by Adam McCulloch
Throw religion into the child protection pot and things become very complicated.
Community Care’s legal expert Ed Mitchell tells the story of a court case from 1993 in France:
"Mr Schmidt is a French national. He and his wife were members of “The Citadel”, an evangelical church. In 1993, their daughter, aged three, was placed in care in France. This was authorised by a French children’s judge who found that Citadel children were cut off from the “Satanic” outside world, obliged to observe frequent fasts, had limits placed on their sleep and, as punishment, were slapped and hit with belts. The judge concluded that, if the child remained with her parents, her “psychological balance and development was likely to be seriously compromised”. For this reason, the judge authorised the child’s removal."
When reading this I was immediately reminded of the children of the Westboro Baptist Church in the US, the focus of a Louis Theroux TV show.
These children were subjected to hate and maybe psychological harm through their association with the church – their parents took them on pickets of funerals. They too were ‘cut off from the Satanic outside world’ although there is no suggestion they were physically harmed or abused by church members.
And what about the fringes around established religion here in the UK? Christianity, Islam, Hinduism … there could be extremists bringing up children and ‘educating’ them everywhere. How would we know when children are being harmed?
By the way, my recommended reading for now is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
Comments (1)
I just came across this post and this site while browsing Google, and felt compelled to respond to the comment made by Adam McCulloch.
Of course if children are being abused in any organisation and the abuse is part of that organisations policy or beliefs, then authorities must act when such things come to light and also to prevent such things.
However, just because one religious group behaves one way, doesn't mean they should all be thrown into the same pot with the assumption that they all behave the same. From my point of view, as a Christian, most children who are in religious families are not abused. Hopefully, you are not defining abuse as someone passing on their beliefs to their children, because this is not the definition of abuse. Surely everyone passes some instruction, wisdom or knowledge on to children, and most religious families are no different in this.
The view that there is no God is only a belief, and if you pass this on to children, then you are passing on a belief and not a scientific fact. Anyone who says 'there is no God' only believe in this by faith, because it is, by scientific standards, un-provable. As for Richard Dawkins: He is clearly a man who is more anti-God than he is pro-science, and his books clearly show this. He is just annoyed that the belief he has devoted his whole life to, evolution, has not been proved. As with all his books he specifically tries to prove the non-existence of God, without any absolute scientific evidence other than repeating his belief in evolution. Any sensible person can see that proving God's non-existence is not in fact possible, regardless of how much you don't like the idea of God.
The theory of evolution is still a theory and the scientific community still call it a theory for that reason. It is therefore no different to faith because you have to believe in it by faith. So surely passing evolution theory to your children is no different to any religious parent passing on their beliefs to their children. Or is it that society, of which religious families are a part, would prefer for no-one to have any other opinion or belief other than the evolution one suggested here?
Posted by S.Cat | November 2, 2007 4:00 PM
Posted on November 2, 2007 16:00