Why Moms Pray

The kids are gone on a trip with the grandparents.
Wa-hoo, you might think. Sleep late. Watch TV. Eat junk food.
But for me, it brings sadness. Every time my children leave, it is another cut in the parental umbilical cord. It’s the sad process of letting go, of realizing that, while they slip away from me [...]

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Let’s Teach Religion in the Classroom

I wrote this column a few years ago for the DMN,  and I received a tremendous amount of interesting responses. I hope to keep the dialogue going, so I’m putting the column here on my blog:
You Might Not Expect an Agnostic to Say….Let’s Teach Religion in the Classroom
Sometimes we find allies in the most unusual people. I’m [...]

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Happy Meal Baptism

If a church can’t guilt a child into membership, if they can’t pull him in with fear or with approval of his sinning self or promises for life everafter, they’ll draw him in with doughnuts and gifts.
 

After the big baptism, I went to pick up my children from their dad’s house. It was my birthday and we were going [...]

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And the preacher said….

When I finally received a response from Pastor P (conveniently after he had baptised my son), here’s what he said. I cut out the blah blah blah “our church is so wonderful” bit to get to the crux of the problem. Incidentally, my older son views Pastor P as a leader and a businessman, the congregation [...]

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No baptism please.

 When my younger son was eight, he was baptized without my permission and against my wishes into a Baptist church. It was my desire that he wait until he was older to be baptized, until he understood what the ritual meant. When I found out he was to be baptized the next day, I sent this [...]

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Einstein didn’t believe…

…in an afterlife either.  Here’s one of my favorite quotes by Einstein: “I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I–nor would I want to–conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from [...]

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Terrorists

 I’ve been asked to boycott Disney World and Wal-Mart because they support gay rights. You’d think that Wal-Mart was selling child pornography with the vehemence of some folk’s disapproval.
 
So I immediately go to my children and tell them about homosexuality, why adults should have the right to choose who they love and why it’s [...]

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The Big Fake

Not long after N*** figured out that Santa Claus was a fake, he started into religion, tearing the thin fabric of his belief in God and heaven. It seemed a natural progression. If there was no fat man who flew through the sky one night a year and delivered toys, was there a bearded old [...]

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Losing my religion

My mother was a devout Catholic. I remember her putting on her knee-length faux fur coat, bundling up with a scarf and leading us out the front door, across the street and up the hill to the church. Yes, we lived right across the street from a quiet Catholic church. Most days, I’d make my [...]

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Seeds

I started my kids out in church. Hypocrite, you might think. That’s sacrilegious.
 
It might seem odd that an agnostic would take her children to church, but I thought I should at least give my boys a chance. Is it fair to force my views on them? Shouldn’t I at least provide a palette full [...]

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