On banning teaching children about religion until they are 18

You see all kinds of fascinating insights into society’s thinking on social media.  Recently I saw a post on Threads (the Meta/Facebook alternative to Twitter) which argued that children should not be taught religion until they are 18. Specifically, they were observing that this is something China seeks to enforce and identifying it as a positive.

It’s worth taking a bit of time to understand the underlying thinking behind such statements.  Note

• The speaker is assuming that religion is something dangerous and harmful.  In fact in the follow up conversation, religion was equated to addictive substances such as alcohol and smoking as well as pornography.
• The speaker is assuming that their position is neutral to religion.
• The implication is that religion free life is in effect a state of innocence and goodness.

Each of those assumptions is readily challengeable. The crucial one though is the assumption that they are able to sit back in neutral judgement.  However, to believe that it is possible for God, faith, worship and prayer to be absent from someone’s life, that in fact it should be absent is to take up a position.  Indeed, whilst it is possible I guess, theoretically, to argue that you shouldn’t teach about God and faith until a certain arbitrary age, whilst believing that God exists, the argument tends to come from those who do not believe in God in general or Jesus and the Gospel in particular.  They have taken a religious position.

Now, it is worth noting that as an evangelical, baptistic Christian, my position is that children cannot inherit or be co-opted into faith, that rather, there comes a point where they profess faith for themselves.  As someone who professed faith as a five year old, I would not put an arbitrary age limit on things. In any case, that is very different from excluding and withholding knowledge and information from children.

A major problem with the “Don’t teach children religion until they are 18” approach is that it isn’t practically possible either.  What do you say to a child when they ask you “what happens when we die?”  Is that only something you can talk to them about after they turn 18?  Remember that if you tell them that death is the end and there is nothing after that, then you have taken a religious position and sought to teach them it.

What are you meant to do when a child asks you why there are trees with lights, they are getting a holiday from school and they are receiving presents?  How do you teach history, literature or language without reference to religion? What do you do when a beloved Grandparent dies and there is a funeral service?  Or what about if a family are invited to a wedding?  Like it or not, religion and faith are interwoven into our culture and history.  You cannot exclude children from knowledge about religion without in effect banning and removing a lot of other things from them.

I think that the original poster was seeking to praise China on this one issue whilst not endorsing anything else about the state.  However, the reality is that rules controlling religion for children are part and parcel of the wider identity of China.  You cannot separate out control of religion from everything else that is tied up with seeking to be a totalitarian regime.