"Statistics show 64% of Christians make a decision to follow Jesus before their 18th birthday. That means the teenage years are PIVOTAL for spiritual development. Statistics alo show church involvement is one of the greatest indicators of a future decision to follow Jesus. DO NOT miss this chance to impact the earthly and eternal destiny of your teenagers. It is well worth the cost."
This is the email that I received from my old church a few weeks ago. Sometimes I'll read something from a lifelong atheist who is confused as to whether the church is aware of the fact that they are indoctrinating kids. Is it really indoctrination or are they just trying to teach their morals and values to the next generation? The email above is indicative of my experience in the church. Religions are very aware that if you get 'em while they're young, you will most likely have a believer for life. In fact, that 64% is a bit off since I found several surveys that put the percentage of people who become Christian before they are eighteen at anywhere between 85-94%. They want the children to come. They want to indoctrinate them. They know that the majority of Christians are created before adulthood. Growing up, I was encouraged to bring my friends to church particularly during an extra special service. Like a big youth group shindig with games and food or VBS. Bring your friend to church, suck them in with fun, and then maybe they will bring their parents too. The church I grew up in had a very active bus "ministry" We bused kids in from all over the city and at one point the church owned four buses that went on two trips each to pick up kids. Our youth group was almost the same size as our church at one point. Now, here is an interesting phenomenon. I was part of a denomination that had a ton of churches in various African countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Botswana. When people immigrated from those countries to the US, they often sought out a church familiar to them and that was our church. When I tell people I grew up around Africans, they often think African-American, but that's not true. My eldest brother's best friend growing up immigrated to the US from Ghana when he was fifteen. The interesting thing about mixing in other cultures though is that their priorities are different. In the US church there has always been a big push to build community churches, to suck in the young, and make things fun and exciting in order to be relevant. Africans don't give a shit about any of that mess. As our church became more and more African, the focus of the church began to shift. We stopped busing kids in. We stopped with the fun youth group activities. Most of the African parents believed their children should be in services with them so children's church dwindled and died a slow death. By the time I was seventeen, our youth group consisted of about ten kids, down from the hundred or so that used to come when I was thirteen. The church decided to move locations because it made the Africans nervous to be in the inner city, especially since they no longer cared to be part of the inner city ministries and were keen on separating themselves from the African-American community within it. I left the church and moved somewhere where there were people my age. My parents tried to hang in there for a few more years, but eventually left since there was absolutely no priority towards community building, missions, or outreach. It was internally focused and they seemed to care very little about whether more people joined or not. "God will lead them to us", seemed to be their motto. There was one thing that wasn't different though...the children. Even the African parents fully believed that we needed to suck in the kids while they are young. The only church ministry activity now is a yearly VBS. Because despite the shifting priorities, indoctrinating the children is the most important thing. This used to make sense to me. Have faith like a child. Children see things more clearly. From the mouths of babes. These were phrases often attributed to the kids in my church. If a child made some statement about heaven or Jesus, "Out of the mouths of babes" was uttered in reverence and awe. Nevermind that the child is literally repeating and copying the things they have been taught. I told my son recently about a dream I had about heaven when I was in my early teens. I was sure that the dream came from god. Going back and analyzing it though, I realize that I was quite literally inundated with Christian propaganda and symbolism. It was a constant topic of conversation in every single circle that I was a part of. I would look through magazines full of religious paintings, talking about which ones we should buy for our house. So is it any wonder that I would have some random dream about heaven one day? The real question is, why wasn't I dreaming about heaven all the time? Of course, my dreams were littered with Christian symbolism, which made my mom believe that God was sending me visions and dreams. Truth was, I was a super imaginative kid and half of the shit I told my mom was completely invented. I don't want to say that I was a huge liar, but I learned fairly early on that talking about god or things that god did would get you positive attention from my parents. With four kids in the house, that attention was hard earned. By the time I was a teenager, I was a master at getting it too. However, I was also good at hiding the things I knew my parents wouldn't approve of. You should have seen the books I was reading. I know this post is a bit rambling. Childhood indoctrination is no joke, but make no mistake, the church is very aware of what they are doing. They want you and they want your kids. Mostly, they want your kids though. Because once they suck them in and teach them fantasy stories, it is very difficult for them to ever break away.
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AuthorThis is a personal, but secret, blog archiving my deconversion from a Christian to a non-believer. Archives
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