have a shortlist, and I’m looking to add more:

1. No mandatory church attendance.

While this may sound like a “duh” statement to those raised outside of religious influence, the implications are much more subtle and much more fraught if grandma and grandpa are religious and readily accessible to the child.

My husband and I want to raise our hypothetical children to decide for themselves. After all, it isn’t their religion (or lack thereof) that I’d be raising — it’s a whole, complete child, equipped with a personality and wants and needs and opinions. Religion will not be kept hidden from them, nor will it be glossed over or minimized, but they will realistically need to know how it informs the beliefs of the greater majority of their family. Developing critical thinking skills will involve us 100% more as parents; fostering these skills would be significantly harder if they are exposed to indoctrination that teaches them that morality is tied to warming a chair once a week at a specific time.

2. No corporal punishment.

As I mentally began sorting through some of these ideas, I realized that my only arguments in favor of physical punishments were faith-based.

Given the track record of this particular discipline technique, the potential for abuse, and the vehement disagreement with the practice from professional communities, I simply don’t see any evidence to even consider the practice in the first place. Full stop.

3. Rewarding honest inquisitiveness.

One characteristic of the Christian religion — or many variants of it — is to discourage critical thinking by painting “doubt” as a negative (just like calling anger “bitterness,” and the useless trapdoor-of-a-phrase, “I’ll pray for you”). I can’t really remember how many sermons I’ve heard about “Doubting Thomas,” where the punchline of the story is almost universally omitted: he ultimately overcomes his doubt through… evidence and reason! For some reason, Thomas was skeptical of the idea that a friend of his was brutally tortured, died, and rose from the dead to walk among humans again, and asked for some simple evidence that would confirm his identity.

You there! With the valid, strong emotions! Why must you be so bitter all the time?

Curiously, in the account in John 20:24-29, Jesus does provide the evidence that Thomas requested, yet (in verse 29) goes on to suggest that request was somewhat petty:

“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

However, there are several layers to this case; according to the story, Jesus was able to confirm Thomas’ doubts with actual, physical evidence, which is never available to the person behind the pulpit, claiming to possess the key to unlock Truth. So, in terms of the story, I agree with Jesus: it is better to believe things that are true even if you haven’t personally witnessed it. Things like gravity, pulsars, and evolution can be established to be “true” even if you yourself can never “see” it with your own two eyes.

What I won’t be doing is teaching my children in the churchified version of the Doubting Thomas story, where the blame lies in his curiosity and his “need” for proof. Instead, I want my children to recognize what kind of evidence a given claim will need, and whether or not the evidence given meets those criteria.

4. Recognize autonomy by resisting the urge to “train” a child.

Ultimately, I will have to realize my limited power as a parent. Just like I can’t “make” students learn a concept in the classroom, I can’t “make” a child become something or another. I can encourage certain behaviors while discouraging others, but at the end of the day their identity does not belong to me.

With Christian parents, many people adopt the Driscollian view that their success as a parent lies in the transfer of their religious values to their children, and it’s a recipe for disappointment. By sheer numbers, I would guess that many readers of this blog come from religious backgrounds, and I would guess even further that some might have observed the negative ramifications of religious belief in their cognitive processes. With this kind of irrational desire placed as such a high priority, all other accomplishments — morality, responsibility, love, care, concern for the world around you — take a backseat to the idea that immortal soul of the child they love is in danger. It completely minimizes actual problems and accomplishments, and colors the relationship that parents can have with their teen and adult children. That’s not the kind of relationship that I envision for myself, nor do I understand why any parent would want that.

All your religion are belong to us.

It won’t be an easy journey, but no adventure in parenting ever is. I also don’t believe that my atheism or skepticism equips me to be a perfect parent, but I hope that the desire to think critically about the world around me and my contributions to it will spill over into a dynamic, organically evolving relationship with my hypothetical future children.

How about you? If you are already a parent, what did/do you do differently from faith based parenting approaches? If you’re simply speculating, like me, what are some things that you consider?

I’m one of those people who wish that theists and atheists could just bury the hatchet and move on; I, personally, would benefit greatly from such a cease-fire, and I have no doubt that there would be plenty of atheists with theist friends and family who would benefit as well. I’m also one of those people wishing there were a magic button to push, or wand to wave, or lever to pull to make all weddings and births and holidays and deaths free of religious strife. Given the chance, I would pull that lever in a heartbeat…if such a lever existed, I think it would be more useful than a god.

