The Discipline of Conservative Christian Children

The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers recently appeared in the Washington Post. Primarily it's about some conservative Christians returning their children to the public schools, but here's the part that caught my attention where it recounts the thoughts of an adult thinking back to his experiences with discipline as a child:

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The memory of waiting as a small child outside his parents’ bedroom for his mother to summon him in; the fear that his transgressions might be enough to incur what he called “killer bee” spankings, when the rod was used against his bare skin; his efforts to obey the order to remain immobile as he was hit — all these sensations and emotions seeped into his bones, creating a deep conviction that those who fail to obey authority pay an awful price.

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There's more detail in the article, but that quote should provide enough of a flavor of conservative Christian children's experience with discipline.It should be obvious to every human being that if your discipline strategies are so detailed that they involve choices between different implements (wooden spoon, hairbrush, belt) and between different ways of administering them (where on the body and whether on clothes, underwear or bare flesh) that you have taken a very wrong turn. Sheriffs can't do it to prisoners, and parents shouldn't be allowed to do it to children. A community that encourages such abuse to me calls into the question the very legitimacy of that community's existence. Children deserve love and attention, not beatings.--Percy

Thread copied here from the The Discipline of Conservative Christian Children thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

That WaPo article is very interesting. And I notice that they did not put this behind their paywall.For people who want a shorter version, the substack post by Hemant Meta might be worth reading: The 3 lies that convinced two conservative Christians to stop home-schooling their kidsMy first impression of the WaPo article, was that it helped explain the insanity that we are seeing in America these days. It seems that too many Americans have been kept within the evangelical bubble, so are not fully aware of the reality that we share.Let's remember that much of the move toward home-schooling was as a way of evading the school integration that was called for in the 1960s civil rights legislation.

It's not just in home-schooling.I forget what this one social program at our Unitarian Universalist (UU) church was called, maybe "traveling dinner" or "rotating dinner". It was usually couples who participated (or maybe it was just for couples; that was at least 30 years ago so I forget those details which my wife knew more about anyway), but a given couple would be chosen to host three other couples for dinner. The purpose was a social activity that helped church members to get to know other members better in a relaxed social setting.At one of these dinners, another guest was a young couple with young children that had just joined our church and who expressed how very thankful they were for finding our church.In that part of the Southern California megalopolis, the dominant church was a branch of Chuck Smith's Calvary Church of Costa Mesa (actually sited in Santa Ana near the border with Costa Mesa), which was Ground Zero for the Jesus Freak Movement of the late 1960's (a bio-pic was released earlier this year, Jesus Revolution). The parent church was known for hard-core proselytizing practices (though that had been tempered over the years with the congregation growing up and devoting more of their energies to building a life for themselves). My understanding is that the branch in question in the Mission Viejo area had been founded and was run by Smith's son. When I was associated with the over-50 singles ministry of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church circa 2005 and the Saddleback people would denounce the Calvary people for being so extremely legalistic (ie, being "letter of the Law" instead of "spirit of the Law" types, which ironically is how Christians, especially fundies like Calvary, describe the Pharisees even though it was Pharisee Rabbi Hillel who had given them the ultimate "sprit of the Law" teaching, the Golden Rule, half a century before their Jesus "came up with it himself" -- 20 BCE versus 33 CE -- not unlike Trump's claim of having just invented the expression "prime the pump").It appears that the Mission Viejo church had returned to its mother church's old growth strategy of aggressive proselyting. As the young couple described it, the neighborhood they had moved to was filled with members who busied themselves converting their neighbors. Many neighbors succumbed to that kind of social pressure, especially new families looking for a church and this was the only one they heard of.The couple was horrified when their new church insisted that they must beat their children as is commanded in the Bible (Calvary Church is bible-literalist, which I learned all to well in my association with them c. 1970). That is why they were so grateful to find our UU church which taught love instead of beatings.Second person reporting based on personal witness of a first person reporting. And I have no doubt that there are many more such stories out there.  ABE:Beating children is not the only questionable teaching.It was shortly after my wife filed for divorce that Jan, one of the main leaders of that Saddleback singles ministry, recruited me from Lindy class to help balance their dance classes (150 students in each class, 100 women and 50 men, which the women were not happy about) and since dance classes was my main therapeutic for what I was going through (where else could I experience women being genuinely happy to see me) I joined. Hence my association with the 50-plus singles ministry at Saddleback.About a year into the divorce process, a man in that group recommended a book on relationships and loaned it to me. I read it but it was the usual nonsense of the man becoming more "Christ-like" in order to lead the woman, etc. I passed it on to Jan who, with her very active role in that church, read it and denounced it as BS.Similarly, Saddleback's singles would join with another mega-church's singles (Mariner) for relationship lectures by two popular Christian counselors, Townsend and Cloud (as I seem to recall their names). They were living evidence for Dan Barker's assessment of fundamentalism as being "when your theology becomes your psychology" and the reason why fundies need their own special Christian counselors who in turn are useless for non-fundies. They would start out with some good ideas, but then suddenly veer sharply into the weeds with some silly religious justification (eg, "Why should you take care of yourself and seek people who provide good advice? Because Jesus wants you to!", not because it's for your own good as a normal counselor would tell you).Jan had also talked me into their DivorceCare program, though mainly to keep me in the dance class instead of another program that met on the same evening. Like Townsend & Cloud, that program had a few kernels of good advice, but they were buried under a mountain of religious-BS chaff. The program's primary message was: "You can never possibly recover from divorce on your own, but rather you need Jesus to help you recover." Thus they made the entire evolution completely useless. "Thank you very much, sir, may I have another one, please?" (Kevin Bacon's first movie line, Animal House).Years later, I was horrified when I heard that Army chaplains were requiring all soldiers going through marital problems, regardless of their religion, to go through the DivorceCare program. But the fundamentalists' campaign to infiltrate of the Chaplain Corps of all services is another topic (see Constantine's Sword (2007) for the havoc they wrought at the US Air Force Academy).

