Stuff and Nonsense

Christenings, religion and other animals

On Sunday I went to the Christening of the newest member of the Goodridge family, Sophie Amelia, at the St. Mary Magdalene Church in Twyning.

As an atheist I wasn’t looking forward to the ceremony, particularly being Easter Sunday - apparently something important happened on that day though hard to track as the date does appear to change on a yearly basis - where the standard hymns, prayers, blessings are multipied ten fold. There was unintentional enjoyment in the blessing of the Holy water vessels, glasses to most people, and I was amused by the unconvincing embarrassed, muted, apologetic, terribly British “Alleluja’s” - come on guys, if you truly believed in this celestial, supernatural, omnipotent, omniscient, miracle working, all powerful magisterial master being, surely you would be slightly more vocal and overjoyed in his exultancy!

I did have a really lovely time with my family and ended up having a very interesting conversation / debate with my Father, Uncle and Nigel on the very topic of this (rant) comment on the subject. I was however quite shocked by the ceremony it’s self, particularly with regard to the very hard nosed approach to the indoctrination of the children. Having not been to church for a (very) long time I had forgotten how the Christian values are drilled in to us (if you are from a Christian country that is, I’m sure it works the same in other places for other religions) from such a young age, and how aggressively they are done so – I’m amazed the poor kids weren’t screaming for forgiveness of their future sins, blood pouring from their ears as result of their own guilt! I was reminded of Frank Zappa who once said:

“Children are naive – they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble”

Three incidents particularly stood out, and I will try to explain them as best I can:

While Sophie was being Chistened she, and the congregation, were told by the vicar (to the best of my memory) – “Sophie’s old life is now over and she has died, to be born again and have a new life in the Christian faith” – Read it again! SHE HAS DIED!!!! She’s 6 months old! What about families who have 6 month old children who actually die? Dreadful. I understand that this can be attributed to being a metaphor, not to be taken literally, a symbolic gesture – But what about the children in the front row who’s brains might not be sophistcated or developed enough to be able to spot subjectability or symbolism in such statements? We know that as Children we are pre-programmed to listen to our elders and to not question, this is how we learn, develop and grow to adulthood. The questioning mind of a child who tests the theory ‘don’t run across the road with out stopping and looking both ways’ is a mind that will not last very long and that child will be dead. I worry that using terminology as ‘she has died’ could be potentially damaging to a developing child.

The second moment involved the Gospel story of the resurection. All the children at the service were asked to the front of the church where a bizarre ‘performance’ involving an empty breakfast cereal box and orange juice carton (no kidding) was acted out to demonstrate the biblical account of the empty tomb.  The children were asked, after this particularly embarrassing piece of theatre, ‘why was the tomb empty?’, and eventually were told due to them not knowing ‘Jesus had risen from the dead’ and that is why the tomb was empty and that is why they MUST believe Christ is their saviour and died for THEIR sins! I was reminded of the wonderful documentary ‘Did Jesus Die on the Cross’ where author Elaine Pagels gave a brilliant and very funny anecdote of the way in which Theology is taught to aspiring Theologians and Theological scholars.  She speaks of how it is accepted, and has been for years, that the bible is not a historical and accurate account of actual events and questioning stories such as the resurrection and subsequent ascension of Jesus Christ is common and in many cases simply not believed; blindly believing such stories is rather patronisingly reserved for the ‘every day folk’ as they are deemed not intelligent enough to understand. ‘Heaven forbid’ they might reason that Jesus could have been resuscitated…

Finally one poor child was brought to the front and presented a microphone so she could read aloud part of the resurrection account from [insert gospel number etc here as I can’t remember it at the moment]. Now once again this may seem fairly innocuous, why wouldn’t a proud mother and father want their child to be front of stage all attention on her? I did wonder however, would these same parents be so keen to have their child quote their preferred newspaper journalist on a recent political event? No, we all agree that the child is too young to have made it’s mind up about such things as it’s political standing. Yet when it comes to matters of their very own existence or the birth of existence we are asked not to question, not to challenge, not to think. I can not help but recall the delightful Douglas Adams when asked about this very subject towards the end of his life:

“[Religion] has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, “Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!” If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says “I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,” you say, “I respect that.”