I understand the idea of waiting till someone understands what is going on and can make a choice before someone is baptized.
But 6 isn’t that age. A 6 year old is just going to believe what their parents tell them and isn’t old enough to understand this choice. Might as well just do infant baptism.
We went through a confirmation process at 17 or 18. Much better way to accept and acknowledge your religion.
For someone to make an informed choice, they also need to know all the options. So, they can’t be raised in the religion of their parents. They need top be taught about the other Christian sects: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They even need to learn about the Christian-adjacent ones like Mormonism. Then they need to learn about Buddhism, Shinto, Islam, Hinduism. And, just in case the true religion died out like the Ancient Egyptian religion, the religions of the Aztecs, Olmecs, Mayans and Incas, the Norse gods, the ancient Greek gods, and the copycat Roman gods.
And, if it’s their parents who are teaching them about their favourite religion, and those parents are true believers, they should also be taught by true believers of those other religions, not just some kind of scholarly information. We wouldn’t want the kids to be influenced by the emotion of their parents.
Of course, no parent is going to agree to this. They’re true believers so their religion is the correct one, and they’re afraid that if the kids are taught something other than their own religion, the kids might be “brainwashed” into thinking the wrong thing.
The confirmation process I went through included some discussion of other flavors of Christianity. It started putting some ideas in my head that eventually led to dropping the faith entirely.
I understand the idea of waiting till someone understands what is going on and can make a choice before someone is baptized.
But 6 isn’t that age. A 6 year old is just going to believe what their parents tell them and isn’t old enough to understand this choice. Might as well just do infant baptism.
We went through a confirmation process at 17 or 18. Much better way to accept and acknowledge your religion.
For someone to make an informed choice, they also need to know all the options. So, they can’t be raised in the religion of their parents. They need top be taught about the other Christian sects: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They even need to learn about the Christian-adjacent ones like Mormonism. Then they need to learn about Buddhism, Shinto, Islam, Hinduism. And, just in case the true religion died out like the Ancient Egyptian religion, the religions of the Aztecs, Olmecs, Mayans and Incas, the Norse gods, the ancient Greek gods, and the copycat Roman gods.
And, if it’s their parents who are teaching them about their favourite religion, and those parents are true believers, they should also be taught by true believers of those other religions, not just some kind of scholarly information. We wouldn’t want the kids to be influenced by the emotion of their parents.
Of course, no parent is going to agree to this. They’re true believers so their religion is the correct one, and they’re afraid that if the kids are taught something other than their own religion, the kids might be “brainwashed” into thinking the wrong thing.
The confirmation process I went through included some discussion of other flavors of Christianity. It started putting some ideas in my head that eventually led to dropping the faith entirely.
I imagine it wasn’t done in a viewpoint-neutral way, right?
I think that is how christening ceremonies are viewed nowadays.