religious indoctrination

A group should not be considered a cult merely because of its unorthodox beliefs. Individual vulnerabilities may include high hypnotizability, strong ability for concentration and vivid imagination, learning disorders, or autism spectrum disorders. Some take place in person, where you may meet someone at work, through a friend or from a community. Indoctrination, in the broad and original sense, is simply education, the teaching of particular truths ("doctrines"). 2011. I went to Christian school from K-12 and I was never taught how to consider any of this. But there are large differences by religion. Learn more. School-attending teens are slightly less likely to say that teachers have been unfriendly toward their religious or spiritual views than they are to say the same about other students (5% vs. 9%). As AI becomes more powerful, it is increasingly important to safeguard individual rights and the locus of control. See Dupper, David R., Shandra Forrest-Bank and Autumn Lowry-Carusillo. It includes isolation and control, fear and coercion, and enslavement. Accordingly the threshold is so high for parents . This problem is a member of 3 aggravating loops. Accessed 04 Jul. Randall Hill/Reuters On April 25, the Supreme Court will hear Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case that was carefully engineered to return prayer to public schools. As a group of psychology and neuroscience scholars explained to the court, coaches have a powerful effect on the behavior of the student athletes in their charge, athletes who crave their approval and support. Some parents consider that their kids are immune to religious indoctrination because they are raised in a non-religious or non-Christian household. Teens with no religious affiliation those who identify as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, sometimes called religious nones are less likely than others to notice religious activities in their schools. We know that religious fundamentalism is strongly correlated with what psychologists and neuroscientists call magical thinking, which refers to making connections between actions and events when no such connections exist in reality. But roughly half (49%) of the students surveyed say they rarely or never participate in any of these religious expressions during the school day, or they did not answer the questions. Kennedy refused, instead hiring lawyers at the far-right First Liberty Institute to threaten the school with a lawsuit. Since science is nothing more than a method of determining truth using empirical measurement and hypothesis testing, denial of science equates to the denial of objective truth and tangible evidence. Teaching encourages questions whereas indoctrination is threatened by them. The combined category is used in this report so that broad comparisons can be made to highlight differences between groups. In this way, some religious ideologies persist while others fade into oblivion. "Flip side to this equation could be that secular kids are taught to lose their sense of wonder and imagination at an earlier age than their Bible-believing friends.". Prosblogion's Helen De Cruz says that while there may be some truth to the results, what the study really shows is that the religious children know their Bible stories. "Not only is there benefit in allowing children to think imaginatively without forcing them into the mindset of perceived reality, but according to at least one study, raising children with religion also increases self-esteem, lowers anxiety, risk of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and dangerous sexual behaviour.". For a Lot of American Teens, Religion Is a Regular Part of the Public Evangelical Protestants stand out on some of these measures. WASHINGTON The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program, the latest decision by a conservative majority that has . This blurring of reality and fantasy, even for children, is not always a good thing, says notable atheist blogger Hemant Mehta. Essentially, infected grasshoppers become slaves for parasitic, self-copying machinery. However, the sample of 1,811 teens did not include enough teens in those religious groups or in some of the smaller Christian traditions, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes called Mormons) or the historically black Protestant tradition to allow their views to be analyzed and reported separately. "Religious Indoctrination": Oklahoma Officials Approve Catholic Public 2001. religious private school) with the potential types of unfriendliness toward religion that he or she may experience in that setting. Idea of secularism Properly speaking, secularism is a doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations in the state's policies, their . How Republicans recast Christian indoctrination as religious freedom. An additional reason for this analytical decision is to avoid conflating the associations between adolescent characteristics and religious experiences in schools with the type of school teens attend. Although this might be unsurprising, secular and religious children also differed in their interpretation of fantasy narratives where there was a supernatural or magical storyline. Why Survivors of Family Trauma See Themselves in Prince