Evangelical Indoctrination of Children

Tulsa reporter Russell Cobb's report titled Heretics on the rise and fall of Carlton Pearson was featured in the 12/8/2008 broadcast of This American Life. Pearson is a former charismatic Pentecostal preacher who at one point renounced hell and began preaching a ministry of inclusion where all souls go to heaven. Declared a heretic by the Pentecostals, he is now a United Church of Christ minister, and his former church, Higher Dimensions, merged with the All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa.While recounting Pearson's story, Russell Cobb gives his impressions of evangelical feelings about the possibility of giving up belief in hell: Here's Steve Palmer recounting his introduction to evangelical thinking on hell and salvation: Is this story from Steve Palmer how it starts for most evangelicals?What Russell Cobb recounted in the first excerpt is just so familiar. It's what we hear from evangelicals all the time. "Don't blame us. We're not the ones who made the rules. God made the rules. God says when killing is murder and when it isn't. God says when rape is rape and when it isn't. God says you'll burn in hell for all eternity, not us. We're not hateful. We're just loving and obedient people following the rules laid down by a loving God."There's no acknowledgement or even any hint of recognition that the Bible is open to many interpretations.There's no sense of compassion.There's no sense of responsibility.There's no sense of remorse.It is amazing what people will believe is good when they think it is God's will, as we see here all the time. Does it begin in childhood? Is the irrationality and determined ignorance we see displayed here everyday a result of childhood indoctrination? If you get to children when they're young and impressionable enough, are they doomed to a lifetime of evangelical closemindedness?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Given the responses, let me come at this from a slightly different angle.The two evangelical respondents both rejected "scare them to Jesus" approaches, so a fear of hell instilled during childhood is not the only way to create confirmed creationists who reject scientific theories for unscientific reasons. Let us grant for the sake of discussion that the approach described by Steve Palmer is uncommon. What is it that produces adults who feel a loving God is consistent with condemning most of the population of the Earth to an eternity of suffering in hell. Carlton Pearson put it this way: I think what we're saying is that we have a little trouble feeling the love when discussing salvation with evangelicals. We're given what sounds to us a very contradictory explanation, that God is love, that God makes the rules that condemn most of humanity to hell, that that's just the way it is, that God works in mysterious ways, that we must not question God, and by the way did we mention that God is love.This thread raises the possibility of childhood indoctrination as an explanation, but what are the other possibilities?--Percy

Yes, there's a couple recent examples. Look at If you were God, what kind of God would you be? for one. Well, okay, if that's the way you feel, but that's the uncompassionate and unloving attitude whose origins I'm inquiring about.--Percy

There was no intention to equate evangelicalism with creationism. Francis Collins, the well known evangelical who led the human genome project, is of course not a creationist. We accept scientific theories because their evidence and insights are accessible to all regardless of race, creed or culture. The same is not true of theology. As I've said before, you name it, the Bible has been used to justify it. If there's anything we can be certain of regarding the Bible it's that it equivocates about almost everything.So claims that the Bible unequivocally condemns most of humanity to hell gives us much more accurate information about the claimant than the Bible. 1st Timothy 4:9 says, "We have our hope set on the living God, who is the savior of all men, especially those who believe." And 1st John 2:2 says, "Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."That God condemns most of humanity to hell isn't what the Bible unequivocally and inarguably says, it's just what evangelicals want to believe, and nothing can talk them out of it. This thread asks whether it's something in childhood that causes this.--Percy

Hi Ochave,Providing real time expressions of uncompassionate, unloving evangelical attitudes toward those who believe differently from themselves isn't really what this thread is about. We already know the attitude exists. This thread is exploring where the attitude comes from. If you'd like to discuss why most of humanity should be condemned to an eternity of suffering in hell then you should propose a new thread over at Proposed New Topics.--Percy

Yes, of course. As I've said before, it's what people do, find post facto rationalizations for what they believe anyway. These rationalizations are not the reasons they formed the belief. They're the reasons they've invented to justify their beliefs.The reason science works is because it employs a method by which beliefs can be measured against the real world. There's no such method in theology. For instance, this is not even a method: Not only will religious sects argue endlessly about which beliefs are orthodox and which aren't, many will simply define orthodox as what most people believe, others as what they or their group believes. I guess this is the whole question of this thread in a nutshell. How can your certainty about an equivocal Biblical interpretation override your compassion for your fellow human beings? Our suspicion is that you don't actually have that compassion.Good people in good conscience treat other people shabbily every day. The only way this can happen is if these other people have become dehumanized in the eyes of their tormentors. This is how slavery happened. This is how the Holocaust happened.The thesis of this thread is that evangelicals use childhood as a period of indoctrination whereby they dehumanize in the child's eyes all those who believe differently from themselves.--Percy

Which Christianity is orthodox?What you *can* reasonably claim is that some Christian beliefs are so widely shared among all Christian sects that they cannot be accurately characterized as equivocal, but this thread is not about such beliefs. It's about beliefs on matters where the Bible equivocates, such as that most of humanity will be condemned to hell for all eternity. Evangelical Christianity will not concede that the Bible is equivocal on this particular belief (and on others), and I contend that such beliefs tell us more about the person holding them than about what the Bible says.The question is, what makes evangelicals this way?--Percy

And these all condemn most of humanity to hell? Also, I expect that just as the Bible is variously interpreted, so are the "broadly accepted creeds." The Bible's contradictory stance on many, many points means no such interpretation is possible. Which interpretation one accepts is an individual decision. The question again is why some people not only accept the least compassionate, least humanitarian interpretation possible, but won't acknowledge or cannot perceive that the Bible conveys no single consistent message on many issues.--Percy

Yes, you're right, it's not so, and that's not what I believe.As far as the Bible goes, what I was talking about wasn't a belief. It's a simple fact that the Bible contradicts itself on a number of issues, universalism being one of them. When evidence is contradictory and insufficient then it is only rational to recognize this fact. Anyone who instead reaches firm conclusions while citing this kind of supporting evidence is telling us much more about themselves than about the Bible.Why is it so important to you to believe that the Bible is unambiguous on points where the ambiguity and ambivalence are obvious? Well, yes, new Biblical interpretations emerge all the time, that's why new religious sects are born and old ones die out. Rather than timeless truths, what you describe is more like the tentativity of science. Because the underpinning of Christianity is not the real world but a book upon which anyone can imprint any interpretation they like, like all religions it follows the currents of social and cultural change.--Percy

This thread asks whether evangelical indoctrination during childhood is responsible for the uncompassionate, unempathetic and inflexible attitudes of adult evangelicals that they excuse by claiming that God makes the rules and they're just following them.Please find other threads if you're not posting on this topic. Thanks.--Percy

Hi Ochave,Please stop posting one line messages. This is a discussion board, not a chat room.If topics have emerged here that you would like to discuss but that do not fit into this particular thread, please propose new topics over at Proposed New Topics.--Percy

The proposed Texas policy was not about the rights of children in science class, its about the science curriculum. If there's something in the Texas science curriculum that infringes upon the rights of children to question what they're taught then you'll have to call our attention to it.Science curriculums define what children should be taught about science. The proposal you quoted is just a Trojan Horse for sneaking anti-evolutionary propaganda into science classrooms. The whole history of creationism and ID is one of seeking answers to the question, "How can we sneak our religious theology into science classrooms?"No one on either side of the debate believes that the proposed Texas wording would ever be used to question F=ma, or whether the Earth orbits the sun, or even biological issues like whether pollen really fertilizes flowers. It would have been used solely for creationism's key issues: the age of the Earth and universe, geology, and evolution. But science has no reason to question these theories, and teaching children that they should be singled out for doubt is not science.--Percy

The discussion of methodological naturalism isn't really on-topic. The premise of this thread is that it is evangelical indoctrination during childhood that produces adults who have no compunction against condemning most of humanity to an eternity of suffering in hell. Rebuttals to this premise have so far consisted only of examples of the very attitudes we lament, e.g., that this *is* God's unambiguous Word, that most of humanity *does* deserve to be condemned to hell, etc.For the sake of discussion, this thread assumes that the Bible is ambiguous and open to many interpretations, including about the conditions for being saved. Those who would like to argue that the evangelical position *is* what the Bible unambiguously says and to discuss the Biblical support for this theology should find another thread.--Percy

I suggest you give Message 79 another look.--Percy

I know Mod said "Christian," but I think what you were questioning was whether the people running those Bible camps for kids have mainstream evangelical beliefs, and Mod presented evidence in support of that premise. If Becky were here she would likely argue that her Bible camp is an honest reflection of mainstream evangelical beliefs. But the text doesn't talk of "spiritual baptisms." You believe in two baptisms, right? One that takes place with water shortly after you're born, and another that takes place later in life when one accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and becomes "born again." Becky didn't say that she considers them both "spiritual baptisms." You picked at a few nits, but by and large Becky seems to believe precisely what you believe, but because you don't agree with her approach to Bible camp you're trying to find reasons why she isn't a "real" Christian. We see this type of thinking from evangelicals here all the time - any evangelical they disagree with or who committed some misdeed could not possibly be a "true" Christian.--Percy