The Meming of Life: on secular parenting and other natural wonders

Guest post by ANDREW PARK
Author, Between a Church and a Hard Place: One Faith-Free Dad’s Struggle to Understand What It Means to Be Religious (or Not)

I first learned about Dale McGowan in 2007. My initial reaction was utter panic as it appeared he had already written the book that I wanted to write. A year later, knowing a bit more, I attended a Parenting Beyond Belief seminar in Cambridge, Mass., an experience described in detail in the last chapter of Between a Church and a Hard Place. I took a liking to Dale and his easygoing, regular-guy manner immediately. After the seminar was over, we stayed in touch as he graciously helped me with my account, and I came to appreciate the passion and thoughtfulness that suffuses his advice as well as the humble and funny style with which he communicates it. During a reading at my local independent bookseller recently, I said that I had a “giant man-crush” on him. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, but there it is.

I am one of those rare non-religious parents today who is himself a product of a faith-free family. Once, when I mentioned this to someone at a cocktail party, he replied matter-of-factly, “Were your parents academics?” Well, duh. As they had come of age in the 1950s and 1960s, my mother and father had shed the mainline Protestantism in which they were reared. By the time I came along in the early 1970s, they didn’t bother with religion at all. Occasionally, my mother’s misgivings about this choice would result in my brother and I being rounded up for Sunday-morning visits to the Unitarian Church or a Quaker meeting, but the habit never seemed to take, for her or for us.

My mother and father are both dead, so I’ll never know what it felt like for them to be on the vanguard of secular parenting. But I doubt it was easy. In my research, I talked at length with a couple who had been friends with my parents and shared their distaste for organized religion. He is a former Episcopal priest, and as newlyweds, they had been missionaries in Southwest Africa. But they had left church behind by the time they moved up the street from us in my Bible Belt hometown. The father, who taught religious studies at the university with my parents, had even written an academic volume on bringing up children in a “post-Christian age.” So I was surprised to learn that even they, probably the most dedicated Nones we knew, hadn’t felt entirely comfortable in this decision:

They moved in to neighbors greeting them with questions about where they were planning to go to church. Even at the colleges where they taught, where there were many non-churchgoers, they sometimes felt they were on the fringe of society, and there was no one interested in discussing how to handle religion with children when you yourself weren’t religious. When Carol saw other parents on the playground or at school, she avoided all talk of it. Ron, who rejected the term atheist because he didn’t want to be defined by opposition to a worldview that was no longer relevant to him, sometimes called himself ‘modern,’ but more often than not he just kept quiet about it.

Times have changed. Through books and blogs and meetups, non-religious parenting is enjoying much wider acceptance. There’s even one of our own occupying the White House, as Dale pointed out in Cambridge. As it was just a few weeks after the presidential election, that made my heart swell a bit. Yet I get the sense that many people are still hesitant to proclaim that this is a valid way to bring up their children. I see them at my readings, sheepishly approaching me for advice on how to celebrate holidays or fend off a more pious relative. Perhaps it’s the rude rebukes of believers that keeps them quiet. Perhaps the infrastructure to support secular moms and dads hasn’t reached their town yet. Or perhaps we just need a few more Dale McGowans in the world to coax them out of the shadows.

ANDREW PARK is the author of Between a Church and a Hard Place: One Faith-Free Dad’s Struggle to Understand What It Means to Be Religious (or Not) (Avery, 2010). He is a former correspondent for Business Week whose work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Slate and other national publications. Andrew lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife, Cristina Smith, and their two children.

To help set the course for our parent community program, Foundation Beyond Belief conducted a survey of nontheistic parents in February of this year—the first of its kind, as far as we can tell. The survey was unscientific (e.g. subjects were self-selected and the survey was advertised on websites that skew in the direction of organized secularism), as is the following analysis. But the project has given us a fascinating and sometimes surprising window into the world of secular parenting.

A total of 1740 people completed the survey, including secular parents in 49 U.S. states (87% of total respondents), 10 Canadian provinces (6%), and 19 other countries (7%).

Respondents were primarily women (60/40)—interesting because organized freethought skews heavily male. Most respondents are raising 1-2 children (38 and 39%, respectively), most are in a two-parent home (89%), and the largest percentage (39.4%) are in a big city suburb.

The largest percentage of respondents (27.4%) report that they themselves were raised in a mainline Protestant denomination, followed closely by Catholic (24.3%) and a poetic tie between atheist and evangelical (11.6% each). These numbers are somewhat muddied by the fact that of the 23% of respondents who checked “Other,” about half listed a denomination that fit one of the listed categories. That’s what an unscientific survey design will get you.

Of those in mixed worldview marriages, 47.8% report very little tension between the parents over issues of parenting and religion, and 41.1% report some tension and occasional issues. Just 6.7% reported frequent issues and 4.4% experience significant, severe conflict over parenting and religion.

I was surprised and pleased to see that only 11 percent of mixed secular/religious marriages in the survey seem to be grappling with these issues on a frequent or severe basis. It’s no less troubling for those people, of course, but as the Foundation develops its parent support program, we can be more effective and efficient in offering solutions if we know the extent of the problem.

The next question also produced something of a surprise to me:

Just over a quarter of respondents (25.5%) report an extended family that is moderate to intense in its religiosity. My surprise is partly an artifact of reportage—the vast majority of my own correspondence and contact with secular parents comes from those in a deeply religious extended family.

Over a third of respondents (35.2%) are in an extended family that ranges from secular to mildly religious, while the largest proportion (39.2%) are in a situation of significant variety, either split along two or more sides of the extended family or scrambled up within the whole.

I think this can be an ideal situation for raising kids who genuinely think for themselves. If your extended family is too uniform (either strictly religious or strictly secular), a parent has to expend more effort to be sure other points of view are represented. When my wife Becca, a fairly conventional Christian believer for most of our marriage, came to self-identify as a secular humanist, it eliminated what small tensions we had over those questions but also deprived us of what had been a handy safety valve against unintended indoctrination. Fortunately we still have a variety of views in the extended family to provide that diversity.

Fewer than half of respondents report significant religious pressure or indoctrination directed at their kids. Family members, unsurprisingly, are the source of most pressure from those who do report it:

(Totals exceed 100% because respondents were free to choose more than one source of pressure.)

And what’s the pressure about? You can probably guess:

How do secular parents expose their kids to religion?

Another question asked about the parent’s feelings about his or her child’s eventual worldview. I’ve often said that it seemed to me that most secular parents are genuinely committed to raising their kids to make their own choices, and the survey seemed to bear this out. Even most of those who hope their kids choose atheism affirm a desire that the choice be their children’s own:

(Complete purple question, which was very carefully worded: “The choice is theirs, and though some religious identities would make me heartsick, others would be fine”)

Finally, two related questions that are of central importance as we build the Foundation’s secular parent support program:

The greatest need of nontheistic parents by far seems to be simply finding and connecting with other nontheistic parents. This result was profoundly influential for the Foundation. It became clear that our original plan to train seminar leaders would not meet the most common need. What is needed is ongoing support for local groups that can help remove the crushing sense of isolation that so many secular parents feel. What’s needed is not a lecture but an opportunity to socialize, to mingle, to informally share experiences and ideas—to simply be with other parents who are raising their kids with the same challenges and opportunities.

Best of all, nearly 1,000 respondents expressed an interest in being contacted if a secular parenting group formed in their area, and nearly a third of these were willing to help start such groups. Ute Mitchell, our parent community coordinator, is currently using the contact data from the survey to help form groups in the ten U.S. states with the most survey respondents (some obviously the result of higher population):

…after which we’ll continue with other states and provinces SOON. We’re also continuing to build the parent resource section of the Foundation website, which will launch in the coming weeks.

Thanks again to all participants! More surveys to come.

Atheists’ Collection Plate, With Religious Inspiration
BY SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

ALPHARETTA, Ga. –– Four or five Sundays in 2005, his own atheism notwithstanding, Dale McGowan took his family into the neo-Gothic grandeur of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis on a kind of skeptic’s field trip.

Mr. McGowan went because he wanted his three young children to have “religious literacy.” He went because his mother-in-law, Barbara Maples, belonged to the congregation. He went because, as a college professor with a fondness for weekend sweatpants, church gave him the rare chance to wear the ties she invariably gave him for his birthday.

Something else began to strike Mr. McGowan on those visits. He listened to the vicar preach about ministering to the poor, and he learned that the cathedral helped to sponsor a weekly dinner for the homeless. Most importantly, he watched as the collection plate moved through the pews and as his mother-in-law, who volunteered at those dinners, dropped in her offering.

All those details added up to a nonbeliever’s revelation. The theology and the voluntarism and the philanthropy, Mr. McGowan came to realize, were part of a greater whole, a commitment to charity as part of religious practice. And on that practice, this atheist felt lacking. To put it in church slang, he was convicted.

Rather than adopt faith, however, Mr. McGowan set out to emulate it, or at least its culture of giving. He set out to, in effect, create the atheist’s collection plate. By now, five years later, that impulse has taken the form of a nonprofit foundation that solicits donations from atheists and bundles them into contributions to organizations in fields like public health, environmentalism, gay rights and refugee aid.

Within the next week or so, Mr. McGowan expects to cut checks for a total of $12,025, the first benefits collected and disbursed by the Foundation Beyond Belief.

Read the full article

And so, as predicted, Santa has darkened the McGowan fireplace for the last time.

Delaney (8) followed the same classic curve as the other two. She started last year with the ancillary technical questions of a child who’s begun to smell something funky but doesn’t reeeally want to dig to the back of the fridge just yet.

“Regular reindeer don’t fly. How do Santa’s reindeer fly?”

“Well…some people say they eat magic corn.”

Magic corn. The rapidity with which this sharp, science-minded, reality-loving inquirer would happily swallow lame answers of that kind and skip tra-la away demonstrated as clearly as anything could that she was more interested at that point in perpetuating this particular belief than in figuring things out—a fact further underlined by her disinclination to ask the obvious, direct question that we would willingly have answered at any point, namely “Is Santa real?”

(Sorry about that sentence, I’m reading Infinite Jest again.)

Same with many kinds of belief. It’s not that true believers of various kinds don’t ask questions — it’s that they so eagerly accept poor answers to those questions in order to preserve belief. It’s something we all do at various times and places in our lives. Yes you do, and have, and will. Me too.

At some point (with Santa, anyway) the weight of inconsistency eventually becomes too great, and the direct question is asked. And when it’s asked, you ANSWER, and congratulate the child for figuring it out.

Just before Christmas, Laney’s questions intensified, but remained oblique. At one point she looked Becca in the eye and asked the most convoluted almost-direct indirect question I’ve ever heard:

“When I’m just about to have kids of my own, are you all of a sudden going to tell me something that I need to know about something?”

“Uh…not that I know of,” Becca replied. Which was true.

“Good, because I love Santa.”

“Who said anything about Santa?”

“Never mind.”

Two weeks after Christmas, Erin (12) came downstairs at bedtime with a look of panic. “She’s figuring it out, and I don’t know what to do!!”

“Figuring what out?” I asked.

“Santa! Laney’s asking all these questions and I don’t know what to do!! I did your thing about ‘Some people believe…’ but then she keeps going and going!”

“That’s awesome! That means she’s finally ready to figure it out. Just answer every question honestly. Do you want me to come up?”

“Yes. No. Well, in a little while.”

I waited ten minutes, then went upstairs. The girls were sitting on their beds facing each other and looked up with little smiles as I entered.

“What’s up in here?”

Laney nodded sagely. “Well…I figured something out.”

“What did you figure out.”

“I figured out…the thing about Santa.”

“What thing is that?” Say it, girl!

“That…well, he isn’t real.”

“Oh, that.” I smiled and sat next to her. “How does that make you feel?”

“A little upset. I really loved Santa!”

Now with Laney being the youngest, I knew there was a risk of her feeling embarrassed at being the last to know. But we’d always played with a very light touch, allowing her to believe until knowing became more interesting — which it now apparently had. Time to let her walk proudly through that door.

The key is to underline the proud. I asked how she had figured it out, and she proceeded to describe a fascinating trail of clues that I hadn’t even known she was following.

She sleeps in my T-shirts, and one night found a half empty box of candy canes nestled in the drawer. “Who buys candy canes in a box?” she said, further noting that this year there were no canes on the tree, only in…the stockings.

“And all of the Santa presents were in Santa paper except the ones for you and Mom. And there was still a price tag on one of my presents.” And on and on she went. She had noticed these things because she wanted to, because she had reached a tipping point between the desire to believe and the desire to know.

So I turned on the praise. “Look what you did!” I said. “You used your brain to figure out all of those clues…and you did it yourself!”

She beamed.

“Was it fun to figure out?”

“Yes,” she admittedly, it actually was.

“And the best thing is that all of the good stuff about Christmas,” I said, “all the fun, all the family stuff, the presents, the yummy food, the lights and music and doing nice things for other people — we still get to have ALL of that. But now you know where it all really comes from.”

She has shared her findings with every significant adult in her life, proof that pride quickly eclipsed disappointment. “Guess what I figured out all by myself,” she says. Only one adult went into a “Yes, Virginia” genie re-bottling attempt.

“Grandma,” Laney said patiently. “You don’t have to do that. I looked at all the clues and figured it out. It’s fine.”

So I remain convinced that our family’s Santa period was jolly well-spent. As I wrote in Parenting Beyond Belief,

By allowing our children to participate in the Santa myth and find their own way out of it through skeptical inquiry, we give them a priceless opportunity to see a mass cultural illusion first from the inside, then from the outside. A very casual line of post-Santa questioning can lead kids to recognize how completely we all can snow ourselves if the enticements are attractive enough. Such a lesson, viewed from the top of the hill after exiting a belief system under their own power, can gird kids against the best efforts of the evangelists -– and far better than secondhand knowledge could ever hope to do.

And I wouldn’t have mythed it for the world.

If you’re a nonreligious parent getting serious pressure or interference from a religious family member about your parenting choices, you’ve got to sit down and have a talk.

Last time I suggested a way of rethinking both the problem and the solution. It isn’t about changing the other person’s mind—it’s about reducing the dissonance that results from your differences. It’s not victory you’re after, but a relaxation of tension and building of mutual confidence. It’s détente.

Note 1: This conversation isn’t always necessary just because your religious perspective differs from your parents, in-laws, etc. Some religious grandparents are entirely respectful of their children’s rights to approach religion any way they wish with their own kids. Others offer nothing more challenging than the occasional grumble, whine, or plea. If you have one of these, be grateful. This post is about a stickier wicket—the grandparent or other relative who threatens, harasses, argues, pressures, and/or actively interferes with your right to raise your kids as you think best when it comes to religion.

Note 2: This is also not about your right to confront an antagonistic relative. For all I know, said relative has earned a merit badge in Self-Righteous Scumbaggery with you as the final project, and your right to retribution is enshrined in six different UN charters. But this post isn’t about us and our personal rights. It’s about creating the best possible family situation for our kids.

Note 3: There are countless variations on the nonreligious parent/religious grandparent dyad, but certain basic principles apply across the board. Be flexible and adapt as needed.

And off we go…

This approach is related to Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a powerful and effective concept developed by Marshall Rosenberg and others. It starts with empathy—making an effort to grasp and feel what the other person feels, to hear things as s/he hears them, and to frame what you have to say accordingly. It can leave people feeling heard, understood, and honored – even if they continue to disagree. It can lead to amazing breakthroughs by recognizing that win and lose are not the only meaningful terms in dialogue.

When a secular parent tells me about locking horns with Grandma, I ask what Grandma is concerned about. The answer is almost always the same—the familiar goulash of hell, morality and discipline.

These concerns may be part of the mix, but I don’t think they are usually at the heart of things. The relative may even be convinced that hell-avoidance really is their main concern and may say exactly that, but I have reason to believe otherwise. (I’ll get to the reason by the end.)

Consider this: Most deeply religious people have their religion woven into their personal identity. It’s not just Grandma’s explanatory system or a moral code—it’s often who she is. She’s likely even to see it as the best of who she is. When her first grandchild was born, her visions of herself as a grandmother centered on sharing the best of herself, the deepest and most meaningful part of her life, with her grandchildren, and of proudly sharing her God-fearing descendants with her admiring friends.

The news that said descendants would be raised without religion would have hit her first and foremost as the end of that vision. Worse still, she would often feel personally dishonored and shut out. Finally, she would feel embarrassed by the judgments of her churchgoing friends.

So then: Hell, morality, discipline, identity, self-image, honor/dishonor, exclusion, family pride, and the judgment of others. A pretty potent mix. We can’t solve them all. But we can do some pretty impressive healing with just a few words. And in the process, we will give nothing away and tell nothing but the truth.

There are four important elements:

HONOR the person. You can continue to think whatever you wish about the person’s beliefs. But people deserve respect as people. Refuse to grant that and you have no basis for discourse. If nothing else, honor their intentions, which (however misguided you think they are) are usually good.

EMPATHIZE. Make a real effort to see things as s/he sees them.

REASSURE. Some of his or her concerns can’t be helped. Some can. Reduce the concerns by addressing those you can.

INCLUDE. This is huge. A clear gesture of inclusion can repair an immense amount of damage and bring down walls. Most people will respond to that generous gesture with a desire to not abuse it. For the rest, some reasonable limits can be placed.

Here’s the idea:

(Honor)
I wanted to sit down and talk this over with you because you are important to us. I know you want what’s best for the kids, and I appreciate that.

(Empathize)
I know your religious faith is a big part of your life. If I were in your position, I’d feel just the way you do—worried that this big part of who I am wouldn’t be shared with my grandchildren.

(Reassure)
I want you to know that it will be shared. Even though we’re not going to church, it’s important to us that the kids learn about religion so they can make a choice for themselves.

(Include)
We want you to help us teach the kids by telling them what you believe. Let’s set up a time for you and me and Amanda to have a cup of hot chocolate so you can talk to her about your faith. How does that sound?

Details are hammered out next, so you should be prepared with a sense of what is OK and what is not. But ONCE THE CONVERSATION HAS HAPPENED, s/he will be infinitely more receptive to a few simple ground rules. For me there were two: no thoughtstoppers (no reference to hell or the idea that doubt is bad), and present all beliefs as your own (”I believe that…”), not as givens.

Sometimes it won’t work. But I’ve heard from so many people that this was the breakthrough, the approach that finally achieved something positive — including many who had sworn in advance that “It’ll never work with my dad” — that I have to think there’s something there. Several people have described step four as the turning point, the moment s/he is invited to share his or her belief with the kids. The road is not paved with daisies from that point forward, but at least it isn’t paved with IEDs anymore.

And this is why I believe it isn’t really all about hell — because without addressing hell one bit, enormous progress is made.

The bottom line in this is that there is an alternative to (1) saying nothing, or (2) spitting nails, or (3) giving away the farm. We can be the generous ones, the ones who understand where the other person is coming from, the ones who find a way forward, without giving up one bit of parental autonomy.

Reword it for your own situation, but have this conversation sooner rather than later — then come back here to tell us how it went.

A couple of years ago at a convention, I made a passing comment about family dissonance during a Q&A. “If you’re getting serious pressure from a religious family member about raising your kids without religion—Mom, Grandpa, mother-in-law, whoever—you need to address it directly. Don’t assume that it will get better with time. It will usually get worse.” Something like that.

After the talk, a gentleman cornered me in the ballroom. Great advice, he said. In fact, I just talked to my mother-in-law a few months ago and laid down the law.

(Ruh roh.)

What follows is as exact a transcription of his story as I could manage by scribbling it on a hotel pad a few minutes later:

I sat her down and said, “Okay, look. Let’s get some things straight. I am not going to apologize to you or anyone else about raising my kids without religious brainwashing. I don’t know why you are so obsessed with this. It’s no big deal that we don’t go to church. In fact, if we can get the kids to the age of eighteen without seeing the inside of a church, I’ll consider it a great success. I don’t want to hear any Jesus-this or Jesus-that around the kids. If we can agree on that, you can spend time with them.”

Just seven words in, she would have lost the ability to hear him as the blood began pounding defensively in her ears. No one can really hear and think under this kind of assault. And the veiled threat at the end is a particularly nice touch.

To get a real taste of just how this sounds to religious Grandma, reverse the poles a bit. Imagine you’re a secular humanist grandparent with a religious adult child, who says to you:

Okay, look. Let’s get some things straight. I am not going to apologize to you or anyone else about raising my kids without atheistic brainwashing. I don’t know why you are so obsessed with this. It’s no big deal that we’re keeping the kids out of science class. If we can get the kids to the age of eighteen without seeing the inside of a science book, I’ll consider it a great success. I don’t want to hear any evolution-this or science-that around the kids. If we can agree on that, you can spend time with them.

Ow, ow, ow. That’s about where this guy left his mother-in-law. Fight or flight. He looked at me for affirmation.

“Oh…okay,” I said, hesitantly. “And, uh…how’s it goin’?”

“Well,” he said, “we haven’t spoken since then. But I won.”

Aw geez. He’d missed the whole point.

Now I don’t know anything else about this guy’s situation. Maybe this woman put him through ten kinds of hell and deserved nothing more or less than to be cut off at the knees. Maybe there was no hope of achieving anything beyond that self-satisfying gofuckyourself. But even if the former is true, the latter almost never is.

If his situation was like 95 percent of those I’ve seen or heard described, his “I won” showed that he misunderstood both the problem and the solution. What did he win—the right to raise his child without religion? As the parent, he’d already “won” that right (barring inter-spousal differences — another post.) If his mother-in-law is actively, directly controlling his parenting decisions, he has a different (and much larger) problem, one that his monologue did nothing to solve.

In most cases, the problem isn’t that Grandma is actively preventing you from parenting the way you want—it’s that an atmosphere of tension and dissonance and poison is created by your differences. Sometimes that atmosphere can turn into something more concrete—sneaky proselytizing of the kids, demanding that other family members choose sides, or outright shunning—but it’s the tension itself that’s at the root. Reduce the tension around your differences and you reduce the symptoms of the tension as well.

Whenever I say this in my seminars, I see a half dozen heads shaking slowly. I know what they’re thinking. There’s no point. She’s never going to change her mind, and I’m sure as hell not going to change mine.

This is where we go wrong—by thinking that changing someone’s mind is the only goal of such a conversation. If it was, they’d be right. There’d really be no point. But one of the central idea of this little series is that changing minds is not the only way forward.

What’s needed in these situations is not victory but détente.

Anyone who lived in the U.S during the Nixon years tends to hear that French word spoken with a German accent. Whenever Kissinger said, “Vee ah voorking vithin a framevoork of détente vith de Zoviets,” I thought it meant, “We agree not to bomb each other for now.” Turns out détente is a much more interesting vurd meaning “a relaxation of tensions and building of mutual confidence.” It is not a ceasefire nor a compromise, but something designed to make an actual exchange of warheads less likely. In the Cold War, détente meant (among many other things) exchanging ballet companies and art exhibits and such to show each other our human sides.

I do think it’s best to sit down and address tensions about your nonreligious parenting with any religious family member who is especially distressed by it. The key is to aim for a reduction in tension, not a “win.” You’re the parent. You’ve already “won” the right to do your thing. What you want is to scale back the tension and discomfort resulting from those choices so your kids can grow up in the best possible family situation. And you can do it without giving up anything. That’s détente.

Next time I’ll share my thoughts on how to do that.

Two of the corners of my life in which I am the least siloed — in which perspectives and opinions bump against each other more than anywhere else — are family and Facebook.

In most other ways, my family and Facebook are different, even antithetical. My extended family’s mix of perspectives is a received fact, and one for which I’m grateful, especially as a parent. (More on that eventually.) By contrast, the diversity of my Facebook friends results from my own choices.

Another difference: Families don’t often talk openly about beliefs and opinions. As Stephen Prothero put it, they do religion like mad but rarely talk about religion. Facebook, on the other hand, is all about sharing opinions (and every other thing that crosses the cortex. Seriously, pass me one more goddam virtual mojito and I’ll pour it on your motherboard).

I’ll get to family later in the series. First Facebook, in two parts.

I’m a Facebook Slut. I climb into friendhood with anyone who asks. My 600+ Friends fall mostly into five groups: Family, K-12 friends, College friends, Post-college friends, and Readers of my books.

It’s interesting that those five groups are roughly arranged in both the order I entered them in life AND in increasing order of siloing. The older I get, the more they’ve reflected my own choices. My extended family is mostly religious, though they vary in intensity. My K-12 friends mostly differ from me in religious and political views, but not as much as family. Friends met at Berkeley are about half secular and half religious, though almost all politically progressive, as are post-college friends. And readers of my books are naturally pretty secular and (as far as I can tell) mostly progressive politically. See how the silo narrows from left to right?

It’d be easy to cull this list down to a comfortable silo of 400 who would tend to nod at my every Facebook status and post and link. But I’ve been in enough of those situations to know it’s not good for me. Makes me lazy. Gives me the queasy feeling I used to get as I stood in chuckling clutches at this or that atheist meeting, basking in the glow (at last, at last!) of people who saw the world as I did.

It’s helpful at first. Then it gets really old.

About two years ago, my writing and my speeches to like-minded groups began centering on the need to spend a bit of our seemingly boundless other-critical energy on a peek in the mirror. An example was a post titled “Six things Christians do (much) better than secularists.” Some loved it — others were pissed. I considered that a good sign.

I continued in my talks to humanist groups around the US, noting that churches ironically do humanistic community better than we do, and that we can and should fix that. Then in my first announcement about Foundation Beyond Belief, I pointed to the statistical fact that the average individual religious believer gives more to charitable causes than the average nonreligious individual — and was met again with both support and outrage. Never mind that I was making the larger point that it’s pretty clearly a structural problem, not a moral one — that churches have created a “culture of giving” by providing regular and easy opportunities to give. Still a bitter pill for some. And again, I thought that a fine thing.

So I guess I’m involved in a two-part communications project here. I want to hear and be heard more effectively outside of my silos, but I also want to stir up the complacency within my silos. I’ve been doing the latter out loud for a couple of years now. As for the former, I’ve been doing it but not sharing the experiment, until now.

So again — Because of my slutty tendencies, Facebook is one of my main opportunities for adventures in unsiloed communication.

No, I’m NOT talking about deconverting anyone. Haven’t spent a lick of energy on that in years. I realized that people will think about worldview questions on their own schedule and under their own control or not at all, and that active attempts to force the issue usually drive them the other way. No need to “give” anyone reasons to believe or not believe. The reasons are scattered all around our feet, just a click or a thought away. At best, we can spur each other’s curiosity –How interesting, an ethical atheist. How fascinating, an intellectual evangelical– by dismantling preconceptions. And the best way to do that is by being out and normal.

(Funny thing — since I stopped trying to change people’s minds, I’ve started receiving emails from people whose minds I’ve changed. Lots and lots.)

Facebook is one of the places I can be out and normal. It’s also possible to use Facebook to create a silo, of course, and I know many people do just that, consciously or not. Befriend a like mind here, defriend an unlike one there, and pretty soon we’ve built ourselves another echo chamber.

As a result, unlike my more siloed corners, I know when I post something on Facebook that it will be seen by several of the most prominent atheists and humanists in the world AND my wife’s extended Baptist family, by Republican neighbors AND Democratic friends — by hundreds of people I love and respect, including many who see the world in a profoundly different way from me. It causes me to take just that little extra bit of care to be accurate, to be fair, but also honest — to be myself, but also to improve myself. I’m not interested in pandering — instead, I try to say things of substance in such a way that I can be heard by multiple human audiences at once.

Next week I’ll give a recent example — a Facebook exchange that illustrates what I think I’ve learned about hearing and being heard.

[Complete series]

I’ve had several parents ask how best to deal with arrogance — especially in pre-teens, it seems — toward religious folks, especially extended family. “How do I keep my 13-year-old from sneering at other people for their beliefs when I frankly think they’re pretty darn sneerable myself?” That sort of thing.

It’s become such a common question that I included a story of mine in Raising Freethinkers–presumptuously inserting it into Jan’s otherwise excellent chapter titled “Secular Family, Religious World.” (Editorship has its privileges.)

In addition to clarifying the two different levels of respect about which I’ve blogged before — that ideas themselves have to earn respect, but people are inherently deserving of it — the best way to approach this is (if you’ll excuse the phrase) by inviting him who is without sin to cast the first stone.

I watch the odd bit of televangelism now and then. My son Connor (then 11) caught a few minutes of one program in which some outrageous thing was being foisted on a nodding throng. My boy reacted not to the idea itself, but by sneering at the people: “I just don’t understand how those stupid people can believe stupid things that make no sense!”

“Hmm, yeah.” I thought for a minute, then said, “Hey Con, could you go get me a Coke from the basement?”

“What?”

“A Coke. From the basement.”

“I…but…” he stammered. “Why?”

“I’m thirsty. Please.”

“But…I can’t go into the basement by myself.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I…I just can’t!”

“Oh,” I said gently. “And…does that make sense?”

I quickly admitted to several irrational quirks of my own, like my completely over-the-top aversion to dead things (unless grilled), and my steadfast belief that M&Ms melt in your mouth but not in your hands, despite constant evidence to the contrary. There are surely many more quirks and irrationalities I carry around, but being me, it’s hard to see them. Just ask Becca what they are — then cancel your appointments for the day.

Connor and I then went after the idea in question as we always do, but he was able to do so from a less self-exalted and slightly more empathetic perch — one fallible human thinking hard and well about the errors to which we are all prone, not some glowing eminence smirking at the foibles of creatures in the mud beneath his feet.

We all have irrational beliefs and fears. Jumping at shadows and seeing faces in tortillas is a direct consequence of our deepest wiring — and all the new software in the world will never completely fix that mess. It’s a good and great thing to try, to pull yourself as far up out of the muck as you can, but it’s delusional to ever think you’ve completely escaped it, or to sneer too thoroughly at those silly fools you imagine you’ve left behind.

Now before I get a dozen furious emails, let me be absolutely clear. Reasoned critique is a great thing, and I encourage my kids to go after any and all ideas on their merits. But eye-rolling arrogance toward those who support a given idea is not reasoned critique — and religious discourse is filled with examples of people on all sides who allow dismissive arrogance to cloud their judgment. Start with arrogance, saying, “I can’t believe how stupid they are to believe xyz” and you have one foot on Ray Comfort’s banana peel. Start instead with a little humility, saying, “I may be wrong about this, but…” and you have a much better chance of actually getting things right.

We all live in glass houses, no matter how thoroughly we think we’ve attended to our own rationality. And that’s not entirely bad. It can keep us humble and, as a bonus, increases our chances of thinking well.

hortly after the release of Parenting Beyond Belief, I mentioned on the PBB Discussion Forum that I think religious literacy is an important thing for our kids (and ourselves) to have. Many agreed, as did most of the contributors to the book, but I received an email from one parent who asked,

Why should I fill my kids’ heads with all that mumbo-jumbo?

Here are my four reasons that religious literacy (knowledge of religion, as opposed to belief in it) is crucial:

1. To understand the world. A huge percentage of the news includes a religious component. Add the fact that 90 percent of our fellow humans express themselves through religion and it becomes clear that ignorance of religion cuts our children off from understanding what is happening in the world around them—and why.

2. To be empowered. In the U.S. presidential election of 2004, candidate Howard Dean identified Job as his favorite book of the New Testament. That Job is actually in the Old Testament was a trivial thing to most of us, but to a huge whack of the religious electorate, Dean had revealed a forehead-smacking level of ignorance about the central narrative of their lives. For those people, Dean was instantly discounted, irrelevant. Because we want our kids’ voices heard in the many issues with a religious component, it’s important for them to have knowledge of that component.

