My cousin is an Episcopalian, which he describes as "the American version of Anglicanism, which is the British version of Catholicism." He has a beautiful new baby son, who will be baptized in just over a month. And he's asked me to be my new cousin's godfather.
Being raised a protestant, I really had no idea what this meant. The whole godfather/godmother thing was totally foreign to me. So I decided I'd ask around at work. I'm surrounded by Catholics here in New York, something else that was foreign while I was growing up in the Midwest.
Apparently, to be a godfather means several things:
That you're expected to give the biggest gifts at birthday parties, graduation, etc.,
That you'll take responsibility for being a parent for the child if anything happens to his real parents, and
That you'll help with the spiritual upbringing of the child.
Oh, dear.
You see, my cousin asked me over the phone, and I pretty much said yes right away without bothering to find out what it meant. And the vast majority of my family - namely, anyone who isn't my parents or doesn't look too closely at my Facebook profile - doesn't know I'm an atheist.
So… what do I do now? How do I let my cousin down easy? I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable helping to raise his son as an Episcopalian, but still - the fact that he'd consider me for such a job tells me that there's something about me that he respects, and I want to show him that I'm grateful that he'd consider me for such a role. Not to mention that telling him I'm an atheist would likely mean that I'd be outed to that entire half of my family… which is something I'm probably due for at this point.
Part of being named as a godfather also means that I'd have to attend the kid's baptism, which is (in my mind) inextricably tied with the beginning of an indoctrination into Christian dogma… sigh.
I know the poll question is simplistic, but the idea is a broad one: What do you think about the use of the child in the video? Is this a form of child abuse?
Essentially, the question is whether or not it's abusive to involve a child in the act of indoctrinating others, as a part of the process of raising them to believe the parents' dogma. It's a sticky question. Without a doubt, there are certain lies that parents can tell their kids without it being considered child abuse.
But religious dogma - especially that of the woman in this video - is entirely different. When you teach a child that the world works in an entirely different way than it actually does… and teach them social skills with the intent of getting them to make friends in order to get people saved… and teach them to fear and be repulsed by their human nature… and teach them that their body is shameful and can lead then to eternal damnation… and teach them that it’s a virtue to believe in fantastic things on little to no evidence… and set them up for a future where they’ll either never really think for themselves or spend many painful years getting over the various mental blocks their indoctrination put in place… yes, I would call that child abuse.
It's especially insidious when these people take their children along as props to disarm their marks. The kids are being told that they have to spread their beliefs to others, and I doubt they've been given much opportunity to determine whether or not they actually want to believe those things.
I indoctrinated myself into fundamentalism, and I’m still digging the poisonous nonsense I learned out of my brain. I can only imagine with horror just how much more difficult that would be if you spent your entire life being told it was true and being encouraged to constantly express your belief in it.
People at Hemant's blog compared this to telling kids that there's a Santa Claus, or raising them with an atheist worldview (whatever that may mean; it's about as meaningful as the term "gay agenda").
It does not compare with telling kids about Santa Claus, because eventually you tell them it was a myth. It also doesn’t compare with raising them as atheists, because you don’t have to lie to them to do that. Some atheists do tell their kids things that aren’t true about what other people believe, but you won’t find them telling their kids that they’ll suffer an eternity of burning torture if they dare disbelieve their parents.
This woman is raising her daughter under a belief system that tells her that she and every other human being on the planet is deserving of eternal punishment for the crime of being born human, and that we have to submit our will and give up much of ourselves to the control of the very being threatening us with said torment. And she's raising her daughter to believe that it's not only good, but admirable to spread those beliefs to other people. She is raising the poor girl in a dogma that teaches that no degree of work that you do to help people live more comfortable or satisfying lives can ever amount to anything meaningful if you don't believe that you're doing it at the command of an eternal judge who finds your essential nature unworthy of redemption.
Yes, this form of evangelicalism is, in fact, abusive. It denigrates everything that makes human beings human and spins it as sinful and offensive to their god. Certainly there are other forms of Christianity that are less damaging to a child's ability to function as a rational member of society, but only inasmuch as they have taken on secular values such as critical thinking and the rejection of eternal punishment for finite crimes. Moderate Christianity is more palatable because it has seen and removed the worm at the center of the rotten apple that is the dogma, but by and large it still attempts to sell you a rotten apple, polished and painted to look more appealing.
Can child indoctrination not be child abuse? Sure - when the dogma is as watered-down as it possibly can be, and everything that impugns the value of humanity (i.e., the entire concept of original sin, sinful thoughts, sinful natural behavior, the need for redemption, etc.) has been removed. This is essentially what I was raised with, and looking back on it I'm struck by just how little I actually bothered to think about God when I was a kid. Yes; when indoctrination is basically content-free, I don't consider it abusive. I just consider it an odd use of time.
