Adam Sandler sings that his Bar Mitzvah was the best day of his life, “until three years later when my parents stopped making me go to Temple.” So he’d have been ~16 when his parents let him opt out.*
If you’re devoutly religious and a parent (even a hypothetical one), when would you let your kids stop going to Mass/Temple/Church/Whatever?
Poll to follow.
*FWIW, Judaism now seems to play something of a role in Adam’s life, what with the whole Eight Crazy Nights movie and all that.
I’m not sure how or if I should answer, because I’m not religious and have never made my child go to religious services. That said, I’ve never been against it either, so the few times he’s been to church with friends, I guess I was letting him “opt out” of our family’s atheism. In that sense, he’s always had permission to opt out.
Helped raise a couple cousins so no kids and besides my answer is actually “other” which is how I voted. When they can explain in some sense why they would rather skip it I am cool with them doing so. Beyond the basic “I want to sleep in” of course. Articulate you thought process and I can support it.
I never asked my parents if I could opt out. But I don’t think they would have allowed it as long as I was living under their roof.
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Heh, similarly, I allowed my kids to dip their toes in religion when they wanted to experience it with their friends. At some point they realized it was all a sham and today they are grown-up successful atheists.
My ex is devout catholic. I’m undevout in any way. She dragged them (and me) to church every Sunday, but I always told her that when they were old enough to make up their own minds, they could do whatever the hell they wanted. I also told her that forcing them to go was a sure way to insure that they dropped it as soon as they were out of the house. Picture someone really, really annoyed when I told her that. While I’m sure they made up their minds long before leaving home, they officially walked away from it the moment they left. My daughter has drifted back into some sort of religious thinking, but I don’t think the others gave it a second thought.
I’ve been an atheist as long as I remember (even back before I knew a term for it), but went to church at my parent’s behest. (And by “behest” I mean that one time when I was pretending to be sick to get out of it they chose to lock me in a bathroom for the duration of the three hour meeting to ensure I wasn’t doing anything fun. When next week I opted for the bathroom they made me go to church anyway.)
I continued to attend church all through high school and into my first year of college. I happened to be living at home at the time (it was free!), and so I still attended because that was the expectation - though at that point my attendance had devolved to just dressing up in a suit, driving to the building, and then sitting in the lobby reading a non-religious fiction book until the services ended. My parents were aware that this was what I was doing - I’m not really the secretive type.
One Sunday as I was headed for the door, book in hand, my mom commented, “You know, you don’t have to go to church if you don’t want to.”
Me: “Really?”
Her: “Really.”
Me: “And I won’t get in trouble or something?”
Her: “Nope. You’re an adult now and can choose to go or not if you want.”
Me: “Okay!”
And I promptly turned around, went to my room, and got changed back into human clothes, and never* attended a church service again.
So for my parents, the answer would be “When he’s twenty.”
I voted “some other.” I have seen how forcing kids to go to church, read Bible, etc. can backfire and serve as a “anti-Christian vaccination” of sorts. I wouldn’t compel them at any point or age. I would definitely strongly hint and nudge in the right direction, but not compel. (unless for practical reasons - for instance, not being worth it to hire a babysitter while wife and I are at church)
I wasn’t real keen on making my kid do anything she felt strongly about not doing. In just about everything except matters of life and death (vaccinations, holding my hand while crossing the street), she was the chooser. I well remember being powerless as a child and didn’t feel like inflicting that on anyone.
She always wanted to go to church. Kept going through college and grad school and still goes (although she’s Episcopalian rather than Catholic now) – she’s almost thirty.
The Westboro Baptist Church forces its kids to go to their church (and do their picketing and other junk) until they are 18 or as they annoyingly call it (when they come to years). The person can stop going to church at 18 but then are kicked out and ostracized from the group.
If the parents don’t really want to be there and are going because they want to impress the neighbors, and use the church as a place to see and be seen, the kids will pick up on that at a very early age. I was about 12 years old when we got a new pastor that nobody liked, and when my brother and I both said, “So, if you don’t like it, why do you go there?” that’s when we stopped.
What religion is this, that you had a 3-hour service?
I do know that the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have lengthy services; was it one of those?
Witnesses only have 3 hour plus services at their regional assemblies. Those are maybe six or seven hours.
Why isn’t this a valid reason?
Could be Quaker. The poster used the term “Meeting,” which is (I believe) what Quakers call their worship service. Whether or not it lasts three hours I can’t say.
I am an atheist. My daughter is a practising Hindu. I wish she would opt out immediately.
My parents weren’t religious as all, but all seven of us kids had to get on the Nazarene church bus every Sunday( and go the full week of church camp in the summer). It was their chance to be rid of all of us at the same time, so they really didn’t care if the religion itself took. As far as I know not a one of us ever went back after we left home.
If my offspring had ever decided to go to church on his own I would have gone with him a few times to make sure there wasn’t a cult thing going on, then I would have left it up to him…but he never got the urge to go to any religious services while growing up.
Can’t speak for all religions, but Christianity observes God’s True Word, and the key to not drifting away from that word is to get that weekly refresher course in what That Word is. The Word does not change for the individual as he or she ages, as if by Satan’s craft The Word might magically change on someone’s 18th birthday. Also, The Word does not apply only to those who believe in it–one’s belief cannot change the facts brought into existence by God. Children are easily misled and must therefore NEVER be allowed to [del]opt out of religious services[/del] wander alone in the wilderness. More to the point, without regular church attendance, one’s thoughts are likely to stray from The Word, and Satan’s reasoned but supernaturally deceitful whisperings will surely corrupt them. As we all have in common God as our Heavenly Father, we are all Heavenly Siblings and are bound to look after one another. So not only do we not let our children wander, those who have wandered even as adults must be brought back and have their ungodly practices and beliefs purged from their ersatz morality. To do otherwise is to contribute to that soul’s condemnation, and to the strengthening of Satan’s endeavors to further deceive and lure away our siblings.
A child who refuses to go to church service is willingly spurning the love of Our Heavenly Father, and as such must be assumed to have been thoroughly taken by Satan and must be considered a condemned soul. They would be dead to me because they would be beyond redemption.
Please be joking.
It’s hard to tell, really. It all came so naturally because that’s how Mom sees the world and it’s how she raised me. Satan, for better or for worse, ended up getting me. But if you were to use that same rigid, self-serving framework to support atheism I would be hard pressed to disavow it.
As I owe some respect to the OP by giving an honest answer: I did let the kids dabble by going to church with their friends, but it was a parenting exercise and we had thorough discussions about what they saw and heard, to put it into the context of how I would be comfortable with them viewing the universe.