3. To make an informed decision. I really, truly, genuinely want my kids to make up their own minds about religion, and I trust them to do so. Any nonreligious parent who boasts of a willingness to allow their kids to make their own choices but never exposes them to religion or religious ideas is being dishonest. For kids to make a truly informed judgment about it, they must have access to it.

4. To avoid the “teen epiphany.” Here’s the big one. Struggles with identity, confidence, and countless other issues are a given part of the teen years. Sometimes these struggles generate a genuine personal crisis, at which point religious peers often pose a single question: “Don’t you know about Jesus?” If your child says, “No,” the peer will come back incredulously with, “YOU don’t know JESUS? Omigosh, Jesus is The Answer!” Boom, we have an emotional hijacking. And such hijackings don’t end up in moderate Methodism. This is the moment when nonreligious teens fly all the way across the spectrum to evangelical fundamentalism.

A little knowledge about religion allows the teen to say, “Yeah, I know about Jesus”—and to know that reliable answers to personal problems are better found elsewhere.

So should you take your kids to a mainstream, bible-believing church? Hardly. They shouldn’t get to age 18 without seeing the inside of a church, or you risk creating forbidden fruit. Take them once in a while just to see what it’s all about and to see that there’s no magical land of unicorns and faeries behind those doors. But know that churchgoing generally has squat to do with religious literacy.

In his (fabulous) book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t, Stephen Prothero points out that faithfully churchgoing Americans are incredibly ignorant of even the most basic tenets of their own belief systems, not to mention others. Europeans, on the other hand, are religiously knowledgeable and rarely darken the door of a church.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. Most European countries have mandated religious education and decidedly secular populations. Unless they attend a UU or Ethical Society, U.S. kids have almost no religious education. Faith is most easily sustained in ignorance. Learning about religion leads to thinking about religion—and you know what happens then.

Mainstream churchgoing also exposes kids to a single religious perspective. That’s not literacy—in fact, it usually amounts to indoctrination.

So how do you get religiously-literate kids?

1. Talk, talk, talk. All literacy begins with oral language. Toss tidbits of religious knowledge into your everyday conversations. If you drive by a mosque and your four-year-old points out the pretty gold dome, take the opportunity: “Isn’t that pretty? It’s a kind of church called a mosque. People who go there pray five times every day, and they all face a city far away when they do it.” No need to get into the Five Pillars of Islam. A few months later, you see a woman on the street wearing a hijab and connect it to previous knowledge: “Remember the mosque, the church with that gold dome? That’s what some people wear who go to that church.”

As kids mature, include more complex information—good, bad, and ugly. No discussion of Martin Luther King, Jr. is complete without noting that he was a Baptist minister, and that his religion was important to him. You can’t grasp 9/11 without understanding Islamic afterlife beliefs. And the founding of our country is reframed by noting that the majority of the founders were religious skeptics of one stripe or another. Talk about the religious components of events in the news, from the stem cell debate to global warming to terrorism to nonviolence advocacy.

2. Read myths of many traditions. Myths make terrific bedtime stories. Start with creation myths from around the world, then move into the many rich mythic traditions—Greek, Roman, Norse, Hopi, Inuit, Zulu, Indian, and more. And don’t forget the Judeo-Christian stories. Placing them side by side with other traditions removes the pedestal and underlines what they have in common.

3. Attend church on occasion with trusted relatives. Keeping kids entirely separated from the experience of church can make them think something magical happens there. If your children are invited by friends, say yes—and go along. The conversations afterward can be some of the most productive in your entire religious education plan.

4. Movies. One of the most effective and enjoyable ways to expose your kids to religious ideas is through movies. For the youngest, this might include Prince of Egypt, Little Buddha, Kirikou and the Sorceress, and Fiddler on the Roof. By middle school it’s Jason and the Argonauts, Gandhi, Bruce Almighty, and Kundun. High schoolers can see and enjoy Seven Years in Tibet, Romero, Schindler’s List, Jesus Camp, Dogma, and Inherit the Wind. This list alone touches eight different religious systems (seven more than they’ll get in a mainstream Sunday School) and both the positive and negative influences of religion in history (one more than you get in Sunday School).

Special gem: Don’t forget Jesus Christ Superstar, a subversive and thought-provoking retelling of the last days of Christ. There are no miracles; the story ends with the crucifixion, not the resurrection; and Judas is the hero, urging Jesus not to forget about the poor as the ministry becomes a personality cult.

(First appeared on November 19, 2007.)

Thanksgiving — one of my very favorite holidays — is mentioned twice in Parenting Beyond Belief. “There should be no difficulty in secularly observing a holiday dedicated to gratitude,” I wrote in “Losing the Holy and Keeping the Day” :

“We can express to each other our thankfulness for each other, for our good fortune, and for life itself. No eavesdropping deity required. There is an additional opportunity to note that the Puritan pilgrims were pursuing the kind of freedom of religious observance to which secularists should be devoted – fleeing harassment and religious persecution in England and heading to the New World where they were free at last to burn witches. Okay, leave that part out.”

The book explores the issue of gratitude a bit further, naming it one of the “Seven Secular Virtues”:

The most terrible moment for an atheist, someone once said, is when he feels grateful and has no one to thank. I suppose it was meant to be witty, but it’s pretty silly. Nonbelievers of all stripes should and do indeed feel enormously grateful for many things, and I’m not aware of any terrible moments. Whereas religious folks teach their children to funnel all gratitude skyward, humanists and atheists can thank the actual sources of the good things we experience, those who actually deserve praise but too often see it deflected past them and on to an imaginary being.