[ Content hidden due to violation of the Forum Guidelines. See Message 8. --Admin ]

I watched the first two minutes.It is all right wing propaganda.NOTE: Having a book in the school library is not at all the same thing as directly teaching what is in that book. School libraries should have books that won't be part of what is taught. Otherwise there would be no point in having a library.

nwr writes:

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NOTE: Having a book in the school library is not at all the same thing as directly teaching what is in that book. School libraries should have books that won't be part of what is taught. Otherwise there would be no point in having a library.

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A library is supposed to provide a maximal set of options, not a minimal one.

From the Forum Guidelines:

4. Points should be supported with evidence and reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions.
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From your message: I've emphasized the "it explains" portion because it isn't "it" that is supposed to do the explaining but you. The video should only be offered as a supporting reference. For this reason I'm completely hiding the content of your message in order to encourage you to make your points yourself.

Percy:

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5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

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From your message:

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Phat writes:

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(Yes...its a video which no one of you old codgers will watch, but it explains fully why some (certainly not all) Christians mistrust public education.)

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I've emphasized the "it explains" portion because it isn't "it" that is supposed to do the explaining but you. The video should only be offered as a supporting reference. For this reason I'm completely hiding the content of your message in order to encourage you to make your points yourself.

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Fair enough. I often hold back my own feelings on a matter due to fear of ridicule from the partisan peanut gallery, who see nothing at all wrong with today's educational agenda and who seek to find things wrong with home schooling.The Pastor in the hidden video is obviously conservative, but he is irate over the schools seeming insensitivity in regards to making certain educational "information" available to such a young age group. (ten year olds)Conservative Christians oppose any aspect of teaching that LGBTQ lifestyles are normal.Parents who seek to shield their younger children from such raw data (that such lifestyles are normal) quite naturally oppose the readily available freedom of such information in a public school. They fear that social indoctrination of their children will thwart their own efforts to teach their beliefs to their own children.The Pastor was received (and was known) by the committee as a local community leader, yet it appears that he was shut down due to the inappropriateness of his authority manifesting in a secular setting.

You always say nearly the same thing about anything conservative. Dont you at least have a fair and balanced mind regarding conservative vs liberal ideology? Years ago, you and your ilk wrested control and definition of morality away from the conservatives (who abused it anyway) but now you nearly seemingly want to eliminate Conservatism and Conservative Christianity altogether. Trust me, if we had it only one way this place would go up in flames quickly.Show me what specifically was said that was propaganda?

I've shifted to a moderator role and so won't reply.

But they are normal, whether you like it or not.They were normal in old testament times, else there would have been no reason to have rules against it.The teachers are just helping the students understand the world that they live in. That is not indoctrination.

False.I had considerable respect for William Buckley Jr and his "Firing Line" series. I disagreed with most of it, but I respected his presentation and argumentation.Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of "propaganda". I never wrested control of anything.Conservative never controlled or defined morality. It is controlled by society at large, not by an ideological subgroup. And when they voted en masse for the morally bankrupt Trump, they pretty much lost all credibility on morals.

The stated goals of public education is for the students to gain knowledge and understanding without compelling belief in what's being taught. It is the opposite of indoctrination.The analogous situation I have often presented here is how in 1982 Air Force Communications Command's Leadership School instructed us USAF NCOs in Marxism and Communism. Obviously, the purpose of that instruction was not to turn us into Marxists and Commies, but rather to inform us of what those systems are and what they teach and how they operate. Sun Tzu's teaching of knowing your enemy (though all to often we forget the other part of that teaching, which is to know ourselves).Similarly, all students should be taught evolution and how it works, not in order to compel belief (which is explicitly condemned as being counter to the purpose of education) but rather so that the students will know what it is and to understand the ideas. Every time a creationist opens his mouth, we all feel the loss from their having never having learned what evolution is.OTOH, religious "education" is pure indoctrination with the goal of telling the students what they are required to believe and then compelling that belief. We see this happen whenever "balanced treatment/equal time" creationist materials have been used in the classroom, wherein each lesson filled with misinformation and false claims concludes by requiring the students to decide, then and there, between the "unidentified Creator" (part of their game of "Hide the Bible") and "atheistic evolution."Conservative Christians et alia do not understand public education. Because they only use "education" for indoctrination, they project that onto the rest of us and wrongly assume that "all education is indoctrination". They don't know the difference. They cannot even begin to realize that there is any difference.  ABE:I have a long record of urging creationists to learn all they possibly can about evolution. One reason (and the one that I present to creationists) is that they cannot possibly hope to fight evolution effectively unless they know something about it. A second reason is that learning what evolution actually and how it works will help them avoid the really stupid creationist claims and arguments (eg, "we never see a dog give birth to kittens", "BUT THEY'RE STILL M*O*T*H*S!!!!"). And a third reason is that once they learn what evolution really is, they will realize that their "reasons" for opposing evolution are groundless and due to their having been misled.A few decades ago, a creationist was making those really stupid creationist claims, so I urged him to please, please, please study evolution and learn everything it that he could. He vehemently refused to even consider such a thing, because "That would require me to believe in it!"That creationist thought that all education was indoctrination and took it to the extreme of believing that studying something requires believing in it.Yes, that was an extreme case, but I suspect that it's much more common than we would like to think.

I'm off moderator duty, so I'll reply now. I'm not watching your video, so you're going to have to explain whether he wants this educational material made unavailable to all ten-year-olds, or just ten-year-olds whose families choose to opt out. If the former, why does he believe he should have the power to choose which educational materials are made available in public schools and which aren't. This parallels southern objections against teaching that blacks were human. 5% of people are trans, and 5% of people are blonds. Are both not "normal"?An even larger question is what is "normal" and who defines it. Is "normal" what Christian evangelicals say it is? Indoctrination is the wrong word. Exposure to ideas is eduction. Indoctrination, which is not exposure to ideas but brainwashing of them in one way or another, is what religious cults do.There seems little justification for the credibility and influence yielded to churches today. The biggest centers of sexual abuse are the Catholic Church and the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. And it is churches that tend to be big on corporal punishment with an attitude of, "Anything parents do to their children is right and proper as long as it is in the name of bringing them to the Lord."Yes, of course exposure to a broader range of viewpoints and possibilities will lead to different educational outcomes than homeschooling. Should public school curricula become copies of Christian evangelical home schooling, or become subject to their approval? Again, didn't watch the video, but you're only getting his side of the story. What you say here is a little ambiguous, but it seems to imply that the pastor is upset that he wasn't able to exercise his religious authority in a secular context. Doesn't separation of church and state say that that's exactly the way it should be?There's a reason the education provided by public schools is described as secular. It means it is free of religious influence. Once that's no longer true then public education would no longer be secular.When I started first grade in public school each day began with, "Our Father, who art in heaven,..." It didn't belong there then, and it doesn't belong there now.--Percy