Non-religious parents who take their kids to church - experiences?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Non-religious / agnostics / atheists who take their kids to church - can you post your motivations and experiences?

Some background: My missus blind-sided me yesterday by saying she was thinking of taking our 2 yo to church today. Neither of us are religious, and have not attended church for years - I’m comfortable with identifying as a complete atheist, whereas I think my wife would be less clear-cut. We both, however, attended church weekly with our families until we were around 16 and both have largely positive experiences of it.

Church at the local level has a lot of obvious pros to me - e.g. provides a moral framework that can reinforce parenting, strong nexus for the community in general where you can meet people / other families, the singing etc. It also encourages kids to think about bigger questions about their place in the world and beyond - promoting introspection every once in a while.

I’ll leave aside the cons for now, which I guess are obvious for an atheist. Basically I would love to hear from anyone who has sat in Mass with their kid thinking: for me, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, but for the wee man it’s worthwhile.

2

I’ve only come in to agree with you, especially the second paragraph. I don’t have any children, but would most likely take them to church regularly for all of the reasons you mentioned. I’ll be interested in what others have to say.

3

Interesting–I’d never heard of such a thing. I guess if your experiences are positive, it could be a good thing for the kid. For me, church was a terrible, terrible thing and made me very bitter, and so I have a “I would never put my kid through THAT!” kind of attitude, and would even if I still believed in god.

4

I’ve posted before about the fact that I am atheist and my children have gone to religious schools and we attend church. When I get up on time.

It’s a social event. We dress up, I get to drink coffee with my friends and hang out and then I get to sit in a big room where no one is allowed to bother me for a whole hour.

For my kids, they are with their friends from school and part of a group. They learn lessons about how to act. Just because I don’t go for all the religious aspect of it, I still believe we ought to treat other people the way we want to be treated and it helps to have a non-parent reinforcing that.

Maybe I’m a really bad atheist, but I just don’t care if my kids have a belief in god. It’s all about doing what makes you feel good or how you make your peace with the world, and if my friends or my kids need church to do it, then I don’t care.

5

One way to get some of the positive experiences and minimize the negative is to go to a Unitarian Universalist fellowship. The community in my neighborhood often has more Catholics and Mormons the Unitarians for these reasons.

6

My family were the only Jews in the small town where I grew up, but my parents felt that I should get religious training of some sort so they had me go to most of the churches in town. I went to two or three Protestant denominations’ Sunday Schools (not at the same time of course), when the Catolic kids were let out of school to attend catacism classes, I went. I even attended some activities at the Kingdom Hall.

It was pretty good. I got the idea they were trying to communicate. But also, I became a bit cynical that all these churches had “the” ear of God and all the others were wrong.

One of the funnier memories of that experience was that one time this spindly Jewish kid ended up serving the host at a Catholic Communion.

7

To the OP - My take is that 2 is a bit young to be taking the sprog to church, but I do agree with much of what has been said.

My caveat would be that “religious” should encompass, at the very least a ground in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism. It shouldn’t be restricted to just the “WASP” idea if church.

I am having this problem at the moment, my daughter is five, her grandfather is a quite devout christian. Mummy is non practising christian. I dun got no religion, but I do have a leaning toward Buddhism over anything else.

FiL likes to take daughter to church on Sundays, wifey doesn’t want to upset daddy. I am uncomfortable about the whole thing because I feel the church is “indoctrinating” her - some of the stuff she comes back with is very uncomfortable for me to try to address, and she doesn’t have the maturity at 5 to understand what I don’t like about the church - she would see it as me saying the church is wrong - which I don’t believe, and even if I did, it’s her decision to make and not mine.

The solution I am leaning towards is to arrange sessions / classes for her at another religion to “balance” what the church is telling her.

This may have the side effect of annoying grandad, but too bad. He apparently has already grumbled to wife that she may be attending a (nominally) buddhist school, but he doesn’t dare to raise this to me.

8

From the other side, there are sometimes reasons for believers not to bring their children/attend structured religious services and sometimes to try out different forms of gatherings, such as other faiths, or even non-faith gatherings.

The benefit of organized religion is that one can physically see the structure, with the priest as a physical intercessor between Jesus and the person. We seem to need/want that physical visual representation, along with begin physically told when to worship and how as reassurance, until we learn who we are in Him and can listen to the spiritual voice of God in us. But it may be very good for children to experience time away from this structure, giving them time to discover God’s voice among men’s and start to develop their own methods. Times to worship as they desire which they may be told they are wrong if attending services, and finding their places where they worship, that may be as simple as thanking God while playing in a stream. Learning that one can worship and communicate with God anywhere, and that God lives in us, not the building.

9

Seconding suggestion of the Unitarian Universalists. My dad’s an atheist and my mom an agnostic, and they took me to UU services and Sunday school off and on (depending on where we lived and what was available) throughout my kid and teenage years. My experiences (some in Ohio, some in Washington state) contained all of the pros you mention in the OP, plus instilling a deep respect for other religious traditions. Sunday school often focused on learning about how various people worship, including field trips to other services. I was ALWAYS encouraged to think through ideas for myself and come to my own conclusions, even at age 4 or 5. I was able to go to Lutheran and evangelical Methodist services with my grandparents without feeling any cognitive dissonance.

