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I was curious how parents educate their children about world religions, if you do. When I was in school we had Religious Education (RE) classes, and we learned about all the major world religions in depth, and I thought it was fascinating. I know many posters here are devout within their own faith, and was curious if you seek out information about other religions for your children too?
We try to seek out many and varied opportunities, for example The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a new temple in our city, and for a short time it is opened to the public for tours. We are going this weekend.
We attend Diwali celebrations, break fast at Ramadan, etc. What do you do that myself and others may find useful or interesting for our children?
Well we were saturated with Christian holidays, and knew Christians went to Sunday Church, while we went to Friday night services. Because we had so many Christian families living in our neighborhoods, we had a general understanding of Christianity - at least the point of it; that our bible ended with one date, and their bible picks up from where it left off. And in the updated version, there's a guy named Jesus who all the poor folks loved but the politicians hated, and the politicians manipulated the masses into voting for his death. And then he was killed on the cross, and somehow managed to come back to life, haunted his old pals for awhile, and then died again. And that supposedly he may rise again. And in some religions, he's already risen again and is hiding and waiting to reveal himself. And in some other religions, he never really died, he just transported his soul to another body and he's been around all this time occuping different bodies.
Clearly it's a lively romantic comedic tragedy about zombies, undead, vampires, and liches.
Then I went to someone's church and saw this HUGE ENORMOUS realistic carving of a scraggle-haired skinny guy nailed to wood with blood dripping from his palms and chest and feet and nails sticking up from them and the guy's expression looked like something out of a nightmare. And they told me "oh yeah that's Jesus. We worship that." I was pretty convinced at that point I'd never become a Christian. It was the most hideous disgusting thing I'd ever seen, even worse than the tupperware containing a rotten piece of roast beef that we found hiding in the back of mom's fridge.
Eventually though, I hooked up with some Methodists in high school and wanted to be one of their crowd so I joined their church youth group. They were a pretty good group, didn't focus much on Jesus and focused more on community service. My own Jewish youth group (NFTY) was all about community service so it was more in tune with my own upbringing.
Well we were saturated with Christian holidays, and knew Christians went to Sunday Church, while we went to Friday night services. Because we had so many Christian families living in our neighborhoods, we had a general understanding of Christianity - at least the point of it; that our bible ended with one date, and their bible picks up from where it left off. And in the updated version, there's a guy named Jesus who all the poor folks loved but the politicians hated, and the politicians manipulated the masses into voting for his death. And then he was killed on the cross, and somehow managed to come back to life, haunted his old pals for awhile, and then died again. And that supposedly he may rise again. And in some religions, he's already risen again and is hiding and waiting to reveal himself. And in some other religions, he never really died, he just transported his soul to another body and he's been around all this time occuping different bodies.
Clearly it's a lively romantic comedic tragedy about zombies, undead, vampires, and liches.
Then I went to someone's church and saw this HUGE ENORMOUS realistic carving of a scraggle-haired skinny guy nailed to wood with blood dripping from his palms and chest and feet and nails sticking up from them and the guy's expression looked like something out of a nightmare. And they told me "oh yeah that's Jesus. We worship that." I was pretty convinced at that point I'd never become a Christian. It was the most hideous disgusting thing I'd ever seen, even worse than the tupperware containing a rotten piece of roast beef that we found hiding in the back of mom's fridge.
Eventually though, I hooked up with some Methodists in high school and wanted to be one of their crowd so I joined their church youth group. They were a pretty good group, didn't focus much on Jesus and focused more on community service. My own Jewish youth group (NFTY) was all about community service so it was more in tune with my own upbringing.
No offense, but you really didn't answer the OP's question. Instead you went off on a long tangent ridiculing Christianity.
To answer the OP, we never had too many opportunities to experience other faiths. My older kids sometimes went to church with other friends who are of other faiths, though. My youngest is now very curious about other cultures and religions, and I've been doing my best to explain some of the differences. I am hampered by my dh though, he is an atheist and his general opinion is that organized religion is all fantasy. I am trying to teach him religious tolerance in spite of it.
As I look around the room, I see an image of the Hindu God Rama, images and statues of angels, a green man hanging on the wall, images of Buddha, a beautiful cross with a sacred heart in the middle of it, a few saints, some crystals, a copy of the Bible, various Buddhist and Hindu texts, books by GI Gurdjieff and PD Ouspensky, Ernest Holme's book Science of Mind, etc. (other religions are represented in other rooms)
In other words, world religions saturate our lives. It's a passion of mine - learning about and honoring other cultures - specifically religions. The thing I find throughout this journey is that at their core, most religions are more similar than different. Just like humans .
Sometimes it comes up in conversation with the kids too (at least with my 3yo...my 19 mo old is a bit young). My 3yo has an LDS friend and the little girl asks questions about the way we dress (less modest than her; for example we wear shorts above our knees), so that sometimes leads to conversations about different beliefs and practices. We are fortunate to live in an extremely diverse community that offers ample opportunities to experience and discuss other cultures.