Earlier this month, I saw the infamous Hillary Adams beating video, where a 16-year-old girl was beaten viciously with a leather belt by her father, a family court judge in Aransas County, TX. After watching it, the entire, horrifying, awful seven minutes of it, I was just sickened. Sickened that someone would feel it appropriate or justified to beat a child like that in any situation, sickened by his profession, sickened by his subsequent comments… but mostly I was sickened by how familiar the situation was to me.

I knew people who were beaten with all manner of weapons for minor to major infractions: belts, switches, paddles, wooden spoons, and spatulas. To them, parenting in this way is both a God-given right and a responsibility of the parent. And the household I was raised in was not what I would consider fundamentalist or extremist in any sense. My siblings and I were pretty normal kids with loving parents who came to my soccer games and school plays and always gave me a bit of money to go to those rock concerts they hoped were a fad. My parents are genuine, nice people… but the things that came from their church’s pulpit often horrified me.

Recently, I went back and attended a church service with them. On the day I was there, the church was performing a “child dedication ceremony” –- different from a baptism in the sense that the parents are being placed with the responsibility of raising the child according to Biblical principles. Choosing to participate in the ceremony indicates that the church members have a responsibility to ensure that the parents follow through. From my understanding, it’s a quite common practice in churches that reject infant baptism.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal… except for the fact that the “Biblical principles” that the preacher cited should have sent spidey-senses tingling down the spines of Amnesty International members around the world. The stuff was heinous.

Red flags were flying all over my mind when he opened the ceremony with an anecdote about a parent whose child had made a huge turnaround after the father converted to Christianity and adopted discipline “the way God intended it.” The pastor said that the man had been “deceived” by, of all people, the child’s pediatrician, who had advised the man not to employ corporal punishment. The pastor went on to ask the congregation if they would rather “parent the way the world wants them to” or if they wanted to “enjoy the blessings of parenting according to God’s will.”

He went on to make his case for corporal punishment by citing the following verses (conveniently organized in one place here):

• Prov 13:24: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”
• Prov 19:18: “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.”
• Prov 22:15: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”
• Prov 23:13: “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.”
• Prov 23:14: “Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”
• Prov 29:15: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”

This pastor is not alone, either. Here’s Focus on the Family’s Chip Ingram:

“When you spank, use a wooden spoon or some other appropriately sized paddle and flick your wrist. That’s all the force you need. It ought to hurt — an especially difficult goal for mothers to accept — and it’s okay if it produces a few tears and sniffles. If it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t really discipline, and ultimately it isn’t very loving because it will not be effective in modifying the child’s behavior.”

It’s a commonly held belief that spanking will help mold a child’s character.

It doesn’t achieve that goal, but there is one thing that this tactic is remarkably good at: obedience and fear.

Instead of being able to explore right from wrong and discern it for themselves, scores of Christian children are being subtly taught that obedience to authority means avoiding punishment — not that it’s morally correct to avoid the behavior in question. Like so many others, I was obedient in order to avoid physical punishments (and, later, removal of privileges), which led me to focus more on finding the right path through the punishment maze rather than sorting out what I actually believed for myself.

The crux of the issue lies in the rabid desire for children’s obedience — rather than a desire to help them grow and develop — in mainstream Christianity, and it is two-fold: One, it complicates children’s abilities to know who is deserving of respect. Two, it prevents children from developing sincere relationships with their parents. It is an unfortunate fact that babies have no choice in who brings them into this world and cares for them, and there is no “opt out” feature when it comes to childhood indoctrination. It’s not a real choice if one party is wielding a weapon.

So why care, as an atheist? As a feminist?

Since there are a million and one reasons flying around my head at the moment, I’ll give you two to chew on:

1. Extolling the virtues of “Biblical discipline” while vilifying medical professionals creates a culture in which abuse is preferred and promoted as morally superior. Just as the issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church is not limited to a few misled individuals, the promotion of corporal punishment of children is not limited to your Focus on the Family readers, or the few thousand people that have purchased Michael and Debi Pearl’s book.

   Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church had this to say about discipline in a 2002 sermon transcript:

   “Proverbs 23:13-14, “Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you punish him with a rod, he will not die.” Okay, a spanking should not wound, mortally injure, kill a child. I’m not talking about that. It’s a sting. It’s not an abuse. They will not die. They should not die. Now, will they sound like they are dying?

