…I have a somewhat jaundiced view of the competing battles to proselytise the young. The propaganda can be self-defeating. Adults have an endless moral panic about the young. We have some justifiable fears that they will kill themselves sticking junk up their arms or drink down their gullets. But we take those justifiable (although sometimes exaggerated) fears and extend them to other areas such as their cultural ignorance and moral turpitude. I lament the fact that my kids don’t know the King James Bible and are religiously illiterate. But there is nothing I can do about it. And I think there is not much that the educational bovver boys of faith and the supine politicians they have snared can do either. I reckon the Chaplaincy Program is pouring an immoral amount of money down the educational toilet. There is nothing more boring and alienating than RE teachers. They are the unwittingly the assault pioneers of unbelief.
So let us think more realistically about the epistemological inspirations of the young. Let us put aside our moral panic. Let us be open-minded about letting both the godless and the godly have their spaces. Remember the mullahs of Iran. They have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the young. I suspect that the Christian mullahs of Australia will share the same fate as they try to shove God down the unwilling or bored throats of the young. For kids are not anti-God. They just have so many other things to think about.
Read it all.
(SMH) Dick Gross–Childhood is seen as critical in the battle for the brain and soul
…I have a somewhat jaundiced view of the competing battles to proselytise the young. The propaganda can be self-defeating. Adults have an endless moral panic about the young. We have some justifiable fears that they will kill themselves sticking junk up their arms or drink down their gullets. But we take those justifiable (although sometimes exaggerated) fears and extend them to other areas such as their cultural ignorance and moral turpitude. I lament the fact that my kids don’t know the King James Bible and are religiously illiterate. But there is nothing I can do about it. And I think there is not much that the educational bovver boys of faith and the supine politicians they have snared can do either. I reckon the Chaplaincy Program is pouring an immoral amount of money down the educational toilet. There is nothing more boring and alienating than RE teachers. They are the unwittingly the assault pioneers of unbelief.
So let us think more realistically about the epistemological inspirations of the young. Let us put aside our moral panic. Let us be open-minded about letting both the godless and the godly have their spaces. Remember the mullahs of Iran. They have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the young. I suspect that the Christian mullahs of Australia will share the same fate as they try to shove God down the unwilling or bored throats of the young. For kids are not anti-God. They just have so many other things to think about.
Read it all.