Non-religious parents and religious membership for babies.

Remove all ads!

Might as well jump in here, because I'm in the position you're discussing; my parents are agnostic/atheist/apathetic, and I wasn't baptised as a child because my father insisted that no such thing should be done until I was old enough to make my own choice. I just questioned my mother on the matter, and apparently this did upset her mother (who was Greek Orthodox and extremely devoted) a great deal; this didn't affect her relationship with me or my mother at all, but it could have been why she made regular efforts to get me to come to church and light a candle when I was a child, and it may also have been part of the reason why she always resented my father a bit.

Looking back on this, I'm very glad I wasn't baptised, because aside from my personal religious views (read: not any kind of Christian), I also have many fundamental problems with the way the Christian Orthodox church chooses to conduct its business in Greece.

But, it wouldn't cost me more than a few days of my life today to go and get my name removed from wherever it lists you as bapitsed. Hell, if I was really trying, it'd take me less than a few minutes to get myself excommunicated! So I suppose I wouldn't have minded too much if I had been baptised as a child, because it wouldn't have affected my life in any way, except inasmuch as my given name is one no Greek Orthodox priest would have willingly baptised a child - in fact, some refuse to baptise a child unless it's given a Greek Orthodox saint's name.

A religious upbringing is another story - that's not just a paper somewhere saying you've been baptised, that's actually having an authority figure tell a child that certain things are true, at an age where the child will take it on trust. I spent a long time as a child trying to believe in Christian doctrine because my grandmother told me that was the way the world worked. It didn't work, but that's another story, and things might've turned out differently if my parents had been agreeing with her (regardless of their own personal beliefs).

Parents certainly make choices for their children, but most of those choices only affect a few (albeit important) years of their life. However, moulding their mind to accept a particular worldview as true has far more long-term consequences, and, if the parents themselves don't believe in the beliefs they're instilling, in my mind that might constitute a betrayal of trust.

Just my two cents.

 

Long time no see Tiamat, nice to see you around.

 

Heheh, yep, been ages. But as this thread is probably not the place for it, I suggest you clean out your PM inbox or come into the chat sometime if you wanna catch up