Harry, How Family Estrangement May Benefit Trauma Survivors, 10 Reasons Being Single Can Be an Excellent Option, 3 Simple Ways to Improve Any Relationship. You only hope kids exposed to it figure it out soon enough," he writes for Patheos. But what about the children? Some religiously affiliated students share examples of teachers challenging religious beliefs, even if they were not personally challenging the respondent: [The teachers said] that God was make believe and religion was to control the masses and taught us multiple religions as if they were all true. At the same time, some students who identify as religious nones note their discomfort when they perceive teachers as promoting particular religious beliefs. If we want to inoculate society against the harms of fundamentalist ideologies, we must start thinking differently about how they function in the brain. With little notice and nothing more than a 23-year-old news clipping, a right-wing, first-term congressman mounted an 11th-hour effort on the House floor to persuade his colleagues that Judge Hatchett, a trailblazing judge who broke barriers as the first Black State Supreme Court justice south of the Mason-Dixon line, was undeserving of being honored. Some distinguish indoctrination from education on the basis that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned. "Raising children with fantastical religious tales is not bad after all.". It is important to recognize the difference between due and undue influence. "By relating seemingly impossible religious events achieved through divine intervention (eg, Jesus transforming water into wine) to fictional narratives, religious children would more heavily rely on religion to justify their false categorisations," writes Shadee Ashtari for the Huffington Post. It was a brief account of a decision Hatchett had written in 1999 as a judge on the 11th U.S. Indoctrination tells you what to think. It is astonishing to contemplate that at the precise moment in which American parents are demanding access to the books their children are reading and video surveillance of public school educators, the rights of those parents who dont believe that public school should privilege certain majoritarian religious viewpoints are poised to be eradicated at the Supreme Court. The ability for parasites to modify the behavior of hosts in ways that increase their own fitness (i.e., their ability to survive and reproduce) while hurting the fitness of the host, is known as parasitic manipulation.. You just met The One or maybe a shady character. The realization that oneself and all ones loved ones will someday die is naturally terrifying, and this existential fear perfectly set the stage for anxiety-reducing ideas, like ones that offer a never-ending afterlife. 1615 L St. NW, Suite 800Washington, DC 20036USA Nature: Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies (see doctrine). As Dawkins explains, ideas spread through the behavior that they produce in their hosts, which is what enables them to be transmitted from one brain to another. About four-in-ten unaffiliated teens (38%) say that hardly any or none of their friends are, like them, atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular when it comes to religion. The sample size is sufficient, though, to allow separate analysis of Catholic, evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant and religiously unaffiliated teens. Not only does fundamentalism promote delusional thinking, it also discourages followers from exposing themselves to any different ideas, which acts to protect the delusions that are essential to the ideology. Teaching, on the other hand, gives you a way to orient yourself in context and encourages you to critically think about what you believe, given the information you possess. Knowing strategies to fix problems or prevent them is important. Recognizing that international associations are generally confronting world problems and developing action strategies based on particular values, the initial content was based on the descriptions, aims, titles and profiles of international associations. brenda kellaway on Twitter: "@HonTonyAbbott ANZAC, religious The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that teachers and administrators cannot lead prayers in public schools, and a decision in 2000 barred school districts from sponsoring student-led prayers at football games. 2015. There are specific strategies, patterns, and behaviors used by cultic groups to recruit new members and manipulate and control them. This vindication didnt matter. For example, among teens who attend public schools, 39% of evangelical Protestants say they sometimes or often pray before lunch, compared with 18% of Catholics and 11% of mainline Protestants who say they do this. Hollywood actors announce start of historic strike, India set to launch historic Moon mission, Australia names first woman to lead its central bank, India's online game tax could kill a booming industry, Murders and mayhem tearing apart an Indian state. Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, disgusted by this outcome, circulated the article to every Republican member of the House ostensibly under the theory that they should be aware of Hatchetts alleged anti-religious animus before honoring his memory with a courthouse. They are manipulated by fear and guilt and may be stuck, with no way out! On April 25, the Supreme Court will hear Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case that was carefully engineered to return prayer to public schools. Across many demographic groups, most school-attending teens rarely, if ever, see other students being bullied for their religion. Three-in-ten teens report that most or all of their friends share their religion, and even more (43%) say some of their friends share their religious identity. Humans are a social animal species inescapably shaped by cultural context, and thus some degree of indoctrination is implicit in the parentchild relationship, and has an essential function in forming stable communities of shared values. The word only gained the meaning of imbuing with an idea or opinion in the 1830s. Despite its potential benefits, family estrangement continues to be stigmatized. Study: Religious children are less able to distinguish fantasy from Religious indoctrination | The Encyclopedia of World Problems Lisa Marie Presley's cause of death revealed, Wagner no longer significant in Ukraine, US says, Stars walk Oppenheimer red carpet - then leave, The unlikely hit film that became a political flashpoint, US Secret Service ends White House cocaine probe. In much the same way, Christian fundamentalism is a parasitic ideology that inserts itself into brains, commanding individuals to act and think in a certain waya rigid way that is intolerant to competing ideas. The survey finds that about four-in-ten teens who attend public schools say they commonly (either often or sometimes) see other students praying before sporting events at school. The first step in keeping you and your loved ones safe is learning more about what a cult is, how they work, and the lasting serious after-effects of being involved with one. One particularly nasty type of computer virus that relies on humans for replication, known as a Trojan horse, disguises itself as something useful or interesting in order to persuade individuals to download and spread it. "Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional," wrote the researchers. Today, school officials who coerce students into prayer go on the offensive, claiming that any attempt to halt their efforts at religious coercion is actually persecution of their religious beliefs. Everyone has vulnerabilities. Religious indoctrination of children Many legal experts have argued that the government should create laws in the interests of the welfare of children, irrespective of the religion of their parents. Roughly four-in-ten evangelical Protestant teens who attend public school say they at least sometimes pray before lunch at school (39%), compared with 18% of Catholic teens and 11% of mainline Protestant teens. But, on the whole, there is little variation in how often students in these various demographic categories report witnessing bullying. Lets equip the next generation with critical thinking and love, and teach them to understand when to defy in the name of God for the sake of justice. Evangelical Protestant teens stand out from other traditions on this measure: 47% know that public school teachers are allowed to read from the Bible as literature, compared with about a third each of mainline Protestant teens (34%), religious nones (33%) and Catholics (32%). Joe Kennedy was a football coach in Washington state who led explicitly religious prayer circles with students at the 50-yard line after games. A Drag Queen reading to kids isnt "indoctrination". Believing you are the cause for all negative events in your life is toxic. Freedom from resentment and pain can follow the decision to let go. Is Christian Education Simply a Matter of Religious Indoctrination? And, even when examining religiously motivated bullying, there are not the same concerns about conflating the type of school a teen attends (e.g. Christians are lulled into the myth of the moral crowd by the seemingly universal modern Christian support for figures like Wilberforce (who combatted slavery), Bonhoeffer (who fought the Nazis), and Martin Luther King Jr. (who championed civil rights), ignoring the fact that these men were largely considered heretics during their lives. Get Sojourners delivered straight to your inbox. These, in turn, increase susceptibility to being recruited by a cult unless there are strong critical thinking, media literacy and good supportive network, which can help a person stay grounded. For most teens, religion is not a regular topic of conversation with friends. Durkheim argued that interaction among co-religionists creates and reinforces religion by fostering solidarity through the creation and veneration of shared symbols. It may cause errors in submitting the form. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'brainwashing' in China, Manson Cult Member Leslie Van Houten Deserves to Be Free, The Dangerous Extremes of Belief About Victims. But its also possible that religious and nonreligious teens may perceive the world somewhat differently: What may appear as a religious expression to an evangelical Protestant teen may not even be noticed by a nonreligious teen. the 2014 . There is good reason to expect that this should vary by religion. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life., Cheadle, Jacob E. and Philip Schwadel. Still, a sizable minority of American teenagers (36%) say they sometimes or often talk with friends about religion. For instance, there are moderate versions of Christianity and Islam that promote qualities like a sense of community and a moral code that fosters ethical behavior. Four-in-ten girls (41%) report sometimes or often talking to their friends about religion; just three-in-ten boys (31%) say the same. Gender, age and grade are not associated with having seen teachers lead a class in prayer or read from the Bible as literature. Religion in public schools has long been a controversial issue. Kennedy later sued the school for violating his First Amendment rights. The survey also asked students a more general question: Has a teacher ever said anything about religion that made you feel uncomfortable? Please fill out the form below, and a member of our online publication team will receive your message. Are we educated or indoctrinated? It is the unit of analysis in this survey because the sample sizes for most of the nonwhite categories are too small to analyze individually. Roughly two-thirds (64%) say they rarely or never talk to their friends about religion. Teens awareness of, and attendance at, religious support or prayer groups at their school also varies by region, with teens in the South more likely to say that prayer or religious support groups meet in their public school and that they, personally, participate in such activities, compared with those in the Northeast and West. Get the help you need from a therapist near youa FREE service from Psychology Today. 2023 BBC. For instance, one teen reports that teachers have brought the [Ten Commandments] to class and preached. Some expound on why a teachers comments were unacceptable: This teacher was heavily promoting having a relationship with God as being the most important thing in life and I didnt think that was appropriate to express while teaching an unrelated subject., According to sociologists, religion is usually a social phenomenon, taking place among a community of believers.14 People affect and are affected by the religious and spiritual beliefs and activities of their friends and family. Teaching About Religion | NEA It is not completely clear what accounts for such large differences in what adolescents see in their schools. But there also are gender differences when it comes to inviting fellow students to church or youth group: Nearly three-in-ten girls (28%) report that they sometimes or often invite others to their youth group or worship services, compared with one-in-five boys (20%). The initial content for the Encyclopedia was seeded from UIAs Yearbook of International Organizations. For instance, would children exposed to scientific study at a young age be more inclined to believe pseudoscientific claims? As such the term may be used pejoratively or as a buzz word, often in the context of political opinions, theology, religious dogma or anti-religious convictions. They want willing slaves. But there also are differences among religiously affiliated teens. It tells you what to believe and how to defend that belief from people who might threaten it. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Therefore, it is a reasonable conclusion to show a cause-and-effect because of such . The neuroscience of religious and spiritual experience These are among the key findings of a survey of 1,811 U.S. adolescents ages 13 to 17, conducted online from March 29 to April 14, 2019. Or you may find yourself recruited online from social media posts, websites, YouTube videos, discussion forums, dating apps, movies or video games. "The very act of her getting up and pressing and pushing to her rightful healing is an act of resistance.". This year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving a high school coach who was fired for leading prayer after games, just one of several recent controversies in this area of law. The survey asked religiously affiliated teens about their own religious practices and expressions in school. About three-in-ten say they rarely witness bullying in school, while 14% say they never see it. Christians and religious nones, boys and girls, and older and younger teens are all about equally likely to witness bullying in school. Brainwashing Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster Key points No one joins a cult; they are recruited by systematic social influence processes. But most know what the law is; 82% of U.S. teens in public schools (and 79% of evangelical teens) correctly answer a factual question about the constitutionality of teacher-led prayer in public school classrooms. The Supreme Court was keenly concerned about such children in Lee and Santa Fe, identifying an overwhelming government interest in protecting children from religious coercion with an eye toward the type of state-sponsored religious indoctrination that animated the Framers. 12. . That's a mistake you don't want to make. But fundamentalist ideologies can be thought of as mental parasites. However, undue influence is deceptive and manipulative. "Are we really going to say that kids who are taught to believe the Bible is true are somehow developmentally delayed because they're more likely, at age 5 or 6, to believe fantastical things?" Indoctrination in the guise of education 1912. The amygdala is a brain region that is activated when we perceive something to be threatening. Esteemed philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett insightfully described how ideas can control minds when he said, The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes. In this regard, it is often not the brain that controls the mind, but the memes that compose the mind that control the brain. , The social nature of religion is a key theme in social scientific research. Essentially, the brain is a biological computer, and an ideology is a set of coded instructions, or cultural software, that is running on the brains hardware. But all undue influence is destructive. When a fundamentalist ideology inhabits a host brain, the organisms mind is no longer fully in control. The vast majority of U.S. teens who attend public schools say there is no religious support group or prayer group that meets in their school (82%). 2012. Not all influence is bad. How have these labels changed overtime? A quarter of teens in public schools (26%) say they often or sometimes see students inviting other students to religious youth groups or worship services. Children -- through childhood indoctrination. That is borne out by the data: Religiously affiliated teens as a whole are roughly twice as likely as religious nones (36% vs. 16%) to report that most or all of their friends share their religion (or lack thereof). Evangelical Protestants are especially likely to approve of teachers bringing religion into the classroom: Two-thirds of evangelical Protestant teens (68%) say it is appropriate for a teacher to lead a class in prayer, compared with four-in-ten mainline Protestants (41%). But not all commentators saw this study as critical of a religious rearing. Roughly eight-in-ten evangelical Protestant teens approve of a teacher reading from the Bible as an example of literature (82%), compared with six-in-ten mainline Protestant teens who say this (59%). A majority of evangelical Protestant teens (58%) regularly talk to their friends about religion, compared with about four-in-ten mainline Protestant teens (39%) and roughly a third of Catholics (35%). Ignoring history sets students up to perpetuate the myth of the moral crowd, making it easier for a new generation to call a prophet a heretic. But far fewer Catholics and religious nones say the same: Only about one-in-ten Catholic and unaffiliated teens report that their school hosts such a group.10. Steven Hassan, Ph.D., is a mental health professional, cult and undue influence expert who has been working in the field of relationship, group, and political cults for over 40 years. Forcing your kids to go to church every week under the threat that they'll burn for eternity in a fiery dimension unless they don't, is. How to Reconcile With an Estranged Family Member, 3 Ways to Build an Unbreakable Bond With Your Child, Stand Up Straight, Your Neurons Are Watching, The Hard Problems of Consciousness and Psychology, How to Support Those Whove Chosen Family Estrangement. Among just those who say teacher-led prayer is appropriate, a somewhat higher share believe it is permitted by law (28%), but 70% still know that it is unconstitutional. Religious activities and expressions in public schools vary by region, too. Itwasestablishedin 1907, byHenri la Fontaine(Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1913), andPaul Otlet, a founding father of what is nowcalled information science. A new Pew Research Center survey asked a nationally representative sample of more than 1,800 teenagers (ages 13 to 17) about the kinds of religious activity they engage in or see other students engaging in during the course of the school day. The researchers then queried the children on whether they thought the main character in the story was real or fictional. Destructive individuals and cults use deception and undue influence to make people dependent and obedient. It is a traditionally-based process of all cultures. (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax It's a mysterious package, delivered by subtle sensory clues. At least one member of the football team felt obligated to join Kennedys prayers because he feared that otherwise, he wouldnt get to play as much. Other members participated only because they did not wish to separate themselves from the team.. This gap makes Christians vulnerable to the myth of the moral crowd the false belief that the judgment of the majority in a crowd (in this case, the church) can be trusted to be moral. There are virtually no differences between boys and girls, younger and older teens, or across regions on this question. Can Churches Spread the Gospel of Solar in Coal Country? By understanding how fundamentalist ideologies function and are represented in the brain using this analogy, we can begin to understand how to inoculate against them, and potentially, how to rehabilitate someone who has undergone ideological brainwashingin other words, a reduction in ones ability to think critically or independently. Supreme Court hints religious schools have right to public funds in
St Stephen Catholic Church St Stephen Mn, Articles R