I have a major problem with the idea of religious evangelism, which in my county consists of stuffy ladies handing out "Evolution is Wrong!!" pamphlets. I don't much like non-religious evangelism either, for that matter, though most people call it "advertising." My problem with evangelism isn't based on principle so much as it plain old annoys the heck out of me.
I know that, what with the old "human rights" concepts in the Constitution, random strangers have the legal sanction to walk up to me and hand me a pamphlet I don't want about stuff I don't care about while yammering on about how the world is going to Hell or whatever their current slogan-of-the-week is. However, I also have the legal sanction to hand the pamphlet back to them, unaltered if I'm in a good mood, close the door, and continue on my merry metaphorical path to Sodom.
My place is inside on a cold day with hot chocolate and a blanket, and the religious equivalent of a door-to-door salesman's place is outside, going door-to-door, and far away from me. I know they're just following their own religious beliefs, but that doesn't mean they have to turn to soliciting; it's a bad tack to try when you have the fate of someone's eternal soul at stake.
But the real problem I have with it is that I nobody ever asks the door-to-door's to come by their house. If somebody wants to be saved, surely they could wrench themselves away from the television long enough to actually figure out what to adopt as their new religion, without needing total strangers to interrupt teatime. The people that want to be converted don't need any help, and the ones that don't want to be converted will just resent the solicitors. And if a legitimate religion actually has to go out and employ sales tactics to get new members, it runs the risk of people holding the veracity of its tenets in doubt.
I don't really hold anything against Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons (who seem to be the most frequent solicitors around here), at least not any more so than for organized religions in general. Although I do think Scientology is a sham, but I haven't gotten any house calls from them yet.
Door-to-door soliciting is bad enough, but at worst it's a waste of their time more than mine, so I can tolerate it. Compared to indoctrinating small children, it's barely a blip on the radar.
This is a direct statement to every religion that requires believers' children to be strictly and heavily brought up with that religion. Doing so may seem like it's helping them, but what would a five year old understand about such abstract concepts? They would likely begin to take their religion for granted, possibly going their entire lives without ever bothering to figure out what the true meaning of their faith is to them.
I can speak from personal experience here. Very, very few children can properly understand what their faith is all about just from hearing it from somebody else, and by the time they're teenagers, even fewer will allocate it an important and meaningful place in their daily lives. They might say the prayers and go to Mass (or whatever else the religion calls for), but if they haven't gone out of their way to try and understand it for themselves, it won't mean very much to them.
People learn by asking questions, by experimenting, by investigating, and by observing. If you never question, experiment with, investigate, or observe the beliefs you were raised with, then that's not faith, it's just conformism and mental laziness! Even if all that thinking ultimately leads back to the same conclusions as before, and it very well may, as you work through what you believe and why it's important to you, you'll get a much better understanding of who you are and what really matters to you.
I'm not saying parents should all raise their children atheist. I'm saying that parents shouldn't forbid their children from trying to figure out their own identity, even if it means questioning everything, including authority, including religion. It comes naturally to a child to look around and try new things as they mature; by preventing that, parents will only end up stunting their child's growth. Even if the kid ultimately doesn't change much about themselves, they've learned how to think, how to cope with confusion and triumph over it. Whatever the end result is, working through your own beliefs and values can only ever be helpful in understanding and accepting who you are.
If I were a priest or rabbi or imam or something, I would be far happier to hear of someone who really thought things through and independently came to the conclusion that my religion was the true way, than of someone who only believed it because it had been pounded into them since they were three and they were too scared of Hell to dare wonder about it.
In short: Raise your kids religious if you want, but don't hold them back from exploring things on their own. Trust that if they're mature enough to seriously understand and consider this sort of thing, they're mature enough to figure things out for themselves. Okay, I'll get off the soapbox now.
