Why Is It Difficult For Children To Be Allowed To Make Up Their Minds About Religion Before They Are Teenagers?

Jean-Kemi Ogunmuyiwa 11 Jupiter Religious Studies Homework

Religion by definition is a person’s belief and opinions concerning the existence, nature and worship of god, a god, or gods and the divine involvement in the universe and human life. It also means a set of strongly held beliefs, views and values that someone lives by. The concept of religion is complicated and often difficult to fully understand by an adult, let alone a child. Subsequently many religious parents instil the values that they themselves subscribe to onto their children and raise them according to their beliefs.

Religion is traditionally passed down in a family from generation to generation therefore children rarely get the opportunity to explore other aspects of life and religion until they are old enough to review alterative forms for themselves. Freedom of religious expression at an early age is rarely encouraged and often frowned upon by parents who have very strong beliefs in their own religion and feel that the child should embrace their beliefs without question.

Even in religions where it is possible for children to make life long decisions, they are required to go through a rigorous process of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Even in religions where it is possible for children to make life long decisions, they are required to go through a rigorous process of confirmation to establish that they know and fully understand the choices that they make. This is because young children are at an impressionable age and care is taken that they are not just following blindly their parent’s religious choices. A good example is baptism in the Christian religion, where children are required to be a certain age before they can be baptised. The general consensus is that a child under that age might want to be baptised but not necessarily understand what baptism entails and therefore what they would be committing themselves to. As baptism is a very public affirmation and confirmation of ones faith it is deemed important for young people to at least be educated in the basics of their faith, the meaning and process of baptism. It is only after this that young children are allowed baptism under the Christian faith.

In addition to the points discussed above, young children often do not posses a highly matured and developed mental reasoning capability or the wealth of experience that would enable them to fully comprehend the complexities of life. It is therefore the responsibility of parents to offer young children guidance on religious and moral matters. Parents also believe in the rightness of their chosen religions and are eager for their children to share in and enjoy the benefits of their beliefs. They hope that by introducing a child at an early age to their chosen religion, that child would grow up with their particular set of beliefs and values; this would make the child more likely to remain in the same faith as an adult.

All of these reasons make it difficult for children to truly make up their minds about religion before they are teenagers.

02/05/2007