We have no difficulty reminding the four-year-old to “say thank you” when Grandma hands her an ice cream cone, but in other situations – especially when a religious turn-of-phrase is generally used – we often pass up the chance to teach our kids to express gratitude in naturalistic terms. Instead of thanking God for the food on your table, thank those who really put it there – the farmers, the truckers, the produce workers, and Mom or Dad or Aunt Millicent. They deserve it. Maybe you’d like to lean toward the Native American and honor the animals for the sacrifice of their lives – a nice way to underline our connection to them. You can give thanks to those around the table for being present, and for their health, and for family and friendship itself. There is no limit. Even when abstract, like gratitude for health, the simple expression of gratitude is all that is needed. No divine ear is necessary – we are surrounded by real ears and by real hearers.

Group prayer of any kind, including religious grace, has always bothered me. It’s coercive, for one thing, and one person speaks for everyone, assuming a uniformity that is never really accurate. After the “amen,” I always want to submit a minority opinion: “I consent to clauses 1, 2, and 4, but dissent from 3 and 5 for reasons as follows…”

On several occasions, I’ve even seen group prayer used manipulatively (”And may the Lord bless and protect those among us who have been making unwise choices lately” [all eyes go to cousin Billy]).

BUT…the options to religious grace can bring their own problems. The old “moment of silence” can feel hollow; others can seem a bit forced (humanist meditations with Baptist intonations); while some, even if accurate, seem both abstract and forced (”thank you to the truckers and turkey wranglers and assembly-line workers”).

The best option I’ve ever heard just arrived in my inbox yesterday in the form of a short story by Wisconsin author/educator Marilyn LaCourt (The Prize, 2004):

Thanksgiving Ritual
by M. LaCourt

Last year I had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at my friend’s house. I arrived just as we were being invited to take our places at the table and I felt a little awkward because I didn’t know a number of the other guests. I looked toward the kitchen expecting someone to bring on the food. It sure smelled good, and I was hungry.

Imagine my confusion when my host looked around the table at each of his guests and asked, “Who wants to start?”

I knew there was supposed to be food, but I still didn’t see any, not even a relish dish or a breadbasket to pass. What were we supposed to do? Pass imaginary bowls filled with imaginary mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey and cranberry sauce? No one spoke.

Finally my host’s eyes settled on his seven-year-old niece.

Cindy stood up, cleared her throat and smiled at her brother. “Thank you, Jimmy, for teaching me to play games on your computer.”

Jimmy blushed and said, “You’re welcome.”

Eric, a nice looking young man with bright blue eyes was next. He thanked his parents for giving him his first telescope when he was ten, and for the many hours they spent encouraging his appreciation for the wonders of the universe. I learned later that Eric had been accepted into a post graduate program to study Astronomy.

My friend, Ron, the host, said thank you to his wife. “I really appreciate the way you put up with my complaining, your understanding and patience with my cause fighting. I love the wonderful meals you prepare for me everyday, your companionship and your sense of humor. Thank you for being my wife.”

Liz smiled and answered, “You’re welcome.”

I was beginning to get the picture. I had some thank-yous of my own and was getting heady with the whole idea, but I decided to watch and listen a bit longer.

“Thank you for taking care of me when I had such a bad case of flu last winter, Rose. I know how terribly unpleasant that must have been for you, and you were so kind to put your own life aside for a few days to stay with me.” Gina’s eyes were damp when she looked at her daughter. “You were such a comfort.” Then she turned to her son- in-law. “Thank you too, Karl, for fending for yourself and the kids while she was taking care of me.”

“You’re welcome.” “You’re welcome.”

Then Rose stood up and walked over to where her husband was sitting. She bent down and gave him a kiss. “Thank you, honey, for working so hard and supporting us and giving me the opportunity to be the stay at home mom I’d always hoped I could be.”

Chuck thanked his friend Bob for all the wonderful tomatoes and other produce Bob gave him during harvest time. He also thanked Jerry and Judy for teaching him how to make the world’s greatest apple sauce.

Jean thanked Patty for listening when she needed a sympathetic ear.

Juan thanked his grandmother for the loan and told her he had put the money to good use. Sonja thanked her neighbor, Dorene, for the wonderful homemade mayonnaise and other goodies. And on it went.

I was thinking about all the wonderful people I wanted to thank. I guess I was drifting off in some sort of a trance when I heard the next person mention my name.

“Thank you, Marilyn,” she said. “You helped my daughter and son-in-law through some rough spots in their marriage.”

I waved my hand in a never mind gesture. “I was just doing my job.”

Ron nearly knocked over his water glass as he stood to interrupt me.

“No, no, no. That’s not allowed.” He shook his pointer at me. “These are the rules. You only get to say ‘you’re welcome’. If you explain it away you discredit the message and invalidate the sincerity of the person saying thanks. You just got a sincere ‘thank you’, Marilyn. Now, say ‘you’re welcome’.” He sat down and fiddled with his napkin.

“Oops. I’m sorry. I mean…” I looked at the woman who’d thanked me and said, “You’re welcome.” Then I smiled at my host and hostess.

“And thank you, Ron and Liz, for inviting me to share in such a beautiful tradition.”

Ron grinned. “You’re welcome.” Liz nodded, “You’re welcome.”

It took a full thirty minutes to get around the table and all the thanks-givings. When we finished Liz excused herself to put the finishing touches on the food and Ron poured the wine.