We are already mixing two religions (me- Jewish husband- Baptist), but I definitely want to expose the kids to differing religions when they are a bit older. We live in an extremely Evangelical area, where there is a tendency to ridicule other religions, and I want to make sure my kids are properly educated. For now, at 3 and 1 year old, I feel they are too young to truly learn about religion, but we teach them to love God, and we would talk a bit about different religious festivals and eat different cultural foods, while staying true to our own religions (for example no bread right now, it being Pesach). As we are planning to home school or possibly send them to a Christian part-time (university model) school, I do think there will be plenty of opportunity for field trips to mosques, Wiccan rituals and other things, even if they are a bit further away, once the kids are elementary school age.
The question was about a child's exposure to religion, in general. That was my exposure, as a child, to religion, in general. It is also the result of that exposure. I was exposed to Christianity in a general sense. I was then exposed to a graphic depiction of the object of christian worship, at a young and impressionable age, which was very scary to me and threw me off the track of further exploration and exposure.
Fortunately, I was re-introduced to the general understanding of christianity in high school, which gave me an opportunity to appreciate the less-scary aspects of it when I grew into adult hood.
I had no muslim exposure that I'm aware of, until college. My parents were fairly liberal when it came to religious studies; we weren't forbidden to explore any religion, however, we never really took much of an interest in them one way or another. My own interest in comparative religious studies didn't flesh out til I was in college, when I hung out in the Hare Krsna temple to study for midterms because the dorms were too noisy and the droning chants of the priests there was soothing.
The older of mine went through childhood attending our local Methodist church.
The younger is quite different. I re-evaluated my beliefs and realized that the only reason I held any beliefs was because my mother told me that was the truth, it didn't matter if inside thoughts were conflicting.
In these past 10 years I thought it out rationally and reasonably and come to the conclusion that there is a God. No doubt about that, but everything past that is man-made, and that's what I teach my child. ALL organized religions and belief systems are MAN MADE. The bible was written by men, as were the qu'ran, etc.. God didn't "tell" one group one thing, and another group something else.
As a result, we have had some fantastic conversations about religion. He has poured over the internet researching all different religions, how they contradict each other and how they are similar. He's come to the conclusion that there is a greater power, but not necessarily a god, and organized religions are pretty narrow minded.
We try to seek out many and varied opportunities, for example The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a new temple in our city, and for a short time it is opened to the public for tours. We are going this weekend.
I hope you enjoy your tour of the temple. I'm going to watch for a post from you as to what your impressions were. You are to be commended in being so open-minded and teaching your children the importance of respecting people of all religions (and of no religion).
Yeah, I'm so open minded I tell my kids one day Jesus is the Savior, the next day I say no he's not, the next day I stay Mohammad is who they should worship, the next day I say no - forget Mohammed, it's Budda we will adore and then I get to where I tell them there is no god but we keep up the diversity so I tell them something else the day after that.
I tell my daughter that many people believe in an invisible friend in the sky who can do many things. But the odd thing about this friend is that whenever someone asks for something really important, like curing the illness of a beloved family member, nothing happens. No one has ever actually heard from this friend firsthand, but lots of people keep believing in him/her/it nonetheless. Some people set themselves up as special representatives of this friend, and ask that you give your money to them, and they will then spend it on themselves or as they see fit without asking you how your money should be used.
Most sports teams believe the sky friend is a fan.
Different groups have varying views of this friend. Some believe there are many friends, some only one. Lots of people are afraid of what their friend may do if the orders of the "special representatives" are not followed, even though they can't see or hear evidence of the friend in the sky.
I tried to explain the concept of blasphemy but it's too ridiculous once you begin to think about it.
There is one group, called Muslims, who tell us that their friend is the only one and is really, really mean. Their friend wants them to kill any who do not believe in their fairytale. And their friend, called Allah, says it's ok to kill your children, especially your daughters, if you get angry about how those daughters act. My daughter asked if I would ever hurt her like that and I reassure her that I will always protect her, but not to ever talk or get close to the Muslims who live near us as they want to kill non-Muslims, or at the very least, beat the women and make them all dress in tents all day. (We see the neighbor women, dressed in heavy robes cutting the grass on hot summer days while the men in the family sit on the deck drinking and smoking their hookah-bongs.)
Muslims also kill people who draw cartoons. They also get quite upset (enough to kill each other) if someone in a land far, far away burns a book which they themselves own. They're also upset about pork BBQ and bacon (who could imagine being upset by bacon?!), music and dancing. Statues seem to stress them and they respond by destroying old beautiful statues by blowing them up with cannons.
I tell her that most other people who believe in magic sky-friends are harmless. If they insist on talking about it, smile and try to change the subject, and be sure to keep your hand on your wallet and just try to be a good person! The only "sin" lies in hurting others without good cause - all other "sins" are invented nonsense!
Me? I did 12 years of Catholic school...
Last edited by Workin_Hard; 04-19-2011 at 08:40 AM..
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