One caveat: Some UU churches have the “feel” of church – formal and awe-inspiring building, structured services with hymns, etc. – while others feel more like informal meetings at a community center. Very very generally speaking, the East coast has more of the more formal ones, while the West coast has more of the informal ones, occasionally with a pronounced new agey flavor. Also, some congregations seem to focus on personal spiritual matters, while others focus much more on community action. This can vary among UU churches in the same area, too. All of which is to say, the UU congregation nearest your neighborhood may or may not be a good fit for your family; if not, it might be worth checking out the next-nearest one or two, if there are any.

10

I am an atheist who sent my kids to a private Christian school for several years. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake, but at the time, I just had my eye on the uniforms and small class sizes.
They also have gone to church many times with their grandmother (and I drag my ass in about once a year to please my grandma).

When I was a kid, my family churched me just about to death, and sent me to private school too. It made me an atheist, so perhaps it won’t do my kids any harm either.

11

Thanks for the replies. Interesting suggestion to spread the experience of worship about a bit between the religions. Excellent idea for the bairn’s development, although it sort of runs counter to the practical / social sides of going to church.

I recall one of the main things that didn’t make sense to me as a kid in the Catholic church was the concept that we’re right - and everyone else is wrong. It was never stated as baldly as that, modernised a little for the late twentieth century, but the essence was that, at the end of the day (literally), our religion is the only correct one - I guess this has to be axiomatic to a lot of religions. I would like to avoid these type of absurdities by taking a more mercurial approach with our kid, if we do end up going. We swerved it yesterday in the end - agreeing to think it over for a while.

12

If you are taking your child to many types of faith services then hopefully your child will realize that, so I don’t think it should be avoided, but experienced and allowed to be mingled with other experiences as the child develops who they are.

13

My agnostic hippie parents took us to various religious services when we were kids. It was more “exposure to different cultures” kind of thing. We also went to the big pow-wow at four corners and various ethnic festivals.

For community/social/family stuff there was no end to the many secular activity groups and volunteer organizations, so that aspect was plenty fulfilled growing up. We were always involved in various after-school programs and sporty stuff.

14

We take our kids to a UU church.

Its liberal indoctrination. Its also about a community, learning about religious traditions without having to buy into the dogma - but learning to respect the faiths of others. Social justice. And, as I said in the other thread about raising kids when you aren’t very religious, it gives the kids a quick answer to the religion question that they can choose to explain, or choose to just leave.

15

Ultimately, “choose” is the big word, and your child eventually will.

My son’s trajectory was an interesting one. I’ll try to be brief:

Me: Went to United Presbyterian Sunday School fairly faithfully as a child and church in my pre-teens, but neither my parents nor my grandparents went to church more than a couple of times a year. Liked the pastor and his wife (my SS teacher) a great deal, but I don’t think a whole lot of it “took.” By my teen years, my grandparents had moved closer and joined a United Methodist church, but their attendance was sporadic, and mine correspondingly less so. Once I entered college, it reduced to zero.

Ex-wife: Raised Catholic, but I don’t think she attended very faithfully, and zero by the time we were married. When our son was born, she suddenly got the notion that we should join a church so he could be baptized. I went along with this: we attended one Catholic service, at which I felt very out of place, and at her instigation ultimately joined a Lutheran church, and our son was baptized. Again, I liked the pastor a lot and dutifully went to classes, etc., but didn’t really feel a part of it all (entirely my fault…everyone was very nice). Funnily enough, my wife fell away from it before I did, and we were churchless the last seven or so years of our marriage.

**Son: **I believe we walked away before our son ever got to the point of attending Sunday School…I can’t recall for sure. His mom and I divorced when he was 9, she remarried and got involved in her next husband’s church. My son attended there fairly faithfully for a while and seemed to get into it, but by his teens he had fallen away. Ironically, he went to college and got a degree in religion! I’ve always explain jokingly that he’s just as big a heathen as his dad, but that he finds the study of religion…all religions…to be interesting. He, of course, now also has a virtually worthless degree, and will be getting his Master’s in a completely different discipline, but he will always maintain this interest. His studies have shown him that there’s value to be found in parts of many religions, but I would describe him as I describe myself, an agnostic who respects everyone’s beliefs as long as they don’t foist them upon others.
Bottom line…once they’re old enough to more fully grasp things, I think you owe it as a parent to be honest with your kid(s) and say “This is what I believe, but your beliefs will ultimately be up to you, and we’ll love and support you no matter what they turn out to be.”

In the meantime, exposure to many different kinds of thoughts and beliefs seems like a good idea to me. I’m not a religious person, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about all of the issues that religion touches upon a lot.

16

My wife occasionally takes my son to her Church. Her church is simply part of her ethnic community (not mine - I’m ethnically Jewish and religiously atheist)

As I mentioned in the Gogol Bordello thead, I try to support my wife in connecting to her Ukranian community roots, sometimes with odd and surprising results:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12390736#post12390736

As my son grows up, it will be up to him to accept what is good from his heritage and reject what is not good. My job as I see it is to educate him as best I can so he can choose wisely.

17

Yeah, that’s me. I’ve even gone further: Sophie goes to Catholic schools. However, given that we lived in Tennessee and Texas for her schooling, the decision was primarily academic. Her mother now appreciates the social and moral framework the school provides (she was initially resistant to the idea) as much (if not moreso) the academic.

18

I never went to services but I took my daughter to the youth group. It’s a super liberal church focused on social justice and being a good person. It did her a lot of good. She says her time spent at the Heifer Ranch was a life changer. It was her idea to go though; I never would have thought about it. Now I’m thinking I may have my little one attend their VBS and maybe an occasional Mother’s Day Out this summer. Now that UU has been brought up I might look into their programs for children too. I wouldn’t mind attending one of their services either.