I was born, Christian and braught up through the formative years of my life a child of Christian parents.
We had prayers and would sing hymns in assembly at school. The prayers ending with the traditional classicly conditioned, postively reinforced “amen” that we would drone back to Mrs Anderson or Father Peter.
We would sit crosslegged like this every morning for years.
I wasn’t informed about other faiths nor was I encouraged to explore avenues beyond the simple Christian framework that was being imposed.
We would have school events conducted in church.
Even a harvest event (pass over) every year, where we would sing
“Lord of the harvest Lord of the field, give thanks now to god in nature revealed”
Years later it’s only now I realise that essentially Christianity was not so much taught but inflicted and imposed.
In religious study lessons we would briefly talk about the names of the major faiths given an extremly simplified history and a brief mention of each religion’s figure head.
We only ever visited churches. Perhaps monks or Muslims didn’t want a group of kids running amuck with their imagination it could be that we only had churches in my home town, but quite frankly it’s apauling.
Not as much as aranging a local Muslim, Sik or Buddhist etc to come and talk to us.
Force fed Christianity that would suit our needs.
As Richard Dawkins so wonderfully put it:
“There is no such thing as a Christian child, only a child of Christian parents.”
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