vive la différence
First, a bit of news: We’ve arrived in Atlanta and tentatively found our new home, and (following the Newsweek article) Parenting Beyond Belief hovered between 350 and 700 on Amazon — the top two hundredths of a percent — before cooling off a bit.
More on all that later. Right now I’ve a blogligation to fulfill. Several weeks back, a reader asked a great question: Why do I consider the line between “religious parenting” and “nonreligious parenting” to be meaningful? Isn’t the kind of parenting I advocate (unbounded questioning, a scientifically-informed, evidence-based worldview, questioning of authority, rejecting the notion of “sinful thoughts,” developing moral judgment instead of simple rule-following, etc. etc.) really just “good parenting”? Am I really saying that religious parents can’t do these things?
No, I’m not saying that — partly because I can’t.
Really. I can’t. It’s an absolute statement, you see — and twenty years immersed in the liberal arts, first as a student, then as a professor, left me completely incapable of making an absolute statement. (Well, not completely.) Go back and read my blog so far. I constantly use qualifiers like most, many, almost, and some because I am painfully aware that all generalizations are wrong.
Well…not all.
There is nothing that religious parents “can’t” do, nothing that is the exclusive purview of secular parenting — just as there is nothing that religious parents can achieve that I can’t.
So why make the distinction at all, then? Why describe something called “secular parenting” if it’s pretty much the same as good religious parenting?
Because though we can end up pursuing the same ends, they really aren’t the same. There is a profound difference in the context — the space in which religious parenting and secular parenting happen.
Both secular and religious parents can raise kids to value fearless questioning, require genuine evidence, question authority, and reject paralyzing ideas of “sin” and the demonization of doubt. But one of these worldviews encourages and supports those values, while the other discourages them. One lends itself to them; the other chafes against them.
(Psst: I’ll tell you which is which in a minute.)
Being a freethinking Christian is something like being a pro-choice Republican. Opposition to legalized abortion is one of the central, defining policy planks of the Republican Party platform. There are pro-choice Republicans, of course, but they surely recognize that their pro-choice position is at odds with their party’s ideology. They can still do it, of course, can still hold that dissenting position within a Republican identity, but when it comes to that issue, they’ll be swimming upstream, struggling against one of the defining values of their group.
Same with pro-war Quakers, acrophobic window washers, and Danny, the claustrophobic tunneler in The Great Escape. “Jeez, good luck with that” is about all I can think to say.
My hat’s off to any religious parent who encourages unrestrained doubt, applauds fearless questioning and rejects appeals to authority. Such religious parents are salmon swimming against one helluva mighty current. At the core of religious tradition and practice are the ideas that doubt is bad, that certain questions are not to be asked, and that church and scripture carry some degree of inherent authority. This varies among the denominations, of course, but some degree of these three will be present in virtually every flavor of the faith. (Five extra points for each weasel word or phrase you can find in that sentence.)
The great glory of secular parenting is that it embraces several key values that religion has traditionally suppressed and feared, allowing parents and children to turn away from that pointless, mind-juddering dissonance, to dance in the light of knowledge and to revel in questioning and doubting as the highest human callings, rivalled only by love.
Parenting Beyond Belief is about the ecstasy of parenting from a worldview that supports and encourages some of our most deeply-held values. That, then, is the difference. And vive la it.
As for those religious-parent salmon, swimming against the unhelpful currents of church tradition, heed this wisdom from the Book of Dory — just keep swimming, follow your conscience, and do what you can to help others see the light: