Relax It's Just God: How and Why to Talk to Your Kids About Religion When You're Not Religious

Parents Take on the 3-Letter Word: G-o-d!-a personal essay-Eric SelbySo often a few decades ago—at least for me—parenting involved being untruthful. People didn’t die: the “passed away.” I never had any discussions about the other three letter word: s-e-x since I was in denial of why my then-wife and I didn’t have any. But since she never asked directly—you know, that other three letter word: g-a-y—I never volunteered why I liked walking by houses under construction where, hopefully, at least one young carpenter was shirtless. My parents were weekly church attendees although just before he died, my father confessed that he mainly went because as the president of the local bank it looked good. (My fondest memory of my father in church was the Sunday he hoisted himself, hymn book in hand, up onto the pew on the outside wall where in one slam he ended the life of a bat. And the minister, a wry Englishman, never stopped preaching his sermon but did manage a witty “Amen” at the demise!) It was after my father’s death that while talking with my mother about God and Jesus that she said, when I asked if she believed that Jesus was part of God, “Of course not. That’s ridiculous.” For decades she along with everyone else in the congregation repeated the jargon of “Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” So when our children were young, we registered them in Sunday school and then went to church ourselves. But one Sunday the lay preacher started his sermon with a statement about the superiority of the white race and something about how white Christians needed to be…. But by the time he got to that, my then-wife and I were on our feet. And within a couple of minutes escorted our white daughters and our adopted half-black son out of Sunday school. We did explain why although Troy, at the time, was maybe only two and wouldn’t have understood. Years later I went back to church—but to the Unitarian one where, finally liberated from my closet, I would not be preached against from the bigotry of so many so-called “Christian” pulpits! All of that just for me to get to this: I am going to gift to that son and his white wife (brought up as a Roman Catholic but maybe lapsed as are increasing numbers of younger Catholics) Wendy Thomas Russell’s Relax, It’s Just God: How and Why to Talk to Your Kids about Religion When You’re Not Religious. Troy and May are the parents of my little quarter-black grandson, Remy, who a tad beyond his second birthday. Since he is a very social little lad, mixing with a wide variety of people in Aspen, certainly God will come up in a variety of contexts. I doubt that either parent goes to church. And I have no idea what their beliefs about God are—and, of course, it’s none of my business although they are fully aware that I waver between agnosticism and atheism. The notion that Jesus is the son of God is so ridiculous to me. What a hoax, a trickster that Joseph was, convincing that young lass Mary that he hadn’t done it—“No, no, Mary, I didn’t insert my you-know-what into your you-know-what. Remember, we’d been drinking wine from wineskins and I know I heard you scream, “Oh God! God! God, that feels so good!” Woman back then were not expected to know much about life—just to produce it! The author and her husband call themselves secular parents, a term I find perfect for people who don’t attend church, temple, mosque…. My then-wife and I should have done that, used that term with our children. But when her 5-year-old daughter came home one day to tell her parents about God as she’d learned about him from another 5-year-old, a Jewish boy, the author found herself unprepared to deal with this three letter word. She was prepared for the s-e-x one. So, as she writes, I “wrote the book I wanted to read.” What she and her husband did with Maxine, their daughter, was this: they read and talked about not only the capital letter God but other gods as well and how history is full of various religious beliefs. Today, as she points out in the book, “sixty million people in the United States are unaffiliated with any religion. That’s a full 20 percent of the population—up from 8 percent in 1990 and 2 percent in the late 1950s.” What really amazed me was to learn is this about the Japanese: 84 percent of them are not affiliated with a religion. (I wonder if the horror of those two bombs knocked a lot of religion out of the population! Purely my own conjecture!) A young man who was a student of mine in a college writing class and who has continued to drop by for writing discussions—he wants to get an MFA—was raised in a home with his Dominican mother, her mother and a bunch of his mother’s sisters, all of whom apparently attend what has to be a very Bible-Belt type church, one in which anti-gay rhetoric flows from the pulpit. Edward’s mother doesn’t like having him come to my house because, of course, she is convinced that all gay men are sexual predators, eager to rape any good looking young man. She has another son, younger than Edward, who has no use for his mother’s religious views. Recently Edward “outed” his brother to his mother: outed him as an atheist. Mother like that are the ones who should be reading books such as Relax, It’s Just God instead of preaching to their children when those children are intelligent and who have so much information available to them on the Internet which, of course, is where the younger brother goes to get support for him developing atheism. The book is thin and well documented. The focus is on how to have meaningful discussions with children about any aspect of religion that the child wishes to discuss. As I said, I would have loved a copy decades ago. And hope that the copy I am gifting to the parents of my little grandson, Remy, will find it useful.

