Rabbi REUVEN BULKA is head of Congregation Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa and host of Sunday night with Rabbi Bulka on 580 CFRA. Who can disagree with that! No one has a right to ram religion down the throats of anyone. Nor would the religious affirmation of one who is forced into it be authentic and meaningful. It would be not much more than Robotics 101. Ultimately, it is the child’s choice, the child’s responsibility. However, I suspect that this is not really your question. From the words “should be left to make up their own minds” you may be insinuating (I am not sure) that parents should not enter into this arena at all, and just leave it to the children to find their way. If that is what is behind what “some people say,” that is a proposition fraught with difficulty. Does it mean that parents, in order to assure the free choice of their children, must avoid religion altogether? That would be preposterous, and irresponsible. The fact that children are raised in the religion of their parents is as natural as that they are raised with the values of their parents. Asking parents to remove their religion from the home is effectively demanding that parents refrain from introducing values such as charity, compassion, empathy, from the home. But, you say, those values are OK, it is just religion that is a problem. Sorry, but that will not pass muster. Religion is intrinsically about eternal values. Removing those values from the religion is akin to making bread without wheat. Parents who embrace these values and live by them are bestowing great blessing on their children by raising them in such a caring environment. Surely, the children are free to reject these values at any time. But not introducing them to these values in a vibrant manner is delinquent parenting. The challenge of parenting is to transmit values in a way that is so inspiring that the children will want to emulate their parents. Parents who resort to coercion of any sort are likely to fail in whatever forced behaviour they try to impose on their children. Parents who lead by noble example will more likely have children who embrace that example, happily and eagerly. And of their own choosing. KEVIN SMITH is on the board of directors for the centre for Inquiry, Canada’s premier venue for humanists, skeptics and freethinkers. Some people say that teaching one’s child your family religion is a form of child abuse. They do make some interesting points that every parent should heed. Every one of us is born an atheist and would live contented, moral, and productive lives as such, save for one thing: our parents feel it necessary to indoctrinate us. Voila! Yahweh’s your God, or Allah, Vishnu, or whatever deity your family has been conditioned to follow. So we become a Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu child without any choice in the matter. In most cases I would not go so far to say it is child abuse, as much as a perversion of children’s rights.

Certainly, those who cling to the literal interpretation of the Bible — the fire and brimstone choir — wreak havoc in the minds of their young. Their message is so frightening and powerful that their fear of Hell remains with many of them throughout their lives. We see evidence of this with several of our religious refugees at our Living Without Religion group in Ottawa. Philosopher and fellow atheist Daniel Dennett believes parents should teach their children the family faith, alongside other religious views. He explains, “Toxic religions depend on enforced ignorance of the young.” He proposes including the history, myths, and contradictions between various faith groups so their young minds “will not be victimized by their parents’ religion.” It’s also important to include a lesson on the fastest growing world view in Western society, one where teens are flocking in droves: non-belief.Customizing your children to blindly follow your faith creates an us vs. them mentality, instilling exclusion instead of embracing our human differences.We don’t own our children. Our prime responsibility is teaching critical thinking and having empathy for others. This is the greatest gift we can give them. Rev. KEVIN FLYNN is an Anglican priest and director of the Anglican studies program at Saint Paul University. I often wonder whether the people who maintain this view also withhold food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care from their children until such time as they can “make up their own minds” about these things. It is only within the last couple of hundred years or so that people in this part of the world would even ask such a question. In a traditional society, you would be thought mad to withhold from children all the goods available to you, including the good that is religious belief. Parents who have faith cannot not impart that faith to their children. Not faith in the sense of certain verbal propositions about the nature of God or Jesus, but faith in the sense of what sort of ultimate they live by, of the way in which they do or do not live not out of fear or conformity, or whether they live out of the conviction that they are grounded in and loved by God. At some point children do have to separate themselves from their parents. They will decide whether to continue to live by the faith in which they were raised, to make it their own, or to go another way altogether. Beyond a doubt they will live by some kind of faith. They will place their hope in something. It may be a rather shallow pursuit of pleasure or of gathering to themselves more and more toys. Or, if their parents have lived, not perfectly but with integrity, with a capacity to forgive and be forgiven, to love others as themselves, then the children will have a good sense of just what holding to their parents’ religion entails. Parents are not the only influences on their children, but they are certainly key when it comes to faith.

BALPREET SINGH is legal counsel and acting executive director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada. Spirituality and religion are deeply personal and each person has a right to choose which faith they wish to follow, if any at all. At the same time, it is natural for parents to teach their children about their faith and provide them with a spiritual foundation from which to grow and make an informed choice. Parents have the task of teaching and passing on values to their children. Spiritual values are an important part of raising a well-rounded child. Religion often plays a central role in family life. It may influence the way a family dresses, what foods they eat, which holidays it celebrates, and how it views the world. It would be impossible (and perhaps even irresponsible) to raise children in a family but isolate them from the family’s religious views. The children would be deeply confused to see a faith practised in the home but not understand why. Sikh children are raised with stories of the Gurus and with the three golden rules of the Sikh faith: remember God, earn an honest living and share what you have with others. Each child must however make a conscious, personal choice to adopt the Sikh faith. Individuals formally accept the Sikh faith by receiving Amrit or the Sikh initiation when they are prepared to make that commitment, whether it is as a youth or later in life. In many cases (such as my own), children may choose to be initiated even before their parents have made that choice. In other cases, children have decided that they cannot live a Sikh lifestyle and abandon the Sikh articles of faith like the turban. While parents can raise their children with a faith, the ultimate decision on what role religion plays in their lives must lie with the children themselves. Rev. RAY INNEN PARCHELO is a novice Tendai priest and founder of the Red Maple Sangha, the first lay Buddhist community in Eastern Ontario. Kids will pretty much make up their own minds no matter what. As parents or community leaders, the challenge for us is to help them do so wisely. As in most aspects of working with kids, we need to strike a balance between hands off and hands on, that is between encouragement and guidance, on the one hand, and pushing and over-structuring, on the other. It hardly needs saying as well that we need to set a good example through our own faith lives. We need to provide several things. They should receive information and resources appropriate to their learning and age. Whatever literature, cultural elements and social practices need to be available, and open to question as well as honestly celebrated. We need to provide the critical skills to support them in evaluating such resources for their lives. It’s never enough to tell kids (or anyone) that such and such is the right and only way to see things. We must not threaten, guilt or shame them into acceptance and compliance.

