Raising Children in Your Faith is a Gift

When I taught high school students, some of them faulted their parents for raising them Catholic. They said that they would have preferred to choose for themselves. I believe that raising children in your faith does not limit them. Such an experience is a gift for them no matter whether they keep the faith later or depart from it.

You Share What You Value with Your Children

Parents want their children to be good people and have the skills they need to negotiate life. They often do this by sharing what they value.

All choices parents make for children reflect values and what the parent knows.  From the earliest days, parents choose what a child eats, learns, and does in his or her free time. Athletic parents may expose their children to sports while musical ones may give them music lessons.

I know my parents moved to a specific county due to the quality of the public school system. They made many sacrifices to send us to Catholic high schools later. They also took us to church every Sunday and had ways of celebrating Advent and Lent at home.

If parents value their faith tradition, they do not want their children to miss out in this crucial area. They will do what they can to share the faith in age-appropriate ways through the years.

My Experience as a Parent

A living feeling of faith was important to my husband and me when it was time to choose a school for our daughter. I also wanted a school that was culturally, racially, and economically diverse. In the school we were blessed to find, her classmates were Korean, Egyptian, of European and African descent, Indonesian, and Canadian. In this school, she attended Mass weekly and rotated learning various ministries: singing, reading, being an usher, etc.

In the end, she attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through college.  Then she went to graduate school at a secular school, which was also good for her.

While she currently does not attend church, I can see the best of Christianity in the person she is. Raising her in a faith is a gift.

Religious Literacy is Rare and Needed

Children may or may not continue in the religious tradition of their parents. They may not realize, however, that their experience enables them to learn more about other faith traditions. There is value in understanding what religion is and why people follow religious traditions. The world desperately needs religious literacy and interreligious dialogue. It is difficult to talk about religion if one has never been exposed to one. Religious experience makes it easier to recognize the role of ritual, group and individual worship, moral values, the role of sacred writings, as well as the idea of a deity.

I imagine that many of the Americans who have issues with Islam do not know any Muslims personally or much about their beliefs and practices. More recently, because of the conflict between the government of Israel and the people of Gaza, anti-Semitism has risen. Can people separate religious beliefs from political decisions? I will answer this myself. Christian nationalism is rising in America so clearly some people cannot define the boundaries between religious faith and secular politics.

I firmly believe in the healthy separation between church and state. Because religion impacts so many people globally, we must educate ourselves about other faith traditions.

Children Can Always Go Their Own Way Religiously

Some children continue in their parents’ faith tradition. Others do not choose another religion but cease to attend a place of worship or follow religious norms. This may be for a short time or end up being a life choice. Many Catholics return to church after some time because they start a family and decide that faith is something they want to share with their children.

If raised in a healthy religious tradition (as opposed to an extremist religious group), the gift of faith will bless them throughout their lives. Whether they embrace the tradition or not, it will have formed them. It has also prepared them to learn about other faith traditions.

In my own experience, raising a child in my faith has been a blessing. The argument of letting children choose means that they are without a faith tradition for many years. In addition, how would they know how to choose if they have never experienced a religious tradition?