I think that in general, this is a remarkable book that fills a very important need. This isn't the only book or tactic out there to address the topic of religion with kids in a secular family, but I think it is generally unique and I applaud the approach espoused, which is: respectfully present the facts about what others believe, and let kids decide for themselves.I think that this approach is very important since as secularists, we should be guided by skepticism and the scientific method in everything that we do, and teach our kids these values. Thus, examining religions for their strengths and weaknesses, and allowing our children to form their own conclusions both reinforces this skill, and ultimately makes their ultimate conclusion (which they reach themselves), more meaningful and stable. It also takes the pressure (and therefore, anxiety) off of us, leading to the title of the book.To this end, the author advocates that we don't shy away from addressing the religion of others, our own non-religiousness (and that's ok!) and directly encourages religious literacy (even to the point of including "cheat sheets" for major religions and holidays) with an eye on respect and mutual understanding, and this is a welcome change from many of the other secular approaches out there which teach that a belief is worthy of ridicule, without addressing WHY something is worthy of skepticism, even if the adherents are otherwise intelligent and good people (as are secularists).My two criticisms would be that:1) Even though the chapters do address different topics (including very welcome ones, such as resolving family conflict), they nevertheless seem to simply repeat the above mentioned approach ad nauseum. You don't notice it with a casual read (the author seems to be a soft spoken but humorous, well articulated and otherwise gifted wordsmith), but at the end of the book I felt that the entirety could have been condensed into an extended post on her excellent blog site.2) for all of the lip service about "presenting the facts" (to the extent that statements about what people believe can be presented as such), and that we shouldn't manipulate our children's conclusions to match our own, she nevertheless advocates doing just that, with her suggestion that discussion of "Hell" be excluded from (at least small childrens') talks since it might cause grief, even though later in the book she also advocates specifically addresses telling children of the afterlife without the concept of "Heaven" because it provides them with an unnecessary comfort about the uncertainty after death (ie, the secular position might cause them grief), as well as omitting the exclusivity of the belief of Christian salvation. Sure, those beliefs may be supernatural, but as she says, belief is based on feelings rather than reason, they nevertheless influence what real people believe and decide, and errors or deception based on omission are still as bad as those based on commission.One of the legitimate criticisms levied upon religious individuals is that they tend to "pick and choose" the tenets of their religion that they feel are most personally or contemporarily agreeable or applicable, and ignore the bad things. The author by her own admission tends to only mention Christianity (and what she feels to be the positives as well as the negatives) rather than what could be considered to be the even more negative, barbaric, misogynistic, and antiquated features of other religions (she doesn't really mention these at all), but to her credit she acknowledges this as a function of her upbringing and former faith tradition and the fact that most of the US comes from a Christian tradition.That said, if your position is to "present the facts about how a certain group believes" and let someone decide for themselves, then at worst it is hypocritical, and at best devalues the approach suggested, by taking the fact that "religion W states that if you believe X, you will experience Y- If you don't, you'll experience Z;" and instead specifically stating that "X is not exclusive [and we don't even talk about Y and Z]."Just like with anything else, making an informed choice about faith requires getting accurate information to analyze, and if you leave out core defining beliefs of a faith, you aren't permitting an accurate analysis to be made--it hurts our cause (as laid out in the book) and doesn't help anybody.

As an agnostic parent with a child in a Christian school I was struggling to know how to talk to my young son about religion etc. and I found this book gave me the confidence to have those discussions. I have a background in theology and philosophy so it wasn't so much that there were groundbreaking ideas for me but that it reinforced my instincts of broadening awareness of multiple religions and the idea that everyone has a right to their own ideas. I found the format of the book very useful to dip in and out of and it's improved my confidence in having those conversations with my little one - all in all a very helpful read.

I can highly recommend this book, we are raising our son nondenominational, but want him to learn about all religions in this world. He attends a Catholic preschool, and when he started to mention God and religious beliefs that he heard about, we initially felt a little bit at a loss. This book gives great ideas, a wonderful overview and some practical examples how one might want to navigate these conversations. My husband and I both read this book within a couple days and are so glad to have found it.

As a non-religious person I was hoping to never have to talk to my kids about religion. But then I got a curious one and had to get over that idea fast. This book was very helpful and reassured me that my blundering through approach of lots of "some people believes" was a good track to be on.The only down side was this book is written for American audiences and the religious culture in Australia is different. It's still very useful!

This is probably the main sort of conflict between me and my wife. She, being the unaffiliated christian, an me, more the new atheist type.The title says it all. It is just god. A subject that have to be put over the table during dining conversations with the kids along side with politics, sports and super-heroes. Easy reading and practical. 10/10

Comprehensive, covers the big questions and concerns, and is accepting of all beliefs and thoughts. I'm way less terrified going forward.