As any parent or teacher knows, children’s needs change and evolve with their age, and as leaders, we have to respect that and try to meet them where they are, inviting them into the faith space that is appropriate to them. I always recall the experience of Eleanor, one of the children of some members of one of our congregations. As a toddler, she was invited to join in and find her own space, as her parents participated. No one excluded her or made her feel out-of-place. Once she arrived at adolescence, she decided to stay away from services, although her parents continued. When she reached her late teens, she re-discovered what the community, the teachings and practices meant, on her own terms. She returned as a fully participating young adult and pursued it for her own needs. She was never bullied, criticized or disrespected, rather helped to discover her own meaning. This seems to represent a good model to pursue. ABDUL RASHID is a member of the Ottawa Muslim community, the Christian-Muslim Dialogue and the Capital Region Interfaith Council. When Prophet Abraham had to leave his birth place, he prayed for a child: “O my Lord! Bestow upon me a gift of the righteous” (37.100). Later, Prophet Zachariah cried out in old age, “O my Lord! Leave me not without offspring though Thou art the best of inheritors” (21.89). A child is a precious and delightful gift bestowed on us by our Creator, but it is also a trust that entails certain obligations on our part. Protection and nourishment of the offspring is common to all animals. The distinction of human beings lies in their moral consciousness. It is this unique human faculty that parents must develop through example and instruction. We are fortunate to live in a country where it is easy to discharge parental responsibility for health and education of children irrespective of our financial position. This allows us to devote our efforts toward the much more important task of raising children who will not only be efficient and productive members of the society in an economic sense, but who will also strengthen the moral fibre of the society. Faith or religion has three mutually reinforcing aspects. It inculcates certain beliefs, prescribes certain worship practices and, finally, promotes righteous behaviour consistent with faith and worship. These teachings are based on the value system of the religion. It is a major function of parents to inculcate these moral values in their children, first by their own example and then through formal teaching. Parents want to do the best for their children. Faith is not just a matter of belief and worship; it is contains a moral code par excellent. To most parents, faith is an important source of both receiving good and doing good. It will indeed be irresponsible to leave children in a vacuum on this aspect of life. Rev. GEOFFREY KERSLAKE is a priest of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Ottawa. I have heard parents say that they do not practise any faith with their children in order to avoid influencing their decision later in adult life about which religious beliefs to hold.

The problem with this approach is that children who have no exposure to any religious beliefs growing up lack even a framework to begin investigating different faiths. Furthermore, rather than avoiding prejudicing their children towards or against a specific religion, parents are sending a message to their children that all religions are equally unworthy of their attention. In effect, they are influencing their children towards having no faith. Before we can make a choice about what religion, if any, we wish to adhere to, we need a context out of which to make an informed decision. The Catholic Church vigorously championed the basic human right to freedom of religion at the Second Vatican Council that: “ ... the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” (Declaration on Religious Freedom, n. 2) Adult Catholic parents have a responsibility to do their best to bring their children up in the practice of their Catholic Christian faith which is made clear to them when they marry in the Catholic Church. However, we all must respect the basic right to choose our own faith practices when we are mature enough to make that decision for ourselves. JACK MCLEAN is a Bahá’í scholar, teacher, essayist and poet published in the fields of spirituality, Bahá’í theology and poetry. Does a child possess the sufficient intellectual and spiritual tools to make an informed decision about religion? Will a child, left on its own, do its own investigation of spiritual matters? Parents who are religiously engaged, value the faith tradition to which they belong. They will naturally want to pass down to their children those values that they hold most dear. In this way, communities are maintained and perpetuated. When you consider the matter carefully, it will be seen that the whole edifice of religion rests upon the teaching of children and youth. We begin public education in childhood; religion functions no differently. Of course, when a child reaches the age of maturity, then there is no question about making up one’s own mind. Bahá’u’lláh (1817-1892), the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, in his Book of Laws, the Kitab-i-Aqdas, set the age of 15 years as the age of spiritual maturity for joining the community and observing the laws of the religion. At age 15, any Bahá’í laws, such as the law of obligatory prayer and fasting, become binding on the young adult. However, the crucial point is this: at age 15, in order to be considered a Bahá’í, the youth must affirm his or her own faith. If not, the person is not registered on the community rolls as a Bahá’í. The parents may well consider their child to be a Bahá’í up to that time, and will have educated the child according to the Bahá’í teachings, but at age 15, the youth either reaffirms his faith, and officially joins the community, or not. No ceremony exists that automatically inducts the youth into the Bahá’í Faith without consent.