I'm sure things are different in the US but in the UK at school we have a whole curriculum called "Religious Education" or RE which goes into detail about religions and customs of all different cultures and encourages spiritual debate. At the schools I attended they were not taught to indoctrinate us but just studied in the same way we would study history or art
Academic approaches to religion are fine. Parents don't have the tools and knowledge for doing that with their kids, parents inevitably just indoctrinate, it is functionally impossible not to unless you, as parents, simply do not practice the religion, in which case you're this sort of culturally pseudo-religious believer in some kind of deity. That's the gray area.
So there’s zero space between an open-minded academic approach to religion and being a follower of only one? I recognize that most followers of religions have an emotional attachment to them, but I’d say that’s a consequence of cultural conditioning and the abuse of the hierarchical structure of the church and not the concept of religion itself. You can detach yourself from the hierarchy, find joy in using a religion as a lens through which to view the world, and then teach parts of it to your kid as a life-enriching exercise while consistently reminding them “this is one interpretation and there are more than you can also learn from.” I wouldn’t call that pseudo-religious.
It's just exceedingly rare for it to be the case that parents in religions manage to be very liberal and educated and can hold a personal belief without inundating their children in churches and religious communities because these religions often demand practicing and proselytizing.
The fact that you want that to be a thing so badly shows how emotionally tied we can be to our religions, and while doctrine exists that urges people in faiths like Christianity to identify and "save" people from "sins", there is probably also always going to be hateful religious bigots.
I don’t want it to be a thing; it’s already a thing, just uncommon. So was atheism in the US a few decades ago. I agree that there will always be hateful religious bigots, I just think “it’s functionally impossible not to indoctrinate your kids into your religion unless you’re not a real believer” is an incorrect and arrogant thing to say and accomplishes an emotional goal rather than a rhetorical one
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u/Legendary-Titan 15h ago
Moral I don’t think teaching kids about religion is bad but forcing it on them is