   (Laughter)”

   He goes on to say that “correct” Biblical discipline is carefully enforced and used for correction, not punishment. That’s all well and good, but how far back does your arm have to wind up before you call it abuse? What angle? What tool? Is a wooden spoon ok to use? How about some rubber tubing? How sore does a butt have to be before we can say that a spanking was too much?

   The issue is the imperative to perform physical punishment at all when legitimate, trusted organizations and studies suggest that there is little to no benefit at all from corporal punishment. Dr. Alan Kazdin of the American Psychological Association says:

   “There is a good deal of research that has already been conducted that shows that anything beyond very mild physical punishment does not work in the long term and has negative consequences. While not all child development experts agree, my advice to parents is to avoid physical punishment altogether; there are simply more effective ways to teach and discipline your child.”

   We need to get serious about aiming our Laser Beams of Reason at religious institutions that harm children; while Hillary Adam’s father claims that she waited seven years to upload the beating video in order to exact revenge, all I could think was that she had to wait seven years until she felt safe enough to take action. Too often, the emphasis on obedience and conformity silences the victims until they escape the environment. We need to understand that Hillary’s experience is not unique; it’s being sold by many Christian families as morally right and proper.

   When it comes to the rights of children, I think it’s important to level all of our vinegar and contempt at organizations that harm them. While the anti-theist in me is pleased at the black mark on the Catholic Church due to the pedophilia scandal, my background and experience tells me that the work is not nearly over… and it’s not just Catholics and their dogma.

2. Parenting with an emphasis on patriarchal hierarchy and the need for obedience divorces parents from the realities of developing children. In addition to being horrifying, it’s just kind of sad. Patriarchal family structures place undue pressure on the man to “perform” as the head of the household; women and children’s options are severely restricted, both immediately and long-term; children are forced to fear rather than respect the parents. Listen to how Libby Anne of Love, Joy, Feminism puts it:
   

   My parents trusted that God would fulfill his promise of a perfect godly family if they only followed his guidelines as taught by [Christian apologetics sources and parenting guides] No Greater Joy and Vision Forum. Somehow, though, they can’t seem to trust him with their children when their formulas go wrong. Instead, they have to fight tooth and nail to bring their erring children back to “the truth.” I think this may be born out of confusion as much as anything else. Their system didn’t work. Everything they built their lives around failed. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

   In some sense, though, the actions of my parents and others like them make sense. After all, my parents aren’t used to trusting their children to God. Rather, they’re used to trusting that God has promised that if they raise their children just so their children will turn out to be just right. This idea puts my parents at the center, not God. They are responsible for how their children turn out, not God. And now that we’re grown, that habit may be difficult to kick.

All too often, I hear stories that span every inch of the spectrum of estrangement, from emotional estrangement (“I can’t connect with them because they don’t see me as a real person”) to literal, physical estrangement (“I no longer speak to/visit them”). Too often, I hear about the hurt that people have suffered, present or past, that prevents them from having any sort of intimacy in their relationships with their parents.

This dogma, in addition to being potentially physically harmful to children, can create needless and senseless emotional strife. Children are being harmed, but parents, too, are being cheated out of potentially healthy relationships directly because of their religious belief.

Parents are being led to believe, through lies, dogma, and misinformation, that children are objects that can be led and molded and “trained”, and this belief has devastating ramifications — while not as incendiary as child abuse, it should also give us pause when we consider the belief’s long-term effects.

After all, it would be nice to be able to write this whole thing off as a Christian problem within Christian culture; annoying, but largely harmless enough to allow them to continue. Unfortunately, the effects of abuse and poor parenting ripple through society in all-too-frequently quiet ways. I don’t want my neighbor believing that she needs to shut up and be subservient to her husband. I don’t want the children in my future classroom believing that the beatings they might be receiving at home are justified. I don’t want to work or associate with the kind of men that needs to have a chokehold on his home — none of those scenarios add more scientists, teachers, or playwrights to society. If anything, we are robbed of the collective benefit that the women who could have become scientists and teachers and playwrights; we are robbed of who-knows-how-many children who could have gone on to do better, greater things had their options not been restricted by religious belief.

It’s not just those people who hurt and get hurt; it’s your coworkers and neighbors and friends and check-out clerks and lawmakers. For that reason, and for the betterment of The World At Large, the atheist movement should respond — loudly, and not in kind.