Why is religion invariably somthing you inherit by birth and not a matter of your choice? Should somebody born of parents belonging to a particular religion automatically owe his/her allegience to it regardless of his/her conscience?
When I raise these questions, I know that they do have personal ring about them. I would have been in a different religion if my parents had not belonged to the religion they were born into. So are most of the people. If religion is a set of ideas, my allegience or lack of it should be based on my acceptance or non-acceptance of those ideas. One becomes a Marxist by his or her choice. We don't tend to treat the child of Marxist parents as Marxist by birth. A parent having neo-liberal or neo-conservative ideas are not privileged to have neo-liberal or neo-conservative children.
Then, why should we give this privilege to religion alone? When we go back to the foundational period of every institutionalised religion, we see a rupture from the dominant religon existing at that time. Early members of Christianity and Islam broke away from the prevailing religion of the time and joined the new religion. It was their choice and not their inheritance. Birth in a family or clan loyal to the existing religion was no obstacle for them to leave it to join the new religion.
Has institutionalisation of major religions over the centuries allowed them to usurp people's conscience? Aren't children born into a religion programmed to absorb the ideas of that religion as absolute and final? My proposal is that we have to go back to the spirit of the foundational moment of the religions when people with conscience joined them. Thus one should have the freedom to follow a faith of his/her choice or not to follow any faith at all. That is real freedom.
When I raise these questions, I know that they do have personal ring about them. I would have been in a different religion if my parents had not belonged to the religion they were born into. So are most of the people. If religion is a set of ideas, my allegience or lack of it should be based on my acceptance or non-acceptance of those ideas. One becomes a Marxist by his or her choice. We don't tend to treat the child of Marxist parents as Marxist by birth. A parent having neo-liberal or neo-conservative ideas are not privileged to have neo-liberal or neo-conservative children.
Then, why should we give this privilege to religion alone? When we go back to the foundational period of every institutionalised religion, we see a rupture from the dominant religon existing at that time. Early members of Christianity and Islam broke away from the prevailing religion of the time and joined the new religion. It was their choice and not their inheritance. Birth in a family or clan loyal to the existing religion was no obstacle for them to leave it to join the new religion.
Has institutionalisation of major religions over the centuries allowed them to usurp people's conscience? Aren't children born into a religion programmed to absorb the ideas of that religion as absolute and final? My proposal is that we have to go back to the spirit of the foundational moment of the religions when people with conscience joined them. Thus one should have the freedom to follow a faith of his/her choice or not to follow any faith at all. That is real freedom.
(Photo: A kindergarten school in Hirsau